This article seeks to develop systematically several themes alluded to in my recent account of Raymond Williams' sociological critique of Marshall McLuhan. It considers some initiatives within social theory which might meet Williams' criteria for an adequate social theory of ‘the media’. The chief target is the illegitimate projection of ‘new social orders' from limited and often asocial analyses of ‘new’ social phenomena, including those related to ‘the media’. A parallel is drawn between the technological determinism from which Daniel Bell projects his post-industrial/information society thesis and the formalism of McLuhan's conception of ‘the media’. Mark Poster's mode of information thesis is found to provide an adequate critique of Bell only to reproduce the projection of McLuhan. More satisfactory alternatives are located in the recent work of John Thompson and Craig Calhoun, both of whom develop further Joshua Meyrowitz's attempted bridging of the theoretical gap between ‘medium theorists' and sociology.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
BellDaniel1962, The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties, Free Press, New York.
2.
BellDaniel1967, ‘Notes on the Post-Industrial Society (Pt 1)’, The Public Interest, no. 6, pp. 24–35.
3.
BellDaniel1976, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting, Basic Books, New York. First published in 1973.
4.
BellDaniel1980a, ‘The Social Framework of the Information Society’, in ForresterT. (ed.), The Microelectronics Revolution: The Complete Guide to the New Technology and Its Impact on Society, Basil Blackwell, Oxford.
5.
BellDaniel1980b, ‘A Reply to Weizenbaum’, in ForresterT. (ed.), The Microelectronics Revolution: The Complete Guide to the New Technology and Its Impact on Society, Basil Blackwell, Oxford.
6.
BellDaniel1989‘Communication Technology: For Better or For Worse?’, in SalvaggioJ. (ed.), The Information Society: Economic, Social, and Structural Issues, Hillsdale, LEA, NJ.
7.
BirnbaumNorman1971, ‘Is There a Post-Industrial Revolution?’, in Towards a Critical Sociology, Oxford University Press, New York. First published in 1969.
8.
BuchsteinHubertus1997, ‘Bytes that Bite: The Internet and Deliberative Democracy’, Constellations, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 248–63.
9.
CalhounCraig1988, ‘Populist Politics, Communications Media and Large Scale Societal Integration’, Sociological Theory, no. 6, Fall, pp. 219–41.
10.
CalhounCraig1992, ‘The Infrastructure of Modernity: Indirect Social Relationships, Information Technology, and Social Integration’, in HaferkampfH.SmelserN. (eds), Social Change and Modernity, UCLA Press, Berkeley.
11.
CalhounCraig1998, ‘Community Without Propinquity Revisited: Communications Technology and the Transformation of the Urban Public Sphere’, Sociological Inquiry, vol. 68, no. 3, pp. 373–97.
12.
CareyJames1972, ‘Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan’, in RosenthalR. (ed.), McLuhan: Pro and Con, Pelican, London.
13.
CareyJames1989, ‘Space, Time and Communications: A Tribute to Harold Innis’, in Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society, Unwin Hyman, Boston.
14.
GoffmanErving1973, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Overlook Press, Woodstock, NY. First published 1959.
15.
HartleyJohn1998, ‘This Way Lies Habermadness’, Media International Australia incorporating Culture and Policy, no. 88, pp. 125–35 (reply to Jones, 1998b).
16.
HolmesDavid1999, ‘Social Integration in the Second Media Age’, paper presented to School of Sociology, UNSW, Sydney, September.
17.
HuyssenAndreas1995, ‘In the Shadow of McLuhan: Baudrillard's Theory of Simulation’, in Twilight Memories, Routledge, New York. First published 1989.
18.
InnisHarold1964, The Bias of Communication, University of Toronto Press, Toronto. First published 1951.
19.
JonesPaul1994, ‘The Myth of “Raymond Hoggart”: On “Founding Fathers” and Cultural Policy’, Cultural Studies, vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 396–416.
20.
JonesPaul1998a, ‘The Technology is Not the Cultural Form? Raymond Williams' Sociological Critique of Marshall McLuhan’, Canadian Journal of Communication, vol. 23, no. 4, pp. 423–54 (co-published in Australian-Canadian Studies, vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 1–32).
21.
JonesPaul1998b, ‘Between Cultural Studies and Critical Sociology: Public Spheres, Counter Public Spheres and Journalism’, Media International Australia incorporating Culture and Policy, no. 87, August, pp. 121–33.
22.
JonesPaul1999, ‘The Problem is Always One of Method: Cultural Materialism, Political Economy and Cultural Studies’, Keywords: A Journal of Cultural Materialism, no. 2, pp. 28–46.
23.
KuhnsWilliam1971, The Post-Industrial Prophets: Interpretations of Technology, Harper Coliphon, New York.
24.
KumarKrishan1981, Prophecy and Progress: The Sociology of Industrial and Post-Industrial Society, Pelican, Harmondsworth, Middlesex. First published 1978.
25.
KumarKrishan1995, From Post-Industrial to Postmodern Society, Blackwell, London.
26.
McLuhanMarshall, 1964, ‘Introduction’, in HaroldInnis, The Bias of Communication, University of Toronto Press, Toronto. Reprinted in McLuhanE.ZingroneF. (eds), The Essential McLuhan, Routledge, London, 1997.
27.
McLuhanMarshall, 1967a, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Sphere, London. First published 1964.
28.
McLuhanMarshall, 1967b, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man, RKP, London. First published 1962.
29.
McLuhanMarshall, 1997, ‘Playboy Interview: A Candid Conversation with the High Priest of Popcult and the Metaphysician of Media’, in McLuhanE.ZingroneF. (eds), The Essential McLuhan, Routledge, London. First published in 1969.
30.
McLuhanMarshallFioreQuentin1967, The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects, Penguin, London.
31.
MeyrowitzJoshua1985, No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behaviour, OUP, New York.
32.
PosterMark1984, Foucault, Marxism and History: Mode of Production versus Mode of Information, Polity, Cambridge.
33.
PosterMark1992, The Mode of Information: Poststructuralism and Social Context, Polity, Cambridge. First published 1990.
34.
PosterMark1995, The Second Media Age, Polity, Cambridge.
35.
PosterMark1997, ‘Cyber Democracy: The Internet and the Public Sphere’, in HolmesD. (ed.), Virtual Politics: Identity and Community in Cyberspace, Sage, London.
36.
ThompsonJohn1995, The Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of the Media, Stanford UP, Stanford.
37.
WebsterFrank1995, Theories of the Information Society, Routledge, London.
38.
WilliamsRaymond1974, Television: Technology and Cultural Form, Fontana, London.
39.
WilliamsRaymond1980, ‘Means of Communication as Means of Production’, in Problems in Materialism and Culture, Verso, London. First published 1978.
40.
WilliamsRaymond1981a, (The Sociology of) Culture, Fontana, London. Originally published as Culture and republished in 1982 in the USA as The Sociology of Culture, Shocken, New York.
41.
WilliamsRaymond1981b, ‘Introduction’ to WilliamsR. (ed.), Contact: Human Communication and its History, Thames and Hudson, London.
42.
WilliamsRaymond1981c, ‘Communications Technologies and Social Institutions’, in WilliamsR. (ed.), Contact: Human Communication and its History, Thames and Hudson, London. Reprinted in WilliamsR. (ed), What I Came to Say, Hutchinson, London, 1989.
43.
WilliamsRaymond1983, Towards 2000, Chatto & Windus/Hogarth, London.
