This article was downloaded by: [Bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal]On: 02 December 2014, At: 13:09Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK

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A Review of: “PeterSimonson. Refiguring MassCommunication: A History.”Reviewed by Joli Jensen aa Hazel Rogers Professor of Communication ,University of TulsaPublished online: 04 Mar 2011.

To cite this article: Reviewed by Joli Jensen (2011) A Review of: “Peter Simonson.Refiguring Mass Communication: A History.”, Mass Communication and Society, 14:2,264-266, DOI: 10.1080/15205436.2010.530386

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15205436.2010.530386

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BOOK REVIEW

Peter Simonson. Refiguring Mass Communication: A History.Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2010, 229 pp., ISBNNo. 978-0-252-07705-0 (paperback).

Reviewed by Joli JensenHazel Rogers Professor of Communication

University of Tulsa

Peter Simonson describes his book as a ‘‘contrarian rehabilitation project’’designed to contribute to a humanist ‘‘third way’’ of communication study—an alternative to both social science and cultural-critical traditions. In sixloosely connected essays he takes the reader through a rhetorical history ofthe term ‘‘mass communication,’’ then offers serial interpretive biographiesof Paul of Tarsus, Walt Whitman, Charles Horton Cooley, and Robert K.Merton, and finally walks the reader through a Pennsylvania countyfair. He ends this unorthodox history with an endearing effort to justify thejourney.

I was happy to follow along with Simonson (currently an associateprofessor of communication at the University of Colorado–Boulder) onhis reclamation tour. His style of communication inquiry was my ownintroduction to what Hannah Arendt calls an ‘‘enlarged mentality.’’ AsSimonson notes, Arendt describes how one ‘‘trains one’s mind to govisiting’’ by taking on, and getting inside, the imaginative perspective ofothers (p. 178). So I was more than willing to ‘‘go visiting’’ with Simonson,as he walked me through his imaginative perspective on Paul, Whitman,Cooley, Merton, and a county fair.

In the opening essay on the term ‘‘mass communication,’’ Simonsontraces how, from the 1930s to the 1970s, a broadcasting paradigm keptthe term allied with advertising campaigns, psychological warfare, and coldwar concerns. Simonson then offers an intriguing alternative conceptualmap, mobilized by five kinds of mass communication—what he calls maza

Mass Communication and Society, 14:264–266, 2011Copyright # Mass Communication & Society Division

of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication

ISSN: 1520-5436 print=1532-7825 online

DOI: 10.1080/15205436.2010.530386

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or barleycake communication (drawing on the metaphor of shared sancti-fied bread); liturgical communication (comparable to James W. Carey’sritual view); abundant communication (various proximities of multitudesin space and time); communication with, among, to, or from the masses;and social totality communication. I could happily have read more onwhat he means in each case, but Simonson has people to see and placesto go.

So in the next chapter we head to biblical Tarsus and hang out with Paul,exploring his First Letter to the Corinthians as a ‘‘classic, originating text inthe intellectual and social history of mass communication.’’ Simonson char-acterizes Paul as an ‘‘apostolic activist’’ who critiques public communicationin the ekklesia in Corinth, putting Christ’s body into writing. And then it’soff 19th-century Mannahatta to stroll with the young Walt Whitman andhis vision of democratic polytheism as embodied in both his biographicalexperience and ‘‘Leaves of Grass.’’ And then we’re on to Michigan to visitwith early 20th-century sociologist Charles Horton Cooley, knowing thatmidcentury academic Robert K. Merton is waiting in the wings and thatwe’ll end up, somehow, at a 1990s country fair.

The Cooley chapter was for me the most satisfying intellectual ‘‘visit’’ inthe book. Simonson argues—correctly, I believe—that Cooley (not theusually credited John Dewey or George Herbert Mead) led the way inAmerican communication study at the turn of the 20th century. This chaptersituates Cooley biographically and intellectually in ways that supportSimonson’s contention that he is historically significant and ‘‘good to thinkwith.’’ Amply footnoted, gracefully written, studded with quotes andinsights—this chapter would be an ideal introduction to Cooley but alsoto anyone interested in imagining communication as creating selves, institu-tions, communities and cultures.

As do the earlier chapters, the Merton chapter combines biography, his-tory and rhetorical analysis to ‘‘refigure mass communication,’’ this time bydrawing on primary documents, including Merton’s letters as well as anintriguing 1966 television debate between Merton and Marshall McLuhan.This is an original and useful account of an influential scholar, and it show-cases the value of Simonson’s idiosyncratic combination of intellectualbiography, rhetorical inquiry, and informal theorizing. Like the rest of thebook, it demonstrates how mass communication—in the right hands—canbe ‘‘good to think with.’’

And then finally we end up at the fair, an ‘‘embodied ritual gathering of abroad local public’’ (p. 165). The final essay is an informal participant-observation study that veers off into reflection and analysis. Enjoyable asit is, it feels tacked on, although Simonson works hard to show how the fairconnects with aspects of Paul, Whitman, Cooley, and Merton.

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Simonson wants to offer us an alternative to both social scientific andcultural-critical approaches to mass communication scholarship; my senseis that readers committed to either of these traditions can enjoy ‘‘going visit-ing’’ with Simonson. He is an eager, insightful host, and the figures he caresabout and the ideas he develops are interesting ones. At the very least, thisbook proves that there has always been (and still can be) much more tostudying mass communication than worrying about hegemony or figuringout effects. Refiguring Mass Communication is a valuable, idiosyncratic,and unorthodox history that readers from many fields, as well as communi-cation scholars, can use to, in Arendt’s terms, ‘‘enlarge their mentality.’’

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