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Whiteness, Hierarchies and Power: A conversation with Professors Pradip Thomas and Vinod Pavarala

Community radio of Deccan Development Society (DDS):
Professor Vinod Pavarala is a pioneering scholar of community radio

 The ongoing conversation of #Whiteness in the discipline and the emerging impetus for changing the infrastructures of the discipline foreground the roles of the National Communication Association (NCA) and the International Communication Association (ICA). As these conversations seek spaces for voices of difference, the hierarchical structures of our organizations and their hegemonic formations are critically interrogated. In this snippet of Facebook conversation between Professor Vinod Pavarala and Professor Pradip Thomas, the very hierarchies built into the articulation of "Distinguished" is interrogated.

 Professor Pradip Thomas at the University of Queensland is a leading scholar of communication for social change, with much of his impactful work spread across the global South. Professor Vinod Pavarala at the Department of Communication at the University of Hyderabad, India, ever-so-humble, is a distinguished scholar in every right, although you will see as you read this exchange, he interrogates the hierarchies embodied in the power struggles around the term "Distinguished." Professor Pavarala has educated many next generation of communication scholars. His pioneering work with community radio is recognized with the UNESCO Chair on Community Media he holds.

 The ensuing conversation in response to the interrogation of the racist structure of the discipline foregrounds the vast interpretive gaps that exist between the structures of Whiteness and the struggles of impactful communication scholarship in the global South.

 Professor Pradip Thomas: And while IAMCR can be chaotic and has its own limitations, it does not have pretentious, I am more equal than or better than BS that the word ‘Distinguished’ implies. Ask young scholars who get grants to travel to and present papers at IAMCR. Hope that many of you will be in Madrid.

 Vinod Pavarala I completely agree with you about IAMCR, Pradip. I always felt comfortable there. But it seems that ICA/NCA are important for academics in the Anglo-American world. One can surely empathize with these battles for diversity, but for those of us already on the peripheries of the international academia, sometimes they are difficult to relate to.

 Mohan Dutta Vinod Pavarala would love to hear more exactly on this point that you are making here. That for academics at the peripheries of international academia, both ICA and NCA are difficult to relate to. The question of relevance here seems key.

 Vinod Pavarala Mohan, what I meant was ICA whose conferences I attended a few times seemed more nominally 'international' and a lot more hegemonic in its approach to the field. For those academics who are in the Anglo-American world, ICA and its turf-defining position seem to be of immediate relevance and they feel compelled to engage with its epistemic and political battles. So what I am saying is that for those of us in the peripheries of global academia, we are fighting our very own battles and find it difficult to relate to these other battles that Western scholars seem to be fighting. For me, IAMCR, while foregrounding criticality, seems to be more open to plurality and multiplicity both in theory and practice. Sorry for rambling, but I hope you understand what I am saying.

 Pradip Thomas i agree and like you Vinod i have been on the periphery of ICA and never cared for their politics. IAMCR too has a long way to go but one can count on them to take on the kind of politics that this struggle us about...

What this conversation attends to is the lack of relevance of the discursive terrains in the current conversations at the ICA. Seen as limited to academics in the Anglo-American world, the politics of ICA, in the voices of these colleagues, is disconnected from the lived experiences and struggles of communication academics in the global South. To open up to conversations in the global South is to fundamentally interrogate the very basis of the conversations that interrogate Whiteness.

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