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:
“Nothing would improve newspaper criticism so much as the knowledge that it was to be read by men too hardy to acquiesce in the authoritative statement of the reviewer.”
—Richard Holt Hutton (1826–1897)
“Homoeopathy is insignificant as an art of healing, but of great value as criticism on the hygeia or medical practice of the time.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and Congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden. Meantime, I seem to have been drifting into criticism myself. But that is nothing. At the worst, criticism is nothing more than a crime, and I am not unused to that.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)