Book Reviews

Global Communications:
Toward a Transcultural Political Economy
Paula Chakravartty and Yuezhi Zhao (Eds.)
Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. 2008. Pp. 359.
ISBN: 978–0-7425–4045–3 (paperback), 978–0-7425–4044–6 (hardback)

This three-part book of 14 chapters has to contend with competition from well-
known or recent publications with similar or related titles, and which push a
related thrust of the increasingly significant role and influence of media and com-
munication in the global (sociocultural, economic, political, and security) arena.
The “threats” come from not only post-9/11 books (e.g., Crack, 2008; Kamalipour,
2007; McPhail, 2006; Thussu, 2007), which try to be more holistic in perspec-
tive and diverse in approach, but also books published or revised around the 9/11
period (e.g., Frederick, 2002; Wilkin, 2001) and more rigid pre-9/11 books (e.g.,
Tehranian, 1999; Hugill, 1999; McChesney, Wood, & Foster, 1998; Taylor, 1997;
Mowlana 1996, 1997; Stevenson, 1994; Comor, 1994), which tend to be historical
if not state-centric.
Hardly any of these “rivals” find much acknowledgment in the book under
review—although a “well-established body of literature” (pp. 6–7) and a “long
tradition in critical media studies” (p. 10) are recognized. The claim in the syn-
opsis that the book’s political economy “approach toward understanding the
uneven flows of global communications—emphasizing the state, the market, and
society” is “new” may not hold much weight considering the works, among oth-
ers, of Comor (1994), McChesney, Wood, and Foster (1998), and Wilkin (2001).
Understandably eschewing direct focus on electronic colonialism and world-sys-
tem theories (central in McPhail, 2006) and Habermasian public sphere theory
(used by Crack, 2008), this volume uses globalization and modernization theo-
ries to focus on an “overarching transcultural political economy framework” (pp.
3, 4, 10) while avoiding media-communication determinism (pp. 9–10).
The reference made to Karl Polanyi (pp. 5, 11) in relation to alternative politi-
cal economy theory is particularly significant in the context of the current global
economic recession that once again has exposed the limits and excesses of neo-
liberal free market thinking—resulting in calls for greater regulatory reforms,
especially in the USA and the UK. In mid-2009, news media reporting of pro-
nouncements on the need for an alternative global reserve currency by emerg-
ing-market politicians, particularly those from the Brazil-Russia-India-China
(BRIC) “bloc,” threatened the dominance of the US dollar. The “neoliberal trans-
formations of information, communication, and culture” is here perceived to be
“embedded” in society—“thus more dynamic and complicated” (p. 5). Indeed,

119
 Book Reviews

Chakravartty and Zhao’s book uses the mid- to late 1990s economic crisis to
highlight the paradoxes of globalization—especially in the “postneoliberal” era
(p. 7). These contradictions include the elitist neoliberal hegemonic aspect, with
an oligopolistic convergence, consolidation, and conglomeration order, against
the resistance-based counter-hegemonic disorder facet with transcultural and
grassroots dimensions (see also Crack, 2008, p. 2; Mowlana, 1996, synopsis).
Yuezhi Zhao captures such tensions in the chapter on China: “Just as com-
munication has been central to the Chinese state’s neoliberal turn in the post-
1989 era, it has also been central to the process of elite contestation and the
potential formation of counterhegemony” (p. 45). Olessia Koltsova refers to the
“Iranization” (p. 69) of Russia and the “Westerners-Slavophiles” tension (p. 70),
with the media playing ambivalent roles. Nearly every chapter tries to capture
these paradoxes, but not all of them necessarily conform neatly to the political
economy approach. Deviants include the chapters on Venezuela (Robert Duffy
and Robert Everton) and Singapore (Soek-Fang Sim). The latter focuses more
on ideological domination—in particular around the Singapore 21 discourse—
rather than direct control, thus raising “an urgent question about the continued
relevance of political economy” (p. 82). Although “it would be naive to dismiss
the importance of political economy,” the author argues, “it is clearly insufficient
to focus merely, as political economists do, on the elite’s direct control of the
media” (p. 94). The fact that theory, especially of the grand kind, is not taken for
granted could in itself be healthy—especially given that most chapters focus on
the global South.
In the Venezuelan study, Duffy and Everton point toward the inadequacy of
traditional Western perspectives in explaining Hugo Chavez’s eccentric engage-
ment with the media in the “Bolivarian Revolution.” Focusing on global com-
modification of cultural goods such as Ghanaian adinkra cloth, Boatema Boateng
goes beyond “Third World versus industrialized nations or global hegemony
versus local victimization” to “identify multiple sites of power . . . gendered
. . . cultural, political, and economic” (p. 166). In the East Asia study, Koichi
Iwabuchi foregrounds a shift from the “bipolar West versus non-West” argument
to “a dynamic interaction among non-Western media cultures” in the study of
“glocal” complexity (p. 144). In examining the collusive “intra-regional flows
and connection,” Iwabuchi focuses on Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and
to a lesser extent China (p. 144). This approach is also somewhat discernible in
Zhao’s chapter, which, apart from examining the “limits of the applications of
neoliberalism” in China, examines how “the Chinese case [is] different from
that of the right-wing Singaporean state discussed by Sim in this volume” (p.
43). The reduced obsession with North-South dichotomy is as refreshing as is
Marwan Kraidy’s reiteration of critical transculturalism—incorporating political
economy, culture, and power (pp. 189–190).

120
 Book Reviews

Apart from its theoretical basis, the empirical grounding of the book (espe-
cially with non-Western data) is declared in the synopsis as its forte—supported
by the “rich fare” verdict by Downing (2008). Although some chapters specify
methods of gathering primary data—such as extensive fieldwork in Marwan
Kraidy’s intercontextual study of Arab reality TV and Soek-Fang Sim’s use of
speeches and policies, newspaper archives (from the Lexis Nexis database, for
the Straight Times), and field interviews in the Singaporean case study—most
are largely based on a review of literature and a consolidation of previous or con-
tinuing work. Although not as up to date, the book—as would be expected in a
volume with this title in this age—does touch on new networked media technolo-
gies, especially in the chapters on China (Zhao), Palestine (Helga Tawir Souri),
and India (Chakravartty).
Compared to Kamalipour’s 2007 edited volume that primarily draws from
US contributors and Thussu’s 2007 volume that features well-known authors,
Chakravartty and Zhao declare their deliberate choice of mostly less well-known
authors of diverse backgrounds. This augments the richness of the book, suitable
for final-year undergraduates, postgraduate students, and faculty in a variety of
related disciplines.

References
Comor, E. (Ed.). (1994). The global political economy of communication: Hegemony, telecommuni-
cation and the information economy. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan.
Crack, A. M. (2008). Global communication and transnational public spheres. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Downing, J. (2008). Review of Media policy and globalization (P. Chakravartty and K. Sarikakis)
and Global communications: Toward a transcultural political economy (P. Chakravartty & Y.
Zhao). International Journal of Communication, 2, 12–13. Retrieved June 10, 2009, from http://
ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/article/view/289/126
Frederick, H. H. (2002). Global communication and international relations. Belmont, CA:
Wadsworth.
Hugill, P. J. (1999). Global communications since 1844: Geopolitics and technology. Baltimore,
MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Kamalipour, Y. R. (Ed.). (2007). Global communication. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth.
McChesney, R. W., Wood, E. M., & Foster, J. B. (Eds.). (1998). Capitalism and the information
age: The political economy of the global communication revolution. New York: Monthly Review
Press.
McPhail, T. L. (2006). Global communication: Theories, stakeholders, and trends. Malden, MA:
Blackwell.
Mowlana, H. (1996). Global communication in transition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Mowlana, H. (1997). Global information and world communication: New frontiers in international
relations. London: Longman.
Stevenson, R. L. (1994). Global communication in the twenty-first century. London: Longman.
Taylor, P. (1997). Global communications, international affairs and the media since 1945. London:
Routledge.

121
 Book Reviews

Tehranian, M. (1999). Global communication and world politics: Domination, development and
discourse. London: Lynne Rienner.
Thussu, D. K. (Ed.). (2007). Media on the move: Global flow and contra-flow. London: Routledge.
Wilkin, P. (2001). The political economy of global communication. London: Pluto Press.

Okoth Fred Mudhai

SuperMedia: Saving Journalism

So It Can Save the World
Charlie Beckett
Chichester, UK: Blackwell. 2008. Pp. 205.
ISBN: 978–1-4051–7924–9 (hardback), 978–1-4051–7923–2 (paperback)

You will either love him or hate him. In the first few pages you might, at times, be
tempted to close the book and look elsewhere. Charlie Beckett, in SuperMedia,
is forthright in his comments and analysis, and he lays into the hallowed world
of journalism early on. Journalists are objective seekers after the truth? Not at
all. Journalists are closer to their sometime archenemies—politicians—than they
would like to think. They are kindred spirits who “share a lack of time, an adapt-
able morality, and a love/hate relationship with the public, power, and the truth”
(p. 3). It is also an unusual business, where journalists have to produce a rarity
(a scoop) in order to attract a mass audience and it is one where accuracy comes
second to impact.
Beckett issues a wake-up call to the profession. We are now at the “tipping”
point and it is time to face up to the new realities of “citizen journalism.” These
citizens could be journalists. “I’m a citizen, too,” cries (literally) one quoted
in the foreword, but also include the banalities of the general population, later
disparagingly referred to as “monkeys,” who thrive on the Internet, revealing
humanity in its banality as well as its glory. At the Highway Africa Conference
at Rhodes University in South Africa in 2005, it was this very aspect of the jour-
nalist as professional or artisan that was central. The fear, of journalism being
downgraded from hallowed profession to mere trade, was palpable, and it is this
fear that Beckett tries to address. Beckett also says that journalism needs to be
redefined and broadened, including entertainment news. He is disturbed at the
tendency to “divide” professional and amateur. SMS pages of reader’s comments
in The Namibian newspaper, for example, are very much separated from “profes-
sional” editorial content.
The title of the book itself gives a clear indication that the superhero journal-
ist, the fighter for truth and objectivity, needs to be saved. It is a similar analysis

122
Copyright of Ecquid Novi: African Journalism Studies is the property of University of Wisconsin Press and its
content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's
express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.