The structures of neoliberalism: Redefining social change

In my book "Communicating Social Change: Structure, Culture, and Agency," I begin with the premise that how we define, operationalize, and measure social change essentially needs to be re-conceptualized in order to articulate an entry point for transformative politics in te backdrop of neoliberalism. I base this argument on the notion that traditional conceptualizations of social change perpetuate the status quo through their emphasis on individual behavior change in target populations and systematically ignoring the necessity for structural transformations. This is particularly true of social change as configured within capitalist formations, where the basic premise of social change has been co-opted within the frameworks of capitalism to keep intact the positions of oppression among the owners of capital, extracting profits through the exploitation of labor.

Therefore, for a transformative moment to be re-captured witin the context of contemporary neoliberal phenomena where the poor have increasingly been impoverished further, the middle classes have lost the economic base for finding sustainable means of engaging in work, and the unions have consistently been rendered ineffective through the co-optation of their resistive capacities, both local and global organizing efforts are needed that fundamentally redefine social change to activist politics, politics that seeks to de-center the positions of power. Efforts of social change need to be re-defined as efforts that are specifically directed at challenging structures, as opposed to efforts that masquerade themselves as social change and fundamentally reify and serve the interests of the status quo.

In the book, I work through examples of the works of Daniel Lerner, Wilbur Schramm etc. to note how the history of communication scholarship is precisely located at the moment of co-opting social change agendas within the agendas of US expansionism, imperialism, and service of the capitalist classes. Rendering this linkage in the history of the discipline visible I believe lies at the heart of re-defining the political capacity of communication scholarship as transformative, as social justice scholarship that sets out to invert the relationships of power written into the dominant power structures.

The examples of mass protests at Wall Street once again point to this transformative capacity of organizing that is directed at bringing about social change. The possibilities for communication for social change are endless, in terms of creating openings for resistance that challenge the established sources of power both locally and globally. The role of communication in re-presenting these stories of social change is tied to specific public relations functions in knowledge production in reverse (read more about this in "Communicating Social Change" and in a book chapter that I have authored with Mahuya Pal for "Public Relations in Global Cultural Contexts"), challenging the traditional forms of knowledge production that serve to carry out the interests of TNCs on the landscape of globalization.

The Haka, the Hurt, and the Work We Owe

The Haka, the Hurt, and the Work We Owe An Indian in Aotearoa reflects on resistance, complicity, and the solidarities we have yet to build Mohan Jyoti Dutta I watched the haka. I watched it several times, in fact. Each time, I tried to sit with what I was feeling before reaching for what I was supposed to think. Let me be honest about who I am in this conversation, because that matters. I am an upper caste, upwardly mobile Indian man. I am a professor at a university in Aotearoa. I carry the accumulated privileges of Brahminical socialisation, of English-medium education, of institutional access that was never designed for the communities I now write about and alongside. I say this not as confession but as orientation — because where you stand shapes what you see, and I have learned, through years of working with communities at the margins, that the refusal to name your own location is itself a colonial habit. The haka directed at Parmjeet Parmar did not offend me. It ...

Whiteness, NCA, and Distinguished Scholars

In a post made in response to the changes to how my discipline operates made by the Executive Committee of the largest organization of the discipline, the National Communication Association (NCA), one of the editors of a disciplinary journal Rhetoric and Public Affairs (RPA), Professor Martin J. Medhurst, a Distinguished Scholar of the discipline, calls out what he sees as the threat of identity (see below for his full piece published in the journal that he has edited for 20+ years, with 2019 SJR score of 0.27). In what he notes is a threat to the "scholarly merit" of the discipline, Professor Medhurst sets up a caricature of what he calls "identity." In his rhetorical construction of the struggles the NCA has faced over the years to find Distinguished Scholars of colour, he shares with us the facts. So let's look at the facts presented by this rhetor. It turns out, as a member of the Distinguished Scholar community of the NCA, Mr. Medhurst has problems with w...

The Substack and the Slur: How a Manufactured Crisis Toppled a Wahine Māori Political Editor

The Substack and the Slur: How a Manufactured Crisis Toppled a Wahine Māori Political Editor On the architecture of the Aotearoa culture-war machine, and the danger it poses to a democracy heading into 2026 There is a particular cadence to the afternoon on which the career of a senior Māori journalist at TVNZ is finished. It is unhurried. It begins with a tweet — in this case, a single image of a typed statement, posted by Maiki Sherman, the now-former political editor of TVNZ, on the afternoon of Friday, 8 May 2026, announcing that she had parted ways with the broadcaster. The post was terse, dignified, and final. As RNZ later reported , Sherman wrote that the scrutiny of the previous week had placed enormous pressure on her and rendered her role "untenable." The first wahine Māori to lead a major broadcaster's political team was gone. The story that finished her had not, ten days earlier, existed in any newspaper, on any wire, on any website you would consider mai...

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