Preface

 

This book combines the Eastern cosmological notion of yin-yang, which has some resemblance to the thesis-antithesis dialectic of Western philosophy, with the “new” systems thinking implicit in the theory of living systems to derive a dynamic humanocentric theory of communication outlets and free expression. The theory asserts that the dialectical interaction of the libertarian-authoritarian antinomy across space-time produces various shades of “social responsibility.” The antinomy represents the autopoietic interaction of energy/matter/information both at the micro and macro levels of a living system. Cognition, the process of life, which conjoins the micro with the macro, enables the antinomy at its particular level of operation to sense the socio-cultural factors relevant to its environment in producing these shades. The theory presumes an operationally closed but cognitively open far-from-equilibrium structure of communication-outlets and free expression at the main levels of the world system (e.g., the world/nation-state/individual levels, or the core/semiperiphery/periphery levels).

The book critically examines the West-centric biases of the classic Four Theories of the “press” (Siebert, Peterson, & Schramm, 1956) and their subsequent “improvements,” and it goes on to show that some contemporary scholars have confused the so-called “press theories” with varying genres of journalism. The Four Theories and its offshoots are based on West-centric history, theory, and practice. West-centrism and universalism are presumed to be one and the same. These normative theories are routinely used to evaluate the mass media of the entire world even though they are oblivious to non-Western history and philosophy. Habermas’s public sphere suffers from the same ethnocentric fallibility.

This book represents a modest attempt to help reverse the current imbalance in mass communication literature and to motivate more communication scholars from “non-Europe” to use Eastern theories to analyze various aspects of communication-outlets and free expression. The book examines how the mass media systems, or what I prefer to call systems of communication-outlets, evolve through the lens of the emerging theory of living systems—combining the theories of autopoiesis, cognition, and dissipative structures—and world-systems analysis.

 I have looked at democracy, journalism, libertarianism, social responsibility, and authoritarianism from the perspective of Eastern philosophies—Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Daoism, and Legalism. I have also used the perspective of postcolonial subaltern studies to examine the relevance of the concepts derived from “ancient” Eastern philosophy to the theory and practice of contemporary state-press relations.

The globalization of West-centric press theories is a reflection of the intellectual domination of the West from the time of Enlightenment. The highly lopsided global communication infrastructure that we see at the beginning of the 21^st century makes it difficult to escape the continuing reality of domination. Autopoiesis of social systems is the natural defense that prevents cultural annihilation of “non-Europe.” The subaltern studies’ project of “provincializing Europe” (Chakrabarty, 2000) calls for the selective retention of universals applicable to the modern nation-state while discarding totalizing Eurocentrism. Such a response is consistent with the autopoietic operation of living systems.

Some may see my analysis of state-press relations from the perspective of Eastern philosophies as a shift from empirical-analytic (“technical”) approach to “mysticism.” However, as Capra (1996, [1975]1999, 2002) and others (e.g., Goswami, 1993; Zukav, 1979) have documented, the basic presumptions of the main strands of Eastern philosophy—the unity, dynamism, and part-whole interdependence of the universe—are remarkably in accord with the presumptions of both quantum physics and deep ecology. I take the view that “transcendental philosophy” offers useful insights that science can neither prove nor disprove. Science cannot handle either the mystery of subatomic physics or the mysticism of Eastern philosophy. All phenomena cannot be reduced to empirical “laws.”

This book’s origin goes back to a paper I prepared in 2001 for an ASEAN symposium on communication and media studies at Universiti Kebangssaan Malaysia and later presented to the Communication Theory and Methodology Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication at the annual convention in Miami Beach, August 2002. I have benefited from the many sharp criticisms of various anonymous reviewers from the time I submitted the basic idea of this book as a conference paper.

Positivists (adherents of empirical-analytic science), historicists (adherents of historical-hermeneutic disciplines), and emancipatory critical theorists are all likely to see my theoretical approach in different ways. Neither Eastern philosophy nor complexity science—two of the main ingredients used to derive my theoretical framework—has yet penetrated the citadels of Western social science. However, if Laozi’s “mysticism” is close to the reality of quantum physics, then the mystery of the Dao may also help our understanding of social science, including state-media/“press” relations.

Social scientists who continue to devalue Eastern philosophy, however, are implicitly following the West-centric modernization paradigm laid out by Montesquieu, Hegel, and Marx, all of whom justified European imperialism because the “most advanced people” had an obligation to help human emancipation. Ali Mirsepassi, the author of Intellectual discourse and the politics of modernization (2000), has analyzed the work of these three intellectual luminaries to demonstrate their deep prejudice against non-Western cultures. Mirsepassi traces the “clash of civilizations” thesis conceptualized by Bernard Lewis and elaborated by Samuel Huntington to the same line of thinking.  I call on my readers to “unthink” the prejudices of these Western intellectual luminaries and engage in humanocentric theory building.