An election campaign serves ritual functions for the American political system, beyond its manife... more An election campaign serves ritual functions for the American political system, beyond its manifest functions of determining which persons and interests will govern the country. The campaign ritual is analyzed in terms of Durkheim’s concept of the totem, including its regeneration and sacrifice. The dirty campaign is a sacrificial feast that establishes conditions for a proper mating between the candidate and the electorate. Voters declare their fidelity to the totem victor and receive a sacrificial promise in return
The computer revolution is less a revolution in the usual sense of the word than the announcement... more The computer revolution is less a revolution in the usual sense of the word than the announcement of a glamorous marriage between two powerful promises in the history of the modern West, the Enlightenment, the impulse to encompass the entire world in a rational system of knowledge, and the Industrial Revolution, the fruit of an ancient impulse to reduce the demands of nature to insignificance. By now we know that some of the fondest legacies of the Enlightenment, such as the belief that the world is fully knowable and that nothing more than rational knowledge is necessary to make us free, are ambiguous ones, but it is still difficult for us to admit that the vision of the Industrial Revolution was naive. In many ways we still believe that utopia is available to everyone who has the right equipment
Annenberg School for Communication John Peters' previous book, Speaking Into the Air: A History o... more Annenberg School for Communication John Peters' previous book, Speaking Into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication memorably enriched the discussion of mass communication by giving it sweeping historical scope and a distinctive ethical philosophy. In Courting the Abyss: Free Speech and the Liberal Tradition, Peters once more sets out to place communication on a wide intellectual stage. This time he takes on the culture wars, broadly interpreted, to challenge the communicative practice at the heart of liberal self-identity. The problem he poses is whether liberal freedom of expression has any decent sense of restraint, and why it matters if it doesn't. Peters is no dispassionate observer standing above the fray. He coins the term 'abyss-walking' to describe what he sees as a regrettable penchant of liberals to consort with the devil. The sort of thing he seems to have in mind is the infamous work of the Catholic, African-American, Puerto Rican New York artist Andres Serrano, whose photograph "Piss Christ" was a culture war emblem par excellence in the early '90s. Asked why he had made so offensive an image, Serrano's answer was roughly, God made urine, why should it offend? Peters doesn't discuss him, but Serrano seems to be an example of the abyss-walking breed Peters suspects of cynically provoking public outrage in order to preen, a motive Peters finds unworthy and damaging. But Serrano has always defended his art, and very articulately, as having a serious religious sensibility, and a group of religious thinkers for whom the difficult boundary between the sacred and the profane is no trivial question have taken him at his word. Such interpretive complexity is little addressed in Peters' extended polemic against liberalism in which he treats offense to public taste as an I-know-it-when-I see-it category and not as an historically moving target. Nor is there much discussion of how to rearrange the legal goalposts to improve how free speech is done in the United States. That's an important omission, since the evolution of liberal freedom of expression during the last century in the U.S. has unfolded largely in the ethical arena of legal philosophy and reasoning. Long before liberals had exasperated Peters, they were embarrassing those who once wore the label proudly. Progressive, the current term of art, is preferred by practitioners of what still amount to liberal values at base. Progressive sounds more intellectually independent and chicly radical than 'liberal' with its roots in those old-fashioned workhorses of classical liberal thought, Adam Smith and John Locke. Lately, the term has suffered an even more depressing fate, providing the root for 'neo-liberal,' a term that links the commercial roots of classical liberalism with the heartlessness of managerial global capitalism.
This chapter examines the work of the media “structuralists” of the so‐called Canadian or Toronto... more This chapter examines the work of the media “structuralists” of the so‐called Canadian or Toronto school of media studies: Harold Adams Innis, Marshall McLuhan, and Walter J. Ong, especially. Their work is placed within its historical context, both in terms of scholarly ancestry and in terms of its reception in North American universities and especially in schools of journalism. A critical assessment of the work of these scholars as media history is offered, recognizing its shortcomings as historical narrative but also its appeal as a way of understanding the influence of media forms.
The International Encyclopedia of Media Studies, 2012
This chapter examines the work of the media "structuralists" of the so-called Canadian or Toronto... more This chapter examines the work of the media "structuralists" of the so-called Canadian or Toronto school of media studies: Harold Adams Innis, Marshall McLuhan, and Walter J. Ong, especially. Their work is placed within its historical context, both in terms of scholarly ancestry and in terms of its reception in North American universities and especially in schools of journalism. A critical assessment of the work of these scholars as media history is offered, recognizing its shortcomings as historical narrative but also its appeal as a way of understanding the influence of media forms.
Americans live in a culture that is as religious as any that exists. In this article we contend t... more Americans live in a culture that is as religious as any that exists. In this article we contend that nationalism is the most powerful religion in the United States, and perhaps in many other countries. 1 Structurally speaking, nationalism mirrors sectarian systems of belief such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam and others that are more conventionally labeled as religious. It happens that nationalism also satisfies some of the most traditional definitions of religion, but citizens of nation-states have religious reasons for denying it. We argue that both sectarian and national religions organize killing energy by commuting devotees to sacrifice themselves to the group. We also briefly explore the ritual role of media in propagating national religion. Media are not the most important ritual vehicles for nationalism, but they matter. Though based in empirical observation, our claims are theoretical in nature. 2 Their value lies in rethinking certain empirical phenomena in relation to notions of nationalism and religion in the contemporary world. Our examples come mostly from the United States and its majority sectarian faith. Although generalization is risky, the principles we describe are broadly applicable to other enduring groups, defined as those for which members are willing to give their lives. By "religion" we mean a system of cosmological propositions grounded in a belief in a transcendent power expressed through a cult of divine being and giving rise to a set of ethical prescriptions. 3 In the moral world shared by many readers, these prescriptions deplore violence and regard any use of it as prima facie profane. Where religious devotees unapologetically embrace violence, the faiths to which they subscribe may be considered morally flawed. Alternatively, it may be claimed that practitioners of violence who act in the name of religion have mistaken the true prescriptions of their faith. The familiar claim that a religious view of the world is characterized by a moral opposition to violence ignores a more complex reality in which faiths that most deeply bind the commitment of devotees are structures for organizing killing energy. This is true both for religions that aggressively kill the other in the name of a deity or deities and those that pledge their devotees to self-sacrifice when confronted with violence. We shall argue that violent and so-called non-violent religions are structurally indistinguishable from a certain perspective. To equate nationalism and sectarianism unsettles champions of both Champions of nationalism see sectarianism as dangerous to nationalism's healthiest aspirations. Sectarianism, they fear, introduces passions that may manifest themselves in violence. They wish to separate church and state by subordinating the claims of the former to the latter Champions of sectarianism see nationalism as threatening to religious values, especially non-violence. The state, they say, is profane because it engages in violence. They wish to bend state claims to fundamental sectarian precepts. 4 Perhaps nationalism and sectarianism recognize something about each other that they hesitate to recognize about themselves. Each fears that members of the other community are willing to kill and die for truth as they understand it. For what is really true in any community is what its members can agree is worth killing for, or what they can be compelled to sacrifice their lives for. The sacred is thus easily recognized. It is that set of beliefs and persons for which we ought to shed our own blood, if necessary, when there is a serious threat. Rituals that celebrate this blood sacrifice give expression and witness to faith. Sacrificial death thus defines both sectarian and national identity. This is the first sense in which both are species of religion. On the whole, we misunderstand the genuinely religious character of American patriotism and the violent character of genuine religion. What distinguishes nationalism from sectarianism is not group logic, for both are religions of blood sacrifice. What distinguishes them is historical location. In the West Christianity once could kill and ask others to die in the name of its particular god. In some places it does this still. But in general in the West the power to compel believers to die passed from Christianity to the nation-state, where it largely remains. Christianity has no authorized guns within the boundaries of the United States, nor does any other denominational sect. In our religiously pluralist society sectarian faith is optional for citizens, as everyone knows. Though denominations are permitted to exist, they are not permitted to kill, for they are not officially true, which is a way of suggesting they are false. Only the true
The computer revolution is less a revolution in the usual sense of the word than the announcement... more The computer revolution is less a revolution in the usual sense of the word than the announcement of a glamorous marriage between two powerful promises in the history of the modern West, the Enlightenment, the impulse to encompass the entire world in a rational system of knowledge, and the Industrial Revolution, the fruit of an ancient impulse to reduce the demands of nature to insignificance. By now we know that some of the fondest legacies of the Enlightenment, such as the belief that the world is fully knowable and that nothing more than rational knowledge is necessary to make us free, are ambiguous ones, but it is still difficult for us to admit that the vision of the Industrial Revolution was naive. In many ways we still believe that utopia is available to everyone who has the right equipment. This journal article is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/asc_papers/76 The Illinois Issues Humanities Essays (second series) Fables for the Information Age:The F...
Has technology grabbed the reins and galloped off with us under the saddle? Are entrepreneurs and... more Has technology grabbed the reins and galloped off with us under the saddle? Are entrepreneurs and research labs and marketers riding herd, spurring technological change with consequences for who we are and what we can become? Or is it all the rest of us, as users, driving what technology is developed and how it is incorporated into social and political life, for good or ill? Who deserves the credit and who the blame, for what effect? These are not new debates, but communication studies, known more for neglecting philosophy than embracing it, has not always been party to the discussions, despite a recent fascination with new technologies in journalism and mass communication. The early days of the Internet followed by ubiquitous and powerful digital machines produced a heady optimism by many about the potential of social media for bypassing traditional gatekeepers and enabling robust networks of people across the globe. But those days are now covered in the trail dust of claims of fake news, contagions of hate and violence, trolls and bots, election interference, hacking, and opinion silos. Technology, appearing now to ride roughshod over hopes for democracy and community, is viewed in much public discourse as a culprit behind a world gone rogue. Have media researchers been complicit in this swing of perceptions from utopian to dystopian? From savior to satan? From technological determinism to determined technology? Do we have enough grounding in the philosophy of technology to ask the right questions and steer a better conversation? Have we interrogated what technologies are and how and why they are developed, the uses to which they are put, and the claims made and consequences incurred? This forum asked experienced scholars in mass communication theory and research how we should think about technology, what part it plays in how, and what we know and who and what we become. What technologies should be developed, by whom, for what purposes? And on what grounds should we judge them? The contributions in this forum give us a quartet of different voices, experiences, and problematics, raising more questions than answering them. Jeremy Swartz and Janet Wasko start off by opening up considerations about what technology is and what it does, using examples of definitions from John Dewey to 841380J MQXXX10.1177/1077699019841380Journalism & Mass Communication QuarterlyInvited Forum research-article2019 352 Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 96(2) Marshall McLuhan and beyond and conceptions of technology from biology and the environment to complex systems. On what grounds can we judge technologies, if they are the product of the same system as our values? More opportunities are needed for mass communication scholars to reimagine disciplinary and material boundaries and share research and engagement if we want to influence systems, they conclude. Carolyn Marvin invites us to consider the long sweep of technological changes and the pattern of disruptions that come in their wake, from the printing press forward. These disruptions fundamentally reshape our social relations, as technologies provide the "sociospatial grids foundational to communicative practice." In other words, they manage social distance and trust. Thus, changes in technology produce crises in communicative relations by disrupting expectations and introducing new suspicions. Digital technologies have produced widespread anxieties that require new conventions to re-establish, "gradually and painfully," a new social geography. Robert Logan shortens our historical view to the media developed since the 19th century, taking us through a brief tour of the phonograph, telephone, telegraph, and Internet and their unintended consequences. Initial optimism, including his own, about the possibility of decentralization of knowledge occasioned by digital media was wrong. These technologies have now turned the table on Marshall McLuhan's description of media. We are the extensions of media, completing technological systems for the profit and advantage of media businesses. He argues that as scholars we can only warn about such consequences and try to repair the damage caused by new monopolies. While Beth Coleman, too, thinks we have experienced a profound shift in our relationship to technology, it has come from decentralization-the view of the "swarm"rather than centralization. It began with the Enlightenment's elevation of humans over nature, who, hand in hand with their computational technology, achieved a reordered command-control system and a decentralized logic. Now, like runaway slaves, smart technology is "marooned"; it has escaped dominion, a coalition with a black aesthetic and politics of innovation, resistance, and freedom. The fusion of the informational and material world has created a built world that surrounds us, irresistibly beckoning. We ignore this change at our own peril, she warns. Despite their differences, all four essays challenge us to reconsider what technology is, what changes are being wrought in who we are and how we know, and what we may or may not be able to do about it. Lana Rakow, Associate Editor form, material public space as democratic resource, and the history and theory of freedom of expression.
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