LECTURE 3 COMM 2920

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LECTURE 3 - COMM 2920 The Nation-State in
Global Times 12 October 2006
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THE QUESTION What is the impact of
communications on the state?
1. THE STATE
2. GLOBALIZATION ( DOES IS REALLY EXIST?)
3. STATE ?? COMMUNICATIONS
4. COMMS AS A THREAT TO THE STATE
5. COMMS AS AN OPPORTUNITY FOR THE STATE
6. SOWHAT RELEVANCE FOR THE STATE?
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1. THE NATION-STATE

• This is obviously a hybrid word, linking the
  idea of the nation with the idea of state.
  While the former refers to what might loosely be
  termed people, that is, to a cultural entity
  often defined in terms of ethnicity, the latter
  refers to a set of institutions through which
  public authority is exercised within a particular
  territory.
• (Robert Holton 1998)

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1. THE NATION-STATE
State exercise of authority on a territory
(sovereignity)
1648 Peace of Westphalia
Nation cultural identity
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• 2. GLOBALIZATION

A social process in which the constraints of
geography on social and cultural arrangements
recede and in which people become increasingly
aware that they are receding (Waters 1995)
- End of geography Territoriality will
disappear as an organising principle for social
and cultural lifeit will be a society without
borders or spatial boundaries. In a globalized
world we will be unable to predict social
practices and preferences on the basis of
geographical location (Waters, 1995)

• Homogenization
• economies trend towards liberalizationpolities
  trend towards democratization and culture
  towards universalization (Waters 1995)

? interconnectedness
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• 2. DOES GLOBALIZATION REALLY EXIST?

- If you are totally illiterate and living on one
dollar a day the benefits of globalization never
come to you (Jimmy Carter)
- Something really new? QUESTION When does
globalization start?

• -1492?

- Earlier? 650-850 Expansion of Islam from the
Western Mediterranean to India 1100 Rise of
Gengis Khan (integration of Eurasia) 1300
Creation of the Ottoman Empire spanning Europe,
North Africa, and the Middle East 1492 and 1498
Columbus and de Gama travel West and East to the
Indies (age of European seaborne empires)
- Andre Gunder Frank (1992) 5000 years ago !!!
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• 2. DOES GLOBALIZATION REALLY EXIST?

• Globalization as a myth
• globalization reverberates through the
  corridors of politics, commerce, industry,
  scholarship, communication, environmentalism and
  popular culture. In moving from prophecy to
  assumption about the world, globalization is
  invoked to signify sweeping social, cultural,
  institutional change
• (Ferguson 1992)

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• 2. DOES GLOBALIZATION REALLY EXIST?

PROBLEMS Meaning. It is not clear whether the
different parties invoking globalization mean the
same thing or even if they are addressing the
same issue. Evidence. Neither the indices, nor
the extent, of its actual occurrence are always
clear. Evaluation. positive benefits or negative
costs are difficult to assess. The deeper
questions who is being globalized (or
de-globalized), to what extent and by whom?
?
Even if globalization did not exist, what is the
impact of the development of communications?
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• 3. COMMUNICATIONS ?? STATE

• Harold Innis technology of communications has
  been a determining factor in the structure and
  duration of empires

- Time-biased and space-biased media Media that
emphasize time are those that are durable in
character, such as parchment, clay, and stone. .
. .
Media that emphasize space are apt to be less
durable and light in character, such as papyrus
and paper. The latter are suited to wide areas in
administration and trade (Innis 1986)
Communications are essential for running a state
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• 3. COMMUNICATIONS ?? STATE

• Benedict Anderson communications create the state

• Imagined communities
• the state is an imagined political
  community... It is imagined because the members
  of even the smallest nation will never know most
  of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear
  of them, yet in their minds of each lives the
  image of their communion (Anderson 1983)

QUESTION What is typically British?
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• 4. GLOBALIZATION AS A THREAT TO THE STATE

• Threats to sovereignty

• Increased economic interdependence of
  nation-states
• Public debate may still be hostage to the
  outdated vocabulary of political borders, but the
  daily realities facing most peoplespeak a vastly
  different idiom. Theirs is the language of an
  increasingly borderless economy the traditional
  nation-states begin to come apart at the seams
  (Ohmae 1996)

• Increased political inderdependence
• multi-lateral organisations
• increasing number of international problems

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• 4. GLOBALIZATION AS A THREAT TO THE STATE

• The CNN Effect
• This is a common view of the power of the media,
  especially television journalism which through
  emotive images moves the public to demand action
  of its government. The CNN Effect, it is
  argued, pushes the government into foreign policy
  pursuits in response to public opinion(Lyn S.
  Graybill 2004)

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• 4. GLOBALIZATION AS A THREAT TO THE STATE

• WARNING

• - Sovereignty has never been absolute!

• TNCs do not operate outside national
  jurisdictions! (symbiosis)

• CNN effect widely rejected the media reflect
  governments agenda!

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• 4. GLOBALIZATION AS A THREAT TO THE STATE

• Threats to cultural identity

• Re-imagined communities (Morley and Robins
  1995) new technologies change peoples
  perceptions and experiences ? new imaginary spaces

• e-mail nationalism (Anderson) connection of
  migrants to causes of original homelands

• empowerment of minorities

• imagined worlds
• (a) ethnoscapes (b) mediascapes (c)
  technoscapes (d) finanscapes and (e) ideoscapes
  these landscapes, are the building blocks of
  imagined worlds
• that is, the multiple worlds which are
  constituted by the historically situated
  imaginations of persons and groups spread around
  the globe (Appadurai 1990)

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• 4. GLOBALIZATION AS A THREAT TO THE STATE

• the history of the world will inevitably
  have to be written as the history of a world
  which can no longer be contained within the
  limits of nations and nation-states as these
  used to be defined, either politically, or
  economically, or culturally, or even
  linguistically. It will see nation-states and
  nations or ethnic-linguistic groups primarily
  as retreating before resisting, adapting to,
  being absorbed or dislocated by, the new
  supra-national restructuring of the globe
  (Hobsbawm 1990)

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• 5. COMMUNICATIONS AS AN OPPORTUNITY FOR THE STATE

• In relation to sovereignty/power

• Country branding

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(No Transcript)
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• 5. COMMUNICATIONS AS AN OPPORTUNITY FOR THE STATE

• In relation to sovereignty/power

• Spin

• Media management

• E-government using comms technologies to
  deliver government information and services to
  citizens

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• 5. COMMUNICATIONS AS AN OPPORTUNITY FOR THE STATE

• In relation to cultural identity

• Development of communications can be used in
  support of local media

• Audiences look for familiar cultural products

• National broadcasting system public service
  (BBC)

• National press still dominant among print media

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• 6. WHAT RELEVANCE FOR THE STATE?

• Communications is crucial to the state

• Development of communications has a deep impact
  on the state

• Does this make the state less relevant?

Probably not
BUT YOU DECIDE!