James Carey

A Critical Reader

Eve Stryker Munson and Catherine A. Warren, editors

$26.00 Paper

ISBN: 0-8166-2703-7

ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-2703-5

An essential guide to the thought of a central figure in media studies.

"James Carey is among the nation's leading cultural historians." —Esquire

James Carey—scholar, media critic, and teacher of journalists—almost single-handedly established the importance of defining a cultural perspective when analyzing communications. Interspersing Carey's major essays with articles exploring his central themes and their importance, this collection provides a critical introduction to the work of this significant figure.

Long before the "interpretive turn" became the fashion in the humanities and sociology, Carey was busily studying and combining the ideas of an impressive array of philosophers, sociologists, historians, and anthropologists, including John Dewey, Clifford Geertz, Raymond Williams, Thomas Kuhn, Max Weber, C. Wright Mills, Richard Rorty, Jürgen Habermas, Harold Innis, and Lewis Mumford. In James Carey: A Critical Reader, seven scholars who have been influenced by him consider his work and how it has affected the development of media studies.

Carey has demonstrated that mass communications serve a complex function in society, with one central question reflecting his concerns: How does one make democracy work in a vast country that spans a continent? In his view, symbols, language, and those who create them are reality-creating, rather than reality-reflecting. Carey has examined the roles the media and the academy have played in creating and maintaining a public sphere, as well as the ways technology helps or hinders that project. Carey's themes range from the strains on democracy and drawbacks of technology to the critique of journalism and the politics of academe.

"A volume of this kind is long overdue. While James Carey has come to be recognized as one of the most creative and influential thinkers in communication studies and journalism, he has also been 'curiously underread.' This volume goes a long way towards correcting this situation." —Canadian Journal of Communication

"Whether Carey is writing about the history of media studies or the technology of journalism, this is a rich and rewarding book­ and a wonderfully convenient assortment of essays that had been until now scattered throughout books and journals that not every library is likely to have." —Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly

"For a quick, easily accessible collection of one of the major communication scholars whose work is read both in communication, journalism, and in allied fields, this is an excellent volume." —Ellen A. Wartella, The University of Texas at Austin

Contributors: G. Stuart Adam, James Carey, Carolyn Marvin, John Pauly, Jay Rosen, and Michael Schudson.

Eve Stryker Munson is assistant professor at Pennsylvania State University. Catherine A. Warren is assistant professor at North Carolina State University.