Page 117 - Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies

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communication research typically reduced its inquiry by isolating specific
conditions of the environment, instead of expanding its investigation to
raise questions about the role of the media in the process of cultural
expressions and ideological struggles and about power among individuals,
groups and political or economic institutions. Consequently, mass
communication research delved into relationships among individuals,
investigated questions of social identity, and, generally speaking, raised
some doubts about the stability of individuals in their social relations. At
the same time, there was a marked absence, however, of investigating the
structure of society, including the location of authority and the distribution
of power, and a lack of articulating larger, more fundamental questions
about the failure of the liberal-pluralist vision of American society,
including the failure of its own theoretical foundation. Although reform
minded in the sense of understanding itself as contributing to the
betterment of society, mass communication research remained committed
to a traditionally conservative approach to the study of social and cultural
phenomena, in which instrumental values merged and identified with
moral values.
The 1970s saw the emergence of a brand of social criticism strongly
related to an earlier critique of American society. These expressions had
ranged from the socialist writings of political economists and sociologists
during the turn of the century, to populist criticism of political and economic
authority by publicists and muckraking journalists in the late 1920s, and to
the social criticism of social scientists since the 1950s.
However, the introduction of critical theory as a competing social (and
political) theory of society constituted a significant development in
American social thought. It rekindled a debate of marxism and radical
criticism and signalled the beginning of substantial marxist scholarship
after the Second World War. The ensuing critique of contemporary
American social theory and research practice also established the
intellectual leadership of British, French and German social theorists. Thus,
the encounter with critical theorists provided a solid opportunity to
examine form and substance of an ideological critique of society.
Specifically, the cultural pessimism of Theodor Adorno and Max
Horkheimer together with the political critique of Herbert Marcuse and the
theoretical inquiries of Jurgen Habermas concerning the role of
communication in the struggle against bureaucracies and authority,
provided American social theorists with an alternative approach to the
questions of power, change, and the future of society. Throughout, this
body of critical writings exemplified an abiding commitment to the study
of culture, including the complicity of the media industry in the ideological
struggle, and to an analysis of the cultural process.
When critical theory reached the representatives of mainstream mass
communication research in the 1970s, it had been a major theoretical event