James Carey and the legacy of Chicago school of sociology on communication and media studies

Although the communication issue has won intellectual status in modern thought and in the social research through the sociological school of Chicago, the communication and media studies have tended to neglect, with some exceptions, that crucial contribution. This paper will focus on the way James Carey, one of the most influent American theorists of media and journalism in the second half of XX century, considered, discussed, and critically embodied the reflection about communication in the Chicago School of sociology. By questioning the “standard” history of mass communication research confined to the functionalist and empiricist paradigm of mass communication, Carey points out the importance of reconsidering an argumentative, civic and universalistic conception of communication which was a legacy of Dewey, Cooley, Mead, and Park. Firstly, this paper proposes to show how Carey recovers and re-elaborates this notion to argue that communication is more than transmission of signals and signs. Supported by the Chicago tradition, he defines communication as a life experience found on human quality of intimacy, conversation, and on the understanding that comes from shared experience. Secondly, it presents Carey’s critique to the utopic features of this tradition, especially to the excessive expectations on communication technologies to improve the quality of culture and civic life. Finally, it discusses how Carey brings back the sociological communication concept of Chicago to confront it with a technical conception of communication that distinguishes the present media industry, showing how communication has lost its dimension of communion and sharing, and definitively tangled in a world of sophisticated economical and political strategies.