(Person) Percentage - Sabanci University Research Database

The Asian Conference on Media & Mass Communication Osaka, Japan
The study engages, at length, with various emancipatory and critical perspectives
including feminism, poststructuralism and liberation theology to explore questions of
subjectivity and power, on the one hand, and liberation theology on the other to learn
how social and spiritual experiences can help in the recovery and validation of
marginalized knowledge. Recognising that such dynamic framework is not possible
within conventional research rigidities, the study develops a non-essentialist
interdisciplinary methodology that approaches the issues of participation and
empowerment from the intersection of various disciplines including communication
studies, human geography, cultural studies and social anthropology.
This inquiry influenced by feminist post-structural approach with multiple positions
(Lather, 1991), reveals complicated, many-sided and often unstable conceptions of
ethnicity, community and identity. This approach, challenging the ‘established’
disciplinary practice, leaves the thesis vulnerable to criticism from many quarters.
However, the study is influenced by the practice of experiential and contextual
learning which encourages a democratic relationship between the knower and known
and, at the same time, rejects false dualisms (Stacey, 1988). Exploring such a dynamic
framework within Foucauldian analysis of power relation opens up possibilities of
looking at things from a variety of perspectives and standpoints, especially in
situations where mono-theoretical frameworks are ineffective.
Taking a critical look at the concept of community the paper problematises the often
‘taken for granted’ view of the community as a homogenous mass of similar people.
In order to move away from this essentialised understanding of the community. The
paper maps the heterogeneities, diversities and fragmentation within the concept of
the community to examine a more strategic and tactical concept wherein the
community remains a flux of changing loyalties, interests and concerns. These
arguments learn from the juxtaposition of Muslim, Mirpuri and minority concepts to
highlight the kaleidoscopic nature of community where spiritual, political and social
aspects of life blend and break, depending on the situation and context.
The paper finally tests these arguments through the case study of Radio Ramzan, a
community radio station in Nottingham. Specifically examining a multi-agency health
campaign, run on the radio station, the paper brings together the perspectives of place,
faith and media to look at how a community-based approach can offer an equitable
and effective approach in dealing with inequalities in health.
This research project was bound by a particular time limitation. It refers to a specific
time period of July1997- July 2001 and has thus intentionally omitted the discussions
and debates on 9/11 and 7/7. The time period of this research, however, witnessed
growing debates on institutional racism, discrimination, assertiveness and social
divide. The Stephen Lawrence case and subsequent report on it by Lord McPherson
(1999), along with the Cantle and the Ousley report (2001) into the disturbances in
northern towns in England, revealed the dimension of racism and the extent of social
deprivation faced by the people belonging to the black and minority ethnic group,
along with a very small number of white groups who shared the same excluded
geography. This was also the period when the British Muslim communities were still
angry about the wars in Bosnia and Chechnya and were ever-passionate about the
situations in Palestine and Kashmir. In the light of these arguments, it is worth
mentioning here that before and during the time frame of this research project, the
Muslim communities felt excluded both socially and politically and saw themselves
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