Intrinsitivity

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to examine Armand Mattelart’s book entitled Networking the World: 1794 – 2000. Although this book is relatively short in length at only 123 pages, it is, nevertheless, concisely constructed to concentrate its contents, ensuring maximum meaning with a minimum of language. I imagine this book to be received as highly informative and deeply provocative to a vast majority of its readers.

Table of Contents

1. Author Biography
2. Book Summary
3. Book Analysis
4. References

Author Biography

Armand Mattelart is a professor of information and communication sciences at the Université de Paris-VIII and the author of numerous other books, including Mapping World Communication and The Invention of Communication. (Mattelart, 2000) Born in Belgium in 1936, Mattelart has traveled extensively around the world presenting his thoughts on globalization and the evolving impact of technology. (Infoamérica, 2006) He has been fired at least once due to outside pressure and at least one of his books has been censored in the U.S. (Infoamérica, 2006)

Book Summary

Networking the World: 1794 – 2000 analyzes historical trends towards socioeconomic globalization with special regard to attempts by American powers and pro-American representatives to install ethnocentric hegemony over global communication networks. This book stands replete with historical data supporting Mattelart’s argument that this hegemonic push is leading to an exclusively economically aligned homogenization of disparate cultures. This trend is, in Mattelart’s view, creating an inevitable monoculture or McWorld from which there is no viable escape. (Mattelart, 2000, p. 103) Mattelart ends his book not on a hopeful note, but by reaffirming his argument that historical trends suggest a future marked by “intolerance fanned not only by exclusivist nationalisms but by free-market globalism.” (Mattelart, 2000, p. 123)

Book Analysis

At the heart of Mattelart’s multifaceted argument rests an assumption that by controlling international communication networks, controllers and advocates of globalization are surreptitiously destroying microcultures in the idealistic name of free information flow. This mantra extends to include unrestricted access by multinational corporations to any and all information that it feels potentially important for ensuring its economic interests. As Mattelart (2000, viii) explains, “the gap is widening between market rationality and cultures, between a technoscientific system that is being generalized and the wish to affirm a sense of belonging.”

Mattelart begins his book by discussing the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, the treaty that ended the Thirty Years War and contained within its principles a recognition of legal status and equality of nation-states as entities removed from official religious control and, specifically, control of the Holy Roman Empire. (Mattelart, 2000, p. 1; Peace, 2006) This starting point, which one might note chronologically precedes that which the title of the book suggests, is an unusual choice for what is partly a discussion on the dangers of transnational control of cultures. For, it represents a longstanding, nearly millennial prior attempt at control of several Germanic microcultures by the Holy Roman Empire, with a dual emphasis on reviving the much older Western Roman Empire and subjugating feudal subjects under theocratic interpretations of medieval Christian dogma. (Holy, 2006)

In essence, Mattelart’s starting point establishes, by the end of his book, a doubly dismal historical timeline whereby Western powers are seen to have shifted their locus of control from a theocratic framework to an even scarier plutocratic one. The difference between the two frameworks is especially striking in its revelation of the historical progression of state control. While a theocracy governs through the religiously imposed subjugation of personal beliefs as prescribed by rigid boundaries of proper social conduct, most who live obediently by its allegedly divine decrees at least remain aware, if only through religious ritual, of those boundaries and are, therefore, free to either live and die as directed or, alternatively, with luck on their side, to find effective means of escaping detection or punishment.

This is not the case with a secular plutocracy, governing as it does through the definitively decentralized networks of a knowledge-based economy. With today’s communication networks extending across the globe and reaching deeper and broader by the moment into the hearts, minds, and, more importantly, pocketbooks of everyone in need of some form of communication, there is no place-or virtual nonplace-left to hide. Though we no longer worry about burning in Hell for voicing opinions against the church, we now face the prospect of the quintessential Orwellian tragedy in which opposition to globalization becomes punishable by something like socioeconomic excommunication.

Classic democratic notions of personal rights include the right to publicly voice one’s opinions, the right to publish one’s thoughts and ideas, and the right to practice one’s religion. All such rights are theoretically ensured by the U.S. Constitution’s 27 Bill of Rights, and, principally, Amendment I, which includes in its coverage each of the relatively basic rights listed above. (Bill, n.d.) The Bill of Rights emphasizes in its phraseology a U.S. citizen’s innate right to express his or her unique desires without fear of government intrusion or censure. (Bill, n.d.) However, it is not the average citizen of a “free culture” who benefits most from globalistic developments. As Mattelart explains, “Globalization is above all a model of corporate management that, in response to a growing complexity of the competitive environment, creates and promotes competencies on a global level with a view of maximizing profits and consolidating market shares.” (Mattelart, 2000, p. 76)

According to Mattelart, by equating “freedom of commercial expression” with “freedom of speech,” globalization becomes a morally subversive process. (Mattelart, 2000, p. 91) It is essentially an economic Trojan horse, that tempts foreign populations with sensationalized dreams of wealth and happiness through unlimited potential for individual gain, while stealthily stripping from them their original cultural and social sensibilities and siphoning away what corporate interests perceive as their most valuable stores of human capital. Globalization is, thus, not a people’s movement to democratize information flow or a diplomatic cross-sharing of global human and natural resources. It is a “first world” marketing ploy whose objective is to ensure the monopolization of those resources.

There are many excellent quotes to be found in Networking the World. Even translated, Mattelart’s succinct and semantically compact writing style crosses the French-English language barrier to raise poignant points about globalistic trends. One such passage I find particularly poignant as a conclusion for this book’s analysis: “Only a mediacentric view of society can delude people into believing that a planetary perspective can be reduced to being exposed to foreign lands and transboundary information, programs, and servers.” (Mattelart, 2000, p. 115)

References

Bill of Rights. (n.d.) The National Archive Experience. The National Archives. Retrieved October 16, 2006, from http://www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html.

Holy Roman Empire. (2006, October 10). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 06:42, October 16, 2006, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Holy_Roman_Empire&oldid=80580222.

Infoamérica. (2006). Armand Mattelart (1936-). (Google, Trans.) Retrieved Sunday, October 15, 2006 from, http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.infoamerica.org%2F
teoria%2Fmattelart1.htm&langpair=es%7Cen&hl=en&safe=off&ie=UTF-8&
oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools.

Mattelart, A. (2000). Networking the World: 1794 – 2000. (Carey-Libbrecht, L. & Cohen A., J., Trans.) Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press. (Original work published 1996).

Peace of Westphalia. (2006, October 9). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 06:20, October 16, 2006, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Peace_of_Westphalia&oldid=80511679.

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