From Marshall McLuhan to Harold Innis, or From the Global Village to the World Empire

Gaëtan Tremblay Université du Québec à Montréal 

ABSTRACT 

The author presents a personal reading of the pioneering contribution to communication studies made by two Canadian thinkers: Marshall McLuhan and Harold A. Innis. Running countertop the general trend stressing their similarities, he highlights their differences. Rejecting their technological-determinist standpoint, the author proposes a comprehensive and critical summary of their analytical frameworks and methodologies, seeking to assess the influence they have had on his own perspective, tracing the contributions they have made to the evolution of communication research. The author’s viewpoint is condensed in the title: we should go back from McLuhan to Innis, from a framework inspired by the global-village metaphor to one based on the expansion of empire. Keyword's Innis; McLuhan; Media theory; Technology theory; Globalization

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2461/052b29f05b97336a489bdde4f0cd21d7eb3c.pdf

The Toronto School of Communication Theory:

Interpretations, Extensions, Applications

Rita Watson & Menahem Blondheim (Eds.), 

https://www.academia.edu/30222120/Rita_Watson_and_Menahem_Blondheim_Eds_The_Toronto_School_of_Communication_Theory_Interpretations_Extensions_Applications

 Toronto/Jerusalem: University of Toronto Press/The

Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2007, 366 pp., $32.95 (paperback).

Reviewed by

Bob Hanke

York University, Canada

 This book focuses on Harold Adams Innis and Marshall

McLuhan as scholars at the geographical centre of the Toronto School

of communication theory. It thus joins a substantial list of Canadian

works that have examined and assessed the contributions and legacies

of these two foundational thinkers in the field of communication

(Kroker, 1984; Stamps, 1995; Willmott, 1996; Acland & Buxton, 1999;

Babe, 2000; Theall, 2001; Cavell, 2002; Heyer, 2003; Marchessault,

2005; Genosko, 2005). This volume is the product of a transnational

network of 17 authors, two editors and two university presses. It

emerged out of the Toronto School sessions at the 9th Biennial

Jerusalem Conference of the Israeli Association for Canadian Studies,

held at Hebrew University in 2002. It contains a Forward by Elihu Katz,

an afterword by David Olson, and 13 chapters organized into three

parts: Interpretations, Extensions and Applications. The contributors

are mainly from Canada, Israel and the U.S. Four of the five chapters

in Part I were based on previous articles or are reprinted from the

Canadian Journal of Communication. 

For readers who may still be unfamiliar with the academic lives of

 these two towering figures, the editors have provided brief biographies.