Graham Murdock - Resume and Abstract

Name	Graham Murdock
Title	Reader in the Sociology of Culture at Department of Social Sciences Loughborough University
Brief Introduction	Graham Murdock is Reader in the Sociology of Culture. His main interests are in the Sociology and Political Economy of Culture. He has written extensively on the organisation of the mass media industries; and on the press and television coverage of terrorism, riots and other political events. His current work is on advertising and on the social impact of new communications technologies Before moving to Loughborough he taught at the University of Leicester. He is currently an external professor at the Institute for Mass Communication at the University of Bergen, Norway.
Recent Publications	McGuigan, J., Graham Murdock, Michael J. Pickering, and Natalie Fenton (Eds.). (2008). Media and Culture. Sage Publications. Deacon, D., Michael Pickering, Peter Golding, and Graham Murdock. (Eds.). (2007). Researching Communications: A Practical Guide to Methods in Media and Cultural Analysis. Oxford University Press, USA ; 2 edition. Murdock, G. and Janer Wasko. (Eds.). (2007). Media in the Age of Marketization. Hampton Press. Murdock, G. (2005). Communication and Critical Inquiry. Sage Publications. Murdock, G. (2004). Communication and Modernity. Hodder Arnold, Murdock, G. and Peter Golding. (2004). “Dismantling the Digital Divide: Rethinking the Dynamics of Participation and Exclusion” in - Andrew Calabrese and Colin Sparks (eds) Toward a Political Economy of Culture: Capitalism and Communication in the Twenty-First Century. Lanham. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Paper:

Communication and Transformation: The Cultural Contradictions of Globalised Modernity

Graham Murdock
Loughborough University

Abstract: It is indisputable that much Western communications scholarship has been based, either openly or by default, on the assumption that accounts developed to address western experiences and ambitions had universal applicability. Against this, we are now witnessing increasing demands for perspectives that acknowledge the cultural specificity and irreducibility of non western formations and practices and the consequent need to decentralise and pluralise approaches to communications. But is approaching the transformations of the current world system through the prism of de-westernisation the most productive way forward ? This paper argues that it may not be and outlines a critical perspective that starts from unfolding processes rather than spatial or cultural maps.

As a preface to this task it is first necessary to interrogate the history of modernity as a globalised but variable and multiple project and to identify its contradictory legacies

These processes are still unfolding but over the last three decades they have been increasingly entangled with three other movements -the globalisation of capitalism , the globalisation of risk, and the digitalisation of communications. The second half of this paper examines these intersections and the ways they are restructuring communications and culture, paying particular attention to the emerging economies of Asia. It argues that the key conflicts are not between the ‘West’ and the ‘Rest’ but between the world wide romance with markets and consumerism, the revivification of national and religious fundamentalisms, and the emergence of new forms of cosmopolitan citizenship.