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Social Forces 81.2 (2002) 673-674



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Race, Media and the Crisis of Civil Society. ByRonald Jacobs. Cambridge University Press, 2000. 189 pp. Cloth, $59.95; paper, $21.95.

This is a carefully crafted study that takes the reader deep into the world of racially differentiated press media and framings of racial issues in the second half of the twentieth century. Ronald Jacobs argues that the significance of the race/civil society/media triad is the role of public communication for democratic culture. The conceptual couplet civil society/public sphere is central to Jacobs's analysis. But civil society is not constituted as a Habermasian singular sphere, but rather as "a multiplicity of public spheres, communities, and associations nested within one another." Because the terrain of civil society is heterogeneous and stratified, Jacobs invokes the notion of a "communicative geography of civil society." Various news media form multiple "imperfect public spheres" that nonetheless play a critical "counter-hegemonic function." These and other features of Jacobs's theoretical approach are developed in the first chapter.

The second chapter empirically grounds the theory of a multipublic civil society by historicizing public spheres in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Among other insights, Jacobs tells the fascinating and little-known story of the "black" press, its trends, fluctuations in activity, and its relationship to the "mainstream" press. He nests the development of the black press, its golden age and decline, within the history of black urban communities. Here we get interesting connections to the Harlem Renaissance, the development of the "institutional ghetto" in Chicago, and the "California Dream" of early twentieth century L.A. But the most detailed analyses take form in three separate chapters that focus seriatum on major racialized events situated in Los Angeles: the Watts rebellion of 1965, the Rodney King beating, and the subsequent uprising that occurred when police officers were acquitted in 1992. A parallel chapter on O.J. Simpson would have really rounded out this L.A.-focused analysis.

Among his key empirical questions, Jacobs asks: (1) How does news coverage of racial crisis differ among cities like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles? (2) How is race news in the mainstream press different from that of the African American press? (3) How have these different spheres of public communication [End Page 673] changed over time? Answers to these and other questions are culled from an impressive empirical base consisting of 2,269 articles spanning the mainstream press (Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and New York Times) and the African American press (Chicago Defender, New York Amsterdam News, and Los Angeles Sentinel). The methodological approach relies largely on narrative analysis deploying elements of plot, characters, and genre as major analytical tools. Though this approach is not without its difficulties given the special narrative character of the press, what makes this book fascinating and rich with implications about the mass media and democracy is its nuanced theoretical development and skillful use of historical data.

Where does the theoretical development and narrative analysis take us? The ultimate promise of civil society, Jacobs argues, is to keep the conversation among multiple publics alive, to open dialogue to new narratives, and to expand the bases for existing solidarities. This is most likely to succeed if there is a differentiated and diverse field of communication media. The problem is that, like the rest of the social formation, the media is itself racially stratified in ways that diminish the ultimate promise of civil society. Moreover, since the 1992 Los Angeles uprising, the trend in racial discourse has followed a tragic emplotment that has deepened the racially based crisis of civil society. Jacobs calls for a greater engagement between mainstream and African American presses as a way to further the promise of a democratic civil society. A potential weakness in this otherwise very important argument is the silence cast on the fact that these communicative public and media institutions are not only racially stratified but are also creatures of serious commodity relations.

This concise book should be of interest to students of race relations, mass...

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