Douglas Ehninger’s theoretical gem, “Argument as Method” (1970), introduces us to two unsavory debate characters. First, there is the “neutralist” – an interlocutor who eschews commitment at every turn. Following the Greek philosopher Pyrrho, the neutralist thinks that since nothing can be known, standpoints should float freely, unanchored by the tethers of belief. The neutralist’s counterpart is the “naked persuader” – someone who approaches argument like Plato’s Callicles – clinging doggedly to preconceived beliefs and resisting any shift no matter how compelling the counterpoints (Ehninger 1970, p. 104).

Naked persuaders and neutralists each have difficulty engaging in argument, but for different reasons. According to Ehninger (1970, p. 104), argumentation is a “person risking enterprise,” and by entering into an argument, “a disputant opens the possibility that as a result of the interchange he too may be persuaded of his opponent’s view, or, failing that, at least may be forced to make major alterations in his own.” In this account, naked persuaders are hamstrung by their unwillingness to risk the possibility that the force of reason will prompt alteration of their views. Neutralists, on the other hand, prevent the “person risking enterprise” from ever getting off the ground in the first place, since they place nothing on the table to risk.

Ehninger’s unsavory characters illustrate how the concept of standpoint commitment has salience in any theory of “argument as process” (Wenzel 1990). To reap the full benefits of the process of argumentation, interlocutors must adopt stances vis-à-vis their standpoints that strike an appropriate balance between perspectives of the naked persuader and the neutralist. For Ehninger (1970, p. 104), such a balanced posture consists of “restrained partisanship,” where advocates drive dialectic forward with tentative conviction, while remaining open to the possibility that the course of argument may dictate that their initial standpoints require amendment or retraction. Finding this delicate balance resembles the tuning of violin strings – a metaphor that underscores his point that the proper stance of restrained partisanship must be tailored to fit each situation.

The public argument prior to the 2003 Iraq War offers a clear example of a poorly tuned deliberative exchange. While several official investigations (e.g. US Commission 2005; US Senate 2004) have explained the breakdown in prewar decision-making as a case of faulty data driving bad policy, this paper explores how the technical concept of foreign policy “intelligence failure” (Matthias 2001) can be expanded to offer a more fine-grained explanation for the ill-fated war decision, which stemmed in part from a failure of the argumentative process in public spheres of deliberation. Part one revisits Ehninger’s concept of standpoint commitment, framing it in light of related argumentation theories that address similar aspects of the argumentative process. This discussion paves the way for a case study of public argument concerning the run-up to the 2003 Iraq War. Finally, possible implications of the case study for foreign policy rhetoric and argumentation theory are considered.

1. Standpoint commitment in argumentation
From a pragma-dialectical perspective, an argument is a “critical discussion” between interlocutors, undertaken for the purpose of resolving a difference of opinion (van Eemeren & Grootendorst 2003, 1984; van Eemeren, Grootendorst & Snoeck Henkemans 1996, pp. 274-311). In the “confrontation stage,” parties lay their cards on the table and establish the central bone of contention. By elucidating their divergent standpoints, disputants provide the impetus that sets into motion the process of critical discussion. This step is essential, since “a difference of opinion cannot be resolved if it is not clear to the parties involved that there actually is a difference and what this difference involves” (van Eemeren, Grootendorst & Snoeck Henkemans 1996, p. 284). However, in pragma-dialectical argumentation theory, once interlocutors advance standpoints, critical discussion norms oblige them to proceed in certain ways. For example, the ninth pragma-dialectical “commandment” requires arguers to retract standpoints if they are refuted in the course of argument, and conversely, to accept successfully defended standpoints offered by their counterparts (van Eemeren & Grootendorst 1992, pp. 208-209).

Here, it becomes apparent that pragma-dialectical theory presupposes the ability of interlocutors to enact a version of Ehninger’s “restrained partisanship.” Arguers are expected to advance standpoints clearly and with conviction, but also to couple this performance with a double gesture that signals a willingness to amend or retract such standpoints should they be refuted during the course of argument. This delicate balancing act challenges participants to find an appropriate middle ground between two poles that have served as perennial topics of inquiry for a wide variety of argumentation theorists.

Consider Chaim Perelman & Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca’s distinction between “discussion” and “debate.” For Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1969), while discussion is a heuristic activity, “in which the interlocutors search honestly and without bias for the best solution to a controversial problem” (p. 37), debate is eristic, where the focus is on “overpowering the opponent” (p. 39), regardless of the truth of the propositions at hand. Occluded in this neat polarity, of course, is the subtle fact that discussion and debate are Siamese twins. They cannot be fully separated without placing the argumentative enterprise at risk. For example, the activity that Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca call “discussion” requires interlocutors to embrace, to some extent, a “debating” posture that moves them to contribute concrete standpoints to the conversation. This caveat does not deny that an overly aggressive debating stance runs at cross purposes with the heuristic goals of discussion, but it does, once again, point to the importance of finding that proper balance that Ehninger calls “restrained partisanship.”

One can isolate other vectors of this pattern playing out in discussions about the proper role of argument in society. For example, the subtitle of Deborah Tannen’s bestseller (1998) The Argument Culture is “Moving from Debate to Dialogue.” Tannen’s distinction between debate and dialogue mirrors Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s debate-discussion polarity. While Tannen thoroughly criticizes excessively adversarial and combative styles of debating, she points out that there is still value in constructive forms of argument that allow interlocutors to vet opposing viewpoints (see also Foss & Griffin 1995; Makau & Marty 2001). In fact, she underscored this point by changing the subtitle of The Argument Culture for the paperback edition to “Stopping America’s War of Words” (Tannen 1999).

A similar pattern of analysis appears in the work of James Crosswhite (1996), who posits a distinction between argumentation as “inquiry” and argumentation as “persuasion.” To elucidate the relationship between these categories, Crosswhite (1996, pp. 256-58) compares inquiry with the “context of discovery” and persuasion with the “context of justification” in philosophy of science. In this scheme, argument-as-persuasion involves attempts to convince others of settled beliefs that have already been justified, while argument-as-inquiry is a process of discovery initiated to yield new insights when clear answers may not yet be apparent. As Crosswhite (1996) explains: “There is a difference between the kind of reasoning we engage in when we have already made up our minds about some issue and simply need to persuade other people to take our side, and the kind of reasoning that goes on when we have not yet made up our minds but are trying to come to a conclusion ourselves” (p. 256; see also Meiland 1989). Notably, Crosswhite locates the key difference between these two modes of reasoning in the “kinds of audiences that are active in the argumentation” (Crosswhite 1996, 257).

In pragama-dialectics, this distinction between modes of reasoning is connected to a corresponding differentiation between rhetoric and dialectic. Drawing on Leff (2000), Frans van Eemeren & Peter Houtlousser (2002, pp. 15-17) identify as rhetorical those aims and objectives that interlocutors pursue in their quest to achieve effective persuasion in a critical discussion. Alternately, dialectical obligations flow from the argumentative procedures that parties must respect in order for a critical discussion to proceed. Echoing the other theorists considered in the preceding paragraphs, van Eemeren & Houtlousser develop this polarity synergistically, arguing that rhetoric and dialectic are complementary concepts. If a critical discussion were an airplane, rhetoric would be the force that drives the propeller and dialectic would be the navigational system that keeps the aircraft calibrated and on course. Without a strong propeller (standpoint commitment by interlocutors), the plane cannot get off the ground. Without a sound navigational system (disputants’ fealty to discussion norms), the plane cannot reach the destination point of mutually acceptable resolution of a difference of opinion.

In working out this relationship between rhetoric and dialectic, van Eemeren & Houtlousser have expounded another important concept – strategic maneuvering. This concept stems from their insight that “there is indeed a potential discrepancy between pursuing dialectical objectives and rhetorical aims” (van Eemeren & Houtlousser 2002, p. 16). Arguers want to persuade their counterparts to accept their standpoints, yet the passion driving such commitments may sometimes conflict with the procedural requirements for carrying on a critical discussion. Rather than declare that in these cases, dialectical obligations always trump rhetorical aims, van Eemeren & Houtlousser stipulate that interlocutors have a middle option of strategic maneuvering, a mode of arguing that bends the dialectical rules of critical discussion in a protagonist’s rhetorical favor, yet stops just short of breaking them and thereby committing a fallacy.

For example, in the context of establishing the burden of proof for a given critical discussion, interlocutors may engage in strategic maneuvering by highlighting certain features of their standpoints (e.g. scope, precision, moral content) so as to configure their burden of proof in a rhetorically advantageous way (van Eemeren & Houtlousser 2002, pp. 22-25). However, there are limits to this process. Taken too far, strategic maneuvering moves beyond bending the rules for critical discussion, resulting in a “fallacious derailment” of the discussion (van Eemeren & Houtlousser 2002, pp. 22-25).

While the exact location of this boundary line that separates legitimate strategic maneuvering from fallacious derailment remains elusive, it is clear that the concept of strategic maneuvering represents an inventive response to the theoretical challenge of developing sound accounts of the relationship between “discussion” and “debate” (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969); “inquiry” and “persuasion” (Crosswhite 1996); and “dialectic” and “rhetoric” (van Eemeren & Houtlousser 2002, pp. 22-25). This same challenge motivates Ehninger’s (1970) effort to explain the complementary relationship between the “naked persuader” and “neutralist” outlined in the introduction to this paper.

Anticipating a key element of pragma-dialectical argumentation theory, Ehninger (1970, p. 102) explains that the speech act of joining an argument involves an implicit agreement that the exchange will exert bilateral influence on the argumentative process. This insight dovetails with his view that argument should be a “person risking” enterprise, and that by entering such an exchange, participants signal that they are ready to place their standpoints in middle space, where tentative commitment drives the exchange, yet is contingent on what transpires in the course of argument. Ehninger (1970, p. 104) elaborates on this posture of “restrained partisanship” by comparing it to the process of tuning a violin: “Just as the strings of a violin must be neither too slack nor too taut if the instrument is to perform properly, so must the threads which unite the parties to an argument be precisely tuned.”

Ehninger’s violin metaphor may provide insight that contributes to pragma-dialectical argumentation theory’s project of delineating the boundary lines that mark off legitimate strategic maneuvering from fallacious derailment. Further insight on this point can be gleaned by considering a specific case study where the issue of standpoint commitment looms large.

2. Prewar public argument on Iraq
The U.S. decision to invade Iraq in 2003 is widely perceived as an “intelligence failure,” in large part because official investigations conducted by a presidential commission (US Commission 2005) and a congressional panel (US Senate 2004) have explained the ill-fated preventive war as a bad policy outcome driven by poor data provided by official intelligence analysts to political leaders. While it is the case that the U.S. Intelligence Community’s prewar analyses on Iraq were imperfect, this is only part of the story. Journalists, citizens, members of Congress and the White House also played key roles in the breakdown. According to Chaim Kaufmann (2004, p. 7), a “failure of the marketplace of ideas” resulted in breakdown of the U.S. political system’s ability to “weed out exaggerated threat claims and policy proposals based on them.” Peter Neumann and M.L.R. Smith (2005, p. 96) call this phenomenon a “discourse failure,” where “constriction of the language and vocabulary” produced a “failure of comprehension.” Elsewhere, I have drawn upon argumentation theory to explain dynamics of this “discourse failure” (see Mitchell 2006; Keller & Mitchell 2006). Here, I isolate a specific element of this phenomenon that has not yet received rigorous scrutiny – derailments in the process of public argument caused by poor tuning of the deliberative exchange with respect to standpoint commitment.

In President George W. Bush’s September, 2002 letter to Congress, he explained that since possible war with Iraq was “an important decision that must be made with great thought and care,” he called for argumentation on the matter: “I welcome and encourage discussion and debate” (Bush 2002a). Bush (2002b) emphasized this point two days later during a fundraising luncheon, inviting “debate” on the Iraq situation, calling for “the American people to listen and have a dialog about Iraq,” and for “an open discussion about the threats that face America.” What exactly did these statements mean? From a pragma-dialectical argumentation perspective, they would seem to constitute “external” evidence that Bush sought to enter into a critical discussion with interlocutors, engaging in argumentation as a way to reach an informed decision on optimal U.S. policy toward Iraq. On this reading, one would expect Bush to proceed as a protagonist in the critical discussion, advancing standpoints, listening to counterarguments, isolating key differences of opinion, and working toward resolution of those differences.

As the first section of this paper established, one key element of this mode of constructive participation in a critical discussion involves tentative standpoint commitment that seeks a middle ground between the postures of Ehninger’s hypothetical interlocutors, the naked persuader and the neutralist. As Ehninger explains further, as disputants search for this middle ground, “investigation not only must precede decision, but is an integral part of the decision-making process” (Ehninger 1959, 284). In other words, a crucial part of an interlocutor’s constructive argument stance involves deferral of a final decision pending completion of the critical discussion. This position has a corollary in pragma-dialectical argumentation theory, where “Rule (9) is aimed at ensuring that the protagonist and the antagonist ascertain in a correct manner what the result of the discussion is. A difference of opinion is truly resolved only if the parties agree in the concluding stage whether or not the attempt at defense on the part of the protagonist has succeeded. An apparently smooth-running discussion may still fail if the protagonist wrongly claims to have successfully defended a standpoint or even wrongly claims to have proved it true, or if the antagonist wrongly denies that the defense was successful or even claims the opposite standpoint to have been proven” (van Eemeren, Grootendorst & Snoeck Henkemans 1996, pp. 285-286).

In the case of President Bush’s argument regarding U.S. policy toward Iraq, Bush’s own statements seemed to express commitment to these principles. After calling for the initiation of a debate on Iraq policy in September 2002, Bush set forth arguments justifying the ouster of Saddam Hussein, but also qualified these standpoints with gestures of “restrained partisanship” (Ehninger 1970, p. 104). For example, during a 6 March 2003 press conference, Bush (2003) stated: “I’ve not made up our mind about military action.”

However, recent disclosure of official documents and insider accounts complicate this picture. We now know that British intelligence chief Sir Richard Dearlove visited the U.S. in July 2002 for meetings where the possibility of war against Iraq was discussed. Regarding developments in Washington, Dearlove briefed Prime Minister Tony Blair on 23 July 2002 that, “there was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” The memo goes on to say that it “seemed clear the Bush had made up his mind to go to war, even if the timing was not yet decided” (Sunday Times 2005). According to National Security Archive Senior Fellow John Prados, the Dearlove memo shows, “with stunning clarity,” that “that the goal of overthrowing Saddam Hussein was set at least a year in advance,” and that “President Bush’s repeated assertions that no decision had been made about attacking Iraq were plainly false” (Prados 2005). Further evidence in support of this view comes from insider accounts of White House communication during the September 2002 – March 2003 “discussion and debate” period. For example, journalist Bob Woodward explains that while Bush was publicly maintaining a posture of “restrained partisanship” during the public argument on Iraq, he privately told National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice in January 2003 that, “We’re gonna have to go. It’s war” (qtd. in Woodward 2004). Further, Woodward indicates that in another meeting that month, Bush wanted Saudi Prince Bandar “to know that this is for real. That we’re really doing it” (Woodward 2004). A separate leaked British memorandum detailed that later in January 2003, Bush even gave British Prime Minister Blair a specific date (10 March 2003) when he should expect war against Iraq to commence (Regan 2003; see also Sands 2005).

Bearing in mind the tension between speech acts arrayed on the top portion of the timeline in Figure 2 and the speech acts falling in the bottom portion of the timeline, it becomes apparent that Bush’s (2003) statement on 6 March 2003 that “I’ve not made up our mind about military action” was a strategic maneuver, one designed to improve rhetorically his position in the unfolding public argument. The political windfall from such a statement is clear, given the political and military necessity that the decision to invade Iraq be justified on the basis of democratically sound procedures (see Payne 2006). But this returns us to the question that percolated out of the first section of this paper – how should Bush’s strategic maneuvering be classified? Was it a legitimate argumentative move, or a fallacious derailment of a critical discussion, or something else altogether? Considering each possibility in turn provides an opportunity to apply and develop the theoretical concepts regarding the role of standpoint commitment in argumentation.

A charitable interpretation of Bush’s prewar rhetoric would explain the tension between his professed commitments to the process of critical discussion and his early private decision to invade Iraq as the product of legitimate strategic maneuvering, undertaken to enhance the persuasiveness of his standpoint in a critical discussion. In this reading, one might interpret Bush’s private comments to Rice, Bandar and Blair as mere instances of contingency planning designed to prepare the groundwork for execution of a future official decision to attack Iraq. Similarly, Bush’s 6 March 2003 statement that, “I’ve not made up our mind about military action” could be seen as a subtle strategic maneuver designed to add purchase to his rhetorical appeals for war by projecting a generous deliberative posture. The soundness of this line of argumentative reconstruction would hinge on the degree to which it could be established that Bush’s maneuvering stopped short of actually transgressing dialectical rules governing conduct of a critical discussion.

Alternately, it is possible to reconstruct the episode by interpreting Bush’s rhetoric as a fallacious derailment of a critical discussion. In this reading, Bush’s 2002 statements regarding the desirability of debate, discussion and dialogue would be seen as speech acts that set into motion a cooperative process of critical discussion and concomitantly signaled a public commitment by Bush to adhere to certain dialectical rules governing conduct of the public argument (see Payne 2006). As we have seen, one of the key responsibilities of an interlocutor in such a context is to maintain a stance of restrained partisanship vis-à-vis standpoints offered in the course of the critical discussion. However, it is plausible to conclude that such a “middle ground” stance would be impossible for a protagonist such as Bush to maintain in a situation where he had already decided to act on his standpoint (Iraq should be invaded), while simultaneously continuing the critical discussion. On this reading, the excesses of Bush’s rhetoric overwhelmed his commitment to dialectical norms of argumentation, resulting in a fallacious derailment of the critical discussion.

A third possible reconstruction of the episode would proceed from the premise that Bush never actually performed a speech act that signaled commitment to norms of critical discussion. This interpretation would frame Bush’s September 2002 statements regarding the need for “dialogue” and “debate” on Iraq as announcements that a peculiar form of argumentation was about to commence, one perhaps consistent with Ehninger’s (1970, p. 101) model of “corrective coercion.” According to Ehninger, protagonists in this mode operate unilaterally: “Not only does the corrector initiate the exchange and direct it throughout its history, but he also dictates the conditions under which it will terminate.” Furthermore, in corrective coercion, unlike the “person-risking” enterprise of cooperative argumentation, standpoints are not contingent, since failure to persuade interlocutors is an outcome that indicates deficiency in the passive audience, not the standpoint being advocated: “If, in spite of the corrector’s best efforts, the correctee stubbornly continues to resist, the corrector may attribute his failure to a breakdown in communication or an inability to summon the necessary degree of authority; or he may write the correctee off as ignorant or incorrigible” (Ehninger 1970, p. 102). This perspective on the prewar argument reconfigures the relationship between Bush’s public and private statements from one of tension to one of consistency. Arguers engaging in coercive correction need not worry about fine-tuning their degrees of standpoint commitment, since the purpose of the argument is not to test or refine their positions. Here, Bush’s statements to Rice, Bandar and Blair indicating that he had already decided the outcome of the dispute regarding the proper course of U.S. policy toward Iraq can be squared with his public arguments designed to coerce audiences to accept the same view.

The aim of the preceding analysis is not to argue that one particular reconstruction of the argumentative episode is necessarily correct. Rather, the point is to show how argumentation theory generates several possible descriptions of an ambiguous deliberative exchange. Similarly, a robust treatment of the normative implications flowing from each reconstruction falls beyond the scope of this limited paper, whose more modest theoretical contributions are explored in the final section.

3. Conclusion
The relationship between rhetoric and dialectic is moving up the research agenda in argumentation studies (Blair 2002). In pragma-dialectical argumentation theory, the concept of strategic maneuvering is emerging as a bridging concept to elucidate the rhetoric-dialectic interplay. Strategic maneuvering’s value in this regard hinges in part on the degree to which theorists can elucidate perspicacious distinctions between legitimate acts of strategic maneuvering and fallacious derailments of critical discussions. This paper has considered how a focus on standpoint commitment offers a means of generating such distinctions, and how Ehninger’s (1970) notions of “restrained partisanship” and the “argument violin” help to peg the appropriate degree of standpoint commitment in any given argument. Ehninger suggests that for cooperative argumentation to proceed constructively, it is incumbent on interlocutors to seek a “consciously induced state of intellectual and moral tension” that fine-tunes, like violin strings, their rhetorical aims and dialectical obligations (p. 104; see also Ehninger & Brockriede 1966).

Application of these theoretical concepts to a case study concerning public argument prior to the 2003 Iraq War yielded several insights. Most basically, the attempt to reconstruct the prewar public argument highlighted the salience of Gerald Graff’s (2003, p. 88) observation: “Which mode we are in – debate or dialogue? – is not always self-evident.” External cues apparently signaling an interlocutor’s commitment to the process of critical discussion may take on different meanings when viewed in the context of subsequent strategic maneuvering. For example, one possible reconstruction of George W. Bush’s contributions to the prewar public argument on Iraq reveals that his utterances expressing commitment to processes of “debate” and “discussion” signal something very different from the sorts of speech acts that in pragma-dialectical argumentation theory indicate an interlocutor’s implied acceptance of critical discussion norms. This possibility serves as a reminder that in generating argumentative reconstructions, critics should be keenly aware of the possibility that they are dealing with mixed disputes, where parties approach the argument from incommensurate normative assumptions regarding proper conduct of the dispute. The lucid exchange between James Klumpp and Kathryn Olson following Klumpp’s keynote address at the 2005 Alta Argumentation Conference illustrates the value of this critical approach.

Finally, my paper provides an occasion for scholars of argumentation to take note of the trend that the argumentation is growing in prominence as a category of analysis in the field of international relations. Consider Douglas Hart and Steven Simon’s proposition that one major cause of the intelligence community’s misjudgments on Iraq was “poor argumentation and analysis within the intelligence directorate.” As a remedy, Hart and Simon recommend that intelligence agencies encourage analysts to engage in “structured arguments and dialogues” designed to facilitate “sharing and expression of multiple points of view” and cultivate “critical thinking skills.” This suggestion comes on the heels of political scientist Thomas Risse’s (2000, p. 21) call for international relations scholars to focus more on “arguing in the international public sphere.” These comments, coupled with the finding of this paper regarding the need to “rhetoricize” the technical concept of “intelligence failure,” suggest promising paths of future research that fuse parallel tracks of argumentation theory and international relations scholarship.

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1. Introduction
What is the opening stage? And why would it be hard to get beyond it?

The opening stage – as many will know – is one of the four discussion stages contained in the familiar pragma-dialectical model of critical discussion (Van Eemeren & Grootendorst 1984, 1992, 2004), which constitutes a normative model for argumentative activities aimed at the resolution of a difference of opinion. It is one of the merits of this model that, in its description of the ideal argumentative process, it does not limit itself to argumentation in the proper, but narrow, sense of advancing arguments for a standpoint, but includes discussion stages where other necessary steps for the resolution of differences of opinion are located. Remember that there are just four stages, and that they are, in order, the following:

1. Confrontation Stage
2. Opening Stage
3. Argumentation stage
4. Concluding Stage.

Contrary to what may be expected, the opening stage does not figure as the first stage (whereas the concluding stage finds itself indeed neatly placed at the end). This is a vagary of nomenclature that sometimes breeds confusion even among experts. Apart from that, it is clear that the process of argumentation proper has been placed in the third stage, the argumentation stage, and that the first two stages figure as preparatory stages.

The problem I want to discuss actually pertains to both preparatory stages, namely: how can one get them completed, in a satisfactory way and within a reasonable time, to move on to what is properly called argumentation. However I will discuss this problem with special reference to the opening stage.

To enhance a more lively remembrance of the four stages of discussion you could picture them as a house with four rooms (see Figure 1).

When guests enter into this house they start on the ground floor in Room 1, a kind of gym – a place suitable for boxing exercises – which represents the confrontation stage, i.e., the stage where a difference of opinion is made explicit. The goal is to get, ultimately, to Room 4, another ground floor room, giving on to the garden, where refreshments are served – drinks and tidbits ­– which room represents the concluding stage, i.e., the stage where agreements are achieved. Now to get there, our guests have to pass through two other rooms, both on the upper floor, which represent the opening stage (Room 2) and the argumentation stage (Room 3). In Room 3, the actual business of argumentation is going on: for instance, a standpoint S is being supported by argument. But before one gets there, a lot of preparatory work needs to be done. The agenda will be presented in the next section, but one thing that has to be settled is the choice of a system of discussion rules that the parties are going to adhere to. No wonder Room 2 is packed with theorists of argumentation debating these rules. The complexity of issues and the multiplicity of perspectives is making one wonder whether any agreement will ever be reached at all. One would be fortunate to see the people in Room 2 manage to come to an agreement about just the shape of their table. Even that issue can be nasty, as was the case at the opening stage of the Paris Peace Conference about Vietnam. As some will remember, in 1968-69 the shape of the table was debated for months. This, of course, was a case of opening a negotiation dialogue, not a persuasion dialogue or argumentative discussion. Yet, the case of the Paris Peace Conference constitutes a classical illustration of how difficult it may be to get beyond the opening stage of a discussion. (Which is not to say that the issue of the shape of the table was unimportant at the time.)

The rest of this paper will be organized as follows. As I announced before, I shall first present the agenda for Room 2, i.e., a task list for the opening stage, assembled from pragma-dialectic writings (Section 2). Then I shall illustrate these tasks in a dialogue (Section 3), point out some problems (Section 4) and start on some sketch of a way to adapt the architecture of critical discussion in order to overcome these problems (Section 5).

2. The Agenda
Coming from downstairs (the gym) with a freshly formulated difference of opinion our guests must now, in Room 2, consider what they will do about their dispute. Fortunately there is, put up on the wall, a large piece of paper on which their tasks are listed. They must come to agreements on the following issues:

1. whether to opt for discussion, i.e., whether to engage in some kind of discussion at all, or rather do something else, for instance, draw lots or have recourse to violence (Van Eemeren & Grootendorst 1984, pp. 85, 88, 105; 1992, p. 35; 2004, pp. 68, 137);

2. whether to opt for argumentative discussion ( persuasion dialogue), which is aiming at rational conviction (rather than, for instance, negotiation dialogue aiming at a compromise or an eristic altercation;[i]

3. what global discussion rules to use to organize the discussion, i.e. what system of persuasion dialogue to adopt (Van Eemeren & Grootendorst 1984, pp. 88, 105; 1992, pp. 35, 39; 2004, pp. 60, 68, 137, 142-43);

4. who will perform the role of Protagonist and who will perform the role of Antagonist, with respect to each of the propositions constituting the difference of opinion (Van Eemeren & Grootendorst 1984, pp. 85, 88, 105; 1992, p. 35, 39; 2004, pp. 60, 105, 137, 141-42);

5a. what logic system is to determine the underlying concepts of validity and consistency (Van Eemeren & Grootendorst 1992, p. 94; 2004, p. 148);
5b. what procedures to adopt for testing for validity and consistency in concrete cases that may arise at the argumentation stage (Van Eemeren & Grootendorst 2004, p. 148);

6a. what argument schemes to admit and to what standards applications of these schemes should conform in order to be correct (Van Eemeren & Grootendorst 1992, p. 159; 2004, p. 149);
6b. what procedures to adopt for testing for admissibility and correctness of application of argument schemes in concrete cases that may arise at the argumentation stage (Van Eemeren & Grootendorst 1992, p. 158-59; 2004, p. 149-50);

7a. what propositions to accept as basic premises, whether as axioms or as defeasible presumptions, to function as starting points for arguments (Van Eemeren & Grootendorst 1992, p. 35, 149, 151; 2004, p. 60, 68, 137, 145);
7b. what procedures to adopt for testing for acceptability of basic premises in concrete cases that may arise at the argumentation stage (Van Eemeren & Grootendorst 2004, p. 145-48).

A glance at this paper on the wall should convince the participants that they need not fear to run out of work, unless they would skip, or only summarily discuss, large parts of the agenda. The dialogue in the next section will serve as an illustration.

3. A Dialogue
In their conversation, as recorded below, Ophelia and her father will demonstrate the various tasks that need to be performed to complete an ideal opening stage. Numbers in brackets indicate the various items on the agenda.

Polonius: To say it just simply and in unadorned language: dolphins are astoundingly intelligent.
Ophelia: Why do you say so, father?
Polonius: Oh dear, didn’t you see the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science?
Ophelia: Stop, daddy. If this is an argument, you are skipping the opening stage.
Polonius: Am I?
Ophelia: Yes, before you can present an argument we must first agree what to do about our difference of opinion. [1] Shall we discuss it?
Polonius: By all means.
Ophelia: [2] Contentiously? Or by rational persuasion?
Polonius: Rational persuasion would be perfect, sweetheart. Someone will try to convince the other that dolphins are really smart.
Ophelia: And someone else will try to cast doubt on that proposition. [3] What discussion rules shall we use? How about the pragma-dialectic model?
Polonius: Fine. [4] Let me be the Protagonist.
Ophelia: And I shall be the Antagonist. [5a] I suggest we use classical propositional logic.
Polonius: [5b] And we’ll check specific cases by truth tables. [6a] I suppose arguments from authority will be acceptable?
Ophelia: I do not fancy them. But OK, provided the authority is impeccable.
Polonius: [6b] Scientific journals would count as such?
Ophelia: And the bible.
Polonius: [7a] Now, what propositions do we agree about to begin with? I presume that if a species uses proper names they must be astoundingly intelligent?
Ophelia Absolutely! But only humans do.
Polonius: Ho stop! We are not yet through with the opening stage.
Ophelia: What more?
Polonius: [7b] As a general procedure to agree on basic premises, I suppose you will gladly accept Freeman’s manual (2005) in its entirety?
Ophelia: With pleasure. But now let’s have our argument.

It is obvious that in this conversation between Ophelia and Polonius the opening stage was cut down so as to retain just the barest exchange needed to address each item on the agenda. (Nevertheless what was said sufficed to give Polonius a very strong position as a Protagonist in the next room.) It is not hard to imagine that a more serious opening stage would have to be much more involved and protracted.

4. Problems
The most striking problem about the opening stage is its tremendous workload. Given that it is at that stage unknown what arguments will turn up in the next room, how can one make sure that enough argument schemes, procedural methods, and substantive propositions have been agreed on to have a fruitful argumentation stage? When is an opening stage completed? This I shall call the completion problem.

The completion problem becomes even more pressing on three counts. First there is the indefinitely long list of propositions to be screened for eligibility as basic premises. Perhaps this list can be handled more systematically and more efficiently by agreeing on procedures to establish basic premises instead of considering them one by one. Even so the discussants need to consider, section by section the issues in Freeman’s book (2005).

Second, what if the discussants do not immediately agree on a proposed basic premise, or on the appropriateness of a type of argument, or its conditions of correctness, or on some matter of logical theory, or on some detail of one of the testing procedures? How do they settle their differences? If they decide to resolve them by critical discussion, this would lead to yet another opening stage to prepare for the argumentation stage of this inserted discussion. And if differences of opinion were again to arise in the opening stage of this inserted discussion, this could lead to yet another inserted discussion, and so on. Thus, the danger of an infinite regress looms ahead.

Third, even when both parties agree after some time that their discussions at the opening stage now provide a sufficient basis for them to proceed to the next room, they could, at the argumentation stage, run into unforeseen problems that necessitate a return to the opening stage. According to Van Eemeren and Grootendorst, as soon as the Antagonist overtly doubts some explicit or implicit premise used by the Protagonist, a new difference of opinion (a subdispute) arises occasioning a new discussion (a subdiscussion):

Besides advancing contra-argumentation against all or part of his opponent’s argumentation, a discussant can also indicate that he does not accept all or part of it. This he does by casting doubt on the statement or statements concerned or by describing them as insufficient justification or refutation. In all these cases this means that strictly speaking a new dispute has arisen which in turn gives rise to a new discussion, the outcome of which may, however, be crucial to the resolution of the original dispute. (Van Eemeren & Grootendorst 1984, p. 89, original emphasis)

Applying the pragma-dialectical model of critical discussion to this new discussion (the subdiscussion), one must conclude that, upon entering a subdiscussion, another opening stage is called for. Since the opening stage of the original discussion may be so construed as to include the opening stages of the subdiscussions, one may also express this by saying that a return to the opening stage of the original discussion is required. For instance, a return to the opening stage would be required if Polonius, in the argumentation stage, were to present an argument that is thereupon criticized by Ophelia. (The example continues the dialogue recorded above at the point where the discussants enter the argumentation stage.)

Polonius: Dolphins are astoundingly intelligent, because they are a species that uses proper names and if a species uses proper names they must be astoundingly intelligent.
Ophelia: But how do you know they use proper names?
Polonius: That was in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.[ii]
Ophelia: Ho stop, daddy. Mine was an expression of doubt, so we are having a subdispute and must first return to the opening stage.

Van Eemeren and Grootendorst suggest that for subdiscussions one could do with the blanket stipulation that they must be “conducted in accordance with the same premises and the same discussion rules accepted in the original discussion” (Van Eemeren & Grootendorst 2004, p. 147). But it seems hard to exclude the possibility that the special character of some premise would require some special provisions as to the way it should be defended. For instance, the original discussion may be about some moral proposition, and not require a deductive proof, whereas one of the premises used by the Protagonist may belong to applied mathematics. If so, upon each utterance of doubt, expressing a difference of opinion, a return to the opening stage would have to follow, a circumstance that would aggravate the problem of getting beyond the opening stage.

There is, however, also a reverse problem, which arises if the parties would indeed succeed in bringing their opening stage to definite completion. This is the fixity problem, the problem that, once the opening stage has been completed, hardly anything is left for the argumentation stage. The decisions taken at the opening stage seem to suffice to determine completely the formal and informal logic that governs the argumentation stage as well as the set of available basic premises. Thus it seems to be determined whether or no an acceptable argument for the initial standpoint can be put forward. Hence the opening stage all but determines the outcome of the argumentation stage, all interesting matters having been discussed at the earlier stage. Given that the argumentation stage is usually seen as the heart of the argumentative process, this is at least an odd result.

A more technical and theoretical problem is that of the relation between the concepts of metadialogue and that of an opening stage. This is the status problem: does the opening stage belong to metadialogue? In a former paper I used the opening stage as an example of metadialogue (Krabbe 2003) because it contains dialogue about dialogue. But within pragma-dialectical theory the opening stage is clearly positioned as one of the stages of the ground level dialogue. This needs to be sorted out.

5. Solutions
At this point I would be glad to conclude my paper since, as usual, I see many problems but hardly any solutions. Nevertheless I shall present some suggestions to steer between the Scylla of the completion problem and the Charybdis of the fixity problem. The goal is of course to get a more realistic, yet normatively strict, set of rules for dialectic.

Foremost, I think it would be a good idea not to try to treat all tasks on the agenda of the opening stage on an equal footing. These tasks may be relocated at different points of the dialectic procedure.

As far as I see there are four possible locations for these tasks:

1. outside the discussion;
2. at the opening stage of the discussion;
3. in a metadialogue embedded in the discussion;
4. at the argumentation stage of the discussion.

The first location lies outside the dialectic process. The idea is to remove some tasks from the dialectic procedure and to presuppose that these tasks were performed before the discussion starts. This way of removing items from the agenda could be considered for
(1) the decision whether to engage in discussion at all and
(2) the decision to engage in persuasion dialogue and
(3) the decision to engage in a specific type of persuasion dialogue which is characterized by a specific set of discussion rules. The task of the dialectician is just to describe a certain system of discussion rules and does not include the description of rules that govern the decision to select the very system he describes.

The second location coincides with the present location of these tasks at the opening stage as a preparatory stage of the dialectic process. The following tasks on the agenda could keep their place at this stage: (4) the decision who is to perform what role; (5a) the decision on logical theory and (6a) the decision on appropriate argument schemes including some of the theory of correct application of these schemes; for the other items, which concern procedures ((5b), (6b), and (7b)) or propositions ((7a), and (7b) again) it could be made optional to what extent they are to be discussed at the opening stage.

The third option for locating tasks on the agenda would be to execute them in a metadialogue, which in a sense amounts to returning to the opening stage. This metadialogue must however be embedded in the argumentation stage, i.e., at the point where the participants enter the metadialogue, it must be functionally relevant for the purpose of that stage. This option is suitable for discussing details of the procedures that take care of (5b) the application of logic, of (6b) the application of argumentation schemes, and of (7b) the testing for acceptability of basic premises. Consequently, these matters will be discussed only when, at the argumentation stage, the occasion arises to do so. Metadialogue can also be used for (7a) the determination of the status of proposed basic premises.

The fourth location is the ground level discussion itself. It is another suitable location for (7a) the introduction of basic premises, supposing that the Antagonist is free to concede propositions that may be used as basic premises in addition to those granted at the opening stage.

The reorganization of the agenda of the opening state may not, in all respects, provide a solution for the completion problem, but it will at least mitigate the trouble. For if such a reorganization is accepted, one forgoes the ambition to achieve completion of the original agenda at the opening stage. Even for the part of the agenda that remains at the opening stage completion is not necessary, since there is lots of room to make repairs later in the metadialogues.

But how about the danger of an infinite regress? To avoid an infinite regress in the opening stage, it suffices to stipulate that the opening stage, in its reduced form, should not itself exhibit argumentative discussion but rather be limited to some uncomplicated version of negotiation dialogue.[iii] However, a theoretical regress in the metadialogues cannot be ruled out in this way, since, presumably, these must be argumentative. In this case, however, infinite regress can be condoned as an acceptable idealization. Moreover, infinite regress will not occur in practice, since, as we know, real discussions are all finite in length.

About the other two problems I shall be brief. Upon reorganizing the agenda, the fixity problem disappears now that more of the tasks are left to the argumentation stage. As to the status problem: we see that not all of the tasks of the original opening stage need to be performed at a metadialogical level, though some will. So part of what used to be the opening stage will retain the status of ground level discussion, and part will be reassigned to the metalevel.

NOTES
i. In the pragma-dialectical writings this item and the preceding one occur as one issue of deciding to discuss.
ii. May 2006.
iii. I am thinking of a simple system of offering, accepting, and rejecting, without recursion, and without embeddings of dialogues of other types.

References
Eemeren, F. H. van & R. Grootendorst (1984). Speech Acts in Argumentative Discussions: A Theoretical Model for the Analysis of Discussions Directed Towards Solving Conflicts of Opinion. Dordrecht/Cinnaminson, NJ: Foris.
Eemeren, F. H. van & R. Grootendorst (1992). Argumentation, Communication, and Fallacies: A Pragma-Dialectical Perspective. Hillsdale, NJ, etc.: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Eemeren, F. H. van & R. Grootendorst (2004). A Systematic Theory of Argumentation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Freeman, J. B. (2005). Acceptable Premises: An Epistemic Approach to an Informal Logic Problem. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Krabbe, Erik C. W. (2003). Metadialogues. In: Frans H. van Eemeren, J. Anthony Blair, Charles A. Willard, and A. Francisca Snoeck Henkemans (Eds.), Anyone Who has a View: Theoretical Contributions to the Study of argumentation (pp. 83-90, Ch 7), Dordrecht, etc.: Kluwer.

Therianthropes and trance dance from artwork painted by Kalahari artist, the late Vetkat Regopstaan Kruiper (with permission)

Ethno-archaeology: Oral narratives and rock art
The focus of my research is on the method of recording oral narratives and their link to, and possible use in, the interpretation of rock art, specifically rock engravings. Research on indigenous knowledge and artefacts falls within a contentious area of indigenous archaeology associated with colonialists’ geographic and intellectual imperialism. It is necessary for my contextual approach to include, as in the exploration of myths, the theoretical setting of ethno-archaeology within which my research takes place. In the discipline of archaeology the use of ethnography falls under what Renfrew and Bahn (1991: 339) call ‘What did they think?’ The use of ‘they’ points not only to ethical issues of ‘othering’, the negative artificial construction of two camps of cultures and the corresponding approaches of scholars and present day descendants of the artists, but also to the time gap between the artists of the past and the present (Lewis-Williams & Pearce, 2004).

The rock paintings situated in caves, shelters and on portable stones, mostly in the mountainous regions in South Africa, and rock engravings situated predominantly in the plateau areas, on boulders on hills or near rivers, date mostly from within the last few thousand years. However, small mobiliary painted stones from Apollo 11 Cave and an engraved ochre piece from Blombos Cave date from some 25 000 and up to 70 000 years ago respectively (Lewis-Williams & Pearce, 2004).  This considerable antiquity complicates any attempts at interpreting the rock art by way of oral narratives, even those recorded by the earliest colonialists. Furthermore, our views and therefore theories on art, oral narrative and methodology are constantly changing (Bahn, 1998).

3.1 Early recordings and attitudes: evolutionist thinking and sympathetic magic
The Islamic incursions into Asia, Europe and Africa approximately 1 300 years ago and the interest of Western countries in foreign countries after the Middle Ages are cited historical events that precipitated an awareness of, and interest in, recording the customs of foreign cultures (Maree et al, 1997). The arrival of foreigners in ships, using horses and later ox wagons, was recorded in rock paintings and engravings by the indigenous people of South Africa (Lewis-Williams, 1983).

Travellers, adventurers, missionaries and soldiers in turn recorded aspects of African cultures in their diaries and reports prior to the formal emergence of anthropology as a science and the development of an evolutionist approach.  The contribution that the drive for material rewards played in the early visitors’ hazardous journeys to the southern part of Africa was recorded by a Dominican priest in 1586:

The country is very hot, unhealthy, and prejudicial to foreigners, especially the Portuguese, who generally fall sick and die of fever; but this is not sufficient to restrain their avarice and the eagerness with which they go thither in search of the mines and riches of the country. (Dos Santos, 1586)

The ‘gaze’ of the colonialists on the ‘exotic other’ is apparent in these writings which, despite attempts to include the voice of the indigenous people, often reveal more of the attitudes and perceptions of the writers than about the cultural features they seek to portray. An example is this account of the Khoikhoi/ Khoekhoen by Christoffel Langhansz when stopping at Cape Town on his way to the Indies in 1694:

As to their religion, they have none, but live like the unreasoning brutes from day to day.  Although some say of them that they reverence the moon this is not so, although it is true that by night, especially at the New Moon, they dance, or better  said leap before it, and thereby howl rather than sing. But this dancing is done only for their pleasure, since leaping against their shadows and clapping their hands delights them especially, in that they see their shadows also do this; and this they continue so long as the moon shines on them, so that this dancing is thus to be considered as solely and entirely for their pleasure and amusement. (Langhansz, 1694 in Maclennan, 2003: 50)

The recording of rock art during this time was incidental and did not follow any formal methodology.  The Chinese have the earliest recordings of rock art dating back to approximately 2 300 years ago by Han Fei (280-233 BC) (Bahn, 1998: 1).  Mention of rock art in Europe is minimal before the 19^th century.

The colonisation of the New World in the 16^th century resulted in identification of rock art in South America.  The link between the rock art and indigenous religion, particularly belief in ‘Quetzalcoatl’ (the feathered serpent God), caused Spanish missionaries to destroy or attempt to allocate Christian meaning to the images (Bahn, 1998: 9-10).  In Ireland recordings of engravings in a burial tomb were made by Edward Lhwyd (1660-1708).  The negative colonial attitudes of scholars of the time to this type of art, labelling it ‘primitive’ (Smith & Blundell, 2000:8) and of little aesthetic value, is reflected in Lhwyd’s reference to the art as ‘rudely carved’ and ‘Barbarous a sculpture’ when referring to a ‘spiral like a Snake, but without distinction of Head and Tail’ (Bahn, 1998: 6).

Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859) impacted not only on ideas concerning man’s origins but, as mentioned previously, on the recording of cultures.  In the field of rock art, evolutionist thinking in terms of categorization from simple to complex forms led to South African rock art – especially geometric engravings – being interpreted as the idle doodlings of a primitive people (Maree et al, 1997; Lewis-Williams & Pearce, 2004) or caricatures (Bahn, 1998). The earliest recordings of rock engravings in South Africa and specifically the Northern Cape are credited to H J Wikar from Sweden on his journeys along the Gariep/Orange River in 1778.   Not all early Europeans dismissed the value of the rock art in South Africa and some, such as Barrow in 1797, attempted an understanding of rock art and appreciated the realistic depictions of animals within it (Bahn, 1998).  When the beauty and artistic merit of the rock art was acknowledged, some Europeans considered the art beyond the scope of the ‘primitive’ indigenous people, the San.  Alternative cultures were invoked and the art was attributed to visiting ‘Caucasians’. The best known example is the ‘White Lady’ of the Brandberg (South West Africa/Namibia), so named by Breuil in 1917 (Smith & Blundell, 2000; Bahn, 1998: 62-63):  ‘Heading the ‘early’ school Abbe Breuil had seen, in such paintings as the famous ‘White Lady’, early Mediterranean influences, and attributes an age of several millennia to much of the art’ (Foreword SA Arch Soc, date and author unknown (approx late 50s).

The impact on meaning attributed to rock art during the unilineal or classical phase of evolutionist thinking was the view that ‘primitive’ art was linked to ‘primitive’ religious practice, namely belief in magic.  In the same way that ‘civilized’ man controls his environment with science and technology, this theory proposed that ‘primitive’ man controlled his environment with magic.  This conjecture was applied to the interpretation of rock art in Europe by historic figures such as Breuil, who regarded rock art ‘primarily in terms of hunting magic’, in that the depicted animal and an associated ritual were believed to influence the outcome of the hunt (Bahn, 1998: 62; Smith & Blundell, 2000).

3.2 Early records and analysis: traditional systematic
The development of anthropology and archaeology as sciences at the beginning of the 20^th century resulted in an emphasis on quantitative methodology and positivist research theory. Diffusionist theory in the late 19^th and early 20^th century emphasized the need to record as much data as possible before it disappeared.   In archaeology and specifically the recording and analysis of rock art, a traditional, systematic approach entailed definition of artefacts in space and time.  In reaction to previous subjective guesswork and ‘imaginings’ as to the significance of artefacts including rock art (Renfrew & Bahn, 1991), emphasis was placed on artefacts that could be analysed scientifically to achieve knowledge of the ‘true’ past. The excavation system of General Pitt-Rivers, developed between 1880 and 1900, influenced the recording and publication of archaeological finds (Renfrew & Bahn, 1991; Webley et al, 2000).  This system required occurrence distribution maps, stratigraphic allocation and finally the assignation of artefacts or assemblages to a specific archaeological culture (Renfrew & Bahn, 1991).

Further systematic analysis of rock art in the traditional approach includes description of rock engravings in terms of place, techniques and time.  Accordingly, Northern Cape rock engravings are found predominantly on ‘rocky outcrops of dolerite and diabase’ (Morris, 1998); they are divided into three techniques whereby the patina (rock crust) is removed, using another hard stone to expose ‘the lighter coloured rock beneath’ (Morris, 1998: 16), namely: fine lined (cutting with a sharp stone), scraped and pecked techniques (Dowson, 1992: 1). The three types sometimes overlap in a single site but may be assigned by archaeologists to different cultures and time periods.  There is not yet unity amongst archaeologists and anthropologists regarding the culture(s) to which the rock engravers belonged. Some engravings in the Northern Cape have been dated broadly by their association with different stone tool assemblages (Morris, 1998):

The rock engravings, which are most frequently met with in the central districts of the Orange Free State and the adjoining northern parts of the Cape lying immediately to the west, also belong to this art group [Bushmen].  Its distribution coincides with that of the Upper Smithfield Industry of the Later South African Stone Culture, and the paintings and engravings are always found associated with implements of this Industry. (Schapera, 1930: 211)

Broadly, the fine line/ hairline engravings may date back up to some 8 000 years and appear to be generally older than the pecked and scraped techniques engravings, of which the oldest may extend back to approximately 3 000 years ago, with the most recent being dated 150-200 years from the present (Beaumont & Vogel, 1989; Morris, 1988; 1998; Dowson, 1992). Direct cation ratio dating of rock engravings has been attempted (Whitley & Annegarn, 1994) but the plausibility of the results has been questioned (Morris, 2002). Different engraving ‘traditions’ have been attributed to San hunter-gatherers, Khoekhoe pastoralists or Bantu-speaking farmers (Smith & Ouzman, 2004).

3.3 A  Multilinear evolution, cultural ecology and rock art
Unilineal evolutionist thinking theorizing that all cultures could be graded on one path to Civilization was replaced in the 20^th century with multilineal evolutionist thinking, which emphasized rather that cultures developed ‘along different paths and at different rates’ (Webley et al, 2000).  This approach falls within American cultural anthropologist Frans Boas’s (1858-1942) theory of ‘historical relativism’, which called for a break away from broad unilinear evolutionary research and greater detailed focus on individual sites (Renfrew & Bahn, 1991). The ‘classification and consolidation’ of artefacts in order to record a culture was extended by the work of Marxist-influenced Gordon Childe in Europe with publications such as The Dawn of European Civilization (1925), in which he posed questions of archaeology that applied not only to the ‘what’, ‘where’ and ‘when’ of a culture’s prehistory, but included an attempt at ‘why?’.  The impact of this type of research on the theory and practice of rock art research is that focus is not solely on chronology and cultural sequences but includes the historical, cultural or ecological context of their creation. The cultural historians ‘described’ rather than ‘explained’ prehistory (Webley et al, 2000: 7).

In the 1940s North American anthropologist Julian Steward and British archaeologist Graham Clark promoted the inclusion of the ecological impact as an additional factor alongside intercultural impact (Renfrew & Bahn, 1991).  Towards a more ecologically inclusive approach, Clarke incorporated the investigative skills of specialists in animal bones and plant remains to develop the archaeological record.  This type of approach is reflected in South African rock art through an emphasis on the inclusion of rock art as part of the archaeological record: ‘after all, the art is a part of the culture of the peoples who created it, and must be studied along with bones and stones, pottery, houses and graves’ (Foreword SA Arch Soc, date and author unknown [approx late 50s]).  Northern Cape rock art research “in the 1980’s was very much concerned with seeing rock art as part of the broader archaeological record (cf. Inskeep, Parkington), and I still believe this to be a crucial perspective” (Personal correspondence, D. Morris 2009).

Fig.3.1 Mc Gregor Museum archaeologist, David Morris, shares the historical context of Wildebeestkuil rock engraving site with visiting students. Photograph: K-S Lange (with permission)

In 1948 WW Taylor published A Study of Archaeology wherein he opposed the culture-historical approach with his call for a cultural anthropological methodology, which echoed contemporary ethnography (Webley et al, 2000).  The dissatisfaction with older forms of archaeological research culminated in the 1960s with the formation of a much more positivist ‘New Archaeology’.

3.3B Quantitative studies: search for patterns and rock art
In South Africa during the 1950s the theory of interpretation of rock art included ‘art for art’s sake’; that is, that the rock art was created with no specific meaning but purely for recreational purposes.  Unlike in the colonial approach, the aesthetic merits of the art were recognised:

The aesthetic value of such paintings is widely appreciated and has already been greatly exploited by the makers of fabrics, ashtrays, and beer mugs[…] Carefully protected and properly published, it may provide a wealth of information for those  interested in Africa’s past, and a source of pleasure for generations to come. (Foreword SA Arch Soc, date and author unknown (approx late 50s)

But no symbolic meaning was attached to the images, as illustrated in The Rock Paintings in Africa, published by The South African Archaeological Society (date unknown [approx. late 1950’s].  The images of the rock art are grouped geographically but no interpretation is imposed in the caption, for example:

Human-headed seals or fishes at Ezeljachtspoort, George district, Cape Province.  A painting 10 ¼ inches (26 cm) in horizontal diameter, generally known as the Mermaid Scene, and probably represents a local legend linked with the sea. (Plate XXXV Copied by Miss M. Wilman. Vol. ii, No. 7)

An explanation for this lack of interpretation is given as follows: ‘partly because it is thought that this is an exercise in which readers may wish to indulge according to their own tastes and theories without interference from the editor!’ (Foreword SA Arch Soc, date and author unknown). Although meaning was not attributed, the significance of motivation and examples of possible inspirations for the art were proposed:

It is important to attempt to arrive at the motives underlying the art […] there seem to be a variety of motives.  Hunting magic may well be one, but it is less easy to be sure than in Europe.  Some, such as the lone piper, may well be simply the expression of artistic feelings, but elsewhere there is good reason to believe that some paintings are true pictograms recording particular events in the life of a group of people.  Others are almost certainly connected with initiation centres and ceremonies. (Foreword SA Arch Soc, date and author unknown)

An emphasis on quantitative studies was influenced by scientific discoveries in the mid 20^th century and a dissatisfaction with the lack of scientific procedures as expressed by the South African Archaeological Society in the above-mentioned publication regarding the dating of rock art: ‘There are two main schools of thought (how nice it would be to replace them with volumes of facts!)’ (Foreword SA Arch Soc, date and author unknown [approx late 50s]).

Quantitative studies in rock art meant further categorization according to details typical of a structuralist approach, whereby understanding is sought within the break-down into smaller segments.  The styles of engraving were divided further than the categories mentioned earlier (such as technique) into the type of images depicted; that is, representational and non-representational or geometrics.  Representational rock engravings were also categorized into either specific animals as opposed to humans, or into types of animals such as rodents, mammals etc; the frequency with which each of these appeared on a site was noted, for example, in the records of rock engravings of South Africa by G J Fock in the 1960s and 1970s (Smith & Blundell, 2000).

The development of scientific dating, such as dendrochronology in 1929 by A E Douglas and radio carbon dating by W Libby in 1949, shifted the emphasis in archaeology from merely descriptive and inductive approaches (that is, looking for generalizations from specifics) to a more deductive approach (that is, explaining processes, which could now be dated more securely, rather than just describing them).  This approach was led by Lewis Binford and other American archaeologists in the 1960s and named ‘New Archaeology’.  This type of archaeology, also known as processual archaeology, called for a process in archaeology and therefore rock art research that required: ‘the formulation of a hypothesis and then testing it through a carefully designed research project’.  Research, however, was still situated within ‘culture historical reconstruction’ (Webley et al, 2000: 10).

3.4 Multiple voices and rock art
The influence of post-structural semiotics and the unstable sign or multiple meanings impacted rock art research theory with the appearance of several new theoretical approaches. The functional and evolutionary approaches discussed previously were rejected in favour of a more human based approach. Post-processual archaeology emphasized people as:

knowledgeable actors who construct, change and manipulate their social worlds.  Meaning is more important than materialism and is always actively created, mediated in relation to interests and social strategies.  (Binneman, 2000: 45)

In South African rock art though ‘the history of rock art research does not simply follow that of archeaology’ (Ouzman, Sven 2007), as in other parts of the world, research approaches that emphasized quantitative processes were not discontinued but were found to be inadequate: ‘counting and listing require enormous amounts of time and labour, and at the end of the day do not reveal anything much about meaning – they merely provide the raw material on which hypotheses can be based’ (Bahn, 1998: 68). New approaches in archaeology are reflected in some South African rock art research, where bridging the gap between the sign and relative interpretation is attempted by means of emphasis on universal physiological traits, as in the psychoneurological theory of Lewis-Williams and Dowson (1989) or emphasis on landscape context, for example, Deacon (1994). Solomon (2006) developed a research process intended to reveal the ideology behind the sign, with an emphasis on post-colonial theory including feminism and the rights of indigenous people. There is new focus on intertextuality and pluralism either by emphasizing the multiplicity or ‘multivocality’ behind the text or through inclusion of multiple voices, especially the voice of indigenous people and the marginalized, as in the work of Morris (2010 in press).

Fig. 3.2 – The ‘power of the place’ Wildebeestkuil rock engraving site. Photograph: K-S Lange (with permission)

3.5 Psychoneurological/ Shamanistic model of rock art
Archaeology differs from historical studies in that it is not only a discipline of the humanities but also a science, and as such requires scientific investigation of material traces from the past (a past which extends right up to the present) – investigation that emphasizes the importance of the archaeologist’s analysis as much as it does the ‘instruments of a laboratory’ (Renfrew & Bahn, 1991: 10).

Lewis-Williams and Dowson made use of ‘controlled experiments, observations of contemporary hunter-gatherers […] and formulations’ that ‘translated the contemporary observations of static material things, and quite literally, translated them into statements about the dynamics of past ways of life’ (Fagan, 1994:26).  Lewis- William’s breakthrough in rock art interpretation was ten years before Dowson collaborated with him (Ouzman, Sven 2007).  His work ‘came in via structural Marxism, an offshoot of especially Childe’s culture history’ (Ouzman, Sven 2007).   The formulation used by Lewis-Williams and Dowson, initially for the interpretation of South African rock art but later attributed international relevance, is known as the neuropsychological or shamanistic model of rock art interpretation (Lewis-Williams, 1980, 1982, 1983, 1988; Lewis-Williams & Loubser, 1986; Lewis-Williams & Dowson, 1989).

The focus of this research requires exploring the neuropsychological model in some detail, given its marked influence on contemporary rock art interpretation, whether in terms of inclusion or opposition:

The ground breaking work of David Lewis-Williams not only introduced a new paradigm in our understanding of San rock art, but an increasing number of researchers utilised aspects of this shamanistic model into their own work.  However, the absence of any substantial body of southern-San ethnography cast doubt for some workers on aspects of the shamanistic model, which was essentially based on Kalahari San ethnography, intertwined with historical records of the southern San. (Prins, 1999: 47)

Contemporary interpretative archaeology, according to Prins, often exists within a positivist view of reality (one true, knowable, reality) and ‘is still practiced largely along the empirical and scientistic frameworks of the 1960s and 70s’ (Prins, 1999: 43). Lewis-Williams & Dowson made use of two ‘interlocking approaches’ of processual archaeology, namely ‘ethno-archaeology’ and ‘experimental’ archaeology (Fagan, 1994: 328).  Rock art research focused on the meaning the art held for the artists (Lewis-Williams & Dowson, 1989).

Ethnography became ‘the key to the art’ when archaeologists turned to indigenous people’s beliefs for understanding of rock art (Smith & Blundell, 2000: 11). The early diaries of travellers, missionaries and explorers provided the first written records of the customs of the Khoisan speaking people of Southern Africa.  These recordings were limited by the majority of these first writers not speaking the indigenous languages, as well as by their context and their colonial prejudices, specifically regarding the religious and spiritual beliefs of the indigenous people of South Africa.

The necessity of understanding the religious and spiritual beliefs of a people in order to understand their art is communicated by Lewis-Williams and Dowson through the analogy of Leonardo da Vinci’s artwork in The Last Supper.  Quantification of images present in the artwork does not bring the viewer closer to understanding the significance of the artwork within a Western Christian context, neither does an aesthetic (discussion of the use of colour and composition) or narrative (the art as a record of the customs, dress and so on of the time) description of the artwork.  Knowledge of the role of Christ, the Eucharist (the Last Supper) and Christian or Western symbolism transforms the artwork from being merely a record of a group of men eating to the representation of an important Christian ritual (Lewis-Williams & Dowson, 1989; Lewis-Williams, 1990).

The neuropsychological model accommodates the religious and spiritual beliefs of the rock artists, acknowledging the integral role of spiritual life in everyday activities and the lack of compartmentalization between the sacred and the secular (Lewis-Williams & Dowson, 1989). Lewis-Williams and Dowson used the following sources to research these beliefs: recordings made in 1873 by Natal Government magistrate Joseph Millard Orpen of Bushman guide Quing’s stories and explanations of rock paintings in Lesotho; the 1870s records of German philologist Dr Wilhelm Heinrich Immanual Bleek and his sister-in-law, Lucy Lloyd, based on the testimony of Southern /Xam Bushmen prisoners in Cape Town; information on the ingredients used in rock painting from Mapote, a Basuto man whose father Moorosi had painted in the caves as recorded by Marion Walsham How in the 1930s (How, 1970);  the American Marshall family’s written and filmed ethnographic records of the Kalahari !Kung in the1950s (Smith & Blundell, 2000: 12); as well as:

…research done on the Kalahari Bushmen during the last three decades.  Writers such as […] Mathias Guenther, Philip Tobias, Alan Barnard, Marjorie Shostak, Richard Katz, Nancy Howell, Patricia Draper, George Silbauer and Polly Wiessner. (Lewis-Williams & Dowson, 1989: 28)

Criticism mentioned earlier by Prins of the use of Kalahari !Kung ethnography for interpretation of art by a completely different San/Bushmen language group in South Africa, namely the /Xam, was addressed through emphasis on the similar ‘ritual practices’ of the two peoples (Smith & Blundell, 2000: 12):

San beliefs and rituals still form an important aspect of their lives.  The basic structure and metaphors in this belief system have strong similarities with those used by the /Xam and Quing and it is these that have shed welcome light on the rock art. And because these similarities can be identified from information gathered a century ago and several thousand kilometres apart, we feel confident about using the general principles of the beliefs and rituals to interpret the rock art. (Deacon & Deacon, 1999:169)

Further ethnography on the southern San was introduced into the archaeological research arena by Prins and Jolly in 1986:

With the publication of two articles relating to the discovery of a first generation southern San descendant, known as M, with authentic knowledge of rock art production and symbology (Jolly, 1986; Lewis-Williams, 1986). M’s father Lindiso was probably the last known San painter, and he passed on some of his knowledge to M (Prins, 1994).  Given developments in rock art research at the time it is not surprising that M’s testimonies were largely utilised to validify and to complement aspects of the shamanistic model or the trance-hypothesis, as it was then known. (Prins. 1999: 47)

Lewis-Williams’s current work includes reference also to the ethnographic research of Megan Biesele in the Kalahari, specifically regarding maidens and ‘metaphors of transition’ (Lewis-Williams & Pearce, 2004: 160).

3.6 Aspects of the neuropsychological model
The neuropsychological model proposes that rock art was painted by medicine men or shamans and that the content of the rock art largely comprises a record of the shamans’ trance hallucinations.  The neuropsychological model bases its hypothesis on three aspects of research, namely: Western neuropsychological laboratory experimentation on the effects of mind altering drugs on patients and the stages of ‘trance’; ethnography of the trance or curing dance from the Kalahari !Kung, and the prominent role in trance dance of the eland in /Xam and !Kung spiritual beliefs and rituals.

Fig.3.3 Eland rock engraving at Wildebeestkuil rock engraving site. Photograph: K-S Lange (with permission)

The work of Patricia Vinnicombe in 1976 is cited by Lewis-Williams as a turning point in rock art research, as she (along with Tim Maggs in the same year) revealed the significant contribution of breaking away from the narrative approach to rock art research.  Quantification indicated the eland as the most frequently depicted animal in most parts of South Africa (Lewis-Williams, 1990). Ethnographic collections in South Africa revealed the eland as an integral part of San/Bushman rituals and thought (Smith & Blundell, 2000).  As mentioned previously, multiple meanings (polysemy) influenced the interpretation of rock art in the 1970s, particularly with regard to the frequent depiction of the eland in rock paintings and engravings in southern Africa (Lewis-Williams, 1990).  Narrative interpretations had previously read the depictions of animals in specific places as indication of the prevalence of that type of animal within that area, but in the 1970s the influence of research into the beliefs of the artists led to the eland gaining multiple meanings, including religious symbolic status.

Not only were words indicating respect attributed to the eland by the San/Bushman, but sometimes the strength of naming it was considered too strong and therefore a taboo.  Lorna Marshall mentioned the !Kung word n/om for the power or energy that certain animals and people contain at certain stages of their lives. Like electricity, the potency could be useful or dangerous. Shamans and the eland (and parts of the eland such as its fat and blood) were considered to be full of potency, which the shaman was required to control ‘for the good of all people’ (Lewis-Williams & Dowson, 1989:32). The eland was part of the most important rituals of the San/Bushmen’s lives, namely: the boys’ hunting rituals, the girls’ puberty rituals or Eland Bull dance, the curing and rainmaking dances.  All these rituals were important for the unity of the people and therefore the eland brought with it connotations of ‘fatness, well-being and rain’ (Lewis-Williams & Dowson, 1989: 82).  In the initiation rituals the fat of the eland was used on the initiates (Lewis-Williams, 1990) and in the paintings the eland blood was used in the ingredients (How, 1970).

3.6B The trance dance
A ritual central to the neuropsychological model of rock art interpretation is the trance or curing dance (Deacon & Deacon, 1999).  This dance is led by medicine persons in the San/Bushmen groups. Lewis-Williams and other archaeologists and anthropologists name these spiritual leaders of the San/Bushman, ‘shamans’:

‘Shaman’ is a Tungus word from central Asia. It has been accepted in the anthropological literature to mean someone in a hunter-gatherer society who enters a trance in order to heal people, foretell the future, control the weather,ensure good hunting, and so forth. (Lewis-Williams & Dowson, 1989: 30-31)

In the 1830s, the French Protestant missionary Thomas Arbousset described a dance called ‘the dance of blood’ because of the number of nose bleeds during the dance (Maclennan, 2003; Smith & Blundell, 2000).  The trance dance is performed in order to ‘obtain supernatural power from God’, which is mainly used to heal people, as well as for rain making, game control and group cohesion (Deacon & Deacon, 1999: 168).  Unlike shamans in other parts of the world who do not participate in everyday life, the Bushman shamans are non-privileged ‘ordinary people’ with approximately half the men and a third of women in a particular group claiming to be shamans (Lewis-Williams & Dowson, 1989:31; Deacon & Deacon, 1999). Ethnography recorded from Quing by Orpen refers to an apprenticeship training whereby experienced trancers taught new pupils, over a few years, the techniques needed for trancing, and imparted potency (Deacon & Deacon, 1999).

The trance dance of the Kalahari !Kung and !Xo, like other traditional San/Bushman dances, usually takes place around a central fire with the women sitting and clapping the rhythm and men and women dancing around the women, or with the dancers inside with the clapping group standing or sitting around them (Marshall Thomas, 1959; Lewis-Williams & Dowson, 1989; Lange et al, 2003b).

Shamans traditionally wear a kaross around their shoulders for a trance dance and have a stick in one hand and often a fly whisk, which is made from the tail of a buck and used to ‘remove the arrow of sickness’, in the other hand (Deacon & Deacon, 1999:173).  The Kalahari !Kung and !Xo dancers tie rattles made from dried cocoons and small pebbles, pieces of ostrich egg shell or camel thorn tree seeds around their legs (Lewis-Williams & Dowson, 1989; Lange et al, 2003b).  The /Xam are recorded as also making rattles out of ‘dried springbok ears’ (Lewis-Williams & Dowson, 1989: 44). On their heads, the dancers often wear headdresses made of animal skin and designed with animal qualities such as horns or ears and a tail (Lewis-Williams, 1990).

The intense dancing, singing, clapping, rattles and stamping continue for hours until the shamans, aided by ‘intense concentration and hyperventilation’, enter a mind-altered state of trance.  Physical indicators of the shaman having entered this state recorded by Orpen include bending over, falling down and blood running from the nose (Deacon & Deacon, 1999: 170-171).  During this state, n/om potency builds up painfully in the body as the dancer gasps for breath, sweats and trembles, feeling hairs standing up on the body (Lee & Woodhouse, 1970).  Metaphors used for this experience include dying, drowning and flying (Lewis-Williams & Dowson, 1989).

Depending on the dance, the shaman can harness the potency in different ways; for example, during a trance dance the shaman would, trembling, place hands on a sick person to draw out the illness. In rainmaking ceremonies, when the shaman collapses, his spirit leaves his body to harness a rain animal and bring it across the mountains and veld where, on its killing, the blood or milk would provide rain. These scenes were depicted in rock paintings in which Lewis-Williams and Dowson read the eland, the favourite animal of the San/Bushman trickster-God /Kaggen (Deacon & Deacon 1999), as mirroring the shaman in trance with buckled crossed knees, blood from the nose and potency indicated by continuous or dotted lines emitted from behind the neck (Lewis-Williams, 1990). Shamans drawn in association with eland, in postures such as touching their tails, are read as drawing strength from the potent animal. Lewis-Williams and Dowson regard the eland as a metaphor for the trancing shaman; that is, a symbol of entering an altered state of consciousness, entering the spirit world with the rock face as the veil between the real and the spiritual world (Lewis-Williams & Dowson, 1990).

The depiction in rock art of therianthropes – creatures with animal and human features – is also read in the trance hypothesis as an indication of an altered state of consciousness and therefore supportive of the shamanistic model.  The reason for this attribution is discussed below.

Fig.3.4 Therianthropes and trance dance from artwork painted by Kalahari artist, the late Vetkat Regopstaan Kruiper (with permission)

3.6C Neuropsychological research
Lewis-Williams insists that neuropsychological research was not used to ‘show that the art is the product of altered states of consciousness’, as he believed the ethnography had already proved this.  Neuropsychological research was used for further understanding of rock art as depictions of ‘visions and experiences of shamans who entered trance’ (Lewis-Williams, 1990: 55-56).  This was particularly relevant for Lewis-Williams and Dowson’s (1988) interpretation of geometrics.

The neuropsychological research approach used by Lewis-Williams and Dowson was applied by Siegel to ‘the experiences of people from a variety of ethnic backgrounds in different countries around the world who have taken hallucinatory drugs’ (Deacon & Deacon, 1999: 172).  The laboratory experiments made use of ‘hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD’ (Lewis-Williams, 1990: 55).  The experiments noted that all subjects went through three stages: a first stage of seeing ‘entoptics’ (geometric shapes); a second stage of trying to make sense of these entoptics according to the cultural context of the subject, for example: a u-shape interpreted as a boat; a third stage where the subject loses a grip on his sense of reality and entoptics are no longer important.  Images seen are no longer like but rather are, as the subject hallucinates ‘animals, monsters and other things with a powerful emotional content’ (Lewis-Williams, 1990: 56-57).

The third stage was used to explain the depiction of therianthropes within a trance hypothesis.  The shamans depicted animals that they experienced themselves becoming (Lewis-Williams, 1990). (This aspect and others mentioned previously relating to states of altered consciousness and the production of rock art will be explored further in the discussion of rock engravings in the research area.)  Other sensations related by the subjects such as lengthening and extra digits were also used to interpret rock art that had fallen outside of the narrative approach (Lewis-Williams & Dowson, 1989). Lewis-Williams noted the greater concentration of entoptics in rock engravings as opposed to rock paintings but, in the 1990s, could only speculate as to the significance of this phenomenon (Lewis-Williams, 1990).

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About the author

Mary Lange (MA), is chairperson of ARROW SA: Art, Culture & Heritage for Peace (Reg 088 058 NPO) affiliated to the international arts for peace organisation INDRA CONGRESS (previously ARROW: Art a Resource for Reconciliation Over the World). Her research interests include oral narratives, visual anthropology, and theatre in development. Lange is a postgraduate supervisor and undergraduate lecturer with The Centre for Communication, Media and Society (CCMS), University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN).  ARROWSA is a CCMS, UKZN research affiliate. Lange is multi-talented, a Culture and Heritage programme facilitator who does drama, a visual anthropologist who educates students in the field. She is currently directing a rock art project in the Northern Cape.

From:  Mary Lange – Water Stories and Rock Engravings- Eiland Women at the Kalahari Edge

Rozenberg Publishers 2011 –  ISBN 978 90 361 0245 2

Graham Greene in the Belgian Congo

My purpose in this contribution is to present and contextualize the only film footage ever recorded of the novelist Graham Greene (1904-1991) in the Belgian Congo in 1959. The footage was filmed with an 8mm camera, which did not record sound. It belongs to Mrs. Édith Lechat (née Dasnoy;1932-) and her husband, the leprosy specialist Doctor (later Professor) Michel Lechat (1927-2014).

From 1953 through 1960, Dr. Lechat was head of the leper hospital and colony of Iyonda, a village and mission station some 15 kms south of the city of Coquilhatville (now, Mbandaka) in central-western Congo. Greene stayed a number of weeks in Iyonda and other mission stations in the region in search of inspiration, a setting, and material for a new novel. The novel, A Burnt-Out Case, appeared in 1960, and was dedicated to Dr. Lechat. Greene occupied a room in the house of the missionary fathers in Iyonda, but spent long parts of his days with the doctor and his family. The film reached me through the hands of Édith Lechat, who had it transposed to a DVD-playable format, and via my friend Hendrik (a.k.a., “Henri” or “Rik”) Vanderslaghmolen (1921-), who was a missionary in the region at the time. As he was one of the only Belgian missionaries there with some knowledge of English, he often accompanied Graham Greene during his trips from one mission station to another. Rik Vanderslaghmolen and the Lechats are still close friends today.

Much of the information I offer below stems from conversations I had with both Rik Vanderslaghmolen and Édith Lechat in July and August 2013. Regrettably, Dr. Michel Lechat’s poor health condition did not allow me to probe his memory, but an interview he gave for the Brussels-based weekly The Bulletin on the occasion of Greene’s death in 1991 is available (Lechat 1991), as well as a closely similar talk he gave at the 2006 Graham Greene Festival in Berkhamsted, published in the London Review of Books in August 2007 (Lechat 2007). Édith Lechat has given me the kind permission to share the film with the readership of Rozenberg Quarterly and to add the necessary contextual information on both the historical situation and the contents of the film.

Graham Greene (right, 54 years old) with Dr Michel Lechat (31 years old) and Lechat’s two first-born children, Marie and Laurent. Car park in front of the airfield of Coquilhatville, the Belgian Congo, 5 March 1959. Photo reproduced with permission from Edith Lechat.

Snippets of the film were used in a documentary the BBC produced on Graham Greene in 1993 (The Graham Greene Trilogy, by Donald Sturrock). Yet, the order in which the documentary presented the snippets did not respect the original course of the film and they were, in any case, fragmentary. Also, neither the film bits nor the voice-overs in the documentary provided much information on Greene’s stay in the Congo and his relation with the Belgian missionaries, but rather served to portray Greene’s personality, i.e. to illustrate what some interviewees described as his tendency to falsely pretend happiness and gaiety while in reality being a sombre and depressed man, especially in those years. My contribution here is thus an opportunity to present, for the first time, the film in its full and unedited length, and to zoom in on the Congolese and missionary circumstances under which it was made.

Graham Greene’s journey to the Belgian Congo took place in the beginning of 1959; to be precise, he arrived by plane in Leopoldville (now, Kinshasa) on 31 January and left that city again for Brazzaville on 7 March 1959. He was in Iyonda from 2 to 11 February and again from 26 February to 5 March, visiting other mission stations in between these two periods. The reason why some 35 years later Greene wrote that “In 1959 I spent about three months in and around the leper colony of Iyonda in the then Belgian Congo” (Greene in Hogarth 1986: 108) and why in the same way he mentioned “months” in an interview heard in part 2 of the BBC documentary, remains unclear. His stay in the Congo must have appeared much longer to him with hindsight than it had been in reality.  Either way, in 1958 he had a rough idea for a book in mind, namely a stranger arriving in a leper colony run by a missionary order. When Greene was searching for a suitable leper colony in a remote place of the globe which he could visit to substantiate his technical knowledge of leprosy and where he could spend time with missionaries, a mutual Belgian friend told him about Michel Lechat and his work in the Congo (Lechat 1991, 2007). He wrote three letters to the doctor, who in turn discussed it with the missionary fathers of Iyonda and Coquilhatville, and his stay was arranged.

The missionary congregation in charge of Iyonda, Coquilhatville, and the other mission stations Greene visited during his Congo journey was the Belgian branch of the Catholic Missionaries of the Sacred Heart (Missionnaires du Sacré-Coeur de Jésus, MSC), which included among its members the famed specialists and guardians of the Mongo people, Edmond Boelaert (1899-1966) and Gustaaf Hulstaert (1900-1990), and which produced the proto-scholarly and socially committed journal Æquatoria (1937-1962), later succeeded by Annales Æquatoria (1980-2009) (see Vinck 1987, 2012 and www.aequatoria.be for more details).  The MSC missionaries and their bishop Mgr Hilaire Vermeiren (1889-1967) were particularly proud to receive the famous author, who had not only converted to Catholicism in his early twenties but some of whose books, such as Brighton Rock, The Lawless Roads, The Power and the Glory, The Heart of the Matter, and The End of the Affair, also developed profoundly Catholic themes.

Entrance to the Iyonda leprosery, with the missionary fathers’ house on the left, where Greene was accommodated. The first part of the 8mm film was recorded on the loggia of this house. Photo reproduced with permission from R. Vanderslaghmolen.

During his stay in the Congo, Greene kept a diary in which he noted down daily observations, thoughts and conversations, and in which he tried out some characterizations and pieces of story for the novel: “I took advantage of the opportunity to talk aloud to myself, to record scraps of imaginary dialogue and incidents, some of which found their way into my novel, some of which were discarded” (Greene 1968 [1961]: 7). Afterwards, the diary was thoroughly proofread by Dr. Lechat, who did not only correct technical errors related to leprosy and leprosy treatment but also cleaned out quite some painful descriptions of real people and situations, before it was published, in 1961, under the title In Search Of A Character: Congo Journal. It contains the dates and locations of Greene’s whereabouts, and mentions the various missionaries, colonials and other people he met on his way. In an article posthumously published in Annales Æquatoria, Gustaaf Hulstaert identified each MSC missionary mentioned in the diary and also attempted to find clues in A Burnt-Out Case (Hulstaert 1994). Hulstaert ends his article with a defence of his fellow missionaries, most of whom Greene had depicted in not so favourable terms in the diary and, less explicitly identified, in the novel as well. Greene had found many of them, although kind and hospitable (see also his words in Hogarth 1986: 108), not widely educated, rather naive and infantile, easily amused by college types of humour and immature games, some of them cruel with animals, others lazy, and all of them occupied with all sorts of logistics, such as constructing buildings, running schools, laying in provisions, but not with the spiritual fundaments and higher goals of motivated Christianity.

One of the exceptions was the bishop, Mgr Vermeiren. Greene and Vermeiren seem to have shared the same perception of the priests; testament to this is what Vermeiren wrote to the MSC provincial superior in Belgium in 1957: “It is my impression that quite a number of our priests are not mature. For people holding university degrees, they sometimes behave so childishly” (letter to Jozef Van kerckhoven, 26 April 1957, MSC Archives). In his diary, Greene appreciates Vermeiren for being “a wonderfully handsome old man with an eighteenth-century manner – or perhaps the manner of an Edwardian boulevardier” (Greene 1968 [1961]: 26), and lauds his cultivation as well as his bravery and tenacity in the difficult years of decolonization (1968 [1961]: 40; see also Hulstaert 1989). In the many years of professional and friendship contacts I have had with members of the MSC, I have learned that priests and friars who worked under Vermeiren are in general less eulogistic about him, remembering him especially for his aloofness and sense for pomp and rank – a characterization which also surfaces in biographical sketches such as Van Hoorick (2004: 26). This discrepancy is indicative of Greene’s general preference for patrician class and high-cultured milieus, and in any case suggests that his interpretive grid was considerably remote from the fathers’, leading more than once to a misunderstanding or at least to a lack of connection. This want of mutual understanding and connection is also mentioned by Hulstaert (1994: 501-502) and was similarly reported to me by Rik Vanderslaghmolen and Édith Lechat.

One of the MSC missionaries working in the Congo was Martin (Adolf) Bormann Jr. (1930-2013), first-born son of Adolf Hitler’s private secretary Martin Bormann, and Hitler’s godson. Converted to Catholicism at the age of 17, he studied theology and was ordained priest in 1958, in the Austrian-German branch of the MSC (MSC 1963: 255). He went to the Congo for the first time in May 1961, where he was assigned to the mission station of Mondombe, in the easternmost diocese of the MSC mission region, some 800 kms east of Iyonda and Coquilhatville. In 1964, fleeing the advancing Simba rebels, he lived for some days hidden in cassava fields, but was nonetheless caught (Bormann 1965, 1996). In November 1964, he was freed by Belgian paratroopers and repatriated to Europe. He went back to the Congo for a second term of one year in March 1966 and left priesthood in 1971. On 12 February 1959, the day when Greene arrives in the mission station of Bokuma, located some 70 kms northeast of Iyonda but still some 700 kms away from Mondombe, he writes “Incidentally Martin Bormann’s son is somewhere here in the bush” (1968 [1961]:  44-45). However, in 1959 Bormann had not yet arrived in the Congo. An explanation for this confusing anachronism in Greene’s diary is to be found in the fact that, as Édith Lechat and Rik Vanderslaghmolen reported to me, Martin Bormann’s entrance in the congregation of the MSC and his being assigned to the missions in the Belgian Congo raised some dust among missionaries and colonials in the vicariate of Coquilhatville. In 1959, Bormann’s anticipated arrival was, in fact, the talk of the town in Coquilhatville and depending mission stations. Greene must have picked up the news and misinterpreted it, believing Bormann had already arrived.

A Burnt-Out Case is set in a leprosery in the Belgian Congo and has as one of its protagonists a Belgian doctor (Dr. Colin), head of the leprosery, who, moreover, works in close collaboration with a group of missionaries, whose personalities and characters conjure up the MSC missionaries Greene met during his journey. In his dedication of the novel to Dr. Lechat (Greene 1977 [1960]: 5), Greene insists that the leprosery in the novel is not literally the one in Iyonda, even if he may have copied “superficial characteristics” from it. He also avers that Dr. Colin is not Dr. Lechat: apart from the fact that he has the same experience of leprosy, the character is in “nothing else” based on him. As far as the missionaries are concerned, Greene admits that he gave the Superior of the mission station to which the leprosery is attached in the novel, the same habit of smoking one cheroot after the other and of spilling ashes on everything and everyone in his vicinity as he had seen the Superior in Iyonda, Pierre Wynants (1914-1978), do. Also, Greene says the river boat on which the main character Querry, and later Parkinson, travel to and from the leprosery is inspired by the steamer which Mgr Vermeiren had put at his disposal in 1959 and on which he was often accompanied by Rik Vanderslaghmolen. But apart from that, Greene insists, none of the central characters is based on any particular person he had met in the Congo, and the novel “is not a roman à clef, but an attempt to give dramatic expression to various types of belief, half-belief, and non-belief, in the kind of setting, removed from world-politics and household-preoccupation, where such differences are felt acutely and find expression” (Greene 1977 [1960]: 5). Yet, however much I agree that reading A Burnt-Out Case as a roman à clef  would severely miss the author’s point and defeat the purpose of the artistic experience, there do seem to be closer resemblances than Greene admits.

The river steamer Theresita, property of the MSC missionaries in the Congo and used by Graham Greene in 1959 to move from one mission station to another. Photo reproduced with permission from R. Vanderslaghmolen.

First of all, much like Greene, Querry, too, defends himself against allegations, from Marie, that the story he is telling her would be an allegory of his past and that he would be the boy appearing in it. Querry retorts to her: “They always say a novelist chooses from his general experience of life, not from special facts” (Greene 1977 [1960]: 152). Greene could have spoken exactly the same words in defence of A Burnt-Out Case. Secondly, Querry displays the same lack of impatience with what he feels to be the priests’ mediocrity as Greene shows in his diary, and both Greene and Querry are sickened by the fondness for gratuitous game hunting of one particular missionary, who, moreover, is both in the novel and in real life the captain of the river steamer (real person: Georges Léonet, 1922-1974). Thirdly, the bishop in the novel is depicted as an aristocratic and highly refined gentleman. He is described as “an old-fashioned cavalier of the boulevards” (Greene 1977 [1960]: 64), which is no less than an immediate echo of the words “Edwardian boulevardier” Greene used in his diary to describe Mgr Vermeiren. What is more, the bishop in the novel is a fond player of bridge (1977 [1960]: 64). The diary does not make mention of Vermeiren’s avid passion for this card game, but this passion is still legendary among MSC members today – not in the least Rik Vanderslaghmolen, who was often summoned to drive Mgr Vermeiren to outlying bridge venues. Fourth, in the same way as Greene is on record for having been a womanizer, drawing much of his success with the other sex from his fame (i.a., Shelden 1994), Querry, too, looks back on a life in which his status and celebrity as an artist-architect earned him considerable attention from women. Fifth, Greene was already world-famous before his departure to the Congo, and as the anticipation of too much attention annoyed him greatly, he travelled in the Congo under the pseudonym “Mr. Graham” (Lechat 1991, 2007). In the diary, Greene more than once noted down his irritation with admirers, mostly Belgian colonials, who in spite of his attempted anonymity managed to approach him to discuss literary matters or submit creative writings of their own to his appreciation and advice. Michel Lechat recounts the funny anecdote of how Greene, upon spotting from far an admirer driving in the direction of the leprosery, would run into the Lechats’ house, jump out of the rear window of their bedroom, and run away into the forest (Lechat 1991, 2007). Querry, too, is an internationally renowned artist, whose success and praises have worn him out. In fact, the very reason for his leaving Europe and hiding away in the Congo is his self-unmasking as a second-rate artist and his related desire to vanish from sight. The nail in Querry’s coffin is Mr. Rycker, Marie’s husband and a Belgian colonial entrepreneur relentlessly exasperating Querry with tributes and references to his grand artistic achievements. Again, the resemblance between Querry and Greene is too striking to be left unnoticed. Lechat in fact also remembers a number of other anecdotes and actual situations that befell Greene in the Congo and that are almost literally lived by Querry in the novel (Lechat 1991, 2007). Decidedly, as the biographer Norman Sherry put it, “in describing […] Querry, Greene is describing himself” (Sherry 2004: 194), and much more so than the novelist was prepared to recognize.

A Britain-based author of many novels set in tropical places, who goes to the Congo in order to find inspiration for a new book, travels the Congo river or its tributaries on a steamer, keeps a Congo diary in preparation of the book, and, in his literary creation, connects outer-world removal from all things familiar with inner-world self-confrontation, despair, and madness – one cannot help being reminded of Joseph Conrad and his Heart of Darkness and An Outpost of Progress (for Conrad’s Congo diary see Najder 1978 and also Stengers 1992).
Evidently, in terms of writing style, no two authors could be more unlike than Greene and Conrad. Although both privilege themes of gloom, failure, and disillusion and even though they both gauge the characters’ psychological and emotional states and changes (see also Stape 2007, among others, on Conrad’s heritage in Greene’ s work), Greene’s style is much less oriented towards sensuality and sensation, is story-practical, and is above all narrative- and action-driven whereas Conrad’s is description-based. Of more importance is the fact that, and the ways in which, Greene invokes Conrad on more than one occasion in his Congo diary. The diary entries reveal how heavily Conrad’s shadow had been hanging over Greene since his first days as a novelist.

First of all, we find several appropriate but terse and spontaneous citations from Heart of Darkness in the diary. When contemplating Leopoldville, Greene briefly cites, without any identification of the self-evident source: ““And this also”, said Marlow suddenly, “has been one of the dark places of the earth”” (Greene 1968 [1961]: 15). And when admiring the Congo river at Iyonda, he writes down “This has not changed since Conrad’s day. ‘An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest.’” (1968 [1961]: 18). We later on learn that Greene has found his Congo journey to be a perfect occasion to reread Heart of Darkness. In itself, this is not particularly noteworthy, as many a European has done the same when travelling to the Congo for the first time. What is of interest is that, on the day of 12 February 1959, Greene confesses that in 1932, i.e. at the age of 28 already, he had abandoned reading Conrad altogether, because it filled him with a strong sense of inferiority as a writer: “Reading Conrad – the volume called Youth for the sake of The Heart of Darkness – the first time since I abandoned him about 1932 because his influence on me was too great and too disastrous. The heavy hypnotic style falls around me again, and I am aware of the poverty of my own” (1968 [1961]: 42).

At that young age, Greene thus stopped reading Conrad – “that blasted Pole [who] makes me green with envy”, as he once referred to him (Keulks 2006: 466) – in order to avoid the risk of being too much influenced by him. Could this be where we have to find the origins of Greene’s strongly opposite writing style, a style he developed in reaction to Conrad’s, which he held in great awe and at the same time considered unattainable? Édith Lechat recalls how she and her husband once mentioned their great keenness for Conrad in a conversation with Greene, and how his reaction was unusually evasive and crabby. So crabby that the three never raised the subject Conrad again. Fascinatingly, a bit later, when he has progressed further in the book, Greene makes a new assessment of the novel as compared to his reading of it in his twenties: “Conrad’s Heart of Darkness still a fine story, but its faults show now. The language too inflated for the situation. Kurtz never comes really alive. […] And how often he compares something concrete to something abstract. Is this a trick that I have caught?” (Greene 1968 [1961]: 44). Whether one agrees with Greene’s appreciation or not (at least as far as Kurtz is concerned, I do), what we seem to be witnessing here is a moment later in Greene’s life at which he overcomes his self-degrading veneration of Conrad. The 54-year old, mature Greene, now rereading Heart of Darkness “as a sort of exorcism” (Lechat 1991: 16), has found faults in Conrad’s characterizations and has discovered a stylistic trick he believes he was overusing. These demystifying discoveries seem to enable Greene for the first time in his life to step out of Conrad’s overpowering shadow, to free himself from the burden of his inescapable ubiquity, now undone.

8mm film of Graham Greene in Iyonda, the Belgian Congo, 5 March, 1959. Reproduced with permission from Edith Lechat and Rik Vanderslaghmolen.
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The camera for this 8mm film was held by Father Paul Van Molle (1911-1969), the later superior of the Iyonda mission and leper colony. Greene mentions Father Paul only once, and briefly, in his diary, namely on 10 February, when receiving a haircut from him (1968 [1961]: 38). Greene himself does not mention or allude to the filming in his diary in any way. On the basis of a series of clues, Édith Lechat has been able to reconstruct that the filming took place in the morning and at lunch time of Greene’s last day at Iyonda, namely Thursday 5 March 1959. Later in the afternoon, the Lechat family would drive Graham Greene to the airfield of Coquilhatville, where he was to board a plane to Leopoldville. With Greene’s departure imminent, Father Paul realized the fathers and the Lechat family had not yet captured his presence among them on film, and therefore hastened to do so.

The film as shown here was not edited: all ‘cuts’ are moments at which Paul Van Molle switched the camera off and on again. The film, 4 minutes and 40 seconds in length, can be said to consist of two main parts, each filmed at a different time of the day and at a  different location in Iyonda. The first part, running until 2’19”, is shot in the morning time on the loggia, named barza in Belgian colonial parlance, of the fathers’ house, where Greene was accommodated (see also photo of Iyonda above). The second part, running from 2’23” until the end, is an hour or two later, i.e. at lunch time, in the Lechat house, which was a few hundred meters away from the fathers’ house. On 27 February, Greene writes that “I no longer bother to go to the Congo [river] to read” (1968 [1961]: 66), a habit he used to entertain during his first stay in Iyonda from 2 to 11 February. The first twelve seconds of the film show Greene stretched out in a deck chair on the fathers’ barza reading a book, which according to the diary must be Belloc’s Catholic testimony The Path to Rome (1968 [1961]: 76). The fact that he is doing his daily reading there, and not on the banks of the Congo river, confirms that the film was recorded during Greene’s second stay in Iyonda.

The other details of the first part of the film are as follows. After 0’12”, we see that Greene has put the book aside and is engaged in a conversation with whom we discover a bit later to be Édith Lechat, then 27 years old, standing on the edge of the barza. Shortly after that, Father Rik Vanderslaghmolen, aged 38, joins in from behind Greene. As I mentioned above, Rik was one of Greene’s main escorts during his Congo journey, and in that capacity his name reappears quite frequently in the diary. At the time of Greene’s visit, Vanderslaghmolen was on leave in Iyonda to recover from illness (see also Hulstaert 1994: 498). Both the film and the diary show a Vanderslaghmolen as his family, confreres, and friends, including myself, know him best, namely as a frolicsome practical joker, an impish leg-puller, an ever good-humoured, jesting entertainer. As the three are having an amicable, relaxed conversation, Greene remaining seated, the zoom is close enough for an experienced lip reader to decipher what Greene is saying, probably in (broken) French, the language in which he habitually conversed with Édith Lechat (whereas he mostly used English with her husband). From 0’32” through 0’39”, Greene is entertained by the Lechat children, Marie (4.5 years old) and, on his little tricycle, Laurent (2.5). Then, from 0’39” to 0’45”, Greene is filmed holding a camera to photograph the cameraman, Rik stepping in and whimsically hindering Greene from looking into the camera viewer. After that (0’46” – 0’58”), Greene and Rik are larking about, Rik blocking the door of the house to prevent Greene, clutching his inseparable whisky flask, from coming in. In the following bit, until 1’13”, we first see Greene with Édith Lechat, lighting a cigarette, and her two children, immediately followed by Rik and Greene sillily engaged in a mock waltz, a stunt clearly triggered by the filming occasion. Next (1’13” – 1’20”), Rik amuses his company by trying to squeeze his lofty body into little Laurent’s tricycle. After Greene picks up his book and glasses and regains his deck chair, and Édith Lechat, following her daughter, leans through a window of the fathers’ house to have a conversation with someone inside, Dr. Lechat has joined the company and a chat ensues between the three (until 2’19”), Greene still seated, Michel and Édith Lechat standing. Michel Lechat’s and Greene’s gazes (1’56” – 1’59”) reveal a light, good-hearted annoyance with the camera’s intrusion.

The second part of the footage is shot in the house of the Lechats, showing Greene with the Lechat family at lunch, assisted by their Congolese servant Mongu Henri (year of birth unknown). This takes place only a few hours after the morning scene at the fathers’ house. It can be noticed, however, that Greene has changed shirts, possibly in anticipation of his flight to Leopoldville (notice that it is  the same shirt as in the photo above, taken in the car park at the Coquilhatville airfield). Gazes into the lens and nervous laughter make it clear that the company, although trying to behave naturally, remain acutely aware of the camera’s presence during the entirety of the meal. My poor lip reading skills aside, I venture to say that at 3’36” – 3’38”, Mrs. Lechat, slightly embarrassed, addresses the cameraman with the words“Père Paul, arrête! Arrête de filmer, s’il te plaît!” (“Father Paul, stop! Stop filming, please!”). Between 3’16” and 3’20”, we witness Dr. Lechat repairing his photo camera, the same camera with which, a few hours later, his wife would take the picture in the airfield car park.

The second half of the 1950s was one of the darkest periods in Greene’s life, specifically after the break-up with his mistress Catherine Walston (i.a., Shelden 1994; Sherry 2004; R. Greene 2008). His manic depression reached the most severe point he had experienced until then, he self-reported to feel chronically miserable, even to have turned into a misanthrope. In the BBC documentary, relations and friends of Graham Greene’s narrate how he was an absolute master in masking away this gloominess and dejection, concealing it under the exact opposite – merriment, smiles, superficial gaiety. Appearing in off-screen voice, his wife Vivien Greene explains that: “I’ve discovered, and I’m sure I’m right, that people who are great on practical jokes are very unhappy. And I think it was when Graham was most unhappy that he started all these practical jokes. […] It was I’m quite sure when he was most deeply unhappy that he had this spell of practical joking, which people think of as high spirits but I don’t think it is.” Her off-screen voice is heard over (very short) bits of images showing Graham Greene dancing around with Rik Vanderslaghmolen on the fathers’ barza and looking happily entertained at lunch with the Lechat family. The message of the documentary makers is clear: Greene’s gaiety and insouciance visible on the Congo footage are make-believe, a shallow pose that when scratched away reveals a deeper, lurking despondency. I do not wish entirely to refute this analysis, but at the same time would like to invoke the album, also mentioned above, that the graphic artist Paul Hogarth made on the locations appearing as settings in Greene’s novels (Hogarth 1986).

In commentaries Greene added to Hogarth’s paintings in this album, the novelist remembered his time in Iyonda as not particularly gloomy:  “It was not a depressing experience. […] Most of my memories of the léproserie are happy ones – the kindness of the fathers and friendship of Dr. Lechat to whom the book is dedicated” (Greene in Hogarth 1986: 108-112). Certainly, the late 1950s were dark, dismal years in Graham Greene’s life, and to be sure the writing of A Burnt-Out Case constituted a terrible artistic ordeal for him – as he put it: “What was depressing was writing the novel and having to live for two years with a character like Querry. I thought it would be my last novel” (Greene in Hogarth 1986: 108). But perhaps the time he spent in the Congo with Dr. and Mrs. Lechat and with the fathers, among whom the comic and generous teaser Rik Vanderslaghmolen, who according to Édith Lechat was “the only person really capable of making Graham Greene laugh and have fun”, triggered off tiny bouts of contentment in Greene’s tormented soul. A contentment surely initiated from the outside, and maybe ephemeral and fleeting, but nonetheless momentarily highly efficacious.

Acknowledgments
I sincerely wish to thank Édith Lechat and Rik Vanderslaghmolen for all the information, feedback, and viewpoints they so kindly offered me. Both of them have given their approval to this text. My gratitude also goes to Honoré Vinck for his assistance with a number of archival issues and to Jürgen Jaspers.

REFERENCES
Bormann, Martin. 1965. Zwischen Kreuz und Fetisch: Die Geschichte einer Kongomission. Bayreuth: Hestia.
Bormann, Martin. 1996. Leben gegen Schatten: Gelebte Zeit, geschenkte Zeit. Begegnungen, Erfahrungen, Folgerungen. Paderborn: Bonifatius.
Greene, Graham. 1968 [1961]. In Search of a Character: Congo Journal. London: Penguin.
Greene, Graham. 1977 [1960]. A Burnt-Out Case. London: Penguin.
Greene, Richard (Ed.) 2008. Graham Greene: A Life in Letters. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
Hogarth, Paul. 1986. Graham Greene Country: Visited by Paul Hogarth, Foreword and Commentary by Graham Greene. London: Pavilion.
Hulstaert, Gustaaf. 1989. Vermeiren (Hilaire). Biographie Belge d’Outre-Mer – Belgische Overzeese Biographie 7(C): 365-368.
Hulstaert, Gustaaf. 1994. Graham Greene et les missionnaires catholiques au Congo Belge. Annales Æquatoria 15: 493-503.
Keulks, Gavin. 2006. Graham Greene. In Kastan, D. S. (Ed.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature, 466-471. New York: Oxford University Press.
Lechat, Michel. 1991. Remembering Graham Greene. The Bulletin: The Newsweekly of The Capital of Europe, 18 April 1991: 14-16.
Lechat, Michel. 2007. Diary: Graham Greene at the leproserie. London Review of Books 29(15): 34-35.
MSC (Missionnaires du Sacré-Coeur de Jésus). 1963. Album Societatis Missionariorum Sacratissimi Cordis Jesu, A Consilio Generali Societatis ad modum manuscripti pro Sociis editum. Rome: MSC.
Najder, Zdzislaw (Ed.) 1978. Congo Diary and Other Uncollected Pieces by Joseph Conrad. New York: Doubleday.
Shelden, Michael. 1994. Graham Greene: The Man Within. London: Heinemann.
Sherry, Norman. 2004. The Life of Graham Greene, Volume 3: 1955-1991. New York: Viking.
Stape, John. 2007. The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad. New York: Bond Street Books.
Stengers, Jean. 1992. Sur l’aventure congolaise de Joseph Conrad. In Quaghebeur, M. & Van Balberghe, E. (Eds), Papier blanc, encre noire: Cent ans de culture francophone en Afrique centrale (Zaïre, Rwanda et Burundi), 15-34. Brussels: Labor.
Van Hoorick, Walter. 2004. Hilaire Vermeiren: De tweede Beverse missiebisschop (1889-1967). Land van Beveren 47(1): 11-30.
Vinck, Honoré. 1987. Le cinquantième anniversaire du Centre Æquatoria. Annales Æquatoria 8: 431-441.
Vinck, Honoré. 2012. Ideology in missionary scholarly knowledge in Belgian Congo: Æquatoria, Centre de recherches africanistes; The mission station of Bamanya (RDC), 1937-2007. In Harries, P. & Maxwell, D. (Eds), The Secular in the Spiritual: Missionaries and Knowledge about Africa, 221-244. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

About the author
Prof.dr. Michael Meeuwis is Professor of African languages and linguistics at Ghent University, where he is also the director of the Centre for Studies in African Humanities ( http://www.cesah.ugent.be/ ).
His domains of interest include the grammatical description of Lingala, the sociolinguistics of Lingala, the history of colonial linguistics in the Belgian Congo, South African sociolinguistics, issues related to language and identity in sub-Saharan Africa, and description and theory formation in pragmatics. His continuously updated list of publications can be consulted at https://biblio.ugent.be/person/801001653606; his personal page is to be found at http://www.africana.ugent.be/node/208

See also: http://grahamgreenebt.org/

See also: http://www.aequatoria.be/

Multicultural education, intercultural education, nonracial education, antiracist education, culturally responsive pedagogy, ethnic studies, peace studies, global education, social justice education, bilingual education, mother tongue education, integration – these and more are the terms used to describe different aspects of diversity education around the world. Although it may go by different names and speak to stunningly different conditions in a variety of sociopolitical contexts, diversity education attempts to address such issues as racial and social class segregation, the disproportionate achievement of students of various backgrounds, and the structural inequality in both schools and society. In this paper, I consider the state of diversity education, in broad strokes, in order to draw some lessons from its conception and implementation in various countries, including South Africa. To do so, I consider such issues as the role of asymmetrical power relations and the influence of neoliberal and neoconservative educational agendas, among others, on diversity education. I also suggest a number of lessons learned from our experiences in this field in order to think about how we might proceed in the future, and I conclude with observations on the role of teachers in the current socio-political context.

Introduction
Although many of my examples are based on the U.S. context and on my research within that context, much of what I have to say is familiar to others in different societies around the world because the power relations and social injustices in the other countries I mention may be similar to the U.S. experience, especially South Africa which, like the United States, also has a history of racial discrimination. Moreover, increasing globalization is making our world smaller and more connected than ever. As a result, whether education is taking place in a large urban school in Johannesburg, a suburb of Boston, a colegio in Buenos Aires, a rural school outside Beijing, a sprawling high-rise community on the outskirts of Paris, or in numerous other places around the world, we face many of the same challenges, problems, and possibilities brought on by the post-colonial condition and by immigration and global economic issues.

Sylvia Ashton-Warner’s ‘Teacher’

Although diversity education is widely recognized as having its origins in the mid-twentieth century United States in what was called the intergroup relations movement (Banks, 2005), glimmers of what could loosely be understood as multicultural education were also taking place in other countries around the world. For instance, Sylvia Ashton-Warner’s 1963 book Teacher chronicled her innovative work with Maori children in New Zealand. Eschewing basal readers and other materials that had little connection to the lives of the children she taught, Ashton-Warner undertook what she called ‘organic teaching’, that is, teaching based on the discourse and realities of her students. At the same time, Paulo Freire’s (1970) groundbreaking literacy work with Brazilian peasants, in which they learned to ‘read the word and the world’, was beginning to have an impact on both literacy and liberation movements around the world. Although neither of these authors used the words now associated with diversity education, they were both concerned with providing students with an education based on the principles of social justice and critical pedagogy, central tenets of what most people today would define as diversity education.

What came to be known as multicultural education in the United States, intercultural education in Europe, antiracist education in the U.K. and, later, nonracial education in South Africa, began with a focus on race. This focus is historically logical and understandable. In the United States, the field has its roots in the civil rights movement while in the U.K. it was a reaction to the tremendous educational inequities faced by young people from former colonies.
In South Africa, the anti-apartheid movement provided a basis for the nonracial movement, and it is still, according to Mokubung Nkomo, Linda Chisholm, and Carolyn McKinney (2004) the underlying basis for the movement which was ‘born out of a conscious effort to transform undemocratic apartheid culture and practice by replacing it with a democratic, inclusive education ethos founded on a human rights culture’. More recently, the focus of diversity education has expanded beyond race alone to also include ethnicity, gender, social class, language, sexual orientation, ability, and other differences. Although there is by no means general agreement on this more inclusive definition of diversity education among either scholars or practitioners in the field, there is a growing recognition that there are complex and important intersections among all social identities that need to be accounted for in diversity education.

Definitions and parameters
For the purposes of convenience, and to be as inclusive as possible, in this paper I refer to the movement that is now most commonly called multicultural or intercultural education with the more neutral term diversity education. Needless to say, there are numerous perceived and real differences among all the terms mentioned, but because I do not want to spend all my time discussing the nuances among these differences, I instead propose some general parameters that I believe most of us in the field would agree with. At the same time, I am mindful of the tremendous differences in context, condition, and history of each society in relation to diversity education. In some nations, diversity education has been concerned primarily with marginalized people of colour, as is the case in the United States. In other nations, particularly in Europe, xenophobia towards both long-term and short-term immigrants is the defining issue (Santos Regó & Nieto, 2000). In South Africa, integrating an immense population that was legally excluded from the full benefits of citizenship looms much larger. Hence, diversity education has not been experienced similarly across distinct contexts. As Crain Soudien, Nazir Carrim and Yusuf Sayed (2004) have argued, One size does not fit all because citizens are not located in homogeneous, symmetrical and stable social, economic, and political positions. How one addresses the differences and the different kinds of inequalities thrown up by the complex social contexts in which people find themselves is a strategic matter.

In the broadest terms, diversity education recognizes the pluralism that students embody (racial/ethnic, social class, gender, and other) as resources to be used in the service of their education. At the same time, multiculturalism is not simply the recognition of group identity, although it has been used in this way in some places, most notably in the United States. Rather, I use diversity education to mean multiculturalism as public policy, as the term is used in Canada and Australia, among other nations (Castles, 2004; Hill & Allan, 2004). Diversity education, used in this way, acknowledges that structural inequalities in society impede equitable outcomes in education, not to mention in life, and it recognizes the role of the state in addressing such inequalities.

For some on the left, multiculturalism is little more than a distraction in the face of the massive global neoliberal retrenchment of the welfare state and the neoconservatives’ outcry for a return to the past. Whether we agree with this assertion or not, it is important to be aware of the palliative nature of ‘feel-good’ multiculturalism unaccompanied by a commitment to social and economic justice (Kalantzis, 1987). The danger of unquestioning loyalty to any particular cultural group may in fact lead to supporting policies and cultural practices that can be repressive; in the worst cases, uncritical cultural affiliations can result in extreme sectarianism and the fundamentalisms that inevitably slide into racism and exclusion of others. We are living with the results of these fundamentalisms in many countries around the globe. Amy Gutmann (2002) suggests instead that the primary social allegiance must be to social justice: ‘Doing what is right’, she says, ‘cannot be reduced to loyalty to, or identification with, any existing group of human beings’.

Related to the issue of group loyalty are competing notions of identity, or what has been called identity politics. Given the roots of diversity education as an attempt to address the scandalous condition of education to which many marginalized populations have been subjected, it is understandable that racial, ethnic, and linguistic identity became the defining features of diversity education. The implication, however, is that all students from a particular group behave and learn in more or less the same way, believe the same things, and share the same values. This assertion is problematic because it essentializes culture, assuming that culture consists of specific elements that can be applied mechanically to all within a particular social group. In turn, essentializing can lead to generalizations and stereotypes that get in the way of viewing students as individuals as well as of members of groups whose cultures are constantly evolving. One problem with a static view of culture is that it fails to recognize that all societies are more heterogeneous than ever. With multiple identities growing ever more rapidly, it is impossible to speak about culture as lived today as if it were unitary. In fact, a static view of culture contradicts the very notion of diversity education today. A more accurate term to describe the cultural fusion that is a fact of life for millions of people in many nations today is hybridity, that is, the synthesis of various cultures to form new, distinct, and every-changing identities.

Acknowledging this reality aligns diversity education directly with social justice while it also challenges approaches – variously referred to as ‘heroes and holidays’, ‘tourist approach’, or ‘polka and pizza’ – that simply affirm differences and include ‘ethnic titbits’ (Nieto, 2004) or mention cultural icons in the curriculum. Thus, segregation and other institutional policies and practices that separate students from one another are generally viewed as impediments to equitable education. This is particularly true in South Africa where, according to Nkomo and his colleagues, the dismantling of apartheid meant the dismantling of an inequitable education system predicated on the separation of the races: ‘If race segregation was the defining feature of schools in the apartheid era’, they write, ‘race integration became a defining aspiration in the postapartheid era’ (Nkomo, Chisholm, & McKinney, 2004, p. 5). At the same time, as Naledi Pandor (2004) suggests, the policy of ‘first mix then engage’ was naïve. She writes, The challenge is not simply racial integration. The challenge is the successful promotion of the values of dignity, equality and the advancement of human rights and freedoms. The challenge is to teach that skin colour is not a marker of superiority and inferiority and that we can all take pride in our cultures and heritages.

In general, as my colleague Patty Bode and I have suggested elsewhere, access and equity must be the overarching framework for diversity education (Nieto & Bode, forthcoming). Absent this critical perspective, diversity education can too easily skirt the issues of inequality that make creating a just school system, and indeed, a just society, impossible.

Another aspect of diversity education that is especially challenging is bilingual and multilingual education. Both in seemingly homogenous societies as well as in more culturally diverse societies, language differences pose a unique challenge. In countries as diverse as Canada, Sweden, Japan, and the United States, policymakers and the general public have often viewed language differences as problematic and as an impediment to social cohesion (Crawford, 2000; Cummins, 1998; Fishman, 1976; Ota, 2000). As a result, programs such as bilingual and multilingual education, immersion education in the national language, and second language instruction have been viewed with varying levels of suspicion, depending on whether they are perceived as adding to, or detracting from, national unity. South Africa is unique in having eleven official languages, and this too presents challenges and opportunities as each of the languages is associated with a particular ethnic group which in turn has a specific set of political, social, and economic conditions.
Although promoting multilingualism is an official policy of the South African constitution, realities such as the lower status and prestige of languages other than English (and to an extent, Afrikaans) and the social, cultural, and economic capital to be derived from them, are issues of particular salience in this context (Mda, 2004). Finding a balance between promoting language diversity and securing social cohesion is thus a conundrum that will need to be worked out, not only in South Africa but also in numerous nations around the world. What is evident to proponents of diversity education, however, is that an imposed language that neglects to recognize and affirm languages other than the lingua franca (such as is the case with English Only in the United States), is in direct contradiction of the very nature of social justice and equal rights.

‘Profoundly multicultural questions’
When used in simplistic ways, diversity education fails to address the tremendous inequities that exist in schools. For example, to adopt a multicultural reader is far easier than to guarantee that all children will learn to read; to plan an assembly program of socalled ‘ethnic music’ is easier than to provide music instruction for all students; to equip teachers with a few lessons in cultural awareness is easier than to address widespread student disengagement in learning; and to simply bring white and black students in close proximity in South African desegregated public schools, is far easier than interrogating the quality of post-apartheid contact. Although these may be useful activities and initiatives, they fail to confront directly the deep-seated inequalities that exist in schools and society. Because they are sometimes taken out of context – isolated as pre-packaged programs or ‘best practices’ – diversity education can become a bandaid approach to serious problems that require nothing short of major surgery.

Diversity in Education

Diversity education is also not simply about culture and cultural differences, although of course it does embrace these concerns. But a focus on culture alone, as if everyone from the same background behaved in the same way or held the same values, is in the end ineffective (Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003). The same can be said of the kind of diversity education that focuses on the past glories of marginalized populations. If we agree that it is centrally about access and equity, then we need to accept that some culture-centric approaches based on romantic notions of an idealized past can simply obfuscate the primary goals of diversity education.

Instead, I want to suggest that diversity education is primarily about what I have elsewhere called ‘profoundly multicultural questions’ (Nieto, 2003a). That is, it needs to address questions that at first glance may not seem to be about diversity at all:
• Who’s taking calculus?
• Who’s in talented and gifted programs?
• Do all schools receive equal funding?
• Do all children have access to quality integrated schools?
• Are all teachers prepared to teach – and do they value – children of all
• backgrounds?

I define these as ‘profoundly multicultural questions’ because they concern first and foremost equity and access. In addition, they imply that hidden dimensions of education, including low expectations of students of marginalized backgrounds, are equally vital to consider.
Diversity education must also take into account how asymmetrical power relations position pluralism in schools and society. A simple ‘celebration of diversity’ is not enough because it fails to address how some groups benefit from unearned power and privilege based on their race, gender, social class, or other social difference, and how such power and privilege are used against the very same people whose diversity is being celebrated. The antiracist movement, first in the U.K. and Canada, and later in the United States, is a case in point, particularly because multiculturalism without an antiracist perspective has been viewed by some as simply a way to manage disruptive groups of people of colour (Troyna, 1987).

Social justice
It is clear, then, that if diversity education is to go beyond a simple recognition of differences, it must be aligned with the concept of social justice. Yet this term, although frequently invoked, is rarely defined. Bandied about as if there were universal agreement as to its parameters, social justice has become little more than another mantra (such as the ‘all children can learn’ mantra in the United States that rarely leads to real changes in student achievement). For the purposes of our discussion, then, I want to make clear what I mean by the term. I offer the definition that my colleague Patty Bode and I use: we define social justice as a philosophy, an approach, and actions that treat all people with fairness, respect, dignity, and generosity. On a societal scale, this means affording each person the real – not simply a verbalized – opportunity to reach their potential by giving them access to the goods, services, and social and cultural capital of a society, while also affirming the culture and talent of each individual and the group or groups with which they identify (so long as such groups are willing to live peacefully and respectfully with others).

In terms of education in particular, social justice is not just about ‘being nice’ to students, or about giving them a pat on the back. Social justice in education includes four components: First, it challenges, confronts, and disrupts misconceptions, untruths, and stereotypes that lead to structural inequality and discrimination based on race, social class, gender, and other social and human differences. This means that teachers with a social justice perspective consciously include topics that focus on inequality in the curriculum, and they encourage their students to work for equality and fairness both in and out of the classroom.

Second, a social justice perspective means providing all students with the resources necessary to learn to their full potential. This includes material resources such as books, curriculum, financial support, and so forth. Equally vital are emotional resources such as a belief in students’ ability and worth; care for them as individuals and learners; high expectations and rigorous demands on them; and the necessary social and cultural capital to negotiate the world. These are not just the responsibilities of individual teachers and schools, however. Going beyond the classroom level, social justice means reforming school policies and practices so that all students are provided an equal chance to learn. As a result, policies such as high-stakes testing, tracking, student retention, segregation, and parent and family outreach, among others, need to be viewed critically. Social justice in education, however, is not just about giving students resources. A third component of a social justice perspective is drawing on the talents and strengths that students bring to their education. This requires a rejection of the deficit perspective that has characterized much of the education of marginalized students around the world, to a shift that views all students – not just those from privileged backgrounds – as having resources that can be a foundation for their learning. These resources include their languages, cultures, and experiences.

Finally, a fourth essential component of social justice is creating a learning environment that promotes critical thinking and supports agency for social change. Creating such environments can provide students with an apprenticeship in democracy, a vital part of preparing them for the future (Nieto & Bode, forthcoming).
Maintaining the focus on social justice in diversity education, however, is not easy given the current sociopolitical context of schools and society, to which I now turn.

The sociopolitical context of education today
Given our globalized economy and huge population diasporas, the world is a vastly different one from what we knew just a few decades ago. Public education, often viewed by people around the world as the central way out of poverty and ignorance, will either gain from this unique time or lose its moral authority as the one place where young people of all backgrounds and conditions can expect to receive an education that will prepare them to live productive lives. Hence, understanding the sociopolitical context of schools and society will be decisive in helping chart the course of diversity education in the years ahead.

Defining the sociopolitical context
The sociopolitical context to which I refer includes the ideologies, conditions, laws, regulations, policies, practices, traditions, and current events that define a society. In many cases, these ideologies, laws, traditions, and so on, support the status quo and keep structural inequality in place, although they could just as easily promote equality and social justice. In the South African context, the apartheid ideology supported and enforced laws regarding the promotion of white supremacy and the subjugation of all those who were not whites. Moreover, taken-for-granted societal ideologies, assumptions, and expectations – which are often related to people’s identities, including their race, ethnicity, social class, language, gender, sexual orientation and so on – may work in tandem with the material and concrete conditions in society to create barriers to (in the case we’re concerned about here) educational progress. Although there is never complete consensus concerning these assumptions and ideologies (if there were, change would be impossible), they nevertheless help define what a society collectively believes that people from particular groups are capable of doing and worthy of receiving.
At a personal level, we take in the ideologies and beliefs in our society and we act on them whether we actively believe them or not. In the case of the ideology of racism, for example, Beverly Daniel Tatum (1997) has aptly described it as ‘smog in the air’. She goes on to say: Sometimes it is so thick it is visible, other times it is less apparent, but always, day in and day out, we are breathing it in. None of us would introduce ourselves as ‘smog breathers’ (and most of us don’t want to be described as prejudiced), but if we live in a smoggy place, how can we avoid breathing the air? (p. 6).

At the societal level, these laws, traditions, assumptions, and ideologies determine who counts? That is, who has access to education? Health care? Employment? Housing? And what counts? That is, whose language is ‘standard’? Whose lifestyle is ‘normal’? At the school level, we must consider questions such as: How do school policies and practices (i.e. curriculum, pedagogy, disciplinary policies, hiring practices, parent outreach, etc.) benefit some students over others? For instance, in terms of curriculum, whose knowledge counts? What knowledge does the curriculum reflect? Whose perspective is represented? Who benefits? Who loses?

The South African experience shows that in many desegregated public schools, white upper/middle class cultural values have become a normalized and at times required school discourse (Chisholm, 2004; Vandeyar, 2008a; Vandeyar, 2006) to such a degree that the schools prioritize these cultural values, thus marginalizing those from outside this dominant discourse. It becomes a case of systematic assimilation of black students into white culture in order to be part of the school.

At the individual level of biases and expectations, the sociopolitical context manifests through teachers’ and administrators’ practices and decisions. For instance, in terms of teachers’ relationships with students, who is favoured? This is particularly evident in the United States where research has shown that pre-service teachers expect – and want – to teach students much like themselves (Irvine, 2003). And since about 90% of all teachers are white, middle-class, and English monolingual speakers, that leaves little room for immigrants, those who speak languages other than English, the poor, and students of colour. Decisions about who is gifted and talented and who needs to be in special education are also affected by teachers’ biases. For example, in the United States, black and Latino students are chronically underrepresented in programs for the gifted and talented, being only half as likely to be placed in a class for the gifted as are white students, even though they may be equally gifted (Harry & Klingner, 2006.).

Changing demographics and diasporas
The current sociopolitical context also includes dramatically changing demographics in both the society in general and in classrooms in particular. Whether we live in small hamlets or large urban centers, whether we are from Africa, Europe, South America, Asia, or anywhere else, our world has changed enormously in the past several decades, and it will continue to do so. For example, what were once fairly homogeneous populations are now characterized by a tremendous diversity of race, ethnicity, and language, among other differences. In some cases, such as the United States and South Africa, diversity has always been a fact of life – although it has not always been acknowledged, accepted, or adequately dealt with. In other nations, the demographic changes have proven to be cataclysmic, challenging the sense of nationhood and community that once seemed fairly straightforward and secure. In all these contexts, children living in poverty, children of backgrounds that differ from the majority, and those who speak native languages other than the common language are now becoming the majority in urban centers and urbanized suburbs, and even in rural areas. Numbers alone, however, as may be seen from the experience in South Africa, will not change the status quo. And even when there is a significant power shift, as has happened in South Africa, it will take many years for changes to be felt by the majority of the population. This is certainly the case in the area of education.

Structural and social inequality
Another aspect of the sociopolitical context concerns the long-standing and growing structural and social inequality throughout the world that invariably results in poverty, inadequate housing, joblessness, poor access to health care, and the attendant racism and hopelessness experienced by many people on a daily basis. In South Africa, the post-apartheid government’s adoption of the neoliberal ideologies of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund through the macroeconomic policy known as Growth, Employment, and Redistribution (GEAR), has placed the socio-economic conditions and the prospects of social mobility of the poor in a precarious situation in this new democracy. (Although GEAR has been recently replaced by the Accelerated Shared Growth Initiative of South Africa (ASGISA), neoliberal principles are also inherent in ASGISA). This macroeconomic policy has been favourably reviewed by the World Bank, but it has had the effect of economically disempowering poor South Africans (Bond, 2004; Desai, 2002; Gumede, 2005). Since education does not take place in a vacuum, this economic inequality trickles down to public schooling, especially because most public schools in poor townships of South Africa have not yet recovered from apartheid inequalities, even though the education budget has increased in all nine provinces (Ndimande, 2005).

In the United States, educators Jean Anyon (2005) and David Berliner (2005), as well as economist Richard Rothstein (2004) have all argued that it is macroeconomic policies, that is, policies that regulate such things as the minimum wage, job availability, tax rates, health care, and affordable housing, among others, that are chiefly responsible for creating school failure because educational policies by themselves cannot transcend these larger policies. While none of them deny the importance and necessity of school reform, they make it clear that what schools can accomplish will be limited if these larger macroeconomic policies do not change. In his report released in June 2006, ‘Reforms that could help narrow the Achievement Gap’, Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., asserts that education reform without complementary investments in early childhood education, health care, housing, after-school and summer programs, and other social and economic supports (more jobs and a liveable minimum wage would also no doubt help), the so-called achievement gap will never be closed. He goes on to warn about the pitfalls of creating a society that is increasingly characterized as having a very few ‘haves’ and many ‘have-nots’. He writes: If as a society we choose to preserve big social class differences, we must necessarily also accept substantial gaps between the achievement of lower-class and middle-class children. Closing those gaps requires not only better schools, although those are certainly needed, but also reform in the social and economic institutions that prepare children to learn in different ways. It will not be cheap.

It is clear, then, that dramatic inequalities exist in the access that students around the globe have to an excellent, high quality education, inequalities that are lamentably too frequently based on race, social class, language, and other differences. No matter how much schools change to accommodate student differences, they cannot, by themselves, completely overcome these structural realities. Moreover, given the current political realities we are facing in the world, it is clear that it will take concentrated work at many levels – institutional, state, national, and international – to turn the situation around.

Neoliberal and neoconservative politics
Current global conditions may have even more of an impact on education than local or national policies. Neoliberal and neoconservative movements around the world, for instance, have had a devastating impact not only on diversity education, but on education in general, not to mention on national policies and practices that affect all other arenas of life. In his book, Educating the ‘Right’ Way (2006), Michael Apple describes how right-wing neoliberal and neoconservative ideologies have had a powerful and negative impact on public education around the world. The right, according to Apple, is not a unitary force, but rather a coalition of sometimes strange bedfellows. It includes, for instance, neoliberals (defined by Apple as ‘capitalism with the gloves off’), who believe in a ‘weak’ state and view the world through a market lens and define freedom as individual choice; neoconservatives, who believe in a ‘strong’ state and tend to hold a vision of an idyllic past that they yearn to return to; and religious fundamentalists who want to bring God (or, more accurately, their version of God) into public institutions. Then there is the New Middle Class/Managerial Class, which tends to swing back and forth in the Alliance, based on where they benefit with their managerial skills. Together, this amalgam of ideologies forms the ‘new right’, or what Apple calls conservative modernization: Conservative modernization has radically reshaped the common sense of society. It has worked in every sphere – the economic, the political, and the cultural – to alter the basic categories we use to evaluate our institutions and our pubic and private lives.

There are numerous examples of how neoliberal and neoconservative policies have impeded progress in diversity education, particularly as it relates to social justice. In South Africa, Ndimande (2006) has made the case that the influence of neoliberalism and neo-conservatism has partly contributed to the lack of resources in township schools and has impeded school access and equal educational opportunities. In Australia research in urban secondary schools shows that the introduction of community languages had very positive effects not only at the school level but also in the community (Kalantzis, Cope, Noble, & Pynting, 1990). Notwithstanding their success, many of these programs were dismantled in the 1990s when neoliberal educational policies began to be implemented around the world (Castles, 2004).

No Child left behind

A growing standardization, bureaucratization, and privatization in education are also part of the international sociopolitical context. Needless to say, diversity education has suffered in this sociopolitical context. For instance, the conservatives’ vision of ‘traditional values’, narrowly defined to include only the values of the majority, denies any credibility to multiculturalism. The loss of local authority and a concentration of central control through high-stakes tests and a national curriculum are other important elements of neoconservative ideology. The contribution of neoliberals has been a determined focus on privatization through vouchers, charter schools, and other such schemes. In the United States, the No Child Left Behind legislation is a perfect amalgam of these forces, but it is clear that the United States is not alone in forging such policies. England, New Zealand, Canada, and other nations have also felt the effects of this new agenda (Apple, 2006; Gillborn & Youdell, 2000). In the United States, this has meant, among other things, a growing pressure to ‘teach to the test’, influenced by the No Child Left Behind federal legislation that is, in fact, leaving many children behind, particularly those that this legislation was supposed to help. Moreover, evidence is mounting that the testing frenzy, which is a direct result of the call for ‘high standards’, is limiting the kinds of pedagogical approaches that teachers use, as well as constricting the curriculum, especially in classrooms serving the most educationally disadvantaged students. Recent research has found that high-stakes testing, rather than increasing student learning, is actually raising dropout rates and leading to less engagement with schooling: Audrey Amrein and David Berliner (2002) reported findings from research in 18 states that student learning was unchanged or actually went down when high stakes testing policies were instituted.
From this discussion, it is evident that the sociopolitical context is a complex issue with many layers: it is an ideological problem, an institutional problem, and a personal problem. The solutions, therefore, have to be at all these levels as well.

Hard lessons learned
What to do with the chasm that exists between stated ideals and the grim realities of life is an especially vital question for nations and educational systems to consider. A common response, unfortunately, is to behave as if this chasm did not exist. Given the parameters of diversity education I outlined previously, however, I argue that the appropriate response is to confront these challenges directly at various levels, including the ideological, national, local, and classroom levels. I want to suggest some ways of doing so by proposing three lessons to be learned from our experiences with diversity education over the past half-century or so. One is the obstinate power of asymmetrical relations, the second concerns how changing the situation is easier said than done, and the third is how teachers – in spite of the sometimes stifling and unsupportive contexts in which they work – have an immensely crucial role to play.

The obstinate power of asymmetrical relations
One of the toughest lessons that proponents of diversity education have learned is that, in spite of admirable intentions and enormous passion, no program, approach, or perspective will, by itself, change the sociopolitical status quo in either schools or society. Put another way, power relations do not disappear simply because we implement diversity education. We certainly have many examples of this throughout the world, including attempts to integrate schools in the United States (Orfield & Lee, 2006), address inequality in Brazil (Gonçalves e Silva, 2004), or reform the curriculum in South Africa to include topics concerning social justice (Moodley & Adam, 2004).
What often happens when marginalized communities make a claim for equitable treatment in housing, employment, education, or other institutions (through uprisings, court cases, or other means) is that authorities, while seemingly paying attention to these claims, end up providing a watered-down version of what was demanded, thus subverting its original intention. In the United States, while segregation was outlawed through the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, states were so slow in acting that there was little change for many years. In the end, after years of stalling, some desegregation did in fact occur but in the decades to follow, there was continued resistance to desegregation, ‘white flight’ from urban areas where most black students lived, and so many other ways of getting around the requirement for integrated schools that segregation once again prevailed. In fact, schools in the United States are even more segregated now, in total, than they were over 50 years ago.

South Africa is a unique case because there was no watered-down version of reforms as the post-apartheid government was always committed to democratic change. Yet a formidable challenge and resistance comes from the right, especially those who have the financial power and access to information to manipulate, for instance, school zones so they can keep their own districts segregated (Jansen, 2004). Racism is still evident in South African public schools (Vally & Dalamba, 1999), including a 2008 racial incident at the University of Orange Free State where white students urinated on a plate of food and duped or intimidated black workers into eating the urinated food. Other white students who appeared on national television claimed that this despicable act was an expression of their opposition to racial integration on what they still consider ‘their’ university campus, especially in ‘their’ white dormitories.

In England, uprisings in 2001 led to the Cantle Commission Report (2001). The report, while agreeing that there was tremendous polarization and little meaningful interaction among various ethnic and racial groups, rather than suggesting diversity education instead recommended a renewed emphasis on the English language, a recognition of the contributions of all groups to the development of the nation, and primary loyalty to the U.K. According to Peter Figueroa (2004), Yet, there is scant evidence that a lack of English language or of loyalty to the U.K. were important factors in causing the riots. Instead, social and economic deprivation, discrimination, Islamaphobia, resentment between the White and Asian communities, and political activity by the far right all seem likely contributing factors.
Another example is what in the United States is referred to as the ‘achievement gap’, that is, the disproportional achievement rates among various groups. The ‘achievement gap’ refers to the fact that some students, generally those from the dominant class or race or ethnic group, achieve substantially more than students from the marginalized and dominated classes. This situation, of course, is not unique to the United States. Although the so-called ‘achievement gap’ is generally positioned simply as a problem of students’ motivation, culture, race, or community, or of teachers’ competence to teach, I want to suggest that it could just as legitimately be called the resource gap or the caring gap: the resource gap because achievement is usually tied to widely varying resources provided to students based on where they live and who they are, and the caring gap because it is too often influenced by teachers’ low expectations, lack of caring, and inability to teach students who are different from them. Yet we persist on calling attention to the so-called ‘achievement gap’, once again laying the blame squarely on the children rather than on the system that created the gap in the first place.

Del dicho al hecho hay gran trecho
The Spanish phrase del dicho al hecho hay gran trecho, literally translated as ‘there’s a big difference between what people say and what they do’, or in more colloquial terms, ‘easier said than done’, is another lesson learned from the state of diversity education in the world today. In spite of enormous differences in history and culture, diversity education is a taken-for-granted reality in many nations today. To quote Will Kymlicka (2004), This trend is quite remarkable given the many obstacles faced by proponents of multiculturalism. These range from deeply rooted legacies of ethnocentrism and racism that denigrate the value of minority cultures to modernizing ideologies of nation building that privilege uniformity and homogeneity over diversity.

Yet in many societies multiculturalism as a policy and practice has not taken root in any meaningful way. In many countries, diversity education is viewed either as threatening to the status quo or as irrelevant to the national interest. In other countries, if acknowledged at all, there is little more than lip service paid to diversity and social justice. But even in cases where the principles of social justice and multiculturalism are inscribed into a nation’s most venerable documents, making these concepts part of the very way a nation defines itself, there is still a discrepancy between what is said and what is done. The ‘policy gap’ (Sayed & Jansen, 2001) is thus a reality in even those nations that have written diversity and social justice into their constitutions. This is, for instance, the case with Canada (Joshee, 2004) and South Africa (Nkomo, McKinney, & Chisholm, 2004; Vandeyar, 2006). Multiculturalism as public policy in Canada, for instance, dates back all the way to 1971, but the shift to the right in the 1990s also brought about changes in educational policies that made a commitment to diversity education difficult, if not impossible (Joshee, 2004). As a result, the fact that multiculturalism and social justice are public policy in no way guarantees that they will be carried out in practice.

Diversity education is also increasingly linked with citizenship education, and more recently, with the notion of democracy. Here too, the fact that multiculturalism is, if not accepted, as least grudgingly recognized, does not mean that it is a reflection of democratic practice in those nations. At a conference of major academics in diversity education that took place at the Bellagio Conference Center in Italy in 2002, one of the major findings was articulated by James Banks (2004), the convener of the conference:
In nation-states throughout the world, citizenship education programs and curricula are trying to teach students democratic ideals and values within social, economic, political, and educational contexts that contradict democratic ideas such as justice, equality, and human rights.

‘Easier said than done’, therefore captures the challenge we are facing if we want to make a difference in the life chances of young people around the world. Why have I focused on macro, policy, and institutional levels? I do so because otherwise we fall into the trap of thinking that teachers alone will make all the difference. Most reports about the ‘achievement gap’, for instance, focus on teachers, school administrators, and students: what teachers and principals are doing wrong, how their beliefs and biases affect student learning; how students’ lack of motivation leads to their failure, how their families need to take more responsibility for student learning; and so on. There is some truth in all of this. But it is misleading, and I might say even immoral, to address the problem at only these levels if we do not at the same time look at the structural inequalities in schools that are, after all, simply a reflection of the inequalities in society. If we start at the teacher and student level, once again blaming them for student failure, we are being at best naïve, and at worst cynical.

Teachers change lives forever
Given the bleak sociopolitical context of education I have outlined, what is the role of teachers, and of those who prepare them, in confronting and challenging social injustice in schools and society? I believe that teachers play an enormously significant role in the lives of students, and even in the life of a society. The final lesson from the past few decades of diversity education that I want to propose is that teachers can, and indeed to, make a difference, sometimes a life-changing difference, in the lives of students around the world. Because I have focused my remarks on the larger context in which education takes place, in what follows I shift my attention to the levels closest to learners, that is, the teacher and school levels.

I now want to turn to my final point: that teachers can and do make a difference in spite of everything. Although we need to also work to change societal ideologies and structural barriers, we cannot wait around for these things to happen. In the meantime, we know that good teaching can help to alleviate – although it certainly cannot completely overcome – the situation in which many children attend school. There is a growing body of research, for instance, that good teachers make the single greatest difference in promoting or deterring student achievement. In the United States, for example the landmark 1996 report of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future (1996) found that ‘what teachers know and do is one of the most important influences on that students learn’. One widely-cited study, for instance, found that students who are assigned to several highly effective teachers in a row have significantly greater gains in achievement than those assigned to less effective teachers, and that the influence of each teacher has effects that spill over into later years (Sanders & Rivers, 1996).

Let me then briefly focus on the role teachers have in creating success in spite of societal inequities. Teachers, after all, are not apolitical actors in a neutral space. Education is always a political endeavour and teachers are significant players in this context. The most successful teachers with whom I have had the privilege to work are skilled in their pedagogy, well versed in their subject matter, and consciously political in the sense that they know their work makes a difference. Consequently, they embody particular behaviours and attitudes that help them both teach and reach their students, while at the same time they challenge inequities both in their schools and, more broadly, in their societies.

To define these behaviours and attitudes more concretely, I draw on my work with teachers over the past thirty years, and more specifically, on my research with teachers in the past decade or so (Nieto, 2003b and 2005). These are: affirming students’ identities; creating a sense of belonging; expecting the best from all students; teaching students to be critical; and understanding their own power as teachers. I focus on these not because they are the only behaviours that make a difference but rather because more bureaucratic responses to teacher quality such as certification tests and specific courses in subject matter assume that these alone will result in higher quality teachers. While recognizing that other elements besides behaviours and attitudes are equally important, I focus on these because they are equally significant. Subject matter knowledge, for instance, is crucial, but if teachers do not learn how to question it, they end up reproducing conventional wisdom and encouraging students to do the same. Knowing pedagogy is also necessary, but if teachers do not at the same time develop meaningful relationships with their students of all backgrounds, the students simply will not succeed. And if teachers do not understand the life-and-death implications of the work they do, no amount of certification requirements or tricks of the trade will help.
The first behaviour, then, is to affirm students’ identities. Too frequently, students’ identities – their race, culture, language, social class, and other characteristics – are treated as problems to be disposed of rather than as resources to be used in the service of their education. To affirm identities also means that teachers admire, respect, and honor their students’ differences. This affirmation is manifested through the curriculum and pedagogy, as well as through teachers’ relationships with students.
A related behaviour of successful teachers is creating a sense of belonging. Students who feel alienated from school find it difficult to claim membership in that particular social circle and they may instead look to other, sometimes more negative spaces, to claim membership. Creating a sense of belonging means making space for all students of all backgrounds. This sense of belonging is visible in classroom activities as well as in outreach activities with families.

Third is to expect the best from all students. The low expectations that teachers and schools have for some of their students based on both societal ideologies and personal biases make their way into pedagogy and other school practices. Numerous research studies over the past several decades, however, have demonstrated that when teachers hold high expectations for their students – in spite of the conditions in which students live or the lack of resources in schools – they meet, and even surpass, those expectations (see Nieto & Bode, forthcoming, for a review of this research).

A fourth behaviour is to teach students to be critical. Too often, controversial topics such as power and inequality are taboo subjects in schools, and this should come as no surprise. After all, as institutions schools are charged with maintaining the status quo and discussing such issues can be threatening. But schools in most societies also claim that a major goal of the educational system is to wipe out inequality. The contradictions between democratic ideals and actual manifestations of inequality need to be exposed, although it might make educators uncomfortable. Such matters are at the heart of a broadly conceptualized diversity perspective because the subject matter of schooling is society, with all its wrinkles and warts and contradictions. Students, therefore, must learn to challenge the ‘regimes of truth’ (Foucault, 1980) perpetuated by societal institutions, including schools. Ethics and the distribution of power, privilege, status, and rewards are basic societal concerns. Students of all ages should be allowed to engage in conversations about these issues if we are serious about teaching for, and about, democracy. Moodley and Adam (2004) agree. They write, We argue that problematizing the contested issues in the context of current debates makes for more relevant and effective learning about democracy than the abstract and idealized exposition of democratic values.

Finally, teachers who make a difference understand their own power. Every day, around the world, teachers matter tremendously in the lives of their students. Let me quote the words of Karen Gelzinis, a high school mathematics teacher I worked with a number of years ago. Karen, who taught in an urban high school in Boston, Massachusetts, was one of the teachers in an inquiry group I led that met for a year at various high schools in the city to reflect on the question of ‘What keeps teachers going?’ On our final day together, we met at a beautiful retreat centre outside Boston. Karen brought a card for me to that final meeting. It said simply, ‘Teachers Change Lives Forever’. She did not really think about it until later that summer when she sent me a long email, only a small part of which I reproduce here: ‘Teachers change lives forever’… Driving home, thinking about the whole day, the verse on the front of the card hit me. I had looked at the verse: We change lives forever. What power! Of course, we all know it. But how often do we really think about it? Does it get lost in the papers that we correct? In the scores/grades that we write down? This has been another of the group’s gifts to me.. I always knew teachers made a difference, a tremendous difference, and I’ve always taken the responsibility very seriously, but to think about it using these words: Teachers change lives forever and ever … and ever … lives … To really think about that, for a long time, is frightening, that type of power, to use it day after day… We are going to change lives forever, one way or another, for good or for bad. Are we doing all that can be done? Despite everything in our way, why do some of us end up staying? Is it because our lives continue to be changed forever, for the better, by our students? What would my life be without Sonie? Without Jeramie? It’s not a give-and-take; it’s a cycle … Once your life has been changed, you understand the power.

Conclusion
What are the implications of all these things for diversity education? And what are the responsibilities and roles of teachers, and of those who prepare them for the profession? Given the current context, I believe these are incredibly crucial questions. At present, most responses to them are bureaucratic: devise more stringent teacher tests; create rubrics, benchmarks, and templates; count the number of courses prospective teachers take; look at college grades to determine who will teach. While some of these may be important, they are certainly not enough.
Let me briefly mention some of the changes that need to take place at both the macro and institutional levels if diversity education is to succeed. Beginning with fair funding of education, for example, which would make a tremendous difference. In the United States, the richest country in the world, the most recent Funding Gap Report from Education Trust (2006) found that across the country US $907 less is spent per student in the highest-poverty districts than in the most affluent districts. In the worst case scenario, The Christian Science Monitor (Huh, 2005) reported that the difference in annual spending between the wealthiest and the poorest districts has grown to a staggering US $19,361 per student! Surely no one can say with a straight face that this difference does not matter.

Since South Africa allocates a large portion of its budget to education, it is important that this money be efficiently distributed and spent, especially on poor schools in the townships, instead of being returned to the Department of Treasury as surplus at the end of a fiscal year (MacFarlane, 2002). Most importantly there should not be a mismanagement of funds in departments of education (Jansen, 2005), funds which could otherwise be used to improve teaching and learning conditions. This would give children in poor neighbourhoods access to public schools with better resources, rather than transporting these children to suburban public schools with better educational resources (Ndimande, 2005).

At the institutional level, removing or reforming school policies and practices that get in the way of student achievement would also lead to a change in student learning. These policies and practices include curriculum, pedagogy, tracking, high-stakes testing, retention, the recruitment and hiring of teachers, parent and family outreach, and others. In teacher education, we can develop programs that encourage prospective teachers to learn more about the students who they will teach and the contexts in which they live, and to respect their families and communities (Vandeyar, 2008b). We can provide experiences – through courses, field experiences, and extracurricular activities – that will help prospective and practicing teachers learn to speak other languages and learn about cultures other than their own. We can create a climate through innovative courses and assignments in which prospective and practicing teachers can become critical thinkers. We can help practicing and prospective teachers understand – through dialogue in courses and seminars, through interactions with excellent veteran teachers, through critical readings, and through reflection in journals and essays – that teaching is more than a job.

Change is also possible if we reform the climate in universities and faculties of education. This is a tall order, but an absolutely necessary one if we are to make a difference. This means recruiting a more diverse faculty in terms of experience and background, as well as determining which attitudes and behaviours dispositions will best serve them if they are to be successful with students. At the societal level, we can advocate for teachers to be well paid for their work, and given the respect they deserve. This means committing the nation’s economic and moral resources to the problem. Both the bureaucratization and the marketization of public education, I submit, are wrong-headed choices. Even diversity education, in and of itself, will do little to change things. What is required is a change of will – as well as a reorganization of national and international priorities – to address the tremendous inequalities that exist in our societies today. The struggle is long and difficult, but the result, I know, will be worth the time and energy we commit to it.

Acknowledgements
The author appreciates the comments of two anonymous reviewers. She also wants to thank Professor Bekisizwe Ndimande for a careful reading of the manuscript and for providing examples from the South African experience to strengthen this chapter.

About the author
Sonia Nieto is Professor Emerita of Language, Literacy, and Culture in the School of Education, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She has taught students at all levels from elementary grades through graduate school, and worked at the university level preparing teachers and teacher educators for over thirty years. Her research focuses on multicultural education and the education of Latinos, immigrants, and students of diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Her books include Affirming Diversity (4th ed., 2004), The Light in Their Eyes (1999), What Keeps Teachers Going? (2003), and two edited volumes, Puerto Rican Students in U.S. Schools (2000), and Why We Teach (2005). In addition, she has published dozens of book chapters and articles.

This essay has been published in:
Mokubung Nkomo & Saloshna Vandeyar – Thinking Diversity, Building Cohesion – A Transnational Dialogue on Education
Rozenberg Edition ISBN 978 90 3610 128 8
Unisa Edition ISBN 978 1 86888 567 1

The ways in which journalists frame HIV stories can strongly contribute towards news consumers’ perceptions of the epidemic. This paper discusses the news values of HIV radio programmes in Ethiopia, Kenya and South Africa. It argues that the culturally appropriate ‘humanisation’ of HIV stories and the proper use of conflict as adding news value are paramount to the impact of stories.
The skillful application of news values can make almost any HIV-related story newsworthy and therefore part of mainstream news. Moreover, it is maintained that HIV advocacy environments contribute to the newsworthiness of HIV stories in the media.
The AIDS advocacy milieus of South Africa and Kenya are compared and related to the type of HIV stories that are published and broadcast in the respective countries. Journalism training methods are critically discussed in the context of the above. It is argued, that, in developing countries, where journalists often lack basic journalism skills, it is not sufficient to provide reporters with HIV-related information; HIV information sharing should be combined with general journalism training and mentoring.

Introduction
In December 2007, an excited Bashir Osman – a Somaligna-speaking journalist from Dire Dawa in the east of Ethiopia – broadcast a live call-in show on breastfeeding and HIV to his Somali audience on Dire 106.1 FM. According to the most recent Ethiopian government figures, Dire Dawa has the second highest HIV prevalence rate in the country, and almost doubles the national average. Each year there are almost 1, 000 HIV positive pregnancies with at least 230 children born with the virus. Yet this was the first HIV programme that Bashir had ever produced. AIDS was so stigmatised in the region that Dire 106.1 FM hardly ever discussed it on air. And Osman had no problem following this route. A week before the broadcast, the journalist – like most of his listeners – refused to be in the same room as people with HIV because he “didn’t want to risk breathing the same air” (Osman cited in De Masi, 2008) as them. He would never consider sharing a plate, or hosting an HIV positive person in his home, and thought it a deep insult to be tested for the virus.
But then Osman accessed what turned out to be a precious piece of culturally relevant information: he learned that babies of HIV positive women can get infected with the virus through their mothers’ breast milk (personal communication, December 6, 2007). All mothers with babies in his community breastfed their infants x including his very own wife. His own five-month old baby could be at risk, he perceived with shock, because neither he nor his wife knew their HIV status. The realisation changed Osman’s entire view on AIDS, and HIV was suddenly a virus that had the potential to directly impact his own life and those of everyone else he knew, in ways he had previously vehemently denied (personal communication, December 6, 2007). In short, this piece of information made AIDS newsworthy to Osman, his community and his editors. It became something that was crucial and worthwhile to talk about.

HIV and the News Media
Several communication experts, AIDS activists and journalists (Collins, 2005; Kinsella, 1989; Malan & Gold, 2006; Scalway, 2003; Shilts, 1987) have argued that the news media have the potential to be an immensely powerful tool in the response to HIV. According to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS Executive Director (UNAIDS), dr. Peter Piot, “journalists can save more lives than doctors in terms of HIV prevention because preventing HIV is about communication and changing norms” (Piot, 2006).
Proving statements like this, however, is very complex; studies have not been able to conclusively show that stories in the news media have resulted in change in HIV-related behaviour on a large scale. Research has, however, strongly suggested that news stories are capable of setting the framework in which citizens discuss public events. McCombs and Shaw (1972) demonstrated that there was a strong relation between the topics that the news media highlighted during an American election campaign and the topics that news consumers identified as important. Another US study illustrated the power of broadcast news to set the policy agenda when it proved that evening news bulletins had the effect of defining the policy areas by which the president should be judged (Iyengar et al., 1984).
McCombs and Ghanem (2001) have argued that “the level degree of emphasis placed on issues in the mass media influences the priority accorded these issues by the public” (cited in Reese, Gandy & Grant, 2001, p. 67). Dearing and Rogers (1996) stated that this proposition had been supported by more than 200 studies. But, I would argue that the regular publishing or airing of stories on a certain subject does necessarily lead to the public taking note of that subject. If such stories do not directly relate to the lives of readers or broadcast audiences, or are not presented in captivating ways with strong news values, they are unlikely to influence news consumers’ opinions – whether negatively or positively. In the case of a highly stigmatised and sensitive subject such as HIV/AIDS, even more so.

Osman broadcast an interview with an HIV positive woman in her mid-twenties. Her name was Meskerem. He met her at an HIV journalism training of the media organization, Internews Network, that he was attending. Meskerem was mother to a baby that was HIV negative because she had used freely available drugs that helped to prevent her baby from becoming infected. Doctors advised her not to breastfeed – unless she could do so exclusively (i.e. without feeding the baby anything other than breast milk for five months followed by a total halt to breastfeeding).
“When my listeners heard the woman speak about breastfeeding and HIV, everyone started to send text messages from their cell phones”, Osman says. “Like me, they wanted to know that their babies wouldn’t get harmed by HIV” (personal communication, December 10, 2007).
The information was directly relevant to the lives of the people of Dire Dawa. Moreover, it was presented with a “human face”, and told by an HIV positive Ethiopian mother herself. And, on top of that, a strikingly attractive and presentable young woman that Osman acknowledged he initially could “not believe was infected with HIV because she looked so healthy and vibrant” (personal communication, December 10, 2007). The interview was followed by a live call-in show with an in-studio specialist HIV nurse who answered callers’ questions or text messages. Most people who phoned or sent texts were desperate to know what they needed to do to protect their babies (Osman cited in De Masi, 2008; personal communication with De Masi, June 29, 2008). The nurse’s most common answer was to tell mothers to get themselves and their babies tested for HIV.
Previously, Osman hardly got any strong audience responses. In many of his programmes – on other topics – he talked almost exclusively. But his HIV programme was different: it framed the AIDS pandemic in a human and culturally relevant way. The fact that it contained a local woman with HIV who was mother to an HIV negative baby, and that the dangers of breastfeeding were explained to a “breastfeeding society”, is what made it of cultural relevance and ultimately newsworthy. Had Osman done his programme in the usual way, by inviting government spokespeople to rattle off statistics on health related subjects, his audience response is unlikely to have been the same. In his words: They would have been their usual self, and not respond at all. I’ve realised those statistics alone don’t move them. It’s the human face and bringing out something that directly impacts them, that makes all the difference. Prior to this program, I didn’t think it was possible to make HIV newsworthy. I thought people just didn’t want to hear about it any longer (personal communication, December 10, 2007).

Influencing audiences
Bernard Cohen (1963, p. 13) has encapsulated the news media’s agenda-setting function in a much quoted statement: “[The press] may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about”. By this, he meant that the news media can influence the topics news consumers talk and think about, but don’t necessarily determine their opinions on those subjects.
However, some scholars find Cohen’s statement misleading. Entman (2007) argued that it is impossible for the media to tell consumers what to think about without also exerting considerable influence over their opinions on the subjects they think about. Entman contended that “getting people to think (and behave) in a certain way requires selecting some things to tell them about and efficiently cueing them on how these elements mesh with their own scheme systems” (Entman, 2007, p. 165). Moreover, Malan (2006) has asserted that the South African news media did in fact tell the public what to think with regards to AIDS policies (that they “lack comprehensiveness”) and antiretrovirals (that they “are effective and should be made available”,) in the late nineties and early 2000s. In the case of Osman’s radio program, the media or experts on his programme told listeners to “get tested for HIV” and “not breastfeed their babies for longer than six months if they test HIV positive”.
Stories can obviously also negatively impact societies, sometimes resulting in media consumers thinking the “wrong” things. In March 2004 one of Kenya’s major national dailies, The Standard, published a front page story on HIV tests arguing that the rapid tests used in VCT centers – which enable clients to receive their test results on the same day – were inaccurate. The news quickly spread when one of the most popular Nairobi based radio stations, Kiss FM, picked up on the story in its morning news bulletins. Most other radio stations followed suit. The story was covered by every major newspaper, radio and television network throughout the week, by using a strong news value: conflict.
It became an issue of extreme concern to AIDS organizations operating in Kenya. Although HIV testing experts were eventually quoted, and they explained why the stories were incorrect and that the tests were indeed accurate, the damage had been done. According to Emma Mwamburi, a USAID programme officer responsible for managing the US government’s support to HIV testing in Kenya, several VCT centers all over Kenya reported a drastic decrease in their clientele for months after the publication and broadcast of the stories. Many Kenyans demanded to be tested with the expensive HIV kits that were used in hospitals at the time (ELISA tests). It took 3 days to get results from such tests, as analysis had to be completed in laboratories. This made the ELISA tests considerably more expensive to carry out than rapid tests; yet they were no more accurate.
Upon subsequent investigation, it was established that the source of the initial story that had painted the rapid tests as inaccurate was based at a company that had previously made large amounts of money from production of ELISA tests. When it was realised in Kenya that cheaper rapid tests were just as accurate as ELISA tests, this firm began losing its previous profits. Hence its spread of a false story, and one that did tremendous damage for a very significant amount of time.
It is therefore extremely important that journalists access accurate HIV information and are trained on how to use this information effectively. Inaccurate information presented with strong values and in captivating ways can potentially grasp the attention of news consumers in similar ways to accurate information.

Media and society
Researchers such as Garfinkel (1967), Goffman (1974) and Berger and Luckman (1967) have argued that news does not mirror society, but rather helps to shape it. These researchers have maintained that, when journalists describe events, they actively define those events by selectively attributing to them certain details or particulars. They have contended that news stories define what is “deviant” in society and what is “normative” and that news acts as a selective “window on the world” (Tuchman, 1978, p.1).
Osman’s report defined what was “normative” – namely breastfeeding – and what was “deviant” – namely talking about HIV and knowing your HIV status. Once the culturally-relevant information – that the breast milk of infected mothers can infect their babies – had been shared, knowing ones’ HIV status became “normative”; it became necessary to get tested for the virus as it could impact on ones’ babies’ health.

The culturally relevant framing of his programme encouraged Osman’s listeners to ask questions about HIV and think about the potential impact of the virus on their own lives. In the media analyst Robert Entman’s (2007) words, “it raised the salience or apparent importance of certain ideas”, in this case a virus that no one in the community dared to talk about and journalists at Osman’s radio station certainly did not address on radio. This is reflected in the number of call-ins/text messages his programme received: almost triple that of any of his previous radio programmes (that did not address HIV). The enhanced interest was an indication that the culturally-relevant way in which he framed HIV appealed to his listeners and significantly increased HIV-related discussion. So much so that Bashir ended up doing two follow-up radio programmes on the issue and managed to sustain a high level of audience participation.
There is a common perception that HIV has been over-reported and that audiences are “sick and tired” of it. But an audience perception study by the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa seemed to dispel this myth, at least as far as a Durban township is concerned. Kwazulu/Natal, the province in the east of the country, in which Durban is located, is often referred to as the “AIDS capital of the world”. AIDS is regularly covered in the city’s local news media. Surprisingly, Jooste (2004) found that respondents didn’t think AIDS was over-reported, but rather that they weren’t hearing or reading enough of the right type of stories.
Jooste analyzed the responses of 200 people in Cato Manor, an informal settlement in Durban. Ninety eight per cent of them said they wanted more reporting on HIV-related matters in print and broadcast media. When Jooste asked them what “kind” of reporting they wanted, 80 per cent indicated they were desirous of “more about people like us” or “more about people living with AIDS”. The researcher discovered that the stories respondents could recall most often were “people-centered” stories. A number mentioned the child activist, Nkosi Johnson – even though he had died about a year earlier – and Gugu Dlamini, a Durban woman who was killed two years earlier for revealing her HIV status. “Both old stories”, but they were “the ones best remembered”. In the case of Osman’s program, more than half of callers’ text messages and call-ins referred to “Meskerem’s story”. One read: “How did Meskerem know she was positive?” and another read “How did Meskerem know how to help her baby?”
These listener responses confirm Jooste’s findings: that media consumers remember “people-centered” stories and identify better with reports about “people like us”. The fact that an Ethiopian mother with HIV told her story herself helped listeners to identify with the issue and “defined a problem worthy of public attention” (Entman, 2007). In stark contrast to Osman’s HIV radio program, an AIDS programme on a major Ethiopian broadcaster seems to have had very little effect. It rarely receives any text messages or call-ins and according to producers, listeners seem to remember very little HIV-related information from it. While this programme is broadcast biweekly, thus regularly, the contents don’t seem to attract listeners – it consists of presenters reading HIV-related information and shocking statistics live on air and medical or government officers explaining strategic plans and scientific information. It rarely humanises the epidemic or makes it culturally relevant to listeners, and often relies on sponsorships, as it hardly ever attracts advertisements.

Lucy Macharia’s programme
A similar radio story of Kenyan journalist Lucy Macharia (not the journalist’s real name; her identity is being protected as her sister is not yet comfortable with being public about her HIV positive status)  in 2005 also illustrates the news value of HIV programmes with a human face. Lucy attended a media workshop that focused on Voluntary Counseling and Testing (VCT). When she learned about the symptoms of HIV-related illnesses, she strongly suspected that her sickly sister was infected with the virus.
The radio programme that Macharia produced related her own experience of having visited a VCT centre to get tested for HIV. It was broadcast on the Catholic radio station, Radio Waumini, for which she worked at the time. She asked her sister to listen to the broadcast and also took it home on CD so that her sibling could listen to it repeatedly. Like Osman, Macharia’s programme began with a human interest feature followed by live call-in show with an in-studio expert, in this case a VCT counselor, that addressed callers’ questions. The human interest feature related Macharia’s fears when she waited for her results. Part of the script read:
I don’t need to tell you what I feel. My mind is drawing pictures of what the test kit looks like with my blood on it. Is there one or two lines? One red line means negative, two means I’m positive”. But it also explained the help she received: “But Bancy, the counselor, speaks to me. She makes me feel safe. She tells me that it’s important to know your HIV status. It helps you to protect yourself (Macharia, 2004).

Similar to Osman’s story, Macharia’s programme ‘humanised’ HIV for her listeners. It enlivened the issue, taking it away from the cold realms of words on paper, and far away from scientific lectures given by “dry” experts who were the usual participants in such shows and who never connected with radio listeners and hardly ever elicited great response. The fact that Macharia went for an HIV test herself and openly and humbly spoke about her fears when doing so and allowed listeners a “look” into an HIV testing room.
The human framing of the programme “defined a problem worthy of public x attention” (Entman, 2007) and raised the importance of going for an HIV test. This is reflected in the kind of call-in questions the programme received – the three most common call-in questions were: “How did you feel when you went for the HIV test”, “How do I get to go to the same HIV testing centre as you?” and “How did you know that the test was accurate?” (personal communication, April 30, 2004).
Previously, said Macharia, her listeners had regarded the tests as “something out there that other people, but not me, do”. After the programme it changed to “something that Macharia has done” and listeners should therefore consider doing as well. After listening to Macharia’s program, her sister asked her to accompany her to get tested for HIV, at the same place as Macharia had undergone such a procedure. And, on the morning that they subsequently visited the specific VCT centre, Macharia’s sister did, indeed, test positive. According to Macharia, the “biggest factor” in convincing her sister to get tested for the virus was the fact that Macharia herself had been tested and that she had the opportunity to first hear “what happens in a counseling and testing room. Having heard what a counselor says to you” and hearing the sound on the air of an actual testing kit being opened and used “is what made all the difference”. Macharia says it in fact gave her sister the “courage” to finally overcome her fear and face up to the reality that she was HIV positive (personal communication, May 5, 2004).
Two follow-up radio programmes on this issue proved that some of Macharia’s listeners seemed to have the same experience as her sister when listening to the programme. A week after the broadcast of the first programme – on a Sunday morning – four listeners called into Macharia’s next programme reporting that they had gone for HIV tests as a result of the first programme and requested to relate their experiences on air. Moreover, Macharia’s news editor was so convinced by the programme himself, that he allocated her airtime for a weekly HIV programme and had the entire staff meet with a VCT counselor who he invited to visit the radio station.
Prior to this program, Macharia had produced at least eight HIV programmes that had not resulted in a single call-in. Instead, she reported, it seemed as if her listeners wanted to “stay away” from the issue. She believes one of the main reasons for this is the fact that her programme didn’t make use of strong news values, and never humanised HIV:
I always presented HIV as something out there for other peoplexsomething that didn’t have a face and certainly didn’t impact on me. When I changed that, the response to my programme changed. I started getting listener reactions – often more reaction than to programmes I produced on other much more accessible subjectsxI realised listeners aren’t tired of HIV, they’re just tired of the way in which we present it (personal communication, May 5, 2004).

‘A Stitch in Time’ (Kenyan Broadcasting Corporation)
One more example of an HIV programme that has used ‘humanisation’ as a news value is that of the radio presenter/producer team Ann Mikia and freelancer Sammy Muraya from the Kenyan Broadcasting Corporation’s (KBC’s) weekly HIV/AIDS programme “A Stitch in Time”. In fact, it seems to have led to government action and strongly impacted on policy change. In August 2004 Mikia and Muraya decided to tackle a difficult topic which was not being addressed by the Kenyan government’s AIDS programme. The radio team focused on matatu (minibus taxi) touts and drivers and the schoolgirls who were exchanging sex with the drivers and touts for free rides to school or money. Muraya took to the streets and recorded interviews with matatu drivers and touts, schoolgirls and also with officials from the Matatu Drivers Association (Muraya, 2004).
He produced a five- minute radio segment that was followed by a live call-in session between listeners and representatives from the National AIDS Control Council (NACC) and the Drivers Association (Malan, 2005). Muraya’s human-interest report raised and defined a problem “worthy of government attention”. (Entman, 2007). In addition to this, the programme was framed in a culturally relevant way. The story raised many questions about the lack of government intervention with regards to transactional sex, a common occurrence in Kenya that most people know of. The representative from the Matatu Drivers Association followed up by asking the National AIDS Control Council (NACC) to commit to action on air. The NACC could not deny any of the problems that were raised in the programme as they were confirmed by the schoolgirls and matatu drivers themselves. One girl in the report admitted that “They [the matatu drivers] have sex [with us] and disappear just like that”.

In December 2004 the team did a follow-programme about the issue, reminding the NACC that the problem had still not been addressed and asking them to explain on air why that was the case. Angry listeners called in to ask “Why is this happening?” and why nothing much was being done about it, while the girls and matatu drivers themselves were admitting to this happening. Then, in May 2005 – six months later – the government launched a matatu drivers HIV/AIDS programme for which they set up a special voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) centre for matatu drivers and provided HIV/AIDS counselling specifically targeted at them. The drivers were also provided with stickers with AIDS prevention messages to display in their taxis. According to NACC spokesman, Abel Nyagwa, the radio programme “A Stitch in Time” was a key player in improving relations with the Matatu Drivers Association.
The radio team’s culturally relevant and human interest framing of this story played a strong role in actively shaping the government’s perception of the extent of the matatu crisis that eventually led to action and “activate[ed] schemas that encourage[d] target audiences to think, feel and decide in a particular way” (Entman, 2007). It also encouraged listeners to respond in ways that put pressure on the government to take action.

Journalism training and mentoring
Producing compelling HIV programmes is not something that comes without considerable journalistic skill. In this section the role of media training and mentoring of journalists in developing countries are discussed in the context of the production of quality HIV radio programmes.

Challenges and limitations
Mikia, Osman and Muraya followed a well-tested method of radio production, albeit as yet uncommon in the developing world: to begin their radio programmes with focused, theme-based human interest radio features, followed by live call-in shows with in-studio experts. It is indeed a relatively straightforward radio production method x But it is one that requires a considerable amount of journalistic skills and resources that these three journalists would not have mastered, nor had access to, without their having attended intensive media training workshops and receiving ongoing mentoring from highly experienced journalism trainers at an international media development organization.
But it is not only HIV-related knowledge that is required to tell such stories successfully. A significant amount of journalistic skill is needed in order to produce news media content that carefully interlaces aspects of the epidemic with “case studies” – people and communities which the virus has impacted – and to still be able to make it newsworthy. As a radio journalist you need to understand, and write well enough, to present “life with HIV” in a way that makes news consumers realise how it affects them as well.
In addition to this, radio producers and presenters need access to telephones and the internet for research, computers with digital sound editing programmes and recording equipment – facilities that are rarely available at under resourced radio stations in poorer countries.

Training and access to resources
All three journalists received access to all of these facilities for the production of their programmes by each attending a weeklong HIV feature story production workshop at Internews Network’s Local Voices programme. The programme follows a training method different from that of most other HIV media training programmes, with a 70 focus on the development of radio journalism skills and only 30 on HIV knowledge. Other HIV media trainings generally approach this very differently, mainly focusing on nurturing HIV knowledge and not journalism skills. At seven days duration, Local Voices workshops are also considerably longer than others, which are generally two to three days. It also trains no more than 10 journalists at a time. All trainees leave the workshops with a ready-to-air radio feature and outline with questions and research for the live call-in show that is to follow the broadcast of their human-interest stories.
During their respective workshops, the journalists learned how to write good scripts, to structure stories, to digitally edit sound and to use appropriate HIV language. They met and interviewed people with HIV and visited pregnancy and HIV testing centres where they recorded natural sound and interviews with counsellors. During the production of their stories, they were carefully mentored by experienced radio journalists who specialised in HIV reporting to ensure quality. Each of them received access to recording equipment while on the training and received their own equipment after the production of five post workshop HIV stories. Mikia has also received several travel grants to produce HIV stories outside of her home city, Nairobi.
A combination of this training approach and access to facilities enabled them to produce HIV stories with human and culturally relevant frames. Without the training and relevant facilities doing this successfully would have proved unlikely, as they would not have had access to phones and research facilities to find the “human” faces of their stories and not have known how to effectively weave them into their programmes.

Advocacy environments
HIV advocacy environments can significantly contribute to the newsworthiness of HIV stories in the news media. The stories of Osman, Mikia and Muraya were produced in an environment where many other inaccurate HIV stories, like the previously mentioned rapid test/VCT example, are being published simultaneously. The rapid test story was for instance published a mere week ahead of Lucy Macharia’s programme on HIV testing. This resulted in several conflicting messages competing with each other in the media.
Traditional approaches to analyzing news that argue that the news media reflect society without having much influence on shaping that information, hold some water, when one considers the influence of AIDS advocacy environments in the case of Kenya and South Africa. Although none of the abovementioned stories were aired or published in South Africa, the diverse civil societies of Kenya and South Africa are a good example to address “advocacy environments as a contributing factor to the framing of stories”.
South Africa and Kenya have two very different civil societies. South Africa’s AIDS activists are extremely vocal and proactive, holding regular protest marches and issuing almost daily press releases. In Kenya, advocacy groups are not nearly as visible and do not place as much emphasis on developing personal relationships with journalists. The ability of civil society organizations and advocacy groups to make their voices heard and present their views in a newsworthy manner, makes a vast difference to what ends up in the news media (Malan, 2005).

When the VCT story about rapid tests broke in Kenya, radio journalists had access to very few HIV testing experts they felt comfortable enough to phone at 6 am in the morning to get a comment on the newspaper article that had appeared that same morning. As a result, comments with accurate scientific information that could counter the information in The Standard’s erroneous article was only obtained and reflected much later that day, and in some cases only later that week. So, for a significant amount of time, the Kenyan public only had access to harmful information regarding HIV testing.
In South Africa, on the other hand, the largest AIDS advocacy group, Treatment Action Campaign, in many cases dictates what appears in the news media. The group frames its opinions in newsworthy ways and TAC spokespeople are available to the media on short notice at almost any time of the day. As a result, the movement’s views are widely quoted in the local news media and scientifically inaccurate news reports and statements are instantly addressed. Several studies have indicated that the TAC is quoted more than any other source in the South African media – and that includes the government (Spur, 2005; Finlay 2004). The TAC uses newsworthy tactics such as protests, civil disobedience and public confrontation of government ministers to keep journalists interested in what they do.

An example of this would be the opening day of the fifteenth International Conference on HIV/AIDS in Bangkok, Thailand when South Africa’s Health Minister, Dr. Manto Tshabala-Msimang, told journalists that the drug Nevirapine (a cost-effective drug used to prevent mother-to-child-transmission of HIV) was unsafe to use (Brummer, 2004). Two years prior to the conference, South Africa’s highest court had ordered Dr. Tshabalala-Msimang to make the drug available, free of charge, to HIV positive pregnant women and their babies. The Minister had displayed resistance to the order ever since. Within a few hours after the Minister’s statement, the TAC, AIDS Law Project (ALP), and Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) held an emergency mass meeting for South African AIDS activists, health workers, scientists, and journalists attending the conference. The story, along with reactions from local non-governmental organizations, that challenged the minister’s statements, was headlined in almost every major newspaper and broadcast on regional and national radio and television stations throughout the country (Malan, 2005). Local NGOs and scientists were furious, insisting that statements such as Dr. Tshabalala-Msimang’s undermined their efforts to educate South Africa’s citizens about prevention against HIV infection. Ultimately, Zackie Achmat, who headed the TAC delegation to the conference, convinced the conference organizers to give the TAC an opportunity to speak at the Thursday morning plenary session, to plead for access to Nevirapine for HIV positive pregnant women in South Africa, and for scientists like Dr. Tshabalala-Msimang to distribute accurate information about the prevention of mother-to-child transmission. In the presence of thousands of participants, the TAC asked session Chairperson Graca Machel, the esteemed Nelson Mandela’s wife, to speak to South Africa’s Health Minister.
This incident, in which prejudicial and incorrect information was disseminated, and then refuted by activists, is a clear example of NGOs taking on the responsibility of informing the media and the international community of the facts. The result was responsible media coverage which reflected the quality and efficacy of the activist environment of the country. As a result of this activism, policy or human rights issues relating to HIV appear far more often in the South African than in the Kenyan media (Malan, 2005). In this regard, NGOs, government spokespeople, academic researchers, doctors and AIDS advocates from countries that do not have adequate media liaison skills need as much training as the journalists themselves. They need to be taught how to relate to the media, how to assist reporters to access information, and sometimes they even need to be trained on how to make resources such as transport to some of their projects available to journalists. It is not just the responsibility of the media to tell the story of HIV; the people who produce the research on this epidemic have a responsibility to make it available to society through the news media.
The media training programme in which the journalists who produced the radio programmes discussed in this chapter participated, includes this aspect; at least 10 HIV spokespeople are trained in effective media relations for every 30 journalists trained in the countries where it operates (Kenya, Nigeria, India and Ethiopia). Media relations trainings are five days in duration, with trainees holding an actual media event attended by journalists on the final day. The reasoning behind this approach is that it doesn’t make sense to train journalists on how to interview activists and local government spokespeople, NGOs and PLHIV networks if those people are not available to the media as a result of their lack of understanding of the sector.

Conclusion
A combination of strong journalism skills, HIV knowledge and an environment conducive to telling stories about AIDS are essential in empowering the media to assist in the response to HIV. Culturally relevant stories “with a human face” can be incredibly powerful, as shown by the case studies discussed in this chapter.
In all of the three human-interest radio programmes that were discussed, the human and culturally relevant framing of the programmes resulted in listener responses that actively engaged with the subjects addressed, whether that was HIV testing, protecting your baby from HIV infection or transactional sex between taxi drivers and school girls.
In the context of HIV and of an increasingly competitive news world, it is no easy task to get airtime for an HIV story and to make an HIV-related human-interest story newsworthy, accessible and accurate. At a media panel at the International AIDS Conference in Toronto in 2006, the Wall Street Journal Science reporter, Marilyn Chase – who had been reporting on HIV for twenty years – echoed this concern: “As the pace of the epidemic matures, our challenges as reporters get more complicated. Editors get choosier about stories. And that means many projects which are worthy may not be deemed newsworthy. That requires us, as reporters, to be smarter and more strategic in uncovering unique angles that make clear what really are the breaking, compelling news developments in the epidemic” (HIV science and responsible journalism media panel, 2006).
Reporting on subjects other than HIV/AIDS is often considerably simpler. There is more often than not less science to understand, issues are less sensitive and not as much work and skill is needed to produce good stories.
There are several HIV journalism trainings happening in Africa. But some training organizations ignore the importance of training reporters as much in journalism skills as HIV knowledge. Simply giving journalists access to a vast amount of AIDS-related information by slapping together one speaker after another rarely makes a difference to their reporting. Journalists need more than that – they need to improve their journalism skills, and they need time and money to travel to access the “human faces” or case studies, and research, that will help them to tell compelling HIV-related stories.
In this regard a recommendation is that more journalists are intensively trained in “humanizing” the HIV pandemic. Journalists from all mediums (print, television and radio) should be trained, but, as radio is the most accessible media form in most African countries, it should receive the most attention.
It is also important to provide journalists in Africa with access to facilities and mentors to produce quality HIV stories. Sending journalists back to under-resourced media houses where there are no facilities to create human-interest stories after a training workshop, is counterproductive. If there is no access to facilities, journalists will not be able to effectively apply the skills they were taught in the training. They also need to be mentored by a senior journalist with significant HIV reporting experience to further develop workshop skills.
Moreover, it is the responsibility of the news media, training institutions, activist communities, scientists and governments, amongst others, to cooperate to ensure that the information surrounding HIV given to the public through journalists’ stories leads to the saving, and not the endangering, of lives.
The programme topics in Osman, Mikia and Muraya’s HIV radio programmes were not addressed as a result of advocacy communities raising their importance; it was journalistic skill and research that motivated reporters to focus on these subjects. Other than in South Africa, reporters in Ethiopia and Kenya can rarely rely on AIDS advocates to identify relevant “news frames” for them.
As shown by the comparison between Kenya and South Africa, the advocacy environments in which reporters file their stories can significantly contribute to the accuracy and creativity – or the opposite – of journalists HIV stories. It is therefore equally important to also train communication teams from government, PLHIV networks and non-profit organizations in effective media relations. The more conducive HIV advocacy environments are to HIV reporting, the better the chances are that creative and accurate stories with “human and culturally appropriate faces” will appear in the media.
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About the author
Mia Malan is a journalist and media trainer. She is a PhD student in Media Studies at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. She headed media programmes for the media develop organisation Internews Network, in Kenya, Namibia and the US, and served as the organisation’s Senior Health Journalism Advisor from 2005-2008.
Ms. Malan is the 2009 Knight International Health Journalism Fellow in South Africa, where she’s working with local media on reporting health policy.
Read more: www.internews.org

2014 – See also: 

Published in:
Luuk Lagerwerf, Henk Boer and Herman Wasserman
Health Communication in Southern Africa – Engaging with social and cultural diversity
Co-published by
Rozenberg Publishers – Amsterdam – The Netherlands and Unisa Press – Pretoria – South Africa – 2009

Rozenberg edition (Europe only)  ISBN 978 90 3610 137 0
Unisa edition (Rest of the World) ISBN 978 1 86888 574 9