REVISED: 8.14.98   
 

 

HON 491

COMMUNICATION AND CIVILIZATION

Department of Communication

University of Hawaii at Manoa

Fall 1998

 

Professor: Majid Tehranian <majid@hawaii.edu>
Graduate Assistant: Jan Huston <jhuston@hawaii.edu>
Office: George Hall 334; Tel.: 808-956-3353
Office Hours: T,Th 1:00-5:00 pm or by appointment
Class Meetings: M 1:30-4:00 pm, Hawaii Hall Room 1

 

This seminar explores the role of communication in the development of human civilization from its premodern to modern, and postmodern trajectories, focusing on changing communication technologies in relation to the evolving economic, political, and cultural modalities of life. Each student is responsible for four book reviews (about 5 pages each) dealing with the four sections of the course and a research paper of about 15-20 pages on a topic selected in consultation with the instructors. Course evaluation will be based on class attendance and participation (10%), four review essays (10% each), and the research paper (50%).

The purpose of the seminar is to develop an appreciation of continunity and change in history through an archeology of differerent layers of communication technologies and power systems.

 

GLOBAL CLASSROOM

We are going to employ the resources of the Internet as much as possible to obtain the feel of a global classroom without walls. If you haven't already, please obtain an Internet account. That will enable you anytime during day or night to "talk" to your instructor, fellow students, and teleprofessors who will be featured in the course from time to time. In addition, it also will enable you to surf the net at your own leisure and pleasure. A good introduction to how to surf the net can be found online at the World Wide Web under the tile of Zen and the Art of Internet. There are many others on the bookshelves of the computer sections of any good bookstore. Teleprofessors in this seminar will include scholars from around the world who have agreed to give a telelecture followed by a question and answer period. As soon as you have your own Email Account, you should sign up for membership in the Academy for Global Communication and Education (ACE) by sending the following message:

To: listproc@hawaii.edu

Message Text: SUBSCRIBE ACE-L PutYourFirstNameHere PutYourLastNameHere

Example: SUBSCRIBE ACE-L John Doe

Your participation in this forum is required. You will keep up with the discussions and ask at least one question from each telelecturer. Happy surfing!

 

SCHEDULE

DATES TOPICS READINGS/VIDEOS

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Part I. Communication As Civilization

Aug 24 - Introduction Joseph Campbell, Videotape 1496

Aug 31 - The Fragility of Civilization Freud, Jung, Sorokin, Spengler, Toynbee, V 10587, 7641, 71492

Sep 7 - Holiday: Labor Day

Sep 14 - The Bias of Communication Marshall McLuhan, Videotape FIRST REVIEW ESSAY DUE Student Presentations

Written notice of students' choices of readings

Part II. Communication and Premodern Civilizations

Sep 21 - Communication and Religious Civilizations Videotapes 3800, 1363. 3796, 19194, 2296, 4657

Sep 28 - Communication and Agrarian Empires Videotapes 13712, 10196, 10193

Oct 5 - Communication and the Silk and Spice Roads The Silk Road, Videotape 7879

Oct 12 - SECOND REVIEW ESSAY DUE Student Presentations

Part III. Communication and Modern Civilizations

Oct 19 - Print Revolution and Democracy America, Videotape 5073

Oct 26 - Electronic Revolution and Ideology Radio Days, Videotape

Nov 2 - Computer Revolution and Technocracy Frontline high stakes in cyberspace VIDEOTAPE 12916

Nov 9 - THIRD REVIEW ESSAY DUE Student Presentations

Part IV. Communication and Postmodernity

Nov 16 - Communication and Globalization Information Society, Video 124

Nov 23 - Communication and Localization Stuart Hall, Videotape

Nov. 30 - Clash or Dialogue of Civilizations Apocalypse Now, 1903, 6603

Dec 7 - FOURTH REVIEW ESSAY DUE Student Presentations

Dec 14 - RESEARCH PAPER DUE

 

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY (*indicates availability in the UH Bookstore)

Part I. Communication As Civilization

Talal Assad, The Genealogy of Religion

Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy

Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power

Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

Christopher Chase-Dunn and Thomas D. Hall, Rise and Demise: Comparing World Systems

Alistair Cooke, Civilization

James Carey, Communication as Culture

*David Crowley and Paul Heyer, Communication in History: Technology, Culture, Society

Hugh D. Duncan, Communication and Social Order

Norbret Elias, The Civilizing Process: The History of Manners and State Formation and Civilization

Jacques Ellul, The Technological System

Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish

Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization

Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality

Michel Foucault, The Order of Things

Michel Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic

Michel Foucault, Power /Knowledge

Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents

Pietre Geyl, Arnold Toynbee, and Pitrim Sorokin, The Pattern of the Past

Jurgen Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action

Jurgen Habermas, Communication and Evolution of Society

Harold Innis, The Bias of Communication

Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Marshal McLuhan, Medium is the Massage

Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man

R. D. Laing, Divided Self

Arnold Pacey, Technology in World Civilization

Pitrim Sorokin, The Basic Trends of Our Time

Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West

Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave

Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History

Immanuel Wallerstein, The World System

Part II. Communication And Premodern Civilizations

Janet AbuLughod, The World System Before 1800

Marcia and Robert Ascher, Quipu: A Study in Media, Mathematics and Culture

Confucius, Writings

A. G. Frank & B. K. Gill, The World System: Five Hundred Years or Five Thousand?

Henri Frankfort et al., Before Philosophy: The Intellectual Adventure of the Ancient Man

Jack Goody, Domestication of the Savage Mind

Jack Goody, The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society

Jack Goody, The Interface between the Written and the Oral

E. Havelock, The Muse Learns to Write: Reflections on Orality and Literacy from Antiquity to the Present

*Harold Innis, Communication and Empires

Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy

Walter Ong, Orality

Muhsen Mahdi, The Philosophy of Ibn Khaldun

Huston Smith, The Religions Of Man

Levi Straus, Savage Mind

Lao Tzu, Tao Teh Ching

Part III. Communication And Modern Civilizations

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities

Roland Barthes, Writing Degree Zero

Roland Barthes, Image, Music, Text

James Beniger, Control Revolution : Technological and Economic Origins of Post-Industrial Society

Walter Benjamin, Illuminations: Essay and Reflections

Peter Berger, Homeless Mind: Modernization and Consciousness

Pierre Bourdieu, Distinctions

D. Czitrom, Media and American Mind: From Morse to McLuhan

Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Social Impact of Print

Stuart Ewen, Channels of Desire

Stuart Ewen, Captains of Consciousness

Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

Franz Fanon, Studies in a Dying Colonialism

M. K. Gandhi, An Autobiograph

Alvin Gouldner, The Dialectics of Ideology and Technology

Alvin Gouldner, The Future of Intellectuals

Heather Hudson, Global Connections: Telecommunication Infrastructures and Policy

Malcolm X, An Autobiography

O. Mannoni, Prospero and Caliban: The Psychology of Colonialism

Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy

Joshua Meyerowitz, No Sense of Place

Michael Parenti, Make Belief Media

Ithiel de Sola Pool, The Social Impact of the Telephone

Theodore Roszak, The Cult of Information

Edward Said, Covering Islam

Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism

Edward Said, Orientalism

Herbert I. Schiller, Information and the Crisis Economy

Katharine Kia Tehranian, Modernity, Space, and Power: The American City in Discourse and Practice

*Majid Tehranian, Technologies of Power: Information Machines and Democratic Prospects

Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution

Part IV. Communication And Postmodernity

Benjamin Barber, Jihad vs. MacWorld

Jean Baudillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death

Elise Boulding,. Building a Global Civic Culture: Education for an Interdependent World

M. Christine Boyer, CyberCities : Visual Perception in the Age of Electronics

Fred Dallmayr, Beyond Orientalism

Wimal Dissanayake, Global/local : Cultural Production and the Trans

Franco Ferrarotti, The End of Conversation: The Impact of Mass Media in Modern Society

Michel Foucault, This Is Not a Pipe

Michel Foucault, Power /Knowledge

Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere

Jurgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity

Cees Hamelink, The Politics of International Communication

Linda M. Harasim, ed., Global Networks

David Harvey, The Conditions of Postmodernity: An Inquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change

Daisaku Ikeda & Majid Tehranian, Choose Dialogue

Mark Juergensmeyer, The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State

William Kuhns, The Post Industrial Prophets: Interpretations of Technology

Philip Lee, ed., Democratization of Communication

Joshua Meyerowitz, No Sense of Place

Ali Mohammadi, Globalization and International Communication

Niel Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death

Neil Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood

Mark Poster, Mode of Information

Mark Poster, The Second Media Age

Howard Rheingold, Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier

Howard Rheingold, Virtual Reality

Colleen Roach, ed., Communication and Culture in War and Peace

Deanna Campbell Robinson, et al., eds., Music at the Margins: Popular Music and Global Cultural Diversity

Theodore Rozak, The Cult of Information

Dariush Shayegan, ed., L'impat de la pensee occidentale red-il possible un dialogue real entre les civilisations?

Gerry Sussman, Communication, Technology, and Politics in the Information Age

Katharine & Majid Tehranian eds., Restructuring for World Peace: At the Threshold of the 21st Century

Majid Tehranian, Global Communication and World Politics, ms.

Alvin Toffler, Future Shock

Tu, Wei-Ming et al., The Confucian World Observed

Sherry Turkle, The Second Self

Gainni Vattimo, The End of Modernity

Sophie Watson & Katherine Gibson, eds., Postmodern Cities and Spaces

Richard Wordman, Information Anxiety

Daniel Yergin, Commanding Heights

 

REFERENCES

Commission on Global Governance, Global Neighborhood.

Peace and Policy, Journal of the Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research

The International Encyclopedia of Communications

United Nations Development Program, Human Development Reports

World Bank, World Development Reports

 

USEFUL WEBPAGES

There are many sites on the Internet relevant to communications studies. You can purchase books on the Internet a discounted prices through <www.amazon.com>. The World Wide Web (WWW) homepage of the Department of Communication at the University of Hawaii has a good listing of sources of information, including Listservs, WWW sites, dictionaries, bibliographies, journals, jobs, government agencies, corporations, non-governmental organizations, etc. You can access the websites through Netscape or MS Explorer.

Department of Communication, University of Hawaii at Manoa:http://www2.soc.hawaii.edu/css/dept/com/com.html Toda Instiutte for Global Peace and Policy research: http://www.toda.org