Dhavalasri Shelton Abeywickreme Gunaratne (Sinhala: ධවලෂ්රි ෂෙල්ටන් අබේවික්රම ගුණරත්න; 22 January 1940 – 8 March 2019) was a professor of mass communications emeritus affiliated with Minnesota State University Moorhead.
Background
Gunaratne, a journalist turned mass communication scholar, was born in the village of Pathegama in Weligama, Sri Lanka .
After completing his high school education at Carey College and Ananda College, he gained admission to the University of Ceylon in 1958. His teachers included H. A. De S Gunasekara, A. D. V. de S. Indraratne, F. R. Jayasuriya, and A. J. Wilson.
Soon after leaving the university in 1962, he joined the Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd. (Lake House), where he served as a journalist for five years. He left Ceylon in 1966 on a one-year fellowship offered by the World Press Institute of Saint Paul, Minn.
Gunaratne attended the University of Oregon, where he got his M.A. in journalism in 1968. The University of Minnesota awarded him a PhD in journalism and mass communication in 1972.
Gunaratne taught journalism in four countries: Australia, China, Malaysia, and the United States, where he settled and became a U.S. citizen. Being an inveterate traveler, Gunaratne has devoted an entire volume of his autobiographical trilogy to his travels .
Scholarship
Gunaratne has blended Eastern philosophy [9, 10], modern physics, and systems approaches [5, 16, 17], including Immanuel Wallerstein's world-systems analysis [18, 22, 28, 29, 31], James Miller's living systems theory , Fritjof Capra's theory of living systems [5, 9], and Ilya Prigogine's dissipative structures theory to introduce new theoretical frameworks that can enrich (mass) communication research [13, 15, 22, 24, 31]. Late in his academic life, around the turn of this century, Gunaratne turned away from reliance on West-centric communication studies and turned his attention on Eastern philosophies to derive communication concepts and theory [9, 10].
Re-emphasis on Eastern philosophies
Gunaratne's principal contribution to de-Westernizing communication studies was his path-breaking book, "The Dao of the Press: A Humanocentric Theory" (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2005) . In this book, he attempted to merge Eastern and Western philosophical tenets to derive a humancentric theory of the press to demonstrate the potential of an inclusive framework of diversity (the yin-yang bifurcations) within unity (the ineluctable Dao). He has argued that the classical Four Theories of the Press has fallen into shambles because it failed to follow the path of "horizontally integrative macro-historical analysis" .
Clifford Christians (2011) wrote that while physicist Capra (in his book The Tao of Physics) established parallels between quantum science and Eastern philosophies, Gunaratne (in The Dao of the Press) has opened up the way for a "humanocentric theory of journalism". Christians (2011: p. 732) said:
Christians implicitly endorsed Gunaratne's choice of Daoism as a radically human philosophy that could meet the challenge of preventing "the totalizing closure of our humanity into technique".
In a Q&A interview that Eric Loo (2004) conducted, Gunaratne explained how the adoption of the Daoist wu wei (action through inaction) model could result in a healthier form of journalism that reflects a multiplicity of views:
Gunaratne's contemporary writings, particularly the essay titled "Go East, young 'man' ..." , advocate the conceptualization of communication theory by placing the building blocks of Buddhist phenomenology on the Daoist yin-yang ontology. Responses to this essay by Rakow (2013)Rakow, L. F. (2013). Worldviews and mediatization: in search of a metatheory. Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 8 (3): 190–194. and by Waisboard (2013);Waisboard, W. (2013). A metatheory of mediatization and globalization? Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 8 (3): 182–189. clearly indicate that a substantial interest remains in the continuing debate over de-Westernizing communication studies. Gunaratne argues that Daoism and Buddhism converge remarkably well on agreeing that human suffering or discontent is primarily a consequence of desire (for wealth), attachment, feelings and doggedly held opinions.
The Dao of the Press has been cited in almost 50 scholarly publications, including the following:
Asante, Miike & Yin (2014);Asante, M.K., Miike, Y., & Yin, J. (Eds.). (2014). The Global Intercultural Communication Reader, 2e. New York: Routledge. Chen (2006);Chen, G-M. (2006). Asian Communication Studies: What and Where to Now. Review of Communication, 6 (4): 295–311. Christians (2008, 2011);Christians, C. G. (2008). Media Ethics on a Higher Order of Magnitude. Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 23 (1): 3–14.Christians, C. G. (2011). The Philosophy of Technology: Globalization and ethical universals. Journalism Studies, 12 (6): 727–737. Featherstone (2007);Featherstone, M. (2007). Consumer Culture and Postmodernism, 2e. London: Sage Publications. Fourie (2008, 2010);Fourie, P. J. (2008). Ubuntuism as a framework for South African media practice and performance: Can it work? Communicatio: South African Journal for Communication Theory and Research, 34 (1): 53–79.Fourie, P. J. (2010). 'New' paradigms, 'new' theory and four priorities for South African mass communication and media research. Critical Arts: South-North Cultural and Media Studies, 24 (2): 173- 191. Ganguly (2012);Ganguly, L. (2012). The cultural sway of the market: Cultural adaptation of reality TV formats and social-cultural change in India. Ph.D. dissertation, American University. Loo (2004);Loo, E. (2004). A Daoist Perspective of Normative Media Practice [An interview with Gunaratne]. Asia Pacific Media Educator No. 15:213–220. McQuail (2010);McQuail, D. (2010). McQuail's Mass Communication Theory 6e. London: Sage Publications. Murthy (2011, 2012);Murthy, C. S. H. N. (2011). Dilemma of course content and curriculum in Indian journalism education: Theory, practice and research, Asia Pacific Media Educator No. 21: 24–42.Murthy, C. S. H. N. (2012). Indian cinema as a model for de-Westernizing media studies: A comparative study of Indian philosophical and Western cultural theories. Asia Pacific Media Educator No. 22: 197–215. Pearson (2013);Pearson, M. (2013). 'Mindful journalism': Introducing a new ethical framework for reporting. https://journlaw.com/2013/07/02/mindful-journalism-introducing-a-new-ethical-framework-for-reporting/ Pennington (2012);Pennington, R. (2012). Mass media content as cultural theory. The Social Science Journal, 49 (1): 98–107. Servaes (2009);Servaes, J. (2009). Media for Social Transformation: Advocacy for Peace. http://www.signisworldcongress.net/2009/IMG/pdf/SERVAES_en.pdf Shao, Xiao, Yao & Shen (2011);Shao, G., Xiao, T., Yao, S., & Shen, H. (2011). Guiding public opinion in civil disorder: The Chinese experience. Journal of International Communication, 17 (2): 91–106. and Zelizer (2011).Zelizer, B. (2011). Journalism in the Service of Communication. Journal of Communication, 61(1): 1.21.
Interrogating Habermas
Another of Gunaratne's key publications aimed at de-Westernizing communication studies was his 2005 "Public Sphere and Communicative Rationality: Interrogating Habermas's Eurocentrism" . In it, Gunaratne makes the case for a revision of Jürgen Habermas's theory to remove its lingering traces of "universalism" that promote domination through globalization—a euphemism for Eurocentric hegemony as the world moved from theory to practice.
From Gunaratne's point of view, Eastern philosophy had much to offer to enrich Habermas's notion of communicative rationality. For example, both Buddhist and Chinese philosophy recognized the validity claim of rightness (conventional truth) derived through social consensus. If Habermas were to concede this point, his theory would become more acceptable to non-Europe.
This monograph has been cited by more than 20 scholars, including Dolber (2011);Dolber, B. (2011). From Socialism to "Sentiment": Toward a Political Economy of Communities, Counterpublics, and Their Media Through Jewish Working Class History. Communication Theory, 21 (1): 90–109. Galily, Tamir & Muchtar (2012);Galily, Y., Tamir, I., & Muchtar, O. (2012). The sport-blogging community and the public sphere: an Israeli perspective. Journal for Communication and Culture, 2 (1): 68–87. El-Nawawy & Khamis (2009);El-Nawawy, M., & Khamis, S. (2010). Collective Identity in the Virtual Islamic Public Sphere: Contemporary Discourses in Two Islamic Websites. International Communication Gazette, 72 (3): 229–250. Hove (2007);Hove, T.B. (2007). Habermas's late public sphere theory. University of Wisconsin—Madison. Kinane (2007);Kinane, R. D. (2007). Living between on and off(line): a phenomenological study of technological disparity M.A. thesis, Texas Tech University. Miike (2007);Miike, Y. (2007). Asian contributions to communication theory: An introduction. China Media Research, 3 (4): 1–6. Min (2009); Rauch (2007);Rauch, J. (2007). Activists as interpretive communities: rituals of consumption and interaction in an alternative media audience. Media, Culture & Society 29 (6): 994-1013. Tran, Mahmood, Du & Khrapavitski (2011);Tran, H., Mahmood, R., Du, Y., & Khrapavitski, A. (2011). Linking Measures of Global Press Freedom to Development and Culture: Implications from a Comparative Analysis. International Journal of Communication 5:170–191. and Weischenberg (2012).Weischenberg, S, (2012). Max Weber und die Entzauberung der Medienwelt. Theorien und Querelen–eine andere Fachgeschichte. Wiesbaden: VS-Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.
Other pitfalls of West-centrism
Gunaratne has advocated de-Westernizing science [4, 9, 11, 15, 31] because its primary emblem, the Cartesian–Newtonian paradigm [25, 26], is based upon questionable Western epistemology, which (a) condones Newtonian reductionism—the tendency to study parts without the context of the whole; (b) fails to capture the nonlinear interactions of relevant factors that engender particular outcomes; and (c) erroneously associates science with objectivity based on the Cartesian belief that the mind and body are independent. He agrees with Wallerstein that science is the smartest Trojan horse used by the West to perpetuate European universalism, when its attempt to do so through Orientalism in the humanities failed.
Gunaratne exhorts the Asian communication scholars to assume a leading role in transforming European universalism to universal universalism in the social sciences by delving into their axial Eastern philosophies [4,10], which the West downgraded as regressive to justify Western colonialism and imperialism. In a 2008 article he wrote for the inaugural issue of Communication, Culture & Critique , he pointed out the potential of two paradigms extracted from Eastern philosophy: the Buddhist paticca-samuppada (dependent co-arising) paradigm, and the Chinese Yijing (Book of Changes) paradigm. Theory and research based on these two paradigms entail greater complexity and realism because they enable the understanding of dynamic processes the outcomes of which cannot be predicted through covering laws as claimed by Newtonian science [25. 26]. The understanding of these processes, however, enables the actors involved to alter their actions on the expectation of counter-actions by their alter egos.