Page 198 - Cultural Studies and Political Economy

Keeping the Portals Open: Poster vs. Innis 187

the natural science paradigm is not suitable for the social scientist because,
unlike the natural world, the social world is inherently unpredictable and
ever-changing. The thoughts and actions of basically free-willed human be-
ings, according to Urwick, are inherently unpredictable. The social scientist,
too, he said, is infused with subjectivist tendencies. Hence, no human being
can truly be objective while examining and interpreting the unpredictable
subject of social behavior. For Urwick, “Life moves by its own immanent
59
force, into an unknowable future.” Innis, though, challenged both the belief
that human behavior ultimately is unpredictable, and Urwick’s rejection of
the scientific project. While agreeing that much behavior is spontaneous and
that human beings (including social scientists) often act on the basis of en-
grained behavioral patterns involving degrees of unreflexive thought, Innis
claimed that these thoughts and practices are themselves structurally condi-
tioned. He called these engrained thoughts and practices, biases. Innis made
an important assertion: while objectivity is impossible, the social scientist can
develop the analytical tools needed to become aware of his/her own subjec-
tivities, how they are constructed, and how and why they are unconsciously
expressed again and again. 60
Here the framework is established for the development of Innis’ bias of
communication. By examining how day-to-day lives are mediated by organ-
izations and institutions—how key nodal points of social-economic power af-
fect thoughts and practices—Innis understood that the social scientist can de-
velop a needed self-awareness. By at least identifying these key mediators,
Innis thought that the social scientist could take preliminary steps in the task
of redressing the influences of his/her own biases and their subsequent impli-
cations for the state of knowledge.
Alarmed by the rapid growth of specialization in social science in the
1930s, Innis was concerned that the university was becoming the arbiter of
instant solutions rather than an essential source of critical questions. Such
concerns compelled him to pursue the question posed by philosopher James
Ten Broeke—why do we attend to the things to which we attend?—and bias
was the primary heuristic tool Innis developed in response.
Biases are organizational and conceptual orientations most generally ex-
pressed in terms of the two fundamental dimensions of human existence—
time and space. Bias does not stem directly or solely from the medium itself
but, rather, it is the outcome of how a given medium or complex of media is
structured and used by already biased agents. In the context of capitalist
modernity, a given medium—an institution, organization, or technology—
may facilitate control over space (territory), and generally their strategic ap-
plication tends to weaken interrelated capacities concerning time (duration,
sustainability). Radio, television, and now the Internet, can be assessed as