Preview

Book. Reading. Media

Advanced search

Straightening the Maelstrom: McLuhan, the “New Columbuses” and Media Ecology

https://doi.org/10.20913/BRM-2-2-5

Abstract

The article is a reflection on Varvara Preter’s (Chumakova) book In the Center of the Cyclone, which reveals the possibilities of instrumentalizing M. McLuhan’s theory to study contemporary media realities. The format of “reflections on the book” is used to trace non-obvious but relevant and heuristic connections and contexts. One of them is the work of P. Sorokin, which anticipates M. McLuhan’s initial position on the universality of media. In the logic of V. Preter’s book, the effects of oblivion, characteristic of the circulation of scientific knowledge, appear as a reaction to information overload. The idea of information aggregation as a form of creativity, which actualizes the authorship of “secondary” genres, is discussed as a productive one.

About the Author

N. V. Veselkova
Ural Federal University named after the First President of Russia B. N. Yeltsin, Ural Institute of Humanities, Department of Political Science and Sociology, Department of Applied Sociology
Russian Federation

Veselkova Natalia V., Candidate of Sociological Sciences, Associate Professor

Lenin Ave, 51, Yekaterinburg, 620083



References

1. Ageeva GM (2020) Literary blogs and podcasts as formats of book media events. Bibliosfera 1: 102-107. (In Russ.)]. DOI: https://doi.org/10.20913/1815-3186-2020-1-102-107.

2. Alexander J (2013) The meanings of social life: a cultural sociology. Moscow: Praxis. (In Russ.).

3. Antonovskiy AYu and Barash RE (2021) The «system of sociology» by Pitirim Sorokin and the systemic communicative approach. Monitoring obshchestvennogo mneniya: ekonomicheskie i sotsial’nye peremeny 6: 528-548. (In Russ.). DOI: https://doi.org/10.14515/monitoring.2021.6.1950.

4. (2010) Aromas and smells in culture. Bk. 1. 2nd ed., rev. Moscow: Novoe lit. obozrenie. (In Russ.).

5. (2010) Aromas and smells in culture. Bk. 2. 2nd ed., rev. Moscow: Novoe lit. obozrenie. (In Russ.).

6. Barkhatova LА (2020) Structural Features of Russian Sociologists’ Communication: An Online Community Case Study. Monitoring of Public Opinion: Economic and Social Changes. 5: 204-221. https://doi.org/10.14515/monitoring.2020.5.1656. (In Russ.).

7. Belov SA and Lazareva DG (2011) Training the university students to control their educational and cognitive activity using blogs. Izvestiya Altayskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta 2-2: 13-16. (In Russ.).

8. Baudrillard J (2000) Symbolic exchange and death. Мoscow: Dobrosvet. (In Russ.).

9. Vanevskaya PN (2021) Sensory ethnography as a methodological resource for qualitative research. Interaktsiya. Interv’yu. Interpretatsiya 13 (2): 8-26. (In Russ.). DOI: https://doi.org/10.19181/inter.2021.13.2.1.

10. Vlasenko E (2022) The book blogger as an actor: the transformation of social roles in literature. Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 4: 360-376. (In Russ.).

11. Vorobyeva IS (2022) The role and place of book blogs in the popularization of modern foreign literature. Sovremennaya nauka: aktual’nye voprosy, dostizheniya i innovatsii: sb. st. XXV Mezhdunar. nauch.-prakt. konf. Penza, pt. 1, pp. 143-147. (In Russ.).

12. Glebovich TA and Novikova AD (2020) Educational blogging on Telegram channels: concepts and forms of content representation. Izvestiya Ural’skogo federal’nogo universiteta. Seriya 1, Problemy obrazovaniya, nauki i kul’tury 26 (3): 57-70. (In Russ.)]. DOI: https://doi.org/10.15826/izv1.2020.26.3.049.

13. Kachkaeva AG and Novikova AA (eds) (2021) Enchanted place. Media consumption, media literacy, and historical memory of rural population. Moscow: Izd-vo Vyssh. shk. ekonomiki. (In Russ.).

14. Simmel G (2000) From the «Excursus on the sociology of feelings». Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 3: 5-13. (In Russ.).

15. Kim AV and Maltseva DV (2022) Professional online community of Russian sociologists: topics of discussion and structure of social interactions. Monitoring obshchestvennogo mneniya: ekonomicheskie i sotsial’nye peremeny 3: 151-174. (In Russ.). DOI: https://doi.org/10.14515/monitoring.2022.3.2106.

16. Latour B (2017) Visualization and cognition: drawing things together. Logos 27 (2): 95-156. (In Russ).

17. McLuhan M (2003) Understanding media: the extensions of man. Moscow: KANON-press-Ts; Zhukovsky: Kuchkovo pole. (In Russ.).

18. McLuhan M and Fiore Q (2012) War and peace in the global village. Moscow: AST: Astrel. (In Russ.).

19. McLuhan M (2004) The Gutenberg galaxy: the making of typographic man. Kyiv: Nika-Tsentr. (In Russ.).

20. Merton R (2006) Social theory and social structure. Moscow: AST: Khranitel’. (In Russ.).

21. Mutyev VA and Elyashevich DA (2021) M. McLuhan’s media theory and contemporary book science discourse: points of confluence. Bibliosfera 4: 3-13. (In Russ.)]. DOI: https:// doi.org/10.20913/1815-3186-2021-4-3-13.

22. Narsky IV (2018) Is it possible to smell (Soviet) past? Prospects and difficulties of the cultural history of olfaction. Mir istorika i prostranstvo istorii: sb. st. k yubileyu N. N. Alevras. Chelyabinsk, pp. 92-117. (In Russ.).

23. Nemenko E (2017) Friendship as a practice in distinction (an example of the intellectual milieu of Yekaterinburg). Sotsiologicheskoe obozrenie 16 (3): 66-86. (In Russ.). DOI: https://doi.org/10.17323/1728-192X-2017-3-66-86.

24. Nikolaev VG (2003) Comments. In: McLuhan M (2003) Understanding media: the extensions of man. Moscow: KANON-press-Ts; Zhukovsky: Kuchkovo pole, 416-457 (In Russ.).

25. Nikolaev VG and Chumakova VP (2018) Translating McLuhan: an interview with Vladimir Gennadievich Nikolaev. Kommunikatsiya. Media. Dizain 3 (1): 175-186. (In Russ.).

26. Nikolai F and Sandomirskaya I (2023) Restoration as a judgment and as an action (Sandomirskaja I. Past discontinuous: fragments of restoration. M.: Novoe lit. obozrenie, 2022. 520 p.). Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 2: 365-373. (In Russ.). DOI: https://doi.org/10.53953/08696365_2023_180_2_365.

27. Panofsky E (2004) Perspective as a “symbolic form”; Gothic architecture and Scholasticism. Saint Petersburg: Azbuka-klassika. (In Russ.)].

28. Petrova SA (2023) Book blogs in the process of bibliosphere development. Berkovskie chteniya - 2023. Knizhnaya kul’tura v kontekste mezhdunarodnykh kontaktov: materialy VII Mezhdunar. nauch. konf. (Brest, 24-25 maya 2023 g.). Minsk, Moscow, vol. 2, pp. 131-135. (In Russ.).

29. Preter VP (2023) At the center of the cyclone. Marshall McLuhan’s tools for analyzing media environments. Moscow: Izd-vo Vyssh. shk. ekonomiki. (In Russ.).

30. Savchuk VV (2013) Media philosophy. An attack of reality. Saint Petersburg: Izd-vo RKhGA. (In Russ.).

31. Sapov VV (2023) Two cases: Pitirim Sorokin in the United States and Talcott Parsons in Russia (reflections on alternatives for Russian sociology). Rossiya reformiruyushchayasya: ezhegodnik. Moscow, iss. 21, pp. 6-40. (In Russ.). DOI: https://doi.org/10.19181/ezheg.2023.1.

32. Sokolov MM (2009) Russian sociology after 1991: the intellectual and institutional dynamics of “poor science”. Laboratorium. Zhurnal sotsial’nykh issledovanii 1: 20-57. (In Russ.).

33. Sorokin P (1992) Amnesia and new Columbuses. Rubezh: al’manakh sotsial’nykh issledovanii. Syktyvkar, iss. 4, pp. 48-61. (In Russ).

34. Sorokin PA (1920) System of sociology. Vol. 1, pt. 1. Petrograd: Kolos. (In Russ.).

35. Sorokin PA (1994) Public textbook of sociology; Articles from different years. Moscow: Nauka. (In Russ.).

36. Tikhonova EV and Kirillova OV (2022) Citation culture: citing authors behaviour vs trust in research results. Nauchnyi redaktor i izdatel’ 7 (2): 166-181. (In Russ.). DOI: https://doi.org/10.24069/SEP-22-58.

37. Trotsuk IV (2021) Questions without answers, or One more ‘dimension’ of the Russian rural differentiation (Review of the book: Enchanted place. Media consumption, media literacy, and historical memory of rural population / ed. by A. Novikova, A. Kachkaeva. Moscow: HSE, 2021. 168 p.]. Krestyanovedenie 6 (3): 180-190. (In Russ.)]. DOI: https://doi.org/10.22394/2500-1809-2021-6-3-180-190.

38. Filippov AF (2008) Sociology of space. Saint Petersburg: Vladimir Dal’. (In Russ.).

39. Chumakova VP (2015а) The concept of Herbert Marshall McLuhan: media in sociocultural dynamics: Cand. cultural sci. diss. Moscow. (In Rus.).

40. Chumakova VP (2015b) Herbert Marshall McLuhan’s role in media sociology and media ecology field development. Mediaskop 1. (In Russ.). URL: http://www.mediascope.ru/1695#12 (дата обращения = accessed 03.02.2024).

41. Shabashov V (2023) Book telegram channels from Russia have become the object of research in South Korea. Snob: website. Published 18.05.2023. (In Russ.)]. URL: https://snob.ru/profile/404345/blog/1008285/ (дата обращения = accessed 06.02.2024).

42. Edgerton S (1983) Linear perspective and Western consciousness: the origins of the objective representation of the object world in art and science. Kul’tury: dialog narodov mira 4: 104-141. (In Russ.)].

43. Antonovskiy AYu (2020) Sorokin Pitirim revisited. His place in social philosophy as a transdisciplinary thinker. Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences 13 (8): 1250-1263. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17516/1997-1370-0639.

44. Bertalanffy L von (1967) Robots, men and minds: psychology in the modern world. New York: George Braziller.

45. Edgerton SY (1976) The Renaissance rediscovery of linear perspective. NewYork [et al]: Harper & Row.

46. Bourdieu P (1984) Distinction: a social critique of the judgement of taste. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press.

47. Howes D (2019) Multisensory anthropology. Annual Review of Anthropology 48: 17-28. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102218-011324.

48. Fischer J (2002) Simmels “Exkurs über die Soziologie der Sinne”. Zentraltext einer anthropologischen Soziologie. Österreichische Zeitschrift für Soziologie 27 (2): 6-13. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11614-002-0002-7.

49. Gombrich ЕН (1960) Art and illusion: a study in the psychology of pictorial representation. New York: Pantheon Books.

50. Latour B (1986) Visualization and cognition: drawing things together. In: Knowledge and Society Studies in the Sociology of Culture Past and Present. Ed. by H. Kuklick. Greenwich, CT: Jai Press, Vol. 6. P. 1-40.

51. McLuhan M and Fiore Q (1968) War and peace in the global village: an inventory of some of the current spastic situations that could be eliminated by more feedforward. New York: McGraw-Hill.

52. McLuhan M and McLuhan E (1988) Laws of media: the new science. Toronto [et al.]: Univ. of Toronto Press.

53. Merton RK (1965) On the shoulders of giants: a Shandean postscript. New York: Free Press.

54. Merton RK (1987) The focussed interview and focus groups: continuities and discontinuities. Public Opinion Quarterly 51 (4): 550-566. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/269057.

55. Pasquale FA (2007) Copyright in an era of information overload: toward the privileging of categorizers. Vanderbilt Law Review 60 (1): 135-194.

56. Sorokin P (1956) Fads and foibles in modern sociology and related sciences. Chicago: Henry Regnery Co.

57. Westmoreland MR (2022) Multimodality: reshaping anthropology. Annual Review of Anthropology 51: 173–194. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-121319-071409.

58. Williams L, Scott K and Simone D (2015) #Social networks: making nonfiction trend in your classroom. The Reading Teacher 69 (2): 181-188. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1357.

59. Kang Sukyung (2023) A New Space in Contemporary Russian Literary Criticism: Focused on Telegram Literary Channel. The Journal of Slavic Studies 38 (1): 1-28. (In Korean).


Review

For citations:


Veselkova N.V. Straightening the Maelstrom: McLuhan, the “New Columbuses” and Media Ecology. Book. Reading. Media. 2024;2(2):120-129. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.20913/BRM-2-2-5

Views: 136


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.


ISSN 2949-6063 (Print)