Overview

Many governments are pursuing with relentless vigour a neoconservative/transnational corporate program of globalization, privatization, deregulation, cutbacks to social programs, and downsizing of the public sector. Countries are forming into giant free trade"" blocs. Increasingly they lack the will and desire to resist encroachments of world superculture."" Furthermore, they encourage heightened commoditization of information and knowledge, for instance through stiffer intellectual property laws, through Information Highway"" initiatives, and through provisions in bilateral and multilateral trade treaties. The analytical underpinning and ideological justification for this neoconservative/transnational corporate policy agenda is mainstream (neoclassical) economics. Focusing on the centrality of information/communication to economic and ecological processes, Communication and the Transformation of Economics cuts at the philosophical/ideological root of this neoconservative policy agenda. Mainstream economics assumes a commodity status for information, even though information is indivisible, subjective, shared, and intangible. Information, in other words, is quite ill-suited to commodity treatment. Likewise, neoclassicism posits communication as comprising merely acts of commodity exchange, thereby ignoring gift relations dialogic interactions the cumulative, transformative properties of all informational interchange and the social or community context within which communicative action takes place. Continuing in the tradition of writers such as Russel Wallace, Thorstein Veblen, Karl Polyani, E. F. Schumacher, Kenneth E. Boulding, and Herman Daly, Robert Babe proposes infusing mainstream economics with realistic and expansive conceptions of information/communication in order to better comprehend twenty-first-century issues and progress toward a more sustainable, more just, and more democratic economic/communicatory order.

Full Product Details

Author:   Robert E Babe
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Inc
Imprint:   Westview Press Inc
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.10cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.453kg
ISBN:  

9780813326719

ISBN 10:   0813326710
Pages:   284
Publication Date:   24 November 1995
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Critical Studies in Communication and in the Cultural Industries -- Introduction -- Part One: Information and Communication in Mainstream Economics -- Information Industries and Economic Analysis: Policy-Makers Beware -- Commodities as Signs -- The Place of Information in Economics -- Part Two: Interrelations Between Economics and Communication Studies -- Communication: Blindspot of Western Economics -- On Political Economy -- Information, Economics, and Ecosystem -- Part Three: Information and Communication in Institutional and Evolutionary Economics -- T. R. Malthus and the Origins of Communication in Economics -- The Communication Theory of Thorstein Veblen -- The Communication Theory of Kenneth E. Boulding -- Part Four: Policy Applications -- Emergence and Development of Canadian Communications: Dispelling the Myths -- Telecommunications Policy: Real World of the Canadian Information Highway -- “Life is Information”: Canadian Communication and the Legacy of Graham Spry -- Conclusion -- About the Book and Author

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Author Information

Robert E. Babe is professor of communication at the University of Ottawa.

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