Communication Grad 200A: Communication as a Social Force

Winter 2001

MCC 205
Office Hours: Tues 10-11:15, Thurs 11-12:15, and by appointment

The course has two objectives. The first is to introduce students to social science theories and approaches in the field of communication. The second is to expose students to various communication institutions, their histories, structures, and operation. The readings are chosen with the aim of combining the two objectives.

Required texts

Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Beacon Press, 1944/2001).

Karl Marx, The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert Tucker (Norton, 1999).

Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting (Basic Books, 1973).

Todd Gitlin, The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left (California, 1980).

Herbert I. Schiller, Mass Communications and the American Empire [2d edition] (Westview, 1992).

Robert Horwitz, The Irony of Regulatory Reform: The Deregulation of American Telecommunications (Oxford, 1989).

Robert W. McChesney, Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times (University of Illinois Press, 1999).

Lawrence Lessig, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (Basic Books, 1999)

Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society (Blackwell, 1996).

Nicholas Garnham, Emancipation, the Media and Modernity: Arguments About the Media and Social Theory (Oxford University Press, 2000).

Recommended texts

Ithiel de Sola Pool, Technologies Without Boundaries: On Telecommunications in a Global Age (Harvard University Press, 1990).

James Curran & Myung-Jin Park, De-Westernizing Media Studies (Routledge, 2000).

Chandra Mukerji & Michael Schudson, eds., Rethinking Popular Culture: Contemporary Perspectives in Cultural Studies (University Of California Press, 1991).

Anonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, eds. Quintin Hoare & Geoffrey Nowell Smith (Lawrence & Wishart, 1971).

Vincent Mosco, The Political Economy of Communication (Sage, 1996).

Assignments

One short paper, 6-8 pages, worth 35% of grade, due sixth week.
One longer paper , 12-15 pages, worth 65% of grade, due finals week.

Calendar and schedule

Week 1. Modernity and liberalism

Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Beacon Press, 1944/2001) pp. 56-76, 130-162, 209-219, 237-258.

Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (Harper, 1942), pp. 82-106.

James R. Beniger, The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society (Harvard University Press, 1986), pp. 1-27.

Graham Murdock & Peter Golding, "Theories of Communication and Theories of Society," Communication Research, Vol. 5/No. 3 (1978), pp. 339-356.

Week 2. Relationship of economy, politics, and society. What is the relationship between agency and structure? What is a political economy approach?

Karl Marx, The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert Tucker (Norton, 1999): "Wage Labour and Capital" (pp. 203-217), selections from Capital, Vol. I (pp. 302-329), "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte" (pp. 594-617).

Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting (Basic Books, 1973), pp. 54-119.

Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration (University of California Press, 1984), pp. 280-304.

Peter Evans, Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation (Princeton University Press, 1995), pp. 3-20.

Recommended:

Vincent Mosco, The Political Economy of Communication (Sage, 1996).

Week 3. Modernization vs. dependency vs. post-colonial theory

Ithiel de Sola Pool, Technologies Without Boundaries: On Telecommunications in a Global Age (Harvard University Press, 1990), pp. 3-33, 65-148, 167-204.

Herbert I. Schiller, Mass Communications and the American Empire 2d edition (Westview Press, 1969/1992), pp. 45-62, 107-169, 1-43.

Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (Knopf, 1999), pp. 178-184.

Silvio Waisbord, "Media in South America: Between the Rock of the State and the Hard Place of the Market," in James Curran & Myung-Jin Park, De-Westernizing Media Studies (Routledge, 2000), pp. 50-62.

Annabelle Sreberny, "Television, Gender, and Democratization in the Middle East," in De-Westernizing Media Studies, pp. 63-78.

Recommended:

Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (Grove Press, 1963).

Week 4. Ideology, hegemony, and power

Anonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, eds. Quintin Hoare & Geoffrey Nowell Smith (Lawrence & Wishart, 1971), pp. 12-16, 52-60.

Raymond Williams, "Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory," in Chandra Mukerji & Michael Schudson, eds., Rethinking Popular Culture: Contemporary Perspectives in Cultural Studies (University Of California Press, 1991), pp.

Todd Gitlin, The Whole World is Watching: The Making and Unmaking of the New Left (University of California Press, 1980).

Recommended:

Perry Anderson, "The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci," New Left Review, No. 100, November 1976 ñ January 1977, pp. 5-80.

Week 5. The production of culture

Graham Murdock & Peter Golding, "Culture, Communications, and Political Economy," in James Curran & Michael Gurevitch, eds., Mass Media and Society 2d edition (Arnold, 1992), pp. 11-30.

Paul Hirsch, "Processing Fads and Fashions," in Rethinking Popular Culture, pp. 313-334.

Theodore Adorno, "On Popular Music," in Studies in Philosophy and Social Science IX (1941).

David Whitson & Richard Gruneau, "The Real Integrated Circus: Political Economy, Popular Culture, and 'Major League' Sport," in Wallace Clement, ed., Understanding Canada: Building on the New Canadian Political Economy (McGill-Queens, 1997), pp. 359-385.

Keith Negus, "Cultural Production and the Corporation," in Media, Culture & Society, Vol 20/No. 3 (1998), pp. 359-379.

America Rodriguez, "Commercial Ethnicity: Language, Class, and Race in the Marketing of the Hispanic Audience," in The Communication Review, Vol. 2/No. 3 (1997), pp. 283-309.

Recommended:

James Curran, ed., Media Organisations in Society (Oxford University Press, 2000).

Week 6. Regulation, deregulation, liberalization. "New institutionalism" theory

Robert Horwitz, The Irony of Regulatory Reform: The Deregulation of American Telecommunications (Oxford University Press, 1989).

Peter F. Cowhey & Matthew D. McCubbins, "Introduction," Cowhey & McCubbins, eds., Structure and Policy in Japan and the United States (Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 1-16.

Recommended:

Thomas G. Streeter, Selling the Air: A Critique of the Policy of Commercial Broadcasting in the United States (University of Chicago Press, 1996).

Week 7. Ownership, concentration, and democracy

Robert W. McChesney, Rich Media, Poor Democracy (University of Illinois Press, 1999), pp. 1- 185.

Robert Entman, Democracy Without Citizens (Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 91-101.

Benjamin Compaine, "Mergers, Divestitures and the Internet: Is Ownership of the Media Industry Becoming Too Concentrated?" paper given to 1999 TPRC (29 pages).

Recommended:

Benjamin M. Compaine & Doug Gomery, Who Owns the Media: Competition and Concentration in the Mass Media Industry, 3d edition (Erlbaum, 2000).

Highly Recommended:

C. Edwin Baker, "The Media That Citizens Need," University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Vol. 147 (1998), pp. 317-408.

Week 8. Law and cyberspace

Lawrence Lessig, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (Basic Books, 1999).

Yochai Benkler, "From Consumers to Users: Shifting the Deeper Structures of Regulation Toward Sustainable Commons and User Access," Federal Communications Law Journal, Vol. 55/No. 3, pp. 561-579.

Recommended:

James Boyle, Shamans, Software, and Spleens: Law and the Construction of the Information Society (Harvard University Press, 1996).

Week 9. The "new" economy

Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society (Blackwell, 1996).

Recommended:

Dani Rodrik, Has Globalization Gone Too Far? (Institute for International Economics, 1997).

Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. & James W. Cortada, eds., A Nation Transformed by Information: How Information Has Shaped the United States From Colonial Times to the Present (Oxford University Press, 2000).

Dan Schiller, Digital Capitalism: Networking and the Global Market System (MIT Press, 1999).

Week 10. Synthesis: Media and social theory

Nicholas Garnham, Emancipation, the Media and Modernity: Arguments About the Media and Social Theory (Oxford University Press, 2000).