Page 215 - Communication Commerce and Power The Political Economy of America and the Direct Broadcast Satellite

Conclusion 205

counter-hegemonic consciousness and movement may arise is strategic
folly. It is folly for at least two inter-related reasons. First, the nation
state remains (through its legal, military and domestic welfare powers)
the essential institution through which the international structures of
globalization are forged, legitimized and potentially challenged. Sec-
ond, the national and local remain the most cogent levels of cultural
identity for the world's masses. As discussed in Chapter 2, culture is a
complex expression of the way people live their lives. It also constitu-
tes the context in which individual conceptual systems evolve and are
applied to 'make sense' of both the information one receives as well as
one's life conditions. The cultural process, over-simplified by Schiller
and underdeveloped in Cox, involves significant disparities in how
different classes, genders, ethnic groups and nations process the great
variations in the information available to them (in addition to the
experiences of day-to-day life). Before the final section of this final
chapter addresses these conditions and capacities in light of DBS and
global information infrastructure developments writ large, the role
played by media (broadly defined) in the international political eco-
nomy deserves some elaboration.
Throughout this book, the mediators of the international political
economy have constituted an implicit analytical thread. The direct
broadcast satellite has been the core technological mediator on which
attention has been focused. The American state (and the nation state
generally) has been the core institutional mediator. The International
Telecommunications Union, UNESCO and the GA TT/WTO have
been core organizational media. More generally, the free flow/free-
trade struggle has been the focus of a regime transition. Developments
involving these media and many others have been addressed using a
dynamic approach- changes in the GATT affected the ITU, DBS
developments influenced the United Nations and so forth. This ana-
lysis also has been holistic in the sense that the micro processes at
work - US State Department versus Commerce Department disputes;
inter-corporate competitive and anti-competitive activities; the polit-
ical economy of digital technology developments, to name just three -
have been viewed in relation to the larger context of hegemonic crisis,
the emergence of an information economy hegemonic bloc, and the
still more general transition toward some form of post-Fordist world
order. In all of this, an emphasis on the capacities of media- both as
historical constructions and as limiting or facilitating structures - has
enabled a relatively nuanced approach to understanding the assump-
tions held by policy agents as to what is do-able, feasible and