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This collection contains key critical essays and assessments of the writings of Canadian communications thinker Marshall McLuhan selected from the voluminous output of the past forty years. McLuhan's famous aphorisms and uncanny ability to sense megatrends are once again in circulation across and beyond the disciplines. Since his untimely death in 1980, McLuhan's ideas have been rediscovered and redeployed with urgency in the age of information and cybernation.Together the three volumes organise and present some forty years of indispensable critical works for readers and researchers of the McLuhan legacy. The set includes critical introductions to each section by the editor.Forthcoming titles in this series include Walter Benjamin (0-415-32533-1) December 2004, 3 vols, Theodor Adorno (0-415-30464-4) April 2005, 4 vols and Jean-Francois Lyotard (0-415-33819-0) 2005, 3 vols.
In If Only We Knew John Willinsky uses current social issues and historical precedents to demonstrate that the social sciences can and should contribute far more to public knowledge than they have in the past. We have the technologies, Willinsky demonstrates, and need only the determination to create a public resource out of social research that can extend democratic participation and self-determination, as well as improve research's focus and public support. If Only We Knew offers examples of why and how this is not only possible but necessary, in the face of knowledge-based economies and a withering public sector. This book inspires the public to demand far more of research; it also shows researchers how to deliver far more of knowledge's value to the public.
Canadian Television: Text and Context explores the creation and circulation of entertainment television in Canada from the interdisciplinary perspective of television studies. Each chapter connects arguments about particular texts of Canadian television to critical analysis of the wider cultural, social, and economic contexts in which they are created. The book surveys the commercial and technological imperatives of the Canadian television industry, the shifting role of the CBC as Canada’s public broadcaster, the dynamics of Canada’s multicultural and multiracial audiences, and the function of television’s “star system.” Foreword by The Globe and Mail’s television critic, John Doyle.
This provocative text considers the state of media and cultural studies today after the demolition of the traditional media paradigm, and engages with the new, active consumer culture. Media Studies, particularly within schools, has until recently been concerned with mass media and the effects of ‘the media’ in society and on people. As new media technology has blurred the boundaries between the audience and the media, the status of this area of education is threatened. Whilst some have called for a drastic re-think (Media Studies 2.0), others have called for caution, arguing that the power dynamics of ownership and gatekeeping are left intact. This book uses cultural and technological change as a context for a more forensic exploration of the traditional dependence on the idea of ‘the media’ as one homogenous unit. It suggests that it would be liberating for students, teachers and academics to depart from such a model and shift the focus to people and how they create culture in this contemporary ‘mediascape’.
One hundred years after Marshall McLuhan’s birth, Elena Lamberti explores a fundamental, yet neglected aspect of his work: the solid humanistic roots of his original ‘mosaic’ form of writing. In this investigation of how his famous communication theories were influenced by literature and the arts, Lamberti proposes a new approach to McLuhan’s thought. Lamberti delves into McLuhan’s humanism in light of his work on media and culture, exploring how he began to perceive literature not just as a subject, but a ‘function inseparable from communal existence.’ Lamberti pays particular attention to the central role played by Modernism in the making of his theories, including the writings of Ford Madox Ford, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and Wyndham Lewis. Reconnecting McLuhan with his literary past, Marshall McLuhan’s Mosaic is a demonstration of one of his greatest ideas: that literature not only matters, but can help us understand the hidden patterns that rule our environment.
In the 1960s, The Beatles would address like no other musical act a radical shift in the cultural mindset of the late twentieth century. Through tools of "electric technology," this shift encompassed the decline of visual modes of perception and the emergence of a "way-of-knowing" based increasingly on sound. In this respect, the musical works of The Beatles would come to resonate with and ultimately reflect Marshall McLuhan's ideas on the transition into a culture of "all-at-once-ness" a simultaneous world in which immersion in vibrant global community increasingly trumps the fixed viewpoint of the individual. By engaging with recording technologies in a way that no popular act had before, ...
Well-known for his work in film and theater as director, actor, and writer, Welles' influence in the field of radio has often been overlooked for the more glamorous entertainment of his movies. The Medium and the Magician is a comprehensive review of Welles's radio career, devoted to assessing his radio artistry and influence in the field. Visit our website for sample chapters!