Robert E. Babe Cultural Studies and Political Economy Column:

This is second in a series of annual Topia columns exploring intersections between political economy and cultural studies. The first looked at money, proposing it has a cultural “bias” in the Innisian sense of unobtrusively and inadvertently helping to form a mindset and structure social relations through its predominance as a medium of communication (Babe 2003). Now I focus on Innis’s communication thesis per se, or what I have elsewhere termed “Canadian communication thought ” (Babe 2000), as being exemplary as a method of integrating political economy and cultural studies. Starting with Innis’s manner of integrating cultural studies and political economy, I next generalize Innis’s method by briefly summarizing properties of “Canadian communication thought, ” and consider factors endemic to Canada that could induce these properties. The bulk of the column, however, is devoted to the “communication writings ” of two of our most eminent contemporaries who mesh cultural studies and political economy in a manner very reminiscent of Innis. Those theorists are John Ralston Saul and David Suzuki. Innis and Canadian Communication Thought For most of his career, Harold Innis was an economic historian whose specialty was Canada. Only in the last decade of his life did he consciously turn to world media history and develop the “communication thesis. ” Innis maintained that economic theory should be closely integrated with economic history, as history affords the means of testing theory. He aimed, therefore, to develop a “philosophy of economic history or an economic theory suited to Canadian needs ” (Innis 1956:3). He identified three features as paramount—Canada’s trading dependence on other countries; her geogra-phy, particularly the inland water systems and the Precambrian Shield; and the unique character of her natural resources or “staples. ” He saw technological developments, particularly in the fields of transportation and communication, as interacting with geography and staples to disrupt established patterns of social interaction. Tensions resulted, according to Innis, when groups controlling the technologies associated wit