Page 50 - Communication Commerce and Power The Political Economy of America and the Direct Broadcast Satellite

38 Communication, Commerce and Power

particular fraction of capital - those corporations directly involved in
or dependent upon emerging information and communication com-
modity activities. 41
Thinking about the American state in the way prescribed in this
chapter compels the development of a comprehensive understanding
of the structural biases affecting human thought and its historical
underpinnings. This involves taking some significant steps beyond
what the cultural imperialism paradigm now provides, especially
given its vague notions of systemically generated, elite-dominated,
largely unproblematic (and monolithic) state-corporate structures.
Ultimately, what the work of Schiller and others lacks is a nuanced
and empirically precise understanding of agency. By examining the
history of the American state and DBS developments, the complex-
ities and contradictions of intra-state and inter-corporate activities
within the core of the hegemon itself, a more sophisticated theorisation
can be developed. Using Cox and the work of other critical students
of IPE, the following chapters redress Schiller's essential limitations
while, in the process, also elaborating on what remains lacking in
Gramscian approaches - a theorization of the role of culture in
general and knowledge in particular in hegemonic orders and coun-
ter-hegemonic projects. These and other points are discussed in what
follows, beginning with a largely empirical analysis of early US tete-
satellite developments and the public and private sector structures
forged in relation to their history.

NOTFS
MacBride et al., Many Voices, One World. International Commission for
the Study of Communication Problems (Paris: UNESCO, 1984) p. 193.
2 Luiz Felipe de Seixas Correa, 'Direct Satellite Broadcasting and the
Third World', Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, 13 (1974) 73.
3. Herbert I. Schiller, Communication and Cultural Domination (New York:
M.E. Sharpe, 1976), p. 9.
4. Ibid. pp. 64--5.
5 Herbert I. Schiller, 'Not Yet the Post-Imperialist Era', in Critical Studies
in Mass Communications Vol., 8(1) (March 1991) 14.
6 The centrality of elite networks linking government, military and corpor-
ate communication interests is first articulated in Schiller, Mass Commu-
nications and American Empire. For example, see pp. 55-9.
7 Ibid., p. 61.
8 Ibid., p. 62.
9 Ibid., pp. 82-3.