Global Communications: Toward a Transcultural Political Economy(Critical Media Studies: Institutions, Politics, and Culture)

This provocative book takes a new approach toward understanding the uneven flows of global communications. Rather than guiding its discussion by geography, types of media, or traditional separations of power and resistance, Global Communications examines political economic power and communication in relation to historically specific encounters with modernity. It underscores lived experiences in its approach to globalization showing that the state and the market can both be sites of empowerment, just as civil society might also be a site of repression. Taking a political-economic analysis of communication and culture, this dynamic group of international authors looks beyond developments in the North American information and culture industries to map new forms of citizenship and exclusion. The chapters spotlight China, Ghana, India, Japan, Palestine, Russia, Singapore, and Venezuela, and foreground the transnational formations of the European Union, the pan-Arab and Spanish-speaking markets, and civil society actors in sub-Saharan African, the Middle East, and North America. Theoretically driven and empirically grounded, Global Communications defines communication broadly to include production, circulation, and consumption and addresses urgent questions about the inequalities of globalization and the possibilities of hybrid cultural forms and practices.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Part I: The State and Communication Politics in Multiple Modernities Chapter 1: Neoliberal Strategies, Socialist Legacies: Communication and State Transformation in China Chapter 2: Media, State, and Responses to Globalization: The Case of Post-Communist Russia Chapter 3: Regional Crisis, Personal Solutions: The Media's Role in Securing Neoliberal Hegemony in Singapore Chapter 4: Governance and Legitimacy: The Case of the European Union Chapter 5: Media, Democracy, and the State in Venezuela's "Bolivarian Revolution" Part II: Embedded Markets and Cultural Transformations Chapter 6: Cultures of Empire: Transnational Media Flows and Cultural (Dis)Connections in East Asia Chapter 7: Local and Global Sites of Power in the Circulation of Ghanaian Adinkra Chapter 8: A Transcultural Political Economy of the Arab Television Industry Chapter 9: Rethinking the Spanish-language Media Market in the U.S. Part III: Civil Society and Multiple Publics Chapter 10: Gender and Empire: Performing Femininities in the War on Terrorism Chapter 11: Neoliberalism, Nongovernmental Organizations, and Communication in Sub-Saharan Africa Chapter 12: Move Over Bangalore, Here Comes . . . Palestine? Western Funding and "Internet Development" in the Shrinking Palestinian State Chapter 13: Labor in or as Civil Society? Workers and Subaltern Publics in India's Information Economy References

About the Author :
Paula Chakravartty is associate professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is the author of several articles on the political economy and culture of high-tech development in India, as well as on migration, labor, and nationalism in India and the U.S. She is the coauthor of Globalization and Media Policy and her current research focuses on the politics of info-development and civil society in Brazil and India. Yuezhi Zhao is professor of communication and Canada Research Chair in the Political Economy of Global Communication at Simon Fraser University, Canada. She is the author of Media, Market, Democracy in China and Communication in China: Political Economy, Power, and Conflict, coauthor of Sustaining Democracy? and coeditor of Democratizing Global Media.

Review :
Rich fare . . . each of the studies is a worthwhile contribution to our knowledge, and the whole reader is easily imaginable as a very stimulating course text. . . . This collection provides some very valuable materials toward that task. The goal of combining empirical study with theoretical analysis of state, market, and civil society that approaches the problematic through lenses that unveil and critique social inequalities . . . is refreshingly incisive. . . . The volume reads as an explicitly fused and persuasive effort of engaged scholarship. The terrain covered in this book is state, capital, media, and democracy; the context is the current phase of globalization. The authors are drawn from around the world to present interesting, local studies while taking account of the global processes of structure and power. Global Communications is a fine example of what political economy of communication stands for—analytical insights based on rigorous, empirical study and hard-hitting analysis presented in a readable style. It was a pleasure to read this book, and I recommend it highly! It's exceptionally rare to read a book that makes you sit up and wonder. Global Communications does just that. It cuts away at the mainstream endorsement of globalization by paying heed to local experience and transnational theorization. The pomposity and puffery that dominate the topic are severely compromised by this welcome addition to the critical communications literature.