Chinese Communication Theory and Research: Reflections, New Frontiers, and New Directions, and: Chinese Communication Studies: Contexts and Comparisons (review)

Universities in the United States have long vied for the claim to the mantle of the avuncular scholar Wilbur Schramm. Through important and longtime associations with programs at Iowa, Illinois, Stanford, and Hawaii, Schramm pursued eclectic interests ranging from creative writing, journalism, and mass communication to national development, and an influential cohort of communication scholars still considers him a "forefather" of their field. He was certainly an ambassador for it, and late in his life, visiting three mainland Chinese cities, he delivered what Zhenbin Sun, in one of the two edited volumes reviewed here, calls "a landmark lecture series" (Jia et al., p. 5).

Schramm's oft-repeated characterization of the study of communication as a crossroads, where many tarry but few remain, no longer holds. Half a century since the comment, communication is a comfortably accepted field of academic research, ensconced in programs, departments, schools, scholarly journals, associations and conferences, and enduring programs of scholarship. Yet the field is also fragmented, reflecting diversity not only in its intellectual wellsprings and disciplinary affections but also in its institutional origins and affiliations.

It may be a sign of maturity that communication scholars, who once sought to define boundaries for purposes of self-legitimation, now can be found in departments across the social sciences and humanities. Furthermore, today's emphasis on interdisciplinary work emboldens them to keep doing what they've always done, namely beg, borrow, and steal across the theoretical and methodological spectrum. One suspects that Schramm would be pleased at the volume and level of activity, but also perturbed that a truly coherent scholarly community has failed to coalesce around the concept of communication. "Ferment in the Field," as the Journal of Communication titled a special issue nearly two decades ago, continues.

These two companion anthologies of work related to Chinese communications, compiled by the same three editors with a few overlapping contributors, illustrate some attributes and consequences of that ferment, for both good and ill. With an explicit emphasis on the interactions of communication and culture, both books demonstrate how scholarship in the Chinese context is helping to expand horizons intellectually as well as geographically. And while the editors' promised critique of "Western approaches" fails to result in striking new insights, let alone novel theoretical formulations, the preponderance of Chinese and Asian American contributors further highlights the increasingly global nature of scholarship and the benefits of cross-cultural perspectives.

At the same time, readers not versed in the myriad roots and branches of the field of communication might be forgiven for wondering just what "communication" refers to. Nor is the notion of "culture" clearly explicated; it often seems synonymous with philosophical tradition, with numerous contributors making familiar arguments about the endurance of Confucian values.

Chinese Communication Studies, with Xing Lu as lead editor, has a clearer focus on interpersonal communication, whereas Chinese Communication Theory and Research, with Wenshan Jia as lead editor, also gives some attention to journalism and mass media studies. In fact, the speech-communication tradition underpins both books, so the sections dealing with mass communication are understandably weak. Editors and authors seem largely unaware of the explosion of scholarly work on journalism and mass media in China since the late 1970s, by both Western and Chinese scholars. One finds other glaring omissions of key works from contemporary China scholarship: two very interesting chapters in Lu et al. dealing with understandings and the framing of human rights, for instance, fail to mention essential groundwork by Andrew Nathan or Roger Des Forges. On the other hand, these contributors build on a fascinating range of relevant literature from such realms as rhetoric, linguistics, education...