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Global Communications: Toward a Transcultural Political Economy. Edited by Paula Chakravartty & Yuezhi Zhao. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2008. 359 pp. ISBN 9780742540446.
Many books on the topic of globalized communications take the singular perspective that the state and the market act exclusively, and mutually, as sites of oppression In Global Communications: Toward a Transcultural Political Economy, editors Paula Chakravartty and Yuezhi Zhao expand on this perspective by indicating that it is possible for the state and the market to also be sites of empowerment The text discusses the topic of neoliberal globalization by melding disdplinary boundaries, combining cultural studies, postcolonial theory, sociology, and theories of political economy. The intent of the editors is clear: neoliberal globalization continues to perpetuate dominant systems of political economics. The goal of combining empirical study with theoretical analysis of state, market, and civil society that approaches the problematic through lenses that unveil and critique social inequalities is, I would suggest, integral for creating substantive change and is refreshingly incisive.
Intentionally rejecting organizing of the text by geography, this anthology uses a relational understanding of domination and resistance as distinctive forces, declaring them as not mutually exclusive, but rather as forces in continual play. The anthology consists of 14 chapters organized into three sections and all written by junior to midrange scholars. The sections are: 1) The State and Communication Politics in Multiple Modernities, 2) Embedded Markets and Cultural Transformations, and 3) Civil Society and Multiple Publics. These sections culminate in a transcultural political economic analysis to describe unequal power relations between cultures.
The line of argument features...