Abstract 2010 Mette Gabler

Mette Gabler 

Email: mette.gabler@student.hu-berlin.de

The Good Life – Buy 1 Get 1 Free

Messages of Outdoor Advertising for Social Change in Urban India

Due to the pervasiveness of media in all aspects of life, a commonly discussed topic  among media scholars, development planners and conscientious citizens is the possible harmful impact of media upon society e.g. sexism. At the same time media messages are considered to be a social sub-structure that represents an intrinsic variable in the process of social change. This is illustrated by numerous examples where media is believed to be useful as an educational tool. Different forms of media are continuously being used to influence attitudes and activities as well as to sway peoples’ purchasing behaviour. A common example of this includes attempts to improve public health besides the multitude of product and service sales. In addition, media is said to be important in democratic governance as it functions as a watchdog of governmental operations and seen everywhere in the form of entertainment. I therefore suggest that media holds the potential to encourage change towards equality, tolerance and social responsibility and hence see possibilities of positive effects of messages.

Consumerist advertising strategies are of special interest. Advertising is believed to have the ability to influence purchasing behaviour and encourage people to buy or use one specific brand or service. Some regard advertising communications as entirely profit driven and not intended as educational messages. However, the messages contained are biased communication that indicate a point of view, a proposed ideology or reflect a public discourse and can in this way be viewed as messages that might challenge existing social structures and prove to propagate social change.

Urban India as a relatively new neo-liberal market is especially interesting due to its blend and vastness of socio-economic classes, castes, religion and trans- and multicultural existences. The increasing consumerist trends among financially-able groups in urban India are accompanied by a milieu with increased advertising and mediated forms of communications.

The characteristics of the public sphere enriches the discussion. Here, the audience is controlled to a lesser extent and open to all socio-economic classes, castes, religious and educational backgrounds, and also varies in all levels of gender, age and ethnic affiliation. Public space hence functions as a space of transcultural communication, a space where cultures meet, and outdoor advertising as a medium that transgresses cultures within urban Indian cultures. I therefore will discuss existing examples of media communications between consumerism and social change in the realm of the multifaceted nature of outdoor advertising in urban India. Included are billboards and posters mainly collected by myself during the fall 2008 that will be presented and analysed in their message conveyed and images depicted.

Gender relations continuously seem to be the foundation of control and politics and as a result the construction of feminine identities is a way to enforce control over women’s lives. As such, characteristics of women and the expected attitude and behaviour have evolved into a “socio-symbolic site”, exemplified in the discourse of women representation in media and advertising. As a result, media messages that seemingly challenge the existing gender construction and femininity are at the centre of this investigation.

Abstract 2010 Christine Whyte and Sara Elmer

Christine Whyte and Sara Elmer

ETH Zürich

christine.whyte@gmw.gess.ethz.ch

sara.elmer@gmw.gess.ethz.ch

Why is slavery bad? The global anti-slavery movement in Nepal and Sierra Leone, 1920-1930

The 1920s saw the growth of extraordinary international attention on the subject of slavery. Ethiopia’s application to join the League of Nations opened up debate about the continued existence of slavery in Africa. After Ethiopia’s entrance to the League, the question was opened up from African slavery to the promotion of an international instrument to end both slavery and the slave trade. The debates on slavery at the League of Nations constructed the, now universally-held, belief in the abhorrent nature of slavery, while protecting and ‘defining out’ certain slavery-like practices as acceptable. The end point of this debate was the 1926 Convention to Suppress the Slave Trade and Slavery, the first international humanitarian law. And so a moral norm was legally ratified as a global code.

Two years before the ratification of the 1926 Convention to Suppress the Slave Trade and Slavery, the first human rights international law, Prime Minister Chandra Shum Shere Rana made a public appeal for the abolition of slavery in Nepal. He denied that his speech was a result of the “moral influence” of the European-dominated League of Nations, highlighting instead Nepalese independence and development. However, at the same time, his speech was published in English, and closely reflected the rhetoric of the global anti-slavery movement of the time.

The same global discourse can be traced few years later in the court case in Sierra Leone, which prompted a belated abolition of slavery by the British colonial government. In Sierra Leone, colonial officials, local elites and the metropolitan government pursued a policy of non-interference in the belief that slavery would evolve away. However, when the Sierra Leone Supreme Court upheld the rights of masters in 1927, a blanket ban was introduced.

By closely examining and comparing these key events - one in an African colony, the other in an Asian independent nation - in the context of the new global legal order, this paper seeks to demonstrate how;

-   slavery became a benchmark of civilization/barbarism in the early 20^th century discourse of civilization and modernization,

-      international institutions, such as the League of Nations, had the discursive power to shape anti-slavery discourse globally, even outwith its official scope,

-        this discourse was interpreted and utilized in specific local contexts, and

-        the moral horror of slavery became a generally accepted argument, while the reality of slavery-like practices continued to exist to date.