Page 33 - Cultural Studies and Political Economy

22 Chapter One

Innis’ innovative contributions have been acknowledged. According to
Professor Paul Heyer, for example, Innis founded medium theory, also
known as communication and history—the practice of placing media of
52
communication at the very center of historical analysis. American media
scholar, James W. Carey, likewise credited Innis with founding “the mod-
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ern studies that now exist under the banner of media imperialism,” surely
an aspect of political economy. Innis inspired an extensive and still bur-
geoning literature. 54
Nonetheless, it is safe to say that, outside of Canada, Innis remains mar-
ginal. Reasons for this marginality, though, while of interest, are really beside
the point. The important issues are whether he deserves to be credited with
(co-)founding political-economic approaches to media studies, and even
more importantly, what have been the repercussions of his neglect. As with
Adorno, I propose here that Innis seamlessly weaved together aspects of what
are now known as cultural studies and political-economic analyses of media,
and that rescuing both scholars from the inattention they have unjustifiably
received in this regard could go a long way toward reestablishing conversa-
tions between cultural studies and political economy—to the betterment of
both fields.
Although theoretical similarities (I will argue) abound between Innis and
the founding members of the Frankfurt School, in terms of biography their
differences could hardly be greater. Innis was a farm boy, who grew up in a
staunchly Baptist household virtually bereft of books. He attended a one-
room school in rural southwestern Ontario for his primary education. More-
over, for most of his life Innis remained untouched by literature, music, and
the arts. “I never heard him quote a line of poetry,” remarked friend and fel-
low historian, Arthur Lower, “and I suspect that to him poetry would have ap-
55
peared not worth a serious man’s attention.” Innis enlisted in World War I
but, injured at Vimy Ridge, returned home, in his own words a “psychologi-
cal casualty,” and as well a rather embittered agnostic.
Although securing a PhD from Chicago after the war, and a teaching posi-
tion in the Department of Political Economy at the University of Toronto, and
despite receiving the acclaim of his peers (he is the only Canadian, apart from
Galbraith, then at Harvard, to become President of the American Economics
Association) Innis humbly described himself as a “dirt economist.” He actu-
ally visited the regions he wrote about to mingle with the miners, trappers,
lumberjacks, and fishers. As a component of his research for his book, The
Fur Trade in Canada, he canoed down the Peace River to Lake Athabasca
and, by the Slave River, to Great Slave Lake, and then down the Mackenzie.
According to biographer Donald Creighton, Innis attained thereby a knowl-
edge of the northlands “such as none of his contemporary Canadian scholars