Voice and Matter is an outstanding collection that will reinstate the centrality and urgency of Communication for Development as an area of research and a field of practice. Hemer and Tufte’s vast expertise in the field of ComDev shines through in the volume’s multidisciplinary approach, methodological and theoretical advances, and inclusion of contributions from diverse world regions (i.e. Latin American schools of participatory communication and recent African Ubuntu-centric epistemologies, among others). Drawing from the lived experiences of collectives and individuals who use media and communication to work toward emancipation and social justice, the chapters in this volume make important contributions to how we think about voice, power, technology, culture, and social change. Taking on the challenge of interrogating the development industries and their inability to detach from market forces and confront power inequities, this volume repositions the agency of subjects who use their own voices and their own media on their own terms – taking matters into their own hands.
Clemencia Rodríguez, Professor in Media Studies and Production, Temple University, Philadelphia, USA
This book is published in collaboration with the UNESCO Chair on Freedom of Expression, Media Development and Global Policy at the University of Gothenburg.