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Political, Cultural and Technological Challenges

Edited by Tim Kuhn, associate professor of communication

“Matters of Communication: Political, Cultural and Technological Challenges” is an invitation to consider the consequences of thinking about communication as (im)material with respect to pressing political, cultural and technological problems.

Arguing against those who would separate the social world into the material and the symbolic, communication scholars increasingly assert that communication matters in social life precisely because it is the central nexus of constitution. The essence of communication exists at the point which objects, sites and bodies intertwine with—and become inseparable from—norms, ideologies and values in the production of social phenomena.

Pursuing this vision, the 10 chapters (along with a preface and introduction) provide theoretical and empirical examples that show how communicative practice constitutes efforts to shape communities, exercise control and engage in projects of social transformation. Taken as a whole, the volume capitalizes on our contemporary encounter with materiality to evoke conceptions of communication with the potential to open up novel engagements with political, cultural and technological challenges.