Criticism
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It is one of the characteristics of Behavior Change Communication, or BCC that its practitioners keep coining new terms to describe their approach—recent ones include Strategic Behavioral Communication (SBC); Information, Education, Communication (IEC); and Communication for Social Change (CSC). True, some of these terms are more about behavior and change than others, but all do share the belief that through communication of some kind, individuals and communities can somehow be persuaded to behave in ways that will make their lives safer and healthier.
The shifting terminology, a characteristic of this field, is a pointer to the fact that BCC is an evolving area, rather than a coherent topic. It is neither a discipline, nor a science or an art. It encompasses conflicting approaches, too little measurement of impact, a variety of theories, and approaches that some feel are too mechanistic. Theories emerging from the West reflect change ideologies rooted in rational choice, individual transformations, and the role of reason and knowledge. BCC practices emerging in developing countries illustrate the role of the community, social acceptance, emotion, and emulation in personal change.
Villagers in a Kenyan community, for example, offered this theory of behavior when asked: the experiences a person undergoes trigger emotions, positive or negative. These shape attitudes, which lead to behavioral choices. One person's behavior becomes another person's experience, and the cycle begins again.
This simple, home-grown theory has much wisdom. It suggests that if a person's experience is the key to his or her behavior, then one way to stimulate new behavior might be to expand this pool of experience. NGOs in Kenya, such as PATH, have designed ways to bring about experience-sharing through deep dialogue in groups and theater processes. In India, participatory community-driven theater among sex workers led to passionate and heartfelt dialogue. In many cases, the critical reflection triggered by these discourses has led participants to self-driven behavior changes.
One school of thought argues that BCC that focuses on "target" audiences and fixed, externally determined behavioral outcomes can violate the very principles that underlie work in the community: dignity, participation, and choice. Focusing on community involvement can lead to deep and durable changes. If BCC practitioners can support communities in understanding their risks, and helping them design behavior change solutions that will work for them, perhaps we will begin to understand where the true transformational power of BCC lies.
Read more about this topic: Behavior Change (public Health)
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“... criticism ... makes very little dent upon me, unless I think there is some real justification and something should be done.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)
“However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“To be just, that is to say, to justify its existence, criticism should be partial, passionate and political, that is to say, written from an exclusive point of view, but a point of view that opens up the widest horizons.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)