James Carey

A Critical Reader

1997

Eve Stryker Munson and Catherine A. Warren, editors

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

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 in media and cultural studies.

“James Carey is among the nation’s leading cultural historians.” --Esquire

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

These essays get to the heart of Carey's concerns with journalism, politics, and culture.

John Pauly

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.

Contributors: G. Stuart Adam, Carleton U, Canada; James Carey, Columbia U; Carolyn Marvin, U of Pennsylvania; John Pauly, St. Louis U; Jay Rosen, New York U; Michael Schudson, U of California, San Diego.

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

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

James Cary is among the nation’s leading cultural historians.

Esquire

These essays get to the heart of Carey's concerns with journalism, politics, and culture.

John Pauly

American culture, unlike its European counterpart, seldom rewards or recognizes the public intellectual. Carey is an unique American treasure. This project will undo that cultural wrong.

Norman K. Denzin

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, University of Texas at Austin