The Spaces Between Grassroots Documentary ... - Ezra Winton
The Spaces Between Grassroots Documentary ... - Ezra Winton
The Spaces Between Grassroots Documentary ... - Ezra Winton
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examines and exposes these phenomena. (Bagdikian, 1987, p. xvi; McChesney, 1999b,<br />
1999a; Hackett, 2000; Thussu, 2000, p.5; Langlois and Dubois, 2005, p.10; McPhail,<br />
2006, p.59) Bourdieu, like Mouffe, Rodriguez and others, feels that researchers have a<br />
role to play in resisting neoliberalism in all its forms against all its fronts. He writes:<br />
Against this doxa, one has to try to defend oneself, I believe, by analyzing<br />
it and trying to understand the mechanisms through which it is produced<br />
and imposed. But that is not enough, although it is important, and there are<br />
a certain number of empirical observations that can be brought forward to<br />
counter it. (1998, p. 31)<br />
Across the Atlantic from France, the Canadian state continues to embrace neoliberal<br />
economic models to shape policy (Carroll and Shaw, 2001) so rigorously it has the<br />
attention of British scholars, like Colin Leys, who tacitly warns other states not to follow<br />
the Canadian example: “How far other states will be induced to surrender their<br />
sovereignty to Transnational Corporations in as wholesale and humiliating a way as<br />
Canada and Mexico have done under NAFTA remains to be seen.” (Leys, 2001, p.21) To<br />
understand the forces of such an ubiquitous, hegemonic ideology, and how to defend<br />
against, it is also important to analyze and investigate the very defensive measures<br />
exacted, such are often the spaces of grassroots documentary distribution and exhibition.<br />
A central argument of this thesis is that it is equally relevant for academics to<br />
focus research efforts on grassroots/alternative media practices as it is to interrogate<br />
commercial or ‘mainstream’ practices. Research contributions that examine<br />
grassroots/alternative media practices have the great opportunity to contribute not only to<br />
the academy, but also to the various ‘social movements’ the studies seek to understand<br />
and interrogate. Contemporary scholars like Clemencia Rodriguez, Chantal Mouffe,<br />
Dorothy Kidd, and the contributing writers to Sociology for Changing the World have<br />
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