Creeping Crisis in South Asia: Perspectives on Health & Environmental Communication

  

This panel is Session 4 in the CODE^SHIFT Research Symposium, which involves over twenty media scholars and practitioners.  Other sessions are titled “Other Immigrants & Well-Being” (9:00-10:15), “Immigrant Advocacy & Counternarratives” (10:15-11:30), “CODE^SHIFT Lunch & Poster Session” (11:30-12:30), and a “Syracuse Showcase Session” (1:45-3:00). 

Associate Professor, 

Global Affairs Program & Department of Communication,

George Mason University

Basnyat is concerned with how Western-centric health communication efforts employing development strategies have excluded local experiences, perspectives, and voices of the Global South. She argues that communication for development using health communication interventions has created a creeping crisis that threatens societal values in South Asia. Sustainable development goals fall with-in the paradigm of development communication, which has stressed the empowerment of women in the Global South since the ’90s. Drawing on the lived experiences of women’s empowerment interventions in South Asia, Basnyat highlights the importance of local contexts in order to center on non-Western perspectives and knowledge about health, health meanings, and health behaviors.

Muhammed Ittefaq
Assistant Professor, 
School of Communication Studies, James Madison University