Harold Innis And The North

Harold Innis is widely understood as the proponent of the "Laurentian school" of historiography, which mapped Canadian development along an East-West axis. Harold Innis and the North turns the axis North-South by examining Innis's intense and abiding interest in the North, and providing new perspectives on this seminal figure in Canadian political economy and communication studies. This collection reveals that Innis's advocacy of the North was closely bound up with his vision of northern Canada as the site of a second industrial revolution based on mining, hydro-electric power, pulp and paper, and enabled by new forms of transportation. Long preoccupied with Canada's coming of age as a balanced and integrated industrial nation-state, Innis grappled with the same issues about the North in the Canadian nation that we are dealing with today. Chapters explore the breadth of Innis's northern activities, including his early studies of the fur trade, his biography of eighteenth-century explorer and cartographer Peter Pond, his review essays on the North for the Canadian Historical Review, his leadership of the Rockefeller-sponsored Arctic Survey, and his trip to the Soviet Union. Harold Innis and the North crafts a new narrative about the nature and scope of Innis's intellectual project and provides a unique appreciation of his multi-faceted professional identity. Contributors include Sergei Arkhipov (North-Ossetian State University and NGO Vladikavkaz Institute of Economics) Jeffrey Brison (Queens), George Colpitts (Calgary), Matthew Evenden (UBC), Barry Gough (Churchill College, Cambridge and Kings College, London), Paul Heyer (Wilfrid Laurier), Jim Mochoruk (North Dakota), Liza Piper (Alberta), Shirley Roburn (Concordia), Peter van Wyck (Concordia), Jeff Webb (Memorial).

A collection of original essays that moves beyond the prevalent view of Harold Innis as a technological determinist, Harold Innis in the New Century brings his innovative ideas to bear upon a variety of contemporary issues, such as postmodernism, liberalism, gender, and cultural policy.

A classic work of Canadian historical scholarship, first published in 1930. In his new introduction, A.J. Ray states that this book is argueably the most definitive economic history and geography of Canada ever produced.

Political Economy in the Modern State is Harold Innis’s transitional and, in some respects, his most transformative book. Completed in 1946, it is a collection of fifteen chapters plus a remarkable Preface selected and crafted to address four main themes: the problem of power and peace in the post-War era; the ascent of specialized and mechanized forms of knowledge involving, most particularly, the media, the state, and the academy; the crisis facing civilization and, more generally, the modern penchant for unreflexive short-term thinking in the face of mounting contradictions; and Innis’s growing focus on what would be called media bias. In this new edition, editors Robert E. Babe and Edward A. Comor provide not only a general introduction to Innis’s largely forgotten book but also dedicated introductions to each of its fifteen chapters and a comprehensive index. Together, Babe and Comor demonstrate how Innis’s volume reflects a shift in Innis’s focus, away from analytical relativism towards, instead, a reflexive search for objective truths.

The book is divided into three sections: "Reflections on Innis" provides a historical reassessment of Innis, "Gaps and Silences" considers the limitations of both Innis's thought and his interpreters, and "Innis and Cultural Theory" offers speculations on his influence on cultural analysis. The interpretations offered reflect the changing landscape of intellectual life as boundaries between traditional disciplines blur and new interdisciplinary fields emerge. Harold Innis in the New Century is a valuable resource for scholars and students of Canadian studies, communication studies, cultural studies, economic history, and political science. Contributors include Charles R. Acland (Calgary), Alison Beale (Simon Fraser), Jody Berland (York), James Bickerton (St Francis Xavier), William J. Buxton (Concordia), James Carey (Columbia), Ray Charron (Concordia), Cheryl Dahl (University College of the Fraser Valley), Michael Dorland (Carleton), Kevin Dowler (York), Donald Fisher (UBC), Sarah Fortin (McGill), Alain-G. Gagnon (McGill), Jane Jenson (Montréal), Heather Menzies (Carleton), Richard Noble (Winnipeg), Daniel Salée (Concordia), Liora Salter (Osgoode Hall), Kim Sawchuk (Concordia), Irene Spry (professor emerita, Ottawa), Judith Stamps (Victoria), and Andrew Werwick (Trent).

Best known for his writings on economic history and communications, Harold Innis also produced a body of biographical work that paid particular attention to cultural memory and how it is enriched by the study of neglected historical figures. In this compelling volume, William Buxton addresses Innis's engagement with the legacy of the fur trader and adventurer Peter Pond. Harold Innis on Peter Pond comprises eight texts by Innis, including his 1930 biography of Pond as well as his writings on the explorer's myriad activities. The book also features a collection of eight letters exchanged between Innis and Florence Cannon, a descendent of Pond with a strong interest in her ancestor's life and times, and an unpublished 1932 article on Pond's 1773–75 activities as a fur trader on the upper Mississippi, written by Innis's former student R. Harvey Fleming. Situating Innis's writings on Pond in relation to his broader body of biographical work, Buxton interprets what these texts tell us about Innis's intellectual practice, historiography, and the writing of biography. The book explores how Innis's perspectives shifted with changing intellectual and political circumstances and shows that his advocacy of Pond as an unrecognized "father of confederation" challenged conventional views of Canadian nation-building. A critical edition of previously overlooked biographical texts, Harold Innis on Peter Pond traces what these writings disclose about the biographer's character and values even as they discuss their subject.

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Empire and Communications" by Harold Adams Innis. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

Harold Innis was one of the most profound thinkers that Canada ever produced. Such was his influence on the field of communication that Marshall McLuhan once declared his own work was a mere footnote to Innis. But over the past sixty years scholars have had a hard time explaining his brilliance, in large measure because Innis's dense, elliptical writing style has hindered easy explication and interpretation. But behind the dense verbiage lies a profound philosophy of history. In Emergence and Empire, John Bonnett offers a fresh take on Innis's work by demonstrating that his purpose was to understand the impact of self-organizing, emergent change on economies and societies. Innis's interest in emergent change induced him to craft an original and bold philosophy of history informed by concepts as diverse as information, Kantian idealism, and business cycle theory. Bonnett provides a close reading of Innis's oeuvre that connects works of communication and economic history to present a fuller understanding of Innis's influences and influence. Emergence and Empire presents a portrait of an original and prescient thinker who anticipated the importance of developments such as information visualization and whose understanding of change is remarkably similar to that which is promoted by the science of complexity today.