Communications, Time and Power: An Innisian View

Abstract

Political economy in the western world will be compelled to broaden its range and to discuss the implications of competition between languages, religions and cultural phenomena largely neglected by it. 1 Innis' 1946 statement holds revolutionary implications for political theory, especially regarding "the significance of communications to the problem of empire." 2 Its broad social reach reflects a continuity and coherence in the problems Innis studied, the methods he used and the multi-factoral ecological approach he foreshadowed. In his last work, Empire and Communications, Innis wrote that he had been "influenced by a phenomenon strikingly evident" in his early study of "Canadian economic history [and] the French, British, and American empires." 3 1