Decolonization of Information: Efforts Toward a New International Order

Abstract

It was inevitable that the wave of anti-colonialism washing across political structures around the world eventually would reach the highest marker of colonial domination - the colonization of the mind - but it has taken time. If the beginning of the end of political colonialism is put at the conclusion of the Second World War, more than two decades elapsed before cultural domination began to be recognized as a still unassailed bastion of the old order. Since the late 1960s, with continuously mounting intensity, the battleground of anti-imperialism has been extended to the cultural sector, though the economic front remains pre-eminent. Characteristic of almost all the struggles for decolonization that have been fought in the last three decades has been the tremendously unequal access to resources - military, economic, and informational - of the participants. The dominators possess the arms, control the finances, and have at their disposal the communications grids and facilities for message transmission and production. The dominated have generally one resource - though a singular onetheir own will for independence and self-determination. They have also, it should be noted, the support of the socialist sector of the world. The amount of this assistance varies naturally with many factors, not least of which is the geographical proximity to the socialist base. With the condition of de facto political independence now largely attained - a few stubborn enclaves of total domination remain in Africa - attention has centered on the interlocking structures of global economic power that dispose of the resources necessary for national development in the poor countries. The challenge to the tightly knit worldwide system of economic and financial authority has been signalized in the call for a new international economic order. One of its palpable manifestations is the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Another is the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Many less influential bodies and organizations also seek to redress the imbalances that the prevailing economic power structure imposes on most of the world - especially the weakest part. Yet with the possible exception of OPEC, the efforts of the poor nations to