Suchergebnisse

In der aktuellen Debatte über Kabel- und Satelliten-Technologie im Kommunikationsbereich wird die traditionelle Sorge um Inhalte und Überparteilichkeit des Rundfunks abgelöst von Fragen der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung und der Industriepolitik. In Irland bestimmen Fragen der nationalen Identität die Diskussion um das Rundfunkwesen, welches weder durch Haushaltsbeschränkungen noch durch neoliberale Wirtschaftspolitik beeinträchtigt wird. (AuD-Hng)

A Community Studies tradition based on the theory and methods of a functionalist social anthropology has since the 1930's been the dominant one in both characterising the social structure of rural Ireland and in theorising social change in Ireland in general. This social anthropological method, while of possible utility in the study of primitive cultures and peoples, confronts certain difficulties when attempts are made to employ pure ethnographic analysis as a method for studying social change in either urban or rural settings in industrialising societies like Ireland. Despite attempts to do so, the Community Studies tradition has been unable to establish a coherent method for the study of local social systems and their structural relations of dependency on wider social, economic and political forces at play in capitalist social formations. Instead, it has fallen on an isolationist approach to studying local areas. In Irish sociology this abstractionism is inevitably undergirded by some variant of the modernisation thesis in which 'traditional life and culture' is progressively 'threatened' by the onslaught of urban‐industrial modernity.

This article examines recent developments in the communication sector in Japan in the light of the recent economic meltdown of the former miracle economies of South East Asai. It argues that the telecommunications, computer and electronics industries are undergoing a restructuring of their activities under the state-endorsed banner of `multimedia' which, we suggest, is an extension of earlier rhetorical strategies concerned with the promotion of an `information society' in Japan. We look in particular at Sony Corporation's activities as it seeks new points of convergence between its computing, telecommunications and entertainment software interests in an increasingly deregulated national and global communications environment. Our investigation of the current relationship between the Japanese state and corporate interests like Sony leads us to take issue with those sociologists and media theorists who would have us believe that the phenomenon of `informationalization' is best understood as the appearance of post-industrial economy and polity based on `collective reflexivity'. We argue instead that multimediatization represents a drive by Japanese capital to restore conditions of profitable accumulation, a phenomenon which is increasingly drawing the other countries of South East Asia into Japan's `circuits of capital'.