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  • Refiguring Mass Communication: A History
  • Matthew B. Morris
Refiguring Mass Communication: A History. By Peter Simonson . Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010; pp xi + 261. $75.00 cloth, $25.00 paper.

When most of us think of the term "mass communication," we probably have in mind something nearly synonymous with media, journalism, or public relations. Peter Simonson's Refiguring Mass Communication is an attempt to problematize that understanding by analyzing the ways in which communication has brought communities together over the past two millennia. In other words, rather than focus on forms of mass communication in which more or less centralized sources broadcast to the public, Simonson argues for a consideration of the mass in mass communication. As he explains, the term "mass" has had many nuanced senses throughout history, all of which unite around the concept of communication as the process through which social bodies come together as communities.

Simonson combines rhetorical analysis with a cultural studies approach to theorizing mass communication through the eyes of Paul of Tarsus, Walt Whitman, Charles Horton Cooley, David Sarnoff, and Robert K. Merton. The result is a thoughtful addition to studies of the history of communication. Simonson's book is rendered in a narrative style that makes it accessible to a general audience, and its use of rhetorical methods promises to be enriching to experts in communication studies and a good example to graduate students. Perhaps the most useful contribution of Simonson's book is his conceptualization of context: "Medium of invention (or inventional medium) is a heuristic concept I use to identify enabling contexts and communicative forms through which rhetorical invention occurs" (26). These media of invention include the bodies and material realities of the men he discusses, their social relations, and the cultural discourses upon which they draw. By grounding the theories of his subjects in their lived experience, Simonson is able to center his studies on individuals without getting caught in the trap of treating them simply as rational agents whose autonomous intention is manifest in rhetorical invention. Still, at times his interest in his case studies comes through in prose that borders on hagiography, especially in his claim that Charles Cooley should replace John Dewey as the founder of modern [End Page 566] communication theory. His justification for the representative nature of these men is tempered by the sardonic tone he adopts toward the usual suspects, suggesting a question of whether his choices are based on reassessment of Dewey's contribution or boredom with his style. Even if the latter, Simonson's celebration of eloquence is reflected his own writing and this makes the book a pleasure to read.

Each of the case studies builds upon the previous studies in the development of Simonson's theory of mass communication. For example, in his study of Paul of Tarsus, Simonson charts the transition of a Jewish tentmaker into one of the foundational leaders of the Christian church: "Outlining the contours of a textually expressed image and the historical bodies behind it, I show how a letter sent to members of Paul's community in Corinth functions as both a social description and normative theory, calling its audience to recognize the Body of Christ as a medium for communication among themselves, paradigmatically enacted through eating blessed bread together" (31). Although the media of invention available to Paul include the traditional technological foci of studies of mass communication (Roman roads, the development of the book as an alternative to scrolls), Simonson's interest in the cultural diversity of the cities visited by Paul during his travels illustrates how social relations gave rise to an emergent form of mass communication in the unification of the masses through communion, during the liturgical ritual that would later be known as "the mass." The reading of Paul's letter to the early Christian community in Corinth becomes the pattern upon which centuries of Christian worship—Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox—is based, echoing the voice of Paul through the centuries as a spirit that unifies believers through differences of time and space in the embodiment of Christ, codified in the sharing of the ritual meal of the Eucharist. This idea of communication as the...

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