Edward Comor | University of Western Ontario (original) (raw)

Papers by Edward Comor

The Political Economy of Communication, Dec 18, 2017

This article looks back at an Obama administration foreign policy initiative called Internet free... more This article looks back at an Obama administration foreign policy initiative called Internet freedom and discusses US responses to anti-American extremism involving digital communications technologies. It does this by using Marx's concept of the fetish to argue that technological fetishism played a constitutive and mediating role in policymaking. Through this analysisrelating international relations with political economy and Marxist theorythe empowering implications of these technologies for American state interests are shown to be also disempowering. Most US officials were likely to be aware that digital communications technologies did not have the inherent powers that their policies implied but, nevertheless, they continued to develop and apply Internet freedom and related policies as if they did. This paradox, it will be underlined, is in keeping with Marx's analysis of the complex reality whereby the fetish performs a mediating role in institutionalized ways of thinking.

University of Toronto Quarterly, Jul 1, 2020

The transition of Harold Innis' work from staples research to communications studies commonly is ... more The transition of Harold Innis' work from staples research to communications studies commonly is understood to have been an extension of his earlier research rather than a dramatic break from it. While in agreement, we argue that a significant transformation in Innis's ontology (but not his epistemology) also took place. This can be understood by referencing his concerns about the fate of civilization and his views on the prospectively strategic role of what he called the Greek tradition. To explain this, herein we concentrate on Innis' largely forgotten book Political Economy in the Modern State, initiated in 1943 and published in 1946, as a window into his intellectual processes. By the latter year, Innis had come to believe that a second Greekinspired renaissance was needed. Vestiges of the Greek tradition, Innis thought, had to be recalled through the university and the humanities in order to provide society with the reflective universal perspective needed for survival. This transitional and transformational period involving his embrace of the Greek tradition as a kind of ideal type constitutes an important but under assessed aspect of Innis's intellectual development.

Media, Structures, and Power is a collection of the scholarly writing of Canada's leading com... more Media, Structures, and Power is a collection of the scholarly writing of Canada's leading communication and media studies scholar, Robert E. Babe. Spanning almost four decades of scholarship, the volume reflects the breadth of Babe's work, from media and economics to communications history and political economy. Babe famously characterized Canadian scholars' distinctive contribution to knowledge as uniquely historical, holistic, and dialectical. The essays in Media, Structures, and Power reflect this particular strength. With a clarity of vision, Babe critiques mainstream economics, Canadian government policy, and postmodernist thought in social science. Containing introductions and contributions by other prominent scholars, this volume situates Babe's work within contemporary scholarship and underscores the extent to which he is one of Canada's most prescient thinkers. His interdisciplinary analyses will remain timely and influential well into the twenty-first century.

University of Toronto Quarterly, 2020

The transition of Harold Innis’ work from staples research to communications studies commonly is ... more The transition of Harold Innis’ work from staples research to communications studies commonly is understood to have been an extension of his earlier research rather than a dramatic break from it. While in agreement, we argue that a significant transformation in Innis’s ontology (but not his epistemology) also took place. This can be understood by referencing his concerns about the fate of civilization and his views on the prospectively strategic role of what he called the Greek tradition. To explain this, herein we concentrate on Innis’ largely forgotten book Political Economy in the Modern State, initiated in 1943 and published in 1946, as a window into his intellectual processes. By the latter year, Innis had come to believe that a second Greek-inspired renaissance was needed. Vestiges of the Greek tradition, Innis thought, had to be recalled through the university and the humanities in order to provide society with the reflective universal perspective needed for survival. This tr...

Consumption and the Globalization Project, 2008

In recent years, optimistic analyses concerning globalization — specifically those forecasting th... more In recent years, optimistic analyses concerning globalization — specifically those forecasting the decline of state authority and the related rise of a progressive global civil society (GCS) — have been pervasive, especially among left-leaning intellectuals and activists. Such prognostications, involving the strategic use of ICTs and, among post-structuralists, the resistance of the so-called ‘networked multitude’,2 have not only dominated critical discourse about post-Cold War international relations, they have, in effect, reified globalization itself — unintentionally emptying it of its history, obfuscating the forces, processes and mediators shaping contemporary developments.3 In this chapter, we argue that instead of the dawning of some kind of cosmopolitan ‘global village’, the dynamics behind the globalization project and the institutionalization of capitalist consumption are, for the most part, the same dynamics that drove the history presented in Chapter 3. Instead of the flowering of some kind of global civil society, another kind of GCS may well be emerging: a global consumer society (at least among the world’s relatively wealthy).

Consumption and the Globalization Project, 2008

In this chapter, we present a history of the institutionalization of capitalist consumption in th... more In this chapter, we present a history of the institutionalization of capitalist consumption in the West. Our goal here is to use history as a resource — a resource containing demonstrable patterns and tendencies that can be used to illuminate contemporary developments around the world. Rather than a comprehensive overview, the task at hand is to outline how capitalist consumption emerged and, in so doing, identify the dynamics behind contemporary trajectories.

Consumption and the Globalization Project, 2008

The power of the American state in international affairs has been subjected to countless strategi... more The power of the American state in international affairs has been subjected to countless strategic studies, critical assessments and resistance projects. In the midst of what may become a seemingly endless ‘war on terror’, debates concerning the policies informing the use of America’s military resources now are congealing around the problematic process of occupying and eventually ‘democratising’ Iraq and, with it, the rest of the Middle East. In the following pages we take a step beyond and back from such analyses by relating the rationale behind these policies to what Innis many years ago referred to as a civilizational crisis involving time. While much attention has been paid to the spatial conquest, occupation and reorganization of the world through trade agreements, neoliberal policy impositions and ICTs, using our understanding of conceptual systems and the institution of capitalist consumption, herein we address still more profound questions concerning time — how it is being organized and conceptualized, as well as the tragic implications of consumption-mediated temporal norms.

Journal of Economic Issues, 1999

... Communication, commerce, and power: The political economy of America and the direct broadcast... more ... Communication, commerce, and power: The political economy of America and the direct broadcast satellite, 1960-2000. Post a Comment. CONTRIBUTORS: Author: Comor, Edward A. (b. 1962, d. ----. PUBLISHER: MacMillan ...

Journal of Economic Issues, 1997

Communication, Commerce and Power, 1998

In 1967, the Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, Dante R. Fasc... more In 1967, the Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, Dante R. Fascell, wrote that during ‘the coming decade, television promises to become the most widely used and influential mass medium of communication’ capable of fostering ‘economic and social change in developing nations.’ Direct broadcast satellites, Fascell predicted, would spearhead this movement largely as a result of the capacity of DBS to transcend the ‘physical’ and ‘political boundaries’ that traditionally have constituted the primary ‘barriers to the flow of communications.’1

Communication, Commerce and Power, 1998

State support for DBS research, including the active participation of NASA and the Department of ... more State support for DBS research, including the active participation of NASA and the Department of Defense in the Applications Technology Satellite (ATS) experiments, coupled with ongoing government support for USIA and CIA propaganda activities, generated a degree of mistrust among officials of foreign states toward the American stated disinterest in DBS. By the mid-1970s, direct broadcasting was seen by many LDCs both to be a boon and a threat to their development aspirations. A DBS system could be applied in the manner of the ATS educational television trial, yet it could also be used for Northern-defined commercial or political ends. The latter appeared more likely given the large-scale costs involved in establishing a DBS system. These costs also inhibited any one LDC from pursuing DBS developments without foreign assistance.1

The Global Political Economy of Communication, 1994

Over the past two decades, United States officials have sought an increasingly liberalised intern... more Over the past two decades, United States officials have sought an increasingly liberalised international communications environment. New technologies — directly involving computers and telecommunications — are now increasing the capacity of corporations and governments to control and profit from the production and distribution of ‘non-material’ information and entertainment products and services. Because of the high costs of producing the initial product and the relatively minimal costs of its reproduction, the production and distribution of these non-material commodities is increasingly becoming the domain of those possessing the capacity to control the product’s or service’s distribution after the initial point of production. Whether it is a new financial service, a computer database or a pay-per-view movie channel, new communication technologies have enabled corporations to substantiate the enormous overhead costs required to develop these products and services and to bring them to market at an unprecedented pace.2

Global Media and Communication, 2015

Araya, whose contribution could spark a whole research project, points to the European style of j... more Araya, whose contribution could spark a whole research project, points to the European style of journalism that dominates in Chile and asks if it fails to incorporate ‘a cultural and situated perspective of newsworthiness’ and participative processes of communication (p.261). The challenge to current and future media reforms is, therefore, to promote the emergence of new subjects, communities and emancipated communicative practices, instead of replicating the logic of mainstream media. This is not far from the concerns of Matos and Benítez. Matos focuses on public service broadcasting and seeks to retrieve its mission to serve the public interest, instead of falling into the trap of using it ‘to reach out voters’ (p.214). Benítez emphasizes the need to link media policies with cultural policies in order to build democratic and multicultural media systems. The problem from this perspective is the local cultural industries’ tight connections with global companies and interests. In closing, Media Systems and Communication Policies in Latin America provides a wealth of information on Latin American media systems and ongoing discussions on media reforms. In addition, this book also connects the discussion of reforms with broader questions about journalistic practice, cultural policy and the relationship between national media policies and the public interest. Curiously, the issues discussed in this era of the Internet are not that far from those discussed by Latin American media theorists since the 1960s and 1970s when military regimes and later neoliberalism drowned Latin American hopes for emancipation. This only underlines how long and winding the road to media and communication emancipation in Latin America is.

Review of Policy Research, 2009

Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 1999

Global Media and Communication, 2005

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication

Harold Innis is one of the foundational theorists of media and communications studies. In the mid... more Harold Innis is one of the foundational theorists of media and communications studies. In the mid-20th century, he developed his concept of media bias (also called the bias of communication). It remains Innis’s most cited concept, but it is also significantly misunderstood. For example, since his death in 1952, bias has often been applied in ways that are akin to a form of technological or media determinism. This has been an ongoing problem despite the fact that Innis developed his concept as a means of compelling analysts to reject such mechanistic formulations. Indeed, his goal was to promote more self-reflective modes of scholarship and, by extension, a recognition that such intellectual capacities—which he believed were essential for civilization’s survival—would be lost if they were not recognized and defended. More generally, Innis contextualized his work regarding media bias in terms of interrelated historical conditions involving political economic dynamics. Through his appl...

This is the fifth and final column in the Topia series exploring intersections between political ... more This is the fifth and final column in the Topia series exploring intersections between political economy and cultural studies. The column in Topia 15 (Babe 2006: 91-101) documents the tendency on the part of mainstream American communication/media scholars—from John Dewey in the first decades of the 20th century to postmodernist writers of today—to obscure to the vanishing point concerns and methods of political economy. The earlier column suggests that “readers should scrutinize carefully the writings of contemporary poststructuralist/postmodernist authoritative figures to determine just where they stand on issues of political economy” (98). That is precisely what we do here: we focus on the American poststructuralist Mark Poster and compare his writings to the media analysis of Canadian political economist Harold Innis

The Political Economy of Communication, Dec 18, 2017

This article looks back at an Obama administration foreign policy initiative called Internet free... more This article looks back at an Obama administration foreign policy initiative called Internet freedom and discusses US responses to anti-American extremism involving digital communications technologies. It does this by using Marx's concept of the fetish to argue that technological fetishism played a constitutive and mediating role in policymaking. Through this analysisrelating international relations with political economy and Marxist theorythe empowering implications of these technologies for American state interests are shown to be also disempowering. Most US officials were likely to be aware that digital communications technologies did not have the inherent powers that their policies implied but, nevertheless, they continued to develop and apply Internet freedom and related policies as if they did. This paradox, it will be underlined, is in keeping with Marx's analysis of the complex reality whereby the fetish performs a mediating role in institutionalized ways of thinking.

University of Toronto Quarterly, Jul 1, 2020

The transition of Harold Innis' work from staples research to communications studies commonly is ... more The transition of Harold Innis' work from staples research to communications studies commonly is understood to have been an extension of his earlier research rather than a dramatic break from it. While in agreement, we argue that a significant transformation in Innis's ontology (but not his epistemology) also took place. This can be understood by referencing his concerns about the fate of civilization and his views on the prospectively strategic role of what he called the Greek tradition. To explain this, herein we concentrate on Innis' largely forgotten book Political Economy in the Modern State, initiated in 1943 and published in 1946, as a window into his intellectual processes. By the latter year, Innis had come to believe that a second Greekinspired renaissance was needed. Vestiges of the Greek tradition, Innis thought, had to be recalled through the university and the humanities in order to provide society with the reflective universal perspective needed for survival. This transitional and transformational period involving his embrace of the Greek tradition as a kind of ideal type constitutes an important but under assessed aspect of Innis's intellectual development.

Media, Structures, and Power is a collection of the scholarly writing of Canada's leading com... more Media, Structures, and Power is a collection of the scholarly writing of Canada's leading communication and media studies scholar, Robert E. Babe. Spanning almost four decades of scholarship, the volume reflects the breadth of Babe's work, from media and economics to communications history and political economy. Babe famously characterized Canadian scholars' distinctive contribution to knowledge as uniquely historical, holistic, and dialectical. The essays in Media, Structures, and Power reflect this particular strength. With a clarity of vision, Babe critiques mainstream economics, Canadian government policy, and postmodernist thought in social science. Containing introductions and contributions by other prominent scholars, this volume situates Babe's work within contemporary scholarship and underscores the extent to which he is one of Canada's most prescient thinkers. His interdisciplinary analyses will remain timely and influential well into the twenty-first century.

University of Toronto Quarterly, 2020

The transition of Harold Innis’ work from staples research to communications studies commonly is ... more The transition of Harold Innis’ work from staples research to communications studies commonly is understood to have been an extension of his earlier research rather than a dramatic break from it. While in agreement, we argue that a significant transformation in Innis’s ontology (but not his epistemology) also took place. This can be understood by referencing his concerns about the fate of civilization and his views on the prospectively strategic role of what he called the Greek tradition. To explain this, herein we concentrate on Innis’ largely forgotten book Political Economy in the Modern State, initiated in 1943 and published in 1946, as a window into his intellectual processes. By the latter year, Innis had come to believe that a second Greek-inspired renaissance was needed. Vestiges of the Greek tradition, Innis thought, had to be recalled through the university and the humanities in order to provide society with the reflective universal perspective needed for survival. This tr...

Consumption and the Globalization Project, 2008

In recent years, optimistic analyses concerning globalization — specifically those forecasting th... more In recent years, optimistic analyses concerning globalization — specifically those forecasting the decline of state authority and the related rise of a progressive global civil society (GCS) — have been pervasive, especially among left-leaning intellectuals and activists. Such prognostications, involving the strategic use of ICTs and, among post-structuralists, the resistance of the so-called ‘networked multitude’,2 have not only dominated critical discourse about post-Cold War international relations, they have, in effect, reified globalization itself — unintentionally emptying it of its history, obfuscating the forces, processes and mediators shaping contemporary developments.3 In this chapter, we argue that instead of the dawning of some kind of cosmopolitan ‘global village’, the dynamics behind the globalization project and the institutionalization of capitalist consumption are, for the most part, the same dynamics that drove the history presented in Chapter 3. Instead of the flowering of some kind of global civil society, another kind of GCS may well be emerging: a global consumer society (at least among the world’s relatively wealthy).

Consumption and the Globalization Project, 2008

In this chapter, we present a history of the institutionalization of capitalist consumption in th... more In this chapter, we present a history of the institutionalization of capitalist consumption in the West. Our goal here is to use history as a resource — a resource containing demonstrable patterns and tendencies that can be used to illuminate contemporary developments around the world. Rather than a comprehensive overview, the task at hand is to outline how capitalist consumption emerged and, in so doing, identify the dynamics behind contemporary trajectories.

Consumption and the Globalization Project, 2008

The power of the American state in international affairs has been subjected to countless strategi... more The power of the American state in international affairs has been subjected to countless strategic studies, critical assessments and resistance projects. In the midst of what may become a seemingly endless ‘war on terror’, debates concerning the policies informing the use of America’s military resources now are congealing around the problematic process of occupying and eventually ‘democratising’ Iraq and, with it, the rest of the Middle East. In the following pages we take a step beyond and back from such analyses by relating the rationale behind these policies to what Innis many years ago referred to as a civilizational crisis involving time. While much attention has been paid to the spatial conquest, occupation and reorganization of the world through trade agreements, neoliberal policy impositions and ICTs, using our understanding of conceptual systems and the institution of capitalist consumption, herein we address still more profound questions concerning time — how it is being organized and conceptualized, as well as the tragic implications of consumption-mediated temporal norms.

Journal of Economic Issues, 1999

... Communication, commerce, and power: The political economy of America and the direct broadcast... more ... Communication, commerce, and power: The political economy of America and the direct broadcast satellite, 1960-2000. Post a Comment. CONTRIBUTORS: Author: Comor, Edward A. (b. 1962, d. ----. PUBLISHER: MacMillan ...

Journal of Economic Issues, 1997

Communication, Commerce and Power, 1998

In 1967, the Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, Dante R. Fasc... more In 1967, the Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, Dante R. Fascell, wrote that during ‘the coming decade, television promises to become the most widely used and influential mass medium of communication’ capable of fostering ‘economic and social change in developing nations.’ Direct broadcast satellites, Fascell predicted, would spearhead this movement largely as a result of the capacity of DBS to transcend the ‘physical’ and ‘political boundaries’ that traditionally have constituted the primary ‘barriers to the flow of communications.’1

Communication, Commerce and Power, 1998

State support for DBS research, including the active participation of NASA and the Department of ... more State support for DBS research, including the active participation of NASA and the Department of Defense in the Applications Technology Satellite (ATS) experiments, coupled with ongoing government support for USIA and CIA propaganda activities, generated a degree of mistrust among officials of foreign states toward the American stated disinterest in DBS. By the mid-1970s, direct broadcasting was seen by many LDCs both to be a boon and a threat to their development aspirations. A DBS system could be applied in the manner of the ATS educational television trial, yet it could also be used for Northern-defined commercial or political ends. The latter appeared more likely given the large-scale costs involved in establishing a DBS system. These costs also inhibited any one LDC from pursuing DBS developments without foreign assistance.1

The Global Political Economy of Communication, 1994

Over the past two decades, United States officials have sought an increasingly liberalised intern... more Over the past two decades, United States officials have sought an increasingly liberalised international communications environment. New technologies — directly involving computers and telecommunications — are now increasing the capacity of corporations and governments to control and profit from the production and distribution of ‘non-material’ information and entertainment products and services. Because of the high costs of producing the initial product and the relatively minimal costs of its reproduction, the production and distribution of these non-material commodities is increasingly becoming the domain of those possessing the capacity to control the product’s or service’s distribution after the initial point of production. Whether it is a new financial service, a computer database or a pay-per-view movie channel, new communication technologies have enabled corporations to substantiate the enormous overhead costs required to develop these products and services and to bring them to market at an unprecedented pace.2

Global Media and Communication, 2015

Araya, whose contribution could spark a whole research project, points to the European style of j... more Araya, whose contribution could spark a whole research project, points to the European style of journalism that dominates in Chile and asks if it fails to incorporate ‘a cultural and situated perspective of newsworthiness’ and participative processes of communication (p.261). The challenge to current and future media reforms is, therefore, to promote the emergence of new subjects, communities and emancipated communicative practices, instead of replicating the logic of mainstream media. This is not far from the concerns of Matos and Benítez. Matos focuses on public service broadcasting and seeks to retrieve its mission to serve the public interest, instead of falling into the trap of using it ‘to reach out voters’ (p.214). Benítez emphasizes the need to link media policies with cultural policies in order to build democratic and multicultural media systems. The problem from this perspective is the local cultural industries’ tight connections with global companies and interests. In closing, Media Systems and Communication Policies in Latin America provides a wealth of information on Latin American media systems and ongoing discussions on media reforms. In addition, this book also connects the discussion of reforms with broader questions about journalistic practice, cultural policy and the relationship between national media policies and the public interest. Curiously, the issues discussed in this era of the Internet are not that far from those discussed by Latin American media theorists since the 1960s and 1970s when military regimes and later neoliberalism drowned Latin American hopes for emancipation. This only underlines how long and winding the road to media and communication emancipation in Latin America is.

Review of Policy Research, 2009

Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 1999

Global Media and Communication, 2005

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication

Harold Innis is one of the foundational theorists of media and communications studies. In the mid... more Harold Innis is one of the foundational theorists of media and communications studies. In the mid-20th century, he developed his concept of media bias (also called the bias of communication). It remains Innis’s most cited concept, but it is also significantly misunderstood. For example, since his death in 1952, bias has often been applied in ways that are akin to a form of technological or media determinism. This has been an ongoing problem despite the fact that Innis developed his concept as a means of compelling analysts to reject such mechanistic formulations. Indeed, his goal was to promote more self-reflective modes of scholarship and, by extension, a recognition that such intellectual capacities—which he believed were essential for civilization’s survival—would be lost if they were not recognized and defended. More generally, Innis contextualized his work regarding media bias in terms of interrelated historical conditions involving political economic dynamics. Through his appl...

This is the fifth and final column in the Topia series exploring intersections between political ... more This is the fifth and final column in the Topia series exploring intersections between political economy and cultural studies. The column in Topia 15 (Babe 2006: 91-101) documents the tendency on the part of mainstream American communication/media scholars—from John Dewey in the first decades of the 20th century to postmodernist writers of today—to obscure to the vanishing point concerns and methods of political economy. The earlier column suggests that “readers should scrutinize carefully the writings of contemporary poststructuralist/postmodernist authoritative figures to determine just where they stand on issues of political economy” (98). That is precisely what we do here: we focus on the American poststructuralist Mark Poster and compare his writings to the media analysis of Canadian political economist Harold Innis