Continental Order?: Integrating North America for Cybercapitalism(Critical Media Studies: Institutions, Politics, and Culture)

Continental Order? examines the converging culture, telecommunications, and new media industries in North America, asking who has power in regional and global media. Experts from the United States, Mexico and Canada address specific sectors and problems: newspapers and magazines, video and film, telecommunications and new media, sport and leisure, marketing, and education. With a broadly political-economic perspective, this book provides a critical account of changes occurring in the aftermath of regional and international trade agreements, such as NAFTA, and sets these changes in the global context of an emerging transnational communication industry.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1 Introduction: Integrating a Continent for a Transnational World Chapter 2 NAFTA and Economic Integration in North America: Regional or Global? Chapter 3 Globalization and Latin Media Powers: The Case of Mexico's Televisa Chapter 4 Globalization, Cultural Industries, and Free Trade: The Mexican Audiovisual Sector in the NAFTA Age Chapter 5 The Reorganization of Spanish-Language Media Marketing in the United States Chapter 6 Telecommunications after NAFTA: Mexico's Integration Strategy Chapter 7 Networking the North American Higher Education Industry Chapter 8 Commerce versus Culture: The Print Media in Canada and Mexico Chapter 9 Whose Hollywood? Changing Forms and Relations inside the North American Entertainment Economy Chapter 10 Upmarket Continentalism: Major League Sport, Promotional Culture, and Corporate Integration Chapter 11 Multimedia Policy for Canada and the United States: Industrial Development as Public Interest

About the Author :
Vincent Mosco is professor of communication, sociology, and political economy at Carleton University and a research affiliate with Harvard University's Program on Information Resources Policy. Dan Schiller is a professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Review :
This enlightening book shows that the Canadian and North American Free Trade Agreements-and the associated economic integration of North America-are parts of a larger corporate globalization process, whose organizers aim to weaken or eliminate any national or public service barriers to the pursuit of bottom line interests. As the authors describe convincingly here, this process is extending and globalizing commercialization from telecommunications, through all media forms, to major league sports and even higher education. In the process, not only are national and public service interests threatened, the displacement of citizens in favor of consumers (and the globalizing corporations who serve them) threatens democracy itself. An impressive collection by some of the leading scholars of political economy.... The patterns traced in the North American setting are fraught with significance for other economic regions and the wider transition to a global economy. This book is an invaluable resource for researchers as well as advocates seeking to understand these powerful techno-economic forces and pursue more humanly-oriented alternatives. A tremendous and complete view of the new complex phenomenon in cultural industries after NAFTA and of the resulting relationships between Mexico, Canada, and the United States. This book is just perfect for students and researchers. Continental Order?, edited by two leading scholars of the North American political-economy tradition, offers an important and timely continental perspective on the restructuring of the communication industries in Canada, the United States, and Mexico. The sum total of the collection is a surprisingly rich and wide-ranging picture of the rapidly evolving North American communications order. Contains excellent political economy case histories. Culture, media, and the information industries in general are increasingly converging and, as they do so, national frontiers become increasingly irrelevant to the corporate interests that organize and arrange them. Simultaneously, market criteria more and more determine what gets published, what gets taught, and what gets viewed. This book is packed full of closely-argued and evidenced materials about processes of the utmost importance to each and all of the citizens of the North American continent.