The Canadian Tradition - I -

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The Canadian Tradition- I -

• Harold Adams Innis

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Harold Adams Innis

• Lecture Outline
• biographical information
• concerns and interests
• key influences
• Innis and the history of mass communication
  research
• major theoretical concepts.

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Harold A. Innis
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Concerns and Interests

• Historical approach
• concern with social structures
• relationship between media and
• social formation
• media biases
• knowledge and power.

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The Lessons of History
The twentieth century has been notable for its
concern with studies of civilizations. Spengler,
Toynbee, Kroeber, Sorokin, and others have
produced works, designed to throw light on the
causes of the rise and decline of civilizations,
which have reflected an intense interest in the
possible future of our own civilization.
Harold A. Innis, Empire and Communication, p.1
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Major Influences

• Rural upbringing
• military service and the War
• education
• University of Chicago
• relationship between material structures
• move away from formal analysis
• concern with public life.

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Innis and Mass Communication Research

• Occupies a marginal position
• overshadowed by Marshall McLuhan
• anticipates media ecology as an
  interdisciplinary approach
• media ecology and the subject
• media ecology and social structures.

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Major Theoretical Concepts

• Orality
• time bias and space bias
• center versus periphery
• monopolies of knowledge.

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Emphasis on Orality

• Historical antecedents
• critique of social deployment of knowledge
• return to free exchange of ideas
• critique of academia,

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Time Bias and Space Bias
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Time-Biased Media

• Durable media difficult to transport
• tradition bound
• emphasis on customs - rituals - moral values
• hierarchical social order
• ruled by elite
• monopoly of knowledge
• challenged by lighter media.

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Space-Biased Media

• Media easy to transport
• oriented to expansion and accumulation
• secular institutions
• complex forms of political authority
• creates abstract forms of knowledge
• challenged by inability to expand and need for
  ritual.

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Time Bias vs. Space Bias

• Media easy to transport
• oriented to expansion and accumulation
• secular institutions
• complex forms of political authority
• creates abstract forms
• of knowledge
• challenged by inability to expand and need for
  ritual.

• Durable media difficult
• to transport
• tradition bound
• emphasis on customs -
• rituals - moral values
• hierarchical social order
• ruled by elite
• monopoly of knowledge
• challenged by lighter
• media.

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Examples of Media
Cuneiform tablet
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The Printing Press
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Television
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Center and Periphery

• Innovation and transformation occur
• at the boundaries of the social
• notion of social asymmetry
• macroscopic approach.

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Monopolies of Knowledge

• Occur through the media used by a given culture
• each medium can be analyzed for patterns of
  concentration of knowledge
• writing and books
• radio
• television
• internet

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An Exampleof a Monopolyof Knowledge
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Short Bibliography

• 1923 - A History of the Canadian Pacific Railway
• 1930 - The Fur Trade in Canada
• 1950 -Empire and Communication
• 1951 -The Bias of Communication
• 1952 - Changing Concepts of Time

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