Page 21 - Communication Commerce and Power The Political Economy of America and the Direct Broadcast Satellite

8 Communication, Commerce and Power

its introduction. Despite the fact that direct broadcast technologies
initially were developed by the cooperative efforts of American state
agencies and some domestic satellite manufacturers, the first transna-
tional DBS applications took place in Europe and Asia and were by
no means dominated by US corporate investments. As such, the
underlying empirical question pursued over the course of the follow-
ing pages is this: what have been the historical forces shaping the
retardation of US-based DBS developments during a period in which
the American state sought the entrenchment of free flow of informa-
tion principles?
Perhaps more importantly, the following chapters examine this
history in order to assess three issues of contemporary empirical and
theoretical importance. One of these is the role of the American state
in contemporary globalization developments. Through this analysis of
DBS and US foreign policy, the nature of relationships involving
American state agents, private sector interests and international insti-
tutions are elaborated. Specifically, this history compels us to ask what
has been role of the American state and other state structures in global-
ization processes? How have nation state structures been modified
through these developments? And what strategic lessons can be garnered
from a historical analysis of a cutting-edge transnational communication
technology - DBS- in the context of the assumed hegemonic decline of
the United States and related shifts in the international political
economy?
A second and related issue to be addressed involves the capacity of
the United States to reassert or reform its hegemonic position. If
hegemony is a process involving economic dominance, military super-
iority and the maintenance of international consent, the subject of the
present study appears most relevant. Critical students of international
political economy, for example, have long recognized the existence of
a dialectical relationship between the changing material conditions of
life and the presence and perhaps predominance of certain ideas or
ways of thinking. However, little work has been done specifying how
this knowledge maintenance or creation process takes place. Through
the present analysis of what can be viewed as one of the most significant
transnational communication technologies in history, this book directs
us toward some important theoretical correctives. Both the cultural
imperialism paradigm and the Gramscian concept of hegemony will be
used, tested and constructively critiqued.
A final issue pursued in the following pages concerns the need to
specify better the complex role being played by key institutional,