Page 21 - Cultural Studies and Political Economy

10 Introduction to Part One

be to influence future cultural productions. As well, cultural “commodities” may af-
fect indirectly those without direct exposure to the cultural artifact, the very definition
of an “externality” or third-party effect. These properties make cultural goods ill-
suited for mainstream economics—one reason among several for preferring political
economy to neoclassical analyses of media and cultural industries. See Robert E.
Babe, Communication and the Transformation of Economics (Boulder, CO: Westview
Press, 1995).
4. Edward Comor, Consumption and the Globalization Project: International
Hegemony and the Annihilation of Time (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
5. McLuhan described himself as a “disciple” of Innis, and referred to his own
most scholarly tome, The Gutenberg Galaxy, as but “a footnote to the observations of
Innis.” James Carey once quipped that the Canadian contribution to media studies
would have been far more impressive had the Innis-to-McLuhan lineage been in the
opposite direction. Elsewhere I have argued that McLuhan turned Innis on his head
by emphasizing biases in reception (eye vs. ear) as opposed to biases in transmission
(space vs. time), in effect de-politicizing Innis. See Robert E. Babe, Canadian Com-
munication Thought: Ten Foundational Writers (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2000), chapter 11. See also the discussion at the conclusion of chapter 7 regarding the
integration of the media theories of Innis and McLuhan.
6. Kevin Robins and Frank Webster, “The Communications Revolution: New
Media, Old Problems,” Communication 10, no.1 (1987): 72.
7. Robins and Webster, “The Communications Revolution,” 72.
8. Robins and Webster, “The Communications Revolution,” 72.
9. Oscar H. Gandy, “Colloquy,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 12, no.1
(1995): 60.
10. James W. Carey, “Abolishing the Old Spirit World,” Critical Studies in Mass
Communication 12, no. 1 (1995): 82.
11. Lawrence Grossberg, “Cultural Studies vs. Political Economy: Is Anybody
Else Bored with this Debate?” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 12, no. 1
(1995): 80.
12. Janice Peck, “Why We Shouldn’t Be Bored with the Political Economy Versus
Cultural Studies Debate,” Cultural Critique 64 (2006): 92.
13. Richard E. Lee, Life and Times of Cultural Studies (Durham, NC: Duke Uni-
versity Press, 2003), 2.
14. Eileen R. Meehan, “Commodity, Culture, Common Sense: Media Research
and Paradigm Dialogue,” The Journal of Media Economics 12, no. 22 (1999): 150.
15. Jane Jacobs, Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of
Commerce and Politics (New York: Vintage, 1994).
16. This possibility was raised by three of the four participants in the Colloquy.
Carey and Grossberg maintained, however, that specialization is not just an explana-
tion for the separation, but that it also provides justification for keeping the fields sep-
arate. Murdock, representing political economy, dissented, urging that specialization
needs to be overcome.
17. Andrew Calabrese, “Toward a Political Economy of Culture,” in Toward a Po-
litical Economy of Culture: Capitalism and Communication in the Twenty-First Cen-