Transmitting Culture Revised Edition Contributor(s): Debray, Régis (Author), Rauth, Eric (Translator) |
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ISBN: 0231113455 ISBN-13: 9780231113458 Publisher: Columbia University Press OUR PRICE: $33.66 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: May 2004 Annotation: How do we explain the fact that certain ideas, at certain moments in time, can have earthshaking effects? Or that some cultures have left an indelible mark while others have not? Why did Jesus, rather than Mani the Mesopotamian or the Eastern god Mithra, take hold among masses of people? Why did Karl Marx instead of Pierre Proudhon or Auguste Comte leave his mark on the century? Behind these questions lies the matter of the human need to conserve, hand down, and transmit cultural meanings -- the study of the means of transmission and of the long evolutionary history of media. In a departure, Rgis Debray redefines communication as the inescapable conditioning of civilization's meanings and messages by their technologies of transmission and lays the groundwork for a science of the transmission of cultural forms -- in a word, mediology. "Transmitting Culture" examines the difference between communication and transmission and argues that ideas and their legacies should be rethought not in terms of "communication" from sender to receiver but of "mediation" by the vectors and messengers of meaning. "Transmitting Culture" stresses the technologies and institutions long overlooked by philosophy and the human sciences in the study of symbols and signs throughout the history of civilizations. Ranging widely from the history of religion and the printing press to the French and industrial revolutions, from the role and place of authority to scientific inquiry, "Transmitting Culture" establishes a new approach to the cultural history of communication. |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Popular Culture - Language Arts & Disciplines | Linguistics - General - Philosophy | Movements - Deconstruction |
Dewey: 306.42 |
Series: European Perspectives: A Social Thought and Cultural Criticism |
Physical Information: 0.43" H x 5.72" W x 8.76" (0.52 lbs) 224 pages |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: An examination of the difference between communication and transmission that stresses technologies and institutions long overlooked in the study of symbols and signs throughout the history of civilizations. |