Page 89 - Cultural Studies and Political Economy

78 Chapter Two

synonymous with price, all but obliterating non-market-based value. It is in
regard to value and price that Williams noted one of the great paradoxes of
modern media. On the one hand, the rise of commercial media competed with
and in the end weakened the influence of high or elite culture, thereby also
weakening distinctions between elites and the working class. On the other
hand, those same new media, highjacked by commercial forces, utterly re-
verse that movement toward democratization, for as mass media artifacts at-
tract working class attention, the constant indoctrination of individualist ide-
ology pushes aside authentic (collectivist) working class culture, and value
becomes synonymous with price.
Although contemporary media generally are controlled by and help but-
tress existing power, Williams emphasized that within the social totality there
is always opposition and contradiction: “The degree of existence of these al-
ternative and oppositional forms is itself a matter of constant historical vari-
ation in real circumstances,” 114 he declared. At the margins of society, too, are
“autonomous artists and independent scholars” who, Williams pronounced
gloomily, despite radical beginnings, often “slip into the prepared ideological
positions: the ‘mass’ culture; the ‘technologised world.’” 115

Technological (Media) Determinism

Williams addressed the issue of technological change in several ways. He rec-
ognized, for example, that contestations between established and emergent cul-
tures are often associated with the rise of new media. Although he did not fully
pursue the Innisian notion that new media are introduced as a way of counter-
ing existing monopolies of knowledge, he did claim that new media are gener-
ally a response to gaps in the existing social system. For example, “the devel-
opment of the [daily] press . . . was at once a response to the development of an
extended social, economic and political system and a response to crisis within
that system.” 116 Prior to industrialization and mass production, the existing lines
of communication were adequate to transmit simple orders, and traditional in-
stitutions, like the Church, were sufficient to propagate ideology. With indus-
trialism, however, new modes of production and consumption required also a
new medium to combine “news and background—the whole orienting, predic-
tive and updating process.” 117 The newspaper was also a response to heightened
private mobility, 118 as was broadcasting. 119
As well as rejecting hard economic determinism, Williams also dismissed
hard technological determinism. He wrote:

Virtually all technical study and experiment are undertaken within already ex-
isting social relations and cultural forms, typically for purposes that are already