Monday, September 24, 2007 Oledan: Streams By Radzini Oledan Slice of life
COMMUNICATION may be considered the soul of our culture. It is a vehicle towards greater cultural understanding and in forging peace not only in the Asian region and but the entire the global community.
It fosters social concern and creates an environment of dialogue among various stakeholders - civil society organizations, government, environmentalists, researchers, conservationists, policy makers, activists, public and private sector organizations, and children and youth of all ages and streams.
Its form has become a tool for galvanizing civil society initiatives and a platform for provoking larger public opinion making process.
It is an effective medium in reaching out to the maximum number of people, cutting across various sectors of society, raising local issues, and increasing and expanding the social network.
The preservation of culture and the forging of greater understanding among peoples serve as the context of knowledge sharing to increase tolerance and promote peace especially in Mindanao.
This is the piece that last Saturday, September 22, was honored with the Global Communicators Award for Excellence.
The paper evolved from a research I conducted late last year, and which I presented during a panel defense in Thailand, March this year for the Asia Fellows Awards.
It delves on the discourse on the notion of 'potential community' which unites, dialectically the critique and other hegemonic appropriation, contrasting it to the actual community in which members live and communicate on the basis of shared meanings.
It is relevant in the face of the hegemonic appropriation by the ruling classes, which influences the global community.
Community in this sense is all about traditions that either promote or hinder peace and development in the region. Family, municipalities and barangays are various levels of such actual community in which tradition remains alive and meaningful for all members not only through rituals and language but also through other shared productive activities.
Communal existence acquires substance through meanings that are inter-subjective and the necessity of having to regard others as subjects, as having intentions behind their beliefs and activities, implies the 'otherness' but it also signifies that it can be brought to the open and discussed as to their validity within the community.
Communication can be a critique on the validity of beliefs and activities in our social life and while there may be dramatic changes in the country's media as a result of globalization, such changes call for the recasting of media's role in promoting social change.
The piece is a narrative on how the stakeholders of Mindanao have come together to weave peace and development. Not for us, but for our children.
Distinctions are only incidental in our advocacy work.
