From: gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.anthropology
Subject: This notion of propaganda?
Distribution: world
Date: Sat, 03 Oct 92 13:06:45 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents

I thought to write this in light of responses in this group to the
_Millenium_ series. If you do not want to read it, please delete it or
go on to another thread.

Of course we know that propaganda developed in the Roman Catholic
Church, and is still in use today in its more traditional form by
The Society for the Propagation of the Faith, for example, which has
a strong toe-hold here in Australia. Another group as I understand
it using propaganda is Catholic Action in keeping with its drive
against what it sees as modernist heresies.

In that sense, the intent is to *convert* another person to the
particular way of thinking of the Church which constitute its corpus
of knowledge, its values and traditions. In pursuing this intent a
variety of the techniques of classical pedagogy are deployed which
assume a certain error in the person subject to the propaganda.

The techniques of pedagogy and propaganda, however, are no different
from the normal range of human communication media and techniques.
Different cultures deploy them to varying extent, some enormously
elaborate and others quite sparingly. That a particular technique is
deployed does not make the intent propaganda.

At the risk of being labelled anti-American, however, it remains that
your nation wields such incredibly destructive power on the world stage
it literally scares people shitless. People are dying, and we do prefer
that you to understand a little better what others are about that you
might moderate your foreign policies, and look upon them as fellows
instead of problems. Not just the U.S., but all the nations.

Anthropologists as a species are educators and translators of culture.
I guess we spend the most part of our time lodged somewhere in the
liminal, ambiguous and contradictory space between the culture we are
studying and our mother culture. But unless individuals are also, for
reasons of their own in their private lives, religious propagandists
and/or political activists there is no intent to *convert* students to
a particular way of thinking. We seek only to educate, to edify and
enlighten, even if it is towards fulfilling the obligation we have to
those others.

I have found nothing in _Millenium_ to suggest propaganda. At most,
Maybury-Lewis and his TV Producers/Directors/Experts have deployed a
technique of communication with which the American people in general
are unfamilar, even perhaps schooled against in their national drive
for technological progress, or whatever other historical reason. But
the techniques are so commonly deployed by other cultures as to pass
unnoticed.

They do not make propaganda. They neither imply nor suggest error in
the audience. They *add* to one's corpus of knowledge and experience,
in striking contrast to this newsgroup's earlier commentary I have
been e-mailed for flaming as I did, and I would hope toward enabling
us all to make more informed decisions about the world of which we
are part.

My viewing of _Millenium_ I simply found a moving and enjoyable
experience, as I would an Operatic work or Ballet, or another Opus
opening for me such a compelling window on human experience.

Perhaps once this is settled we can get on with more practical and
constructive endeavours.

--
Gil Hardwick                                      gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au
Independent Consulting Ethnologist                            3:690/660.6
PERTH, Western Australia                                 (+61 9) 399 2401
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