Page 29 - Communication Commerce and Power The Political Economy of America and the Direct Broadcast Satellite

2 Critical Perspectives on US

Foreign Communication

Policy

The underdevelopment of a theory of culture among both critical
international political economists and agents of US foreign policy is
remarkable. In these pages I begin to redress this gap by focusing on
the role of the American state in shaping cultural capacities as a
method of constructing and maintaining international consent. This
effort is pursued through a critique of aspects of the cultural imperia-
lism paradigm - something of a staple among students of interna-
tional communications since the late 1960s - and some discussion of
'knowledge' as a neglected concept among students of political eco-
nomy. In what follows, the practical nature of culture in the dialectical
construction, maintenance or annihilation of a hegemonic order is
pursued. More than a critique, this chapter also presents theoretical
tools of use both in this book's analysis of DDS and US foreign
communication policy and, it is hoped, in the more general theoretical
and strategic efforts of critical social scientists.

2.1 THE CULTURAL IMPERIALISM PARADIGM

In 1979, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO) released the report of its International
Commission for the Study of Communication Problems - more com-
monly called the MacBride Report. Its conclusion that the '[i]mbal-
ances in national information and communication systems are as
disturbing and unacceptable as social, economic, cultural and techno-
logical disparities', and that the 'rectification of the latter is in-
conceivable ... without elimination of the former,' 1 was to some
degree the product of concern about the early unilateral development
of DDS systems by American-based interests. Luiz Felipe de Seixas
Correa, a Brazilian representative to the UN, expressed this in 1974:
'it is inconceivable that a field so pregnant with far-reaching implica-
tions [international communication] should be allowed to evolve

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