Communication, Commerce and Power: The Political Economy of America and the Direct Broadcast Satellite, 1960-2000 [Hardcover]

In this history of US-based direct broadcast satellite developments, the United States and other nation-states are shown to be the ultimate arbiters of their ongoing histories. In making this now unfashionable argument, Edward A. Comor directly challenges recent academic work that tends to privilege global processes over national, and argues that the contemporary world order is being shaped primarily by transnational rather than nation-state-based forces. In testing this orientation with empirical research on US foreign communication policy since 1960, Communication, Commerce and Power compels academics and policy makers to rethink commonplace assumptions about the characteristics and potentials of the contemporary and future international political economy.Preface - List of Acronyms - Introduction - Critical Perspectives on US Foreign Communication Policy - Telesatellite Policy and DBS, 1962-84 - Foreign Communication Policy and DBS: 1962-84 - DBS and the Structure of US Policy Making - Exporting Liberalisation and the Ascendancy of Trade - Capital, Technology, and the United States in an 'Open Market' Regime - Conclusion: Communication, Culture and American Hegemony - Bibliography - Index

'It represents a completely new approach to disciplinary scholarship within the field of international communications that can only serve to give the field greater academic weight and integrity.' - Philip M. Taylor, University of Leeds

'The book provides a thorough examination of the role played by the US in the establishment of an international regime characterised by free flow of information principles institutionalised through free trade goals...relevant not only to the academic reader interested in theoretical approaches to understand how the world order is shaped, but also to regulators and policy-makers interested in the evolution of DBS from a political economy perspective.' - Luiz Fernando Ferreira Silva, Telecommunications Policy