Concept
Harold Innis
Overview
Harold Adams Innis (November 5, 1894 – November 8, 1952) was a Canadian professor of political economy at the University of Toronto and the author of seminal works on media, communication theory, and Canadian economic history. He helped develop the staples thesis, which holds that Canada's culture, political history, and economy have been decisively influenced by the exploitation and export of a series of "staples" such as fur, fish, lumber, wheat, mined metals, and coal. The staple thesis dominated economic history in Canada from the 1930s to 1960s, and continues to be a fundamental part of the Canadian political economic tradition. Innis has been referred to as the "father of communications theory" and as the "father of Canadian economic history".
Innis's writings on communication explore the role of media in shaping the culture and development of civilizations. He argued, for example, that a balance between oral and written forms of communication contributed to the flourishing of Greek civilization in the 5th century BC. He warned, however, that Western civilization is now imperiled by powerful, advertising-driven media obsessed by "present-mindedness" and the "continuous, systematic, ruthless destruction of elements of permanence essential to cultural activity." His intellectual bond with Eric A. Havelock formed the foundations of the Toronto School of communication theory, which provided a source of inspiration for future members of the school Marshall McLuhan and Edmund Snow Carpenter.
Innis laid the basis for scholarship that looked at the social sciences from a distinctly Canadian point of view. As the head of the University of Toronto's political economy department, he worked to build up a cadre of Canadian scholars so that universities would not continue to rely as heavily on British or American-trained professors unfamiliar with Canada's history and culture. He was successful in establishing sources of financing for Canadian scholarly research.
As the Cold War grew hotter after 1947, Innis grew increasingly hostile to the United States. He warned repeatedly that Canada was becoming a subservient colony to its much more powerful southern neighbor. "We are indeed fighting for our lives", he warned, pointing especially to the "pernicious influence of American advertising ... We can only survive by taking persistent action at strategic points against American imperialism in all its attractive guises." His views influenced some younger scholars, including Donald Creighton.
Innis also tried to defend universities from political and economic pressures. He believed that independent universities, as centres of critical thought, were essential to the survival of Western civilization. His intellectual disciple and university colleague, Marshall McLuhan, lamented Innis's premature death as a disastrous loss for human understanding. McLuhan wrote: "I am pleased to think of my own book The Gutenberg Galaxy as a footnote to the observations of Innis on the subject of the psychic and social consequences, first of writing then of printing." Mel Watkins declared that Innis was "without doubt the most distinguished social scientist and historian, and one of the most distinguished intellectuals, that Canada has ever produced".
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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Yet those who know the habits of the continent of Europe are aware how apparently small a motive often outweighs the desire of money getting, even in the operations which have money getting for their direct object. The more highly the science of ethology is cultivated, and the better the diversities of individual and national character are understood, the smaller, probably, will the number of propositions become…
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
States what Harold Innis is.
For traders and artisans a moderate gain was, in his opinion, best. He has never, like modern writers, idealized the wealth of nations, any more than he has worked out the problems of political economy, which among the ancients had not yet grown into a science. The isolation of Greek states, their constant wars, the want of a free industrial population, and of the modern methods and instruments of 'credit,'…
Plato, Laws
The author is tied to Harold Innis in the knowledge graph.
This indeed is the only kind of instruction that will abide permanently in those in whom it is engendered. And this, said I, is the best criterion for distinguishing talents naturally fitted for dialectics, from those which are not so. He who perceives this alliance is skilled in dialectics; he who does not, is not so. I am of the same opinion, said he.
Plato, The works of Plato
The author is tied to Harold Innis in the knowledge graph.
Philosophers who discussed Harold Innis
Related ideas
- University of Toronto Press
- Marxism
- Great Depression
- Marshall McLuhan
- Western world
- Western culture
- New England
- Neoclassical economics
- Plato
- University of Nottingham
- Soviet Union
- American Philosophical Society
- University of Oxford
- University of Chicago
- Cold War
- George Herbert Mead
- McMaster University
- University of Glasgow
- Master of Arts
- Class struggle
- Political economy
- World War I
- Canada
- Ancient Rome
Place in the tradition
Part of Philosophy in Canada.