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Muhammad Ahsan Syed ms02743

Rahma Mian

Communication and Culture

9th October 2018

A Cultural Approach to Communication

One of the many important aspects that I believe is important in academia even to this date

is the idea of constantly questioning. Whether it is to question the claims of one’s own self or

questioning other scholars and their claims. That is exactly how the author, James Carey, starts off

with his work ‘Cultural approach to communication’. He starts talking about a prominent

philosopher, John Dewey, whose work on philosophy has largely revolved around human

experiences. James Carey starts to question about John Dewey’s views regarding communication

where he claims that ‘communication is wonderful’. He looks into his two famous views of

communication and also comes up with his own definition which states that ‘Communication is a

symbolic process where reality is produced, repaired, maintained and transformed.’ James Carey

discusses these processes in detail and concludes by saying how communication studies needs to be

reanalyzed to and why studying communication is important.

John Carey starts his work by questioning the ‘wonderfulness’ of communication, as claimed

by John Dewey, when through communication we hear so many bad news and information which

clearly is not wonderful at all. Which makes us feel more anxious rather than wonderful (Carey 13).

When we look into the work of John Dewey we notice that he used communication in two different

senses or definitions but there was conflict between these ideas. Both definitions come from

religious origins but with different experiences. One is called the transmission view of

communication and the other is called the ritual view of communication. (Carey 14)
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Transmission view literally came from the metaphor transportation and means simply

transmitting and giving information to others. Carey says that this view became the most dominant

in his culture or more specifically in the industrial culture. Through this view the movement of both

people or goods and information were seen as the same and both were termed communication even

though there’s a difference between them (Carey 16). In my opinion this can also come under the

same definition of transmission or exchange of information because whenever people travel to

different places they’re not just moving from one place to another but they are also moving their

own experiences and stories as well. But the main idea behind this view of communication was

nothing but to take control of land by transmitting information over long distances.

James Carey further adds that the transmission view derives from the ancient dreams of

humans which is the desire to increase the speed and effect of messages as they travel through space.

With that being said I think one can argue about it that this dream of ‘humans’ that he talks about

only refers to the people in power at that time. So in this way it comes to light that transportation

and actual exchange or direct exchange of information was thought to be the same until the

telegraph was invented. But even with this invention, the desire to control people and distances still

remained. It is quite fascinating when we discuss about the roots of the transmission view of

communication we get to know that they are actually religious even though it seems to be more

economical or political. However, after analyzing the time period of this transportation of people

and information it was noted that most of those were all inspired by the Roman Catholic churches.

These churches simply wanted to extend the kingdom of God, go and conquer lands, show the

native people of those land their self-proclaimed ‘true path’, make a second Jerusalem outside

Europe, save all other non-European people and create a new world for them. Any movement

whether to America or to Africa or Australia was not transmit information but spread Christianity
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itself and extend the kingdom of God as it was thought to be a Holy duty of theirs. James further

talks about inventions like telegraphs which we always associate with science and technology are

deeply rooted with religion as most of the inventions of the past were in a time where religion had

influenced most of these inventions, which is true even to this day and age. All these inventions in

one way or the other are propagated by religion and also used to spread religion as well. Telegraph

could be taken for example where used to further spread was the message of God faster. Now at

this point there became a clear difference between communication and transportation where

communication was seen as more superior as it helped in the transfer of thought faster over longer

distances. The author talks about this view that with time this form of view became popular and had

started to get associated with science itself but its history is never really eliminated as it always

remain rooted with religious intentions. This same sense of moral improvement is always there with

every new technology. (Carey 16) Let’s assume for example that with the new technologies today

where we are trying to find life in outer space we somehow end up making contact with extra-

terrestrials. Even in that case there will be tension among us humans as we will be bound to morally

improve them, save them and show them the ‘real’ path.

The second view of communication was the ritual view which is one of the oldest views of

communication. This view is different from the first one because here instead of transmission it is

more based on sharing and participation in the knowledge or information we have. It doesn’t root

towards extension of messages but the ‘maintenance’ of society in time. It basically is a

representation of shared beliefs within a society. It draws people together under these same beliefs

and the structure of beliefs. The highest manifestation of this view is actually the maintenance of the

religious beliefs which serves as a controller for the whole society itself. This view has never been

able to escape its religious roots as compared to the transmission view which gradually happened
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due to the advent of many tools which had some scientific proposes involved in as well. Scholars

who have studied this view of communication state that according to this view, society is a world

revealed to us that is made of projection ideals created by a community. These projections and their

embodiment in the form of music, dance, art etc. of a particular community don’t necessarily

provide new information but represent an ‘order of things’ (Carey 18).

The ritual view of communication has not been very dominant in the American scholarship.

Since culture plays a very important role in this view of communication it’s no surprise for it not

being dominant in American scholarship because for one thing, the concept of culture is a very weak

notion in American social thought (Carey 19). Even if we were to look at the current scholarship

that talks about the role of culture we must heavily rely on European or European inspired

American scholarships but that causes a great deal of misunderstanding because most of them are

heavily influenced by their own biases. Trying to define and understand a culture from an outsider’s

perspective is a very difficult task. Even if someone does that, it will be through their own

experiences as an outsider and not as a person who was born in that very culture. We can take the

example of John Everett who went to Brazil to study (spread Christianity among) the people of

‘Piraha’. All of his study and analysis are from his own perspective and we know about their culture

through his interpretation. That still doesn’t mean we know everything about their culture because it

is from a perceptive of one man who lived only a few years with them. This all can lead to a great

deal of misunderstanding. (Colapinto 2007)

An example of a newspaper is given to differentiate between the two views. The

transmission view of communication will see it as a transfer of information and knowledge whereas

in the ritual view the very same idea of a newspaper is said to help in maintaining and reconfirming
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of already believed views. Nothing new is learned but our point of views are just maintained. So

news reading and writing becomes a ritual act where there is little to no transfer of actual

information but rather just point of views of already established knowledge. One thing important to

be noted here is ‘whose’ point of view is transferred. The point of view of the people in control of

the newspaper and the mass media is the one that is actually transferred instead of any actual

information. Under ritual view, news becomes drama and having dramatic forces controlling it with

action and trying to influence the points of views of one another. (Carey 21) An example of this can

be given by the news of our army given to us by the media where no actual news is given but just

points of views about what these ‘dramatic forces’ (our news channels in this case like BOL) wants

us to think about the army.

One thing is clear for sure that neither of these views deny the existence of the other. Ritual

view does not exclude the possibility of transfer of actual information and transmission view does

not deny ritual views definition as well. It is clear from this that there is some sort of tension

between these two views. When John Dewey said ‘communication is the most wonderful” he might

have meant it because communication makes human relations. It helps in social bonds. The very

existence and maintenance of society is because there is communication. (Carey 22)

With the analysis of both of these views of communication by John Dewey it is evident that

the transmission view has dominated in our world. The author James Carey believes that in order for

solid achievement to understand communication itself, we will have to reopen the analysis of the

tension between John Dewey’s two views about communication and will also seek help from

different resources from different platforms of knowledge. (Carey 23)

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In order for James Carey to get a new and fresh perspective on communication he looked

into the work of old scholars like Weber, Durkheim and even colleagues and descendants of Dewey

himself from Chicago school and drew a definition of communication where he thinks is a symbolic

process where reality is produced as well as repaired, maintained and transformed. (Carey 23)

In order for us to understand his view on communication, he tries to explain it by saying that

we as humans don’t realize the importance of symbolic forms of communication as they actually

gives form to human existence itself. These symbolic forms could be language, music, art etc. The

author talks about social sciences which takes any regular or normal thing that occurs in our daily

social lives and tries to explore these particular miracles. That is why Dewey claimed communication

is wonderful and as he knew that whenever there was an information gap, knowledge grew from that

point because we had the wonderful phenomena of communication. (Carey 24)

Through observation we all can attest to the fact that there are events that happen and

through symbols of communication we name these events of the real world. So this reality that we

talk about isn’t something that is already present but it’s something that we have created through

human experiences and communication. It is because of these symbols of communication like

language that reality is made. It is not something completely independent or there to discover, rather

we create our own realities. So what is being said here is that existence itself is produced by these

symbolic realities that we have created. That means if one has to question and analyze

communication then we should have an idea that all this comes because of the phenomena of

experience that we face every day and is not something already ‘existing’ in nature. (Carey 25)

In order for us to understand what James Carey means by symbolic forms in communication

he gives an example of a school going child and the relation between the house and school of that
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child. So if the child doesn’t know the way from home to school then this situation becomes

problematic one and here communication comes into play where we use a map which have symbolic

forms like a collection of lines and patterns on paper which solves the problematic situation. These

symbolic forms could exist in other ways as well like for example it can be a poem or song with

directions or a dance move hinting directions from home to school etc. These symbolic forms also

differ from language to language, people to people. There are some symbolic forms that help solving

a problematic situations. This sort of mapping and creating an understanding of a situation is very

much related in religion and story-telling where preachers and religious scholars try to map reality

itself. They represent the space and also maintaining it as well through many different acts. All these

are symbolic forms of communication. (Carey 27). One thing that is important to note here is that

the representation in this case which helps to solve or make sense of a problematic situation will

only work when the representation is shared and understood by others and there is a possibility that

one representation of something can have two different meaning in the minds of others. (Hall 18)

Here each symbolic act is displaced and produced. Displaced in a sense that they are able to

make sense of a complicated act when the thing is actually not present. Productiveness helps in

making an infinite number of symbolic elements that are used. A map basically produces a simplistic

model of a complicated space. It is because of this map that space is made manageable. Though it

should also be noted that there is a possibility that a same space can be represented with different

maps which in term make different realities. So these maps not only constitute the idea of reality-

making but also constitute nature itself. (Carey 28)

The author tries to talk about nature where he questions the very nature of thinking itself.

Thought is actually the constructor of such maps that help in solving problematic situations. This
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thought actually produces reality that we see and do every day but thought itself is also dependent

on symbols of communication too. The author explains that thought is seen as a very private thing

that only we know and we produce ourselves and is not effected by anything from the outside

because it is ours only. But then James Carey explains that thought is actually public because it relies

on or is influenced by external symbols available to us at any given time. Whenever we think or are

made to think is because we have absorbed any or all of these symbols of communications that are

out there in the public. These could be anything like a song you heard in a café, a painting you saw

on social media, or any article that you read once. All of these are external or public symbols of

communication which influence our thoughts. (Carey 28)

The reality that we produce rests upon a particular quality of symbols of communication.

This quality is their ability to become both ‘for’ and ‘of’ representations of reality. In order to explain

what it means we can take the example of the map of a house. When we want to know the relation

of the house, the map will represent itself ‘for’ that reality where the relation is simply defined. When

we want a description of the house then a map is something that can be pointed towards which

simplifies the house and gives the reality ‘of’ the house. So symbols ‘of’ represent and simplify reality

whereas symbols ‘for’ create the very reality they are present in. (Carey 31) In case of an example

from a local perspective we can say that religious rituals for example ‘Eid-ul-zha’ represents ‘of’

reality which is the nature of human life that celebrate this event i.e. sacrificing animals in order to

understand what sacrifice is. But at the same time constructs reality as well. And when someone asks

about ‘Eid-ul-Azha’ then to simply portray what the event is becomes ‘for’ representation of reality.

We humans produce our realities and our world by symbols and then live in it as well. But

this reality is also maintained because no matter what it is that is produced, when the new generation
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comes they will feel the need to transform it or reshape it. (Carey 31) For example in the context of

Pakistani societies the reality of marriage in a household is slowly transforming. Children were not

given any choice regarding whom they should marry but this reality has transformed now and slowly

a new reality is emerging where the children are getting the chance to have a choice. So this reality

has now changed and is being maintained and transformed slowly and steadily as we speak. So one

very important thing that we should take out from this discussion is that we need to be ready to toss

out authoritative realities that we have built up because it will keep on changing. A few thousand

years ago people had this authoritative reality that we are in the center of the universe and everything

revolves around us but this changed over time as well even though a lot of people had made this

reality authoritative. (Newton 17)

James Carey concludes his piece by saying that in order for us to study communication we

should know about these symbolic forms, how they are created and used. However many scholars

would argue that it is still very important to get rid of the current notions of communication. A

variety of symbols systems like, science, journalism, religion, mythology etc., are constructed so that

we are able to produce express and transmit our knowledge towards a particular reality. One thing

about studying communication itself is that it is not something there in nature to be discovered. We

study it by creating models ‘of and for’ aspects. One model tells us the process of communication

and the second model is the production of the process or behavior that we told or described which

we talked about before. In order to study communication we have to discover models in our culture

that tells us how this miracle of films, dance, music, art, etc. are there. These models are found in

religious traditions and scientific theories. Traditionally these models that we talk about were

believed to exist in religious thought only. But today they are found more in science though they

have the same implications as religious thought. (Carey 32)

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The scientific model relies more on transmission view communication and has represented

itself in terms of power and anxiety models through many different theories present in it. What the

James Carey says is that in this model all of the diversity of communication is ultimately reduced to

either power or flee anxiety (which heavily rely on modern institutes) which again is the reason why

the analysis of communication becomes much more important. These models are both ‘for’ and ‘of’

communication and helps in explaining more about it because in every art, music, welfare work or

teaching lies these models of human contact and interaction. So our models actually create as

opposed to what we thought it was i.e. to describe. (Carey 33)

If we follow Dewey’s work we begin to identity that the problems of communication are

linked with problems of community itself. Our lives are shaped by experiences and representation of

these experiences which is communication. (Carey 34) It is true that through models of

communication we are able to produce maintain and transform reality but when there is a lack of

model and we are unable to describe, share and interact with one another that is where we fail

because our models have failed and we see the problems of communication. James Carey says that

because of our obsession with the transmission view of communication we derived everything to

power, politics, trade and therapy when we look at our society. Our analysis at the moment are just

chaotic because we heavily rely on modern culture. Even in terms of communication and advances

in communication we always see these advances in the form of the advances different technologies

that are used in communication as an opportunity for politics and economics. We never have looked

the advance of communication in terms of expanding people’s power or ability to learn and

exchange ideas. So this idea of understanding communication shouldn’t just be understanding why

communication is ‘wonderful’ itself but also to rebuild a models ‘of and for’ communication which

helps in the restoration of communication itself. (Carey 34)

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The author James Carey first took the work of John Dewey and analyzed his two views of

communication namely the transmission view and the ritual view. After studying both of them and

acknowledging the tension between the two he also presented his own view on communication as

well. James Carey explained why he thought communication as a symbolic process and also

discussed how it maintains, creates and transforms reality and also came to a conclusion about

communication as to how much important it is for human experiences and how important is the

need to study and reanalyze communication.

References:

CAREY, JAMES W. "A CULTURAL APPROACH TO COMMUNICATION." Theorizing

Communication: Readings Across Traditions (2007): 37.

Colapinto, John. “The interpreter.” The New Yorker, 16 April. 2007,

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/04/16/the-interpreter-2. Accessed 25th

September 2018.

Hall, Stuart, ed. Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices. Vol. 2. Sage, 1997.

Newton, Isaac. "The Structure of Science." (1900).

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