Establishing Communication Studies: A Unique Canadian Tradition

What is it that best defines the unique flavour if any, found in Canadian Communications Studies (CCS) which distinguishes it from the rest? One way to explore this is to look towards its disciplinary foundations laid down during its inception. What borders do those foundations trace out, what are they made of, how were they constructed, and who constructed them? To answer these questions Robert Babe, in the paper “Foundations of Canadian Communication Thought” (2000), provides a historical narrative of the academic roots of CCS. For Babe, there absolutely is a distinctly Canadian flavour which was forged by the 5 “foundational Canadian communication theorists”: H. A. Innis, George Grant, Northrop Frye, C. B. Macpherson, and Marshall McLuhan. These founders minted that flavour as decidedly dialectical, critical, holistic, greatly concerned with ontology, oriented towards Political Economy, and concerned with mediation and dynamic change.

While Babe spends equal time on all 5 theorists, it seems clear to me that he believes that Innis is the most important of all, of whom, the rest are essentially disciples. Innis was interested in the development, expansion, and collapse of large societies. The expansion of the British Empire into what we now call Canada, he claimed, though originally fueled by a desire for the exploitation of staples could only have occurred through networks connecting “imperial centres and their colonial margins”, mediated through modes of transportation and means of inscription (Babe, 2000, p. 5). Communication, thus, takes centre stage and the conflicts which inevitably occur at such margins demand consideration of contradictions and ultimately, dialectical thinking.

Babe (2000) argues that, while Innis is immersed in a variety of dialectics, the space-time dialectic, which splits societies into time-bound or space-bound and communication modes into time-binding or space-binding, is central to it all. Time-bound cultures utilize time-binding media which are slow to propagate but help to establish tradition, culture, and resiliency. In opposition to that are space-bound cultures which use “primarily space-binding media - media that are light, transportable, easy to work with, and have a large capacity to carry and store messages” (p. 5). Babe’s analysis of Innis’s work as dialectical may indeed be a fair approximation. Innis’s grand history presented in “The Bias of Communication'' (1949), for example, is rife with stories of conflict, with modes of communication and inscription at the centre. For example, Innis proclaims that “[i]n England suppression of printing contributed to the outbreak of civil war” (Innis, 1949, p. 472). And that the “[i]ntroduction of the alphabet meant a concern with sound rather than with sight or with the ear rather than the eye” (Innis, 1949, p. 462). McLuhan doesn’t sound so original now, does he? Conflict, power, and the Political Economy of the media are at the centre of Innisian thought and, since he was so active during its infancy, he may well sit at the centre of Canadian Communications thought. Sure. But, why the other 4?

I found this paper challenging, not simply for the fact that dialectics is the throughline, and how I hate dialectics! But, also because I’m simply eager to believe Babe. Who am I to question his narrative? This paper is after all the second paper in the “Millenium Issue” of the Canadian Journal of Communication, an issue which aimed to retroactively consider the 26 years of history of the journal, and by proxy, define the history of CCS. And herein lies one of the key problems of this article. By presenting a history he helps to construct the foundations of CCS himself. The “foundational Canadian communication theorists” then, are not simply the 5 listed above, there is in fact another: Babe himself! He’s conducted a sort of magic trick here by distracting the reader from the fact that he is the active agent in the show. He’s the designer and constructor of the foundations. As Sara Ahmed says, we can “think of citations as bricks. When citations become habits, bricks form walls” (Ahmed, 2015). While Innis, McLuhan, and the other ol’ boys no doubt left their marks and fired their own bricks, Babe selected them and aligned them to form foundations, walls, and his dream home - or “shelters” as Ahmed might say. A home that we may be all too happy to inherit. There's no need to build a new home, what a timesaver! But if we’re not careful, we may simply accept the placement of the windows and walls, and overlook the vistas that they obscure.

So, what are we to do? Tear the house down? Pulverize the bricks? Start from scratch? I think the essential task is neither to quickly move into the house nor to tear it down but to walk the land, examine the bricks and the houses, and to boldly ask ourselves “what kind of house do I want”? The possibilities are many. Maybe we’re fine with the house we inherited from Babe. We move in, decorate, and get on with our lives. But, if so, then we’re excluding all other possibilities. I’m not willing to simply live in the house Babe built, nor do I fully accept the foundations as he’s laid them, however, I’ll examine them and take mental notes. Maybe I do like Innis as the cornerstone, at least it’s a sturdy starting point, but from there I’ll take my time to choose and lay the rest of the bricks. I’m fine camping in the forest for now.

References

Ahmed, S. (2015). Feminist Shelters | feministkilljoys. https://feministkilljoys.com/2015/12/30/feminist-shelters/

Babe, R. (2000). Foundations of Canadian communication thought. Media, Structures, and Power: The Robert E. Babe Collection, 25(1), 193–216.

Innis, H. A. (1949). The Bias of Communication. The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, 15(4), 457–476.