Abstract
This exploration of the nature of institutional discourse on development communication opens with a brief introduction and then locates the theoretical framework used within the "recent tradition" of using the context of institutional discourse to analyze development. Next the article focuses on historical shifts in the development discourse on women and gender and on how communication interventions affect social change. The article then considers how this discourse articulates both the role of gender as it creates constructions of project beneficiaries and the role of communication as a strategy for social change. The analysis is informed by a review of 262 population health and nutrition projects implemented outside of North America and Western Europe since 1975. Findings reveal 1) assumptions made about the potential for communication interventions to affect social change 2) how gender works as a mode of categorization in constructions of beneficiaries 3) patterns of discourse about social change and beneficiaries across organizational contexts and 4) changes in intervention strategies and constructed beneficiaries across time. The final section looks at the implications of gendered constructions of beneficiaries and of different approaches to strategic communication intervention and concludes that development communication is not a direct cause for the failure of development efforts to improve womens conditions. Instead it is recommended that development discourse and practice be broadened to privilege individual consumption and structural privatization.
