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Linda Austin

Media International Australia, volume 150, issue 1 (2014), pp. 114-121

"Faith-based broadcasters comprise half of all community radio stations in the South Pacific islands. As such, they reflect the deep indigenisation of Christianity and its central role in Pacific cultural identity. But their position within the media environment is surprisingly contentious. For secu ... more

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Farming for the Future: Communication Efforts to Advance Family Farming

Linda Austin

Rome: FAO (2014), ix, 57 pp.

"This document has been prepared to inspire reflection about the role of communication in advancing family farming. It includes an analysis of examples of ComDev approaches applied to smallholder farming and rural development and the issues that they encompass: food security, natural resource manage ... more

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Pacific Islands Rentier Behaviour and Community Radio: Revisiting MIRAB

Linda Austin

Diverse Media Paper presented at the 10th OURMedia Conference: Diverse Communities (2014), 22 pp.

"For nearly 30 years, the widely accepted economic-rationalist model used to explain Pacific island development has been variations of Bertram and Watters’ (1985) MIRAB model, or that of development based on the extraction of “rents” from Migration, Remittances, Aid and Bureaucracy. This paper ... revisits the MIRAB model through a culture-centred approach to investigate the phenomenon of community radio, specifically why there appears to be so little of it in the South Pacific islands and what can be learned from comparing the few successful community radio stations with those that have failed. One key difference relates to indigenous notions of rent extraction and wealth redistribution. Hau’ofa (2005) contends that all Pacific island cultures are defined in fundamental ways by the adaptive interactions between people and the sea. This “oceanic” orientation – one that is expansive, cyclical, open and fluid – stands in opposition to the bounded, stationary and seemingly changeless nature of land, which lies at the heart of Western development theories. This outward orientation predisposes islanders to anticipate the introduction of new technologies and ideas from exogenous sources, which are then interrogated, appropriated and transformed into “something meaningful” to island societies. In this way, Pacific communities have long sought rent-seeking relationships with the outside world to sustain their village lives and have redistributed this wealth through social networks. As will be demonstrated through case studies involving donor-initiated, women’s advocacy, and faith-based community radio stations, this rent-seeking orientation is pervasive throughout all levels of Pacific society, from civil society organizations (CSOs) that work with international donors to establish community radio stations, to the communities purported to benefit from the stations, to volunteers who work within them. How well the rent-extracted wealth is redistributed within culturally appropriate social networks is often the key to a radio station’s future sustainability. Such pathways to sustainable development within alternative islander-defined development models, however, are often opaque to international development actors working within Western-defined development theories, resulting in the widespread failure of many community media development projects." (Abstract) more

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Pan-Asia ICT R&D Grants Programme Final Report: Radio Pasifik-Nauru

Linda Austin

Pan-Asia ICT (2008), 93 pp.

Faith-Based Community Radio and Development in the South Pacific Islands

Farming for the Future: Communication Efforts to Advance Family Farming

Pacific Islands Rentier Behaviour and Community Radio: Revisiting MIRAB

Pan-Asia ICT R&D Grants Programme Final Report: Radio Pasifik-Nauru