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Introduction -- Publishing as a Social Practice: Considering Publishing Studies

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Abstract

With the rise of Publishing Studies programs in universities, there has been a “search for a discipline” (Murray 2007, 2–35). But why consider Publishing Studies in and of itself? Does the social practice of publishing need its own disciplinary frame? Or do conceptual models adequately live in other disciplines, from Information and Library Sciences, to the Sociology of Culture or Literary Sociology, or Communication and Media Studies? Or is Publishing Studies more suited as vocational training, rather than an academic, disciplinary practice, where training of professional practice is subsequently siloed and normalized into sub-categories, genres, and dynamics of practice? With this journal, and the larger Research Network, we seek to offer a framework to approach the question of what makes this domain of social practice unique. We have a twofold aim. On the one hand, we set out to consider the conceptual frames—a social theory of publishing. On other hand, we are equally concerned with considerations of practice—how Publishing Studies shapes the development of a professional community that “lives” in cultures, and societies.
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INFORMATIONMEDIUMSOCIETY.COM
Journal of Publishing Studies
Information, Medium,
and Society
__________________________________________________________________________
Introduction: Publishing as a Social Practice
Considering Publishing Studies
PHILLIP KALANTZIS-COPE
VOLUME 18 ISSUE 1
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INFORMATION, MEDIUM, AND SOCIETY: JOURNAL OF PUBLISHING
STUDIES
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Information, Medium, and Society: Journal of Publishing Studies
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ISSN: 2691-1507 (Print), ISSN: 2691-1515 (Online)
https://doi.org/10.18848/2691-1507/CGP/v18i01/0-0 (Article)
Introduction
…………………………………
PUBLISHING AS A SOCIAL PRACTICE:
CONSIDERING PUBLISHING STUDIES
…………………………………
Phillip Kalantzis-Cope,
Editor—Information, Medium, and Society: Journal of Publishing Studies
Chief Social Scientist—Common Ground Research Networks, USA
With the rise of Publishing Studies programs in universities, there has been a “search for a
discipline” (Murray 2007, 2–35). But why consider Publishing Studies in and of itself? Does the
social practice of publishing need its own disciplinary frame? Or do conceptual models
adequately live in other disciplines, from Information and Library Sciences, to the Sociology of
Culture or Literary Sociology, or Communication and Media Studies? Or is Publishing Studies
more suited as vocational training, rather than an academic, disciplinary practice, where training
of professional practice is subsequently siloed and normalized into sub-categories, genres, and
dynamics of practice?
With this journal, and the larger Research Network, we seek to offer a framework to
approach the question of what makes this domain of social practice unique. We have a twofold
aim. On the one hand, we set out to consider the conceptual frames—a social theory of
publishing. On other hand, we are equally concerned with considerations of practice—how
Publishing Studies shapes the development of a professional community that “lives” in cultures,
and societies.
A Short History
By way of background, the Information, Medium & Society: The Publishing Studies Research
Network was founded in 2003 with the inaugural International Conference on the Future of the
Book. Since then, the Research Network has expanded its scope in two phases. The first was in
2009 when it became the Books, Publishing, and Libraries Research. In this iteration, the
Research Network began to look beyond the book as the primary site of investigation. Over the
years we have been enriched by the voices of Jason Epstein (Editor, USA), Angus Phillips
(Director, Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies, Cambridge, UK), Bob Young
(Founder, Lulu.com and Red Hat Inc., USA), Lawrence Lessig (Legal Scholar, USA), Françoise
Dubruille (Director, European Booksellers Federation, Brussels, Belgium), Lorraine Fannin
(Director of the Scottish Publishers Association, UK), and John Man (Author, Historian, UK)—
to name a few.
Now the network undergoes another change, to become Information, Medium & Society:
The Publishing Studies Research Network, broadening its scope to explore the nature, role, and
purpose of information and publishing in society.
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Informational Foundations
A distinctive quality of our species is that we are curious, investigative, and creative. We seek
to explain the world around us. We produce knowledge and cultural artifacts. These desires,
processes, and artifacts come to define the transmission of human culture through history. The
artifacts embody a universal force of history that is always context-laden. The knowledge we as
a species create builds a catalog of who we are, and in this social practice of meaning-making
we discover genealogies of human agency (Cope and Kalantzis 2020). At the same time, there
is a meaningful association of the artifact to individual personhood; we call this authorship. The
word “author” serves as an ontological cornerstone—“originator, creator, instigator.” In this
informational foundation, we see our collective and individual purpose.
Information has modalities that are shaped too by historical forces. Our understanding of
information was once dominated by language, or more specifically, the written text. But we
moved beyond this to understand the informational qualities of still, moving images and sound.
And now, in the era of artificial intelligence, derivative data, and meta-data. Adding a multi-
factored complexity, layered into each information modality are styles and genres.
Here we have our first framing of what makes this domain of social practice a powerful site
of considered investigation. At its foundation Publishing Studies is connected to the most
essential of human acts—structuring and supporting the formulation of social knowledge,
navigating the construction of common knowledge and cultural heritage, and the interweaving
of these with individual and community subjectivities. At the existential center of this social
practice is a conception of the public good in the pursuit of knowledge.
Mediums of Disruption
Mediums structure ways of presenting and receiving information. They shape what and how we
know. “Mediums, more than direct personal experience, define people’s world picture” (Van
der Weel 2011, 1). As part of an industrial machine age, the printing press disrupted social and
cultural realities. This machine came to define a long history in the production of social
knowledge. A technology gave birth to a medium that allowed for mass communication of
cultural artifacts on an unprecedented scale. It gave voice to many and provided cultural and
intellectual sustenance to many more. It fundamentally transformed the information landscape
from which individuals, cultures, and societies informed their decisions (Man 2002).
In these print beginnings publishers established themselves as partners of content producers
in the production of social knowledge. Content creators and publishing houses need each other,
building collaborative relationships, particularly as review and editorial ethics add a defining
dimension to this social practice. In this relationship the publisher becomes a “merchant of
culture” (Thompson 2011). In the age of print, publishing houses often became—or were left
the responsibility—to fund the infrastructure of the medium, and the very materiality of the
printed artifact demanded that the publisher thread the needle of commercial viability and
cultural value of the information resource.
Then comes another media disruption—a digital disruption. In a general mainstream social
zeitgeist, a case is often made that this medium is “exceptional” (Kalantzis-Cope 2018). For the
social practice of publishing, digital communication tools and platforms allow for low-cost self-
publishing—disrupting the relationship to the publisher to the content creator. They also give
traditional publishers new tools for the production, distribution, and access of information—
disrupting legacy processes and workflows. What makes this medium supposedly exceptional is
its ability to transcend the traditional gatekeepers and hierarchy-defining mediators of the print
medium, but at the same time there is downward pressure on the creator, framed in a normative
grammar of “autonomy,” to negotiate commercial viability and personal value of the
information resource in the context of the need to sustain a livelihood.
ii
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In these transitions and the coexistence of mediums—print and digital—there are deeper
implications for consideration. These considerations include the changing nature of the artifact
—“traditional” print vs digital (Thompson 2005). Digital disruption affects various domains of
publishing in different ways. For example, in academic publishing, we confront a new pollical
economy with the Open Access movement, connecting the medium within a broader context of
the “public good’ (Willinsky 2009). With the rise of social media platforms, the question arises
of who and what a publisher is, and the responsibilities entailed with this title. At an
epistemological level there is a medium-driven disruption of our species bringing to it a “digital
order of knowledge” (Van der Weel 2011, 1-9).
In the unfolding history of disruptive media moments, I suggest a second framing of what
makes this domain of social practice a powerful site of considered investigation. For this reason,
Publishing Studies offers a pathway into a particular a media archeology (Huhtamo and Parikka
2011). This can be approached in a comparative sense, outside-in—addressing the ways the
social practices use existing mediums and mirror historical frames of development, or it can be
tackled inside-out—analyzing the ways the social practice produces its own mediums.
Social History and Impacts
Publishing is a sociocultural phenomenon. It has its own social history—both of specific
principles and practices and the societies that are shaped by its activity (Briggs and Burke
2010). Both the internal professional and social-facing dimensions are steeped in cultural pre-
suppositions that, if not critically approached, can calcify social practices into dangerously
unchecked power.
The professional publishing industry forms kinds of communities. Then, one layer in,
publishing “houses” produce and resource their own organizational cultures. These cultures,
with their resonances and reflections across an industry, have direct effects on “what” and
“whose” culture is produced—who is given a voice in the cultural landscape. From editorial
acquisitions in trade publishing, to funding opportunities in academic publishing, gatekeeper
effects can perpetuate and reinforce structural imbalances. These tend to mirror mainstream
social disparities and injustices. Such imbalances are manifest not only in content but also in the
workforce—who fills roles for production and design, marketing and distribution, or
management and leadership.
An overarching force shaping cultures in and through publishing is the “market.” This
demands critical reflection too. On the one hand, there are specific institutional logics and
inertias that shape editorial decisions within “market logics” (Thornton 2004), and, on the other,
with the rise of digital platforms motivated by a data economy, the question of content
accountability and the production of filter bubbles (Pariser 2012).
The forces of the market also define boundaries of access—the cost of the published
artifact in print and digital artifacts. We need to recognize and reflect on how institutions like
libraries, which support and facilitate access, bear the brunt of these market forces. Then in a
digital marketplace, we see new market logics shifting the role of authors as self-publishers,
publishers and booksellers as they respond to online marketplaces, and even a “bookstore”—
Amazon—that is becoming the defining force of digital commerce and web services. We also
must consider the effects of consolidation in the industry that is now dominated by a few.
This leads us toward some vexing social questions and a perhaps also an ambitious,
proactive social agenda. We need to reflect on the global structuring effects of copyright as an
extension of western-European legal traditions. We need to ask, what is the role of publishing
houses in the sustenance of alternative and autonomous communities? Consider, for instance:
the history of feminist publishing houses and practices (Murray 2004a, 2004b); post-colonial
publishing (Davis 2005; Low 2011); or making a place of LGBTQ voices in publishing as a
mode of praxis (Goltz and Zingsheim 2015). These are only a few of a multitude of questions
that reflect individual, communal, and societal diversity.
iii
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Publishing Studies becomes a powerful site of considered investigation when we trace its
connections to a broader social-institutional landscape, and when we do this, it becomes a
metaphorical canary in the coal mine. From its informational basis to mediums of disruption we
can critically consider the practice of social knowledge within publishing as a generative force
within societies. Because publishing supports the production of formal artifacts out of shared
experience and history, it is not just any domain of practice. In very grounded ways, publishing
is a professional practice that is socially embedded, and for this reason itself is always in need
of critical reflection and transformation. As much as it is of society, publishing is a pathway to
transforming societies themselves. In fact, we could argue, this is its modus operandi as a social
practice since its beginnings.
Conclusion
As a social activity, publishing has specific principles and practices. Nonetheless, we must
counter the claim that Publishing Studies has a “lack of theoretical and methodological rigor” as
a consequence of its emphasis on the “vocational wing of publishing studies” (Murray 2007, 3).
We need to turn this perceived weakness into a strength:
General examination of the role of profession-orientated disciplines within universities;
the effectiveness of the opportunities they are afforded for disciplinary development; and
the extent to which they can invigorate professional practice through an enhanced
awareness of a variety of methodologies for analyzing processes, enriching the
interpretation of data gathered during practical work. (Baverstock et al. 2014, 221)
The case we want to make, and we walk with others in this journey, is that Publishing Studies is
an ideal place to frame interdisciplinary and practice-focused domain of research, and that this
powerfully connects to social impact.
This journal—Information, Medium, and Society: The Publishing Studies Research
Network—aims to be a forum for sustained investigation of the theory and practice of scholarly
communication, information science, and trade, technical and scholarly publishing. It seeks
perspectives that are both retrospective, documenting recent and historical experience, and
prospective, examining trends in technologies and business processes that are destined to shape
the social practices of publishing in the imminent future. We invite you to be a part of this
journey.
REFERENCES
Baverstock, Alison, and Jackie Steinitz. 2014. “Barriers and Opportunities for Research in
Publishing Studies.” Learned Publishing 27 (3): 207–221.
https://doi.org/10.1087/20140307.
Briggs, Asa, and Peter Burke. 2010. A Social History of the Media, from Gutenberg to the
Internet. London: Polity Press.
Clark, Giles, and Angus Phillips. 2019. Inside Book Publishing, 6th ed. London: Routledge.
Cope, Bill, and Mary Kalantzis. 2020. Making Sense: Reference, Agency, and Structure in a
Grammar of Multimodal Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316459645.
Davis, Caroline. 2005. “The Politics of Postcolonial Publishing.” Book History 8:227–244.
https://doi.org/10.1353/bh.2005.0004.
Goltz, Dustin Bradley, and Jason Zingsheim. 2015. Queer Praxis: Questions for LGBTQ
Worldmaking. New York: Peter Lang Publishing.
iv
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Huhtamo, Erkki, and Parikka Jussi. 2011. Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and
Implications. Oakland: University of California Press.
Kalantzis-Cope, Phillip. 2018. The Work and Play of the Mind in the Information Age: Whose
Property? London: Palgrave. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64650-3.
Low, Gail. 2011. Publishing the Postcolonial: Anglophone West African and Caribbean
Writing in the UK 1948-1968. New York: Routledge.
Man, John. 2002. Gutenberg: How One Man Remade the World with Words. London: Wiley.
Murray, Simone. 2004a. “The Cuala Press: Women, Publishing, and the Conflicted Genealogies
of Feminist Publishing.” Women’s Studies International Forum 27 (5-6): 489–506.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2004.09.005.
———. 2004b. Mixed Media: Feminist Presses and Publishing Politics. New York: Polity
Press.
———. 2007. “Publishing Studies: Critically Mapping Research in Search of a Discipline”,
Publishing Research Quarterly 22:3–25. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12109-007-0001-4.
Pariser, Eli. 2012. The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web Is Changing What We
Read and How We Think. New York: Penguin Books.
Thornton, Patricia H. 2004. Markets from Culture: Institutional Logics and Organizational
Decisions in Higher Education Publishing. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Thompson, John. 2005. Publishing in the Digital Age: The Transformation of Academic and
Higher Education Publishing in Britain and the United States. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Thoburn, Nicholas. 2016. Anti-Book: On the Art and Politics of Radical Publishing.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Thompson, John. 2010. “Merchants of Culture.” Cambridge: Polity Press.
Van der Weel, Adriaan. 2011. Changing Our Textual Minds: Towards a Digital Order of
Knowledge. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Willinsky, John. 2009. The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to Research and
Scholarship. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
ABOUT THE EDITOR
…………………………………
Dr. Phillip Kalantzis-Cope: Editor—Information, Medium, and Society: Journal of Publishing
Studies, Chief Social Scientist—Common Ground Research Networks, USA
v
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Information, Medium, and Society: Journal of Publishing Studies
explores the nature and forms of media and information, as
manifest in publishing practices. Publishing is conceived as a
distinctive mode of social knowledge and cultural production.
The journal is a forum for sustained investigation of the theory
and practice of scholarly communication, information science,
and trade, technical and scholarly publishing.
Its perspectives are both retrospective, documenting recent and
historical experience, and prospective, examining trends in
technologies and business processes that are destined to shape
the social practices of publishing in the imminent future. It aims
to be a resource for scholars, publishing professionals,
librarians, collection managers, and media makers. Its authors
address issues facing publishing in the era of digital information,
with a shared interest in shaping the direction of change - in
publishing and for the societies that it serves.
Information, Medium, and Society: Journal of Publishing Studies
is a peer-reviewed, scholarly journal.
ISSN Pending
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ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any citations for this publication.
The Work and Play of the Mind in the Information Age: Whose Property?
Book
Full-text available
  • Sep 2017
This book tells a series of living stories about a domain of social activity, “the work and play of the mind,” in a particular historical epoch: the “information age.” The stories concern political processes and movements as varied as the World Trade Organization’s Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, China’s Great Firewall, practices of image sharing in social media, Occupy Wall Street, The Arab Spring, The Alt-Right, and the use of geographical indications by indigenous peoples and farmers to defend their lifestyles. In its theoretical analysis, the book illuminates four alternative political agendas for the work and play of the mind. These four “propertyscapes” represent competing visions for social life, framing projects for collective political action that are at times competing, at times overlapping. The author prompts us to consider whose property is the work and play of the mind, as well as addressing larger questions regarding the framing of political space, the kinds of political communities we may need for the future, and the changing place of the work and play of the mind within these social imaginaries. The book will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines including media and communications, arts and design, law, politics and interdisciplinary social sciences.
View
Barriers and Opportunities for Research in Publishing Studies
Article
Full-text available
  • Jul 2014
This paper reports findings from an international survey into the research involvement and support of university teaching staff in a relatively new profession-orientated discipline, publishing studies (PS). It uses these findings to consider barriers and opportunities for academic research both specifically in PS and more broadly in other profession-orientated disciplines. Greater understanding was felt to be of value as universities internationally are increasingly being pressurized to create close links with the wider economy, produce employable students, and encourage relevant and implementable research. The survey suggests that while there is strong agreement among respondents that it is beneficial for those teaching PS to be research-active, there was considerable variation in current levels of research activity. Respondents rated their research activity highest in departments with an active research culture and effective research support processes. Lack of time was the main reason cited for reduced or non-involvement in academic research and while this is a common issue for academics, PS respondents isolated a number of exacerbating factors. Suggestions are offered for addressing identified barriers and pursuing new opportunities for research. The paper argues that as research outputs of academics are increasingly monitored it is important to consider how the full range of disciplines housed within institutions can be accommodated within research support. Overall, the research has a strong relevance for interdisciplinary areas, and other profession- and practice-orientated subjects within universities.
View
Markets From Culture: Institutional Logics and Organizational Decisions in Higher Education Publishing
Book
Full-text available
  • Mar 2004
Institutional logics, the underlying governing principles of societal sectors, strongly influence organizational decision making. Any shift in institutional logics results in a similar shift in attention to alternative problems and solutions and in new determinants for executive decisions. Examining changes in institutional logics in higher-education publishing, this book links cultural analysis with organizational decision making to develop a theory of attention and explain how executives concentrate on certain market characteristics to the exclusion of others.Analyzing both qualitative and quantitative data from the 1950s to the 1990s, the author shows how higher education publishing moved from a culture of independent domestic publishers focused on creating markets for books based on personal, relational networks to a culture of international conglomerates that create markets from corporate hierarchies. This book offers broader lessons beyond publishing—its theory is applicable to explaining institutional changes in organizational leadership, strategy, and structure occurring in all professional services industries.
View
Changing our textual minds: Towards a digital order of knowledge
Book
  • Feb 2011
[Introduction to the book] Western culture is a mediated culture. Mediums, more than direct personal experience, define people’s world picture. Starting with images in prehistory, mediation took off in earnest with the invention of writing. It accelerated as first print, and then new medial forms such as photography, film, radio, and television were invented at ever shorter intervals. In such a mediated culture, medial change has an enormous social impact. Already the current digital devel- opments are showing to be no less momentous than those of the epoch-making historical changes that preceded them. Books, newspapers, periodicals, and any number of old and new text formats are now finding digital form at a rapid, even exponential, rate. Paradoxically, text is both the first and the last of the medial modes that is to go digital. It was the first in the sense that text was the first modality after numbers to become computable in the 1950s. Since then digital texts have become available in vast quantities, both digitised analogue texts and texts that did not exist in analogue form before, notably Web pages. At the same time – and this is the paradox – paper books, newspapers, periodicals, and other products of the printing press continue to persist in vast quantities. While digital photography, digital video, and digital music are now the norm, the entire analogue world of printing, bookshops, and libraries still largely continues as of old. That it was the last of the medial modes to go digital is the result of that peculiar phenomenon in the dialectics of progress that an initial head start tends to turn into an eventual handicap. [A phenomenon the Dutch historian Jan Romein termed the ‘law of the diminishing lead’ in The Watershed of Two Eras: Europe in 1900 (Middletown CT, 1978), p. 4.] The long-term importance of text and print to society, and especially the gradual perfection of the book into the reading machine it is today, have given it a ubiquitous and hardy presence. In Western culture printed text structured in the form of books has become a major social organ- ising principle, which I will be referring to as the ‘Order of the Book’. The absence of the book as an organising principle and fixed point of reference is hard to imagine. It is hard to imagine that the world of paper texts could go the way of analogue music, with the gradual disappearance of record shops and record companies. Yet there are many signs that it has already started to happen. The digitisation of textual transmission is proceeding so rapidly that already the consequences are huge and all-encompassing, indeed revolutionary. As reading practices move on line the once discrete products of the print world all become part of the digital textual ‘docuverse’, and that docuverse in turn becomes part of the all-digital array of mediums converged on the WorldWide Web. In the online digital domain, reading – once an isolated, private activity – is but one of a panoply of medial activities on offer. Increasingly reading has come to share the same space with shopping, watching a film or television, listening to the radio or a podcast, e-mailing or writing a blog entry. Moreover, as I have argued elsewhere, [In ‘Explorations in the Libroverse’, 147th Nobel Symposium, in Going Digital: Evolutionary and Revolutionary Aspects of Digitization’, Nobel symposium 147, ed. Karl Grandin, Stockholm: Centre for History of Science, 2011, pp. 32-46.] if the Order of the Book is gradually disintegrating, it is highly unlikely that it will be replaced by a similar but now digital order. The chief characteristic of the digital ‘order’ seems to be precisely that it evades a sense of order. It certainly evades the familiar one-way linear hierarchical order fostered by the print paradigm. This makes it all the more urgent to attempt to understand the implications of the digitisation process that is currently washing over us. The chief purpose of this book is to ‘make visible’ the digitisation of textual transmission and what it entails, and to assess its (potential) impact. The advent of a range of ‘new media’ in the last 150 years or so has been studied in meticulous detail. In fact the impact of photography, film, radio, and television continues to be scrutinised to this day. By contrast, the changes in textual transmission – though they are, as I shall argue, at least as pervasive and formative of our culture – have been comparatively neglected. Moreover, while the tremendous social change caused by an invention like the steam engine is rarely questioned, the notion that the printing press could be regarded as an ‘agent of change’ is anathema to most historians today. The transformativity of other technological inventions is readily accepted, but the notion of the transformativity of textual mediation seems for some reason unacceptable. Among the more plausible explanations for this scepticism is the fact that text has been with us for such a long time. Text is old in the sense that its cultural transmission started a long time ago (if 5,000–6,000 years may be called long in human history), but it is also always old in each individual lifetime. Learning to read and write tends to happen so early in formal education, if not before, that humans have little conscious experience of pre-literacy, leaving text almost invisible as a technology. As a consequence our awareness and understanding of the formative role of text rather than ‘the media’ (usually confined to film, radio, television, and journalism) in human culture remains surprisingly rudimentary. The need to redress this imbalance is one major reason why, despite the convergence of all modalities in the digital realm, in this book I will restrict myself to the modality of text. (Although I will naturally place text in the context of other modalities where relevant.) Despite the prominence of ‘the media’ in contemporary society, writing remains the most important medium for the transmission of knowledge ever devised. It has a long and continuous history of inscribing human culture. Text has given material shape to opinions, knowledge, creative ideas, and so on for centuries. One advantage of this restriction in scope is, incidentally, that it allows the major – but by no means the sole – disciplinary perspec- tive on this digital revolution to be that of book studies. Book studies used to be confined to the printed book and other products of the printing press. However, the recognition is now beginning to take hold that book studies should take a longer perspective, and deal with the history of textual transmission at large. Though an entire chapter will be devoted to a definition of terms later on, this distinction is worth stressing now. The material book is merely one particular, historical, form in which text is materialised. Text, on the other hand, is a system for the inscription of linguistic utterances by means of characters, that both pre-dates the book and survives it. In other words, even if text as a modality remains constant, its materiali- sation as a medium has taken a variety of forms. A manuscript book, a printed book or digital text all use the same modality, but represent different mediums. In such a longer perspective the history of the book is merely a chapter in the history of textual transmission, which is the history of the production, distribution and consumption of text. The history of textual transmission is also the history of the interaction between textual form and textual content – in manuscript, printed and digital form – and of the social significance of that interaction. Though this longer perspective is relatively new, book studies is a long established discipline, which is itself of a multi- if perhaps not quite post-disciplinary nature. In this book I intend to borrow insights from many other disciplines, including linguistics, philosophy, science and technology studies, brain and cognition studies. The method I will use to assess the significance of the digitisation of textual transmission is twofold. Chiefly I will give a descriptive historical account, along with an analysis of the importance of the major milestones: the inventions of writing, printing, and digital textual transmission. This historical account of the long and continuous history of inscribing human culture by means of text stresses the technological nature of textual mediation in order to make it more visible. The historical account also emphasises that the textuality that characterises Western society today is the outcome of a long and organic process. It began when the first forms of writing began to invade the oral mind set. Then printing changed not only the technological means by which texts were transmitted but equally the nature of their contents. Now the flood of digital texts is again affecting both the nature of the message and its social significance. The history of inscribing human culture has been, and continues to be, a process of continuities and discontinuities. Some elements of the earlier technology carry over into the new, while others gradually disappear and entirely new characteristics emerge. In this organic process technology will be found to play a pivotal role. In the historical narrative the central focus will be on the introduction and next the development of the digital textual medium. It discusses the social implications attending on the change from predominantly paper-based to increasingly digital textual mediation. Despite all appearances to the contrary, I would suggest that the digital substrate has lent text a new and unfamiliar aspect. This book probes especially what that unfamiliar aspect consists in, and what its significance is. While not ultimately immaterial, the inscru- table and conditional existence of virtual text, for example, gives it a ghostly and unstable quality. The convergence of modalities, as well as the convergence of formerly discrete mediums in a single digital medial space has repercussions that are not at once obvious but nonetheless far-reaching. The digital ‘docuverse’ enables new ways of accessing the text, both as a whole (the unitary text, conventionally identified, for example, by means of a library catalogue record) and as fragments of text within a collection of unitary texts. Moreover, the ‘democratisation’ of textual production, distribution and consumption creates an entirely new relationship between author and reader. The second part of the methodology is that this historical account, although it concentrates on the digital developments in text trans- mission, will be a contrastive analysis of all of the textual revolu- tions and their impact: the introduction of writing, printing, and digital textual transmission. In this way historical knowledge about the actual development of the earlier relevant medial technologies of writing and printing can inform an understanding of the digital revolution that is now taking place. A historical comparison can establish certain technological properties that can be seen – at least in retrospect – to account for its later development and, importantly, its social consequences. For these properties I propose to use the concept of salient properties. In this process, social factors play a role too. The historical account of the way the computer came to be the next major support for text stresses the sociotechnical nature of change. This suggests a spiral movement in the dialectic between social and technological factors, in which, however, technology acts as a catalyst. It both contributes the initial driving force and represents the conditions enabling change, initially as well as later. Technologies are usually created without a clear view of their full ultimate deployment. They usually suggest social uses after they are made available. It will be shown that these social uses are frequently not only additional to, but different from those foreseen by the developer of the technology. Instead of being steered by intentions, the development of technologies tends to be steered by inherent technological properties: their salient properties. Attending the unintended uses of technology there are obviously also unintended social consequences. Such a comparative historical perspective on medial change also highlights the transformative nature of textual mediation. The book will suggest that medium change is as transformative as, for example, the evolutionary development of language in humans, influencing not only the form but also the content and nature of human knowledge. The implications are vast and, far beyond those who deal with text professionally (writers, educators, scholars, publishers, librarians), affect society at large, notably in such institutions as education and democracy. By helping to determine the way we think, they help to determine our culture and our identity. This latest revolution in textual inscription is happening right now. It may be too early to bring to the analysis the right amount of historical distance to reach lasting verdicts about its significance, but I am convinced that studying the radical changes that are now happening will afford much-needed insight into the mechanisms at play. The findings from the comparison can be usefully applied to the present, offering a‘handle’to help understand present developments and perhaps even a measure of control over this process of change. Moreover, establishing the inherent properties of digital textuality in a historical perspective also allows a tentative extrapolation into the future. This is intended not as an exercise in fortune telling but to help gauge the pervasive transformative power of this latest textual revolution. The book is organised as follows. Suggesting a parallel with language, Chapter 1 establishes the transformative nature of textual technology. It elaborates on the book’s aims and the method it employs, and discusses the challenges to the task at hand. Chapter 2 offers definitions of the terms most relevant to under- standing textuality and its significance for human culture, and so sets the framework for the account of the historical development of textual technology and the contrastive analysis in the remainder of the book. By presenting a concise account of the history of textual transmis- sion up to the digital revolution, Chapter 3 presents the historical context in which to understand that revolution. However, it also demonstrates how contemporary developments in the digitisation of text throw a new light on the earlier revolution of printing, forcing a reinterpretation of ‘known’ facts. In fact it challenges the very notion what it was that Gutenberg invented and why that was, or was not, significant. The main topic addressed in Chapter 4 is how developments in the digital transmission of text resulted from the interplay between social and technological factors, and how this relates to inherent salient properties of the digital medium on the one hand, and the social construction of these characteristics on the other. Chapter 5 presents the particular constellation of salient techno- logical properties that characterises digital text. It identifies some of the many social repercussions of this particular technological form of the medium, affecting both the nature of its messages and the connotation of digital textuality in the broader social sense. Chapter 6 sketches in very broad outline some of the current and potential future effects of digital textuality, and, in so doing, returns also to a discussion of the nature of sociotechnical change in the light of the book’s findings.
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Making Sense: Reference, Agency, and Structure in a Grammar of Multimodal Meaning
Book
  • Jan 2020
Cambridge Core - Semantics and Pragmatics - Making Sense - by Bill Cope
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The Politics of Postcolonial Publishing: Oxford University Press's Three Crowns Series 1962-1976
Article
  • Jan 2005
  • Bk Hist
Book History 8 (2005) 227-244 In July 1962, Oxford University Press editor Rex Collings "discovered" the plays of Wole Soyinka. He immediately attempted to persuade his manager, David Neale, that these plays should be included in the Three Crowns series, an eclectic collection of books about Africa published in London for both the UK and international market. Encountering initial opposition, Collings wrote an emphatic response: Rex Collings's argument for the publication of original African literature by OUP hinged on its political expedience. He emphasized the importance of embedding "high culture" in the African publishing program for the purpose of prestige and public relations, and predicted that Three Crowns might serve an important function in compensating for the more commercial activities of the press. This argument was evidently persuasive. He was given permission to begin acquiring African writing for the Three Crowns series, initially with the publication of Soyinka's plays: A Dance in the Forest and The Lion and the Jewel were published in 1963, followed by Three Short Plays in 1964, The Road in 1965, and Kongi's Harvest in 1967. Three Crowns came to be dominated by English-language African literature: mainly drama, with some poems and short stories. For OUP, this was a significant departure from its general pattern of commissioning and writing texts in the UK for the African educational market. Within the context of postcolonial publishing in Africa, this article explores the development of Three Crowns and the political debate surrounding the series. Based on previously unresearched archival material at Oxford University Press and interviews with Three Crowns editors, this study considers the strategy, finances, and management of the series, which in turn reveal the political complexities of postcolonial publishing in the 1960s and 1970s. Three Crowns was to become a highly contentious series, subject to two major reviews. It narrowly survived on both occasions before being finally closed in 1976. What saved Three Crowns from earlier closure was the same liberal argument that Rex Collings first used to justify the initial experiment into African literary publishing: the fact that this cultural enterprise helped justify Oxford University Press's commercial publishing in Africa. Oxford University Press was one of several British companies that consolidated publishing empires in the postcolonial period. Peter Sutcliffe writes in his history of the press: "As the Old Empire dissolved, the Overseas Education Department set out to build a new one." The end of formal colonization in Africa gave British publishing companies the opportunity to become more, not less, deeply entrenched in the cultural life of the continent. New offices were established by OUP in South Africa (reopened 1946), Nigeria (1949), East Africa (1954), and the Gold Coast (1955). As African nations achieved political independence in the early 1960s, OUP sales offices throughout Africa were converted to publishing branches. In 1963 the Nigeria branch (Figure 1) and East Africa branch were opened, followed in successive years by branches in Lusaka (1964), Addis Ababa (1965), and Accra (1966). OUP's International Division was based in the London office of the press and was the coordinating center for the foreign branches, except New York, which was independently managed. The African branches had a degree of autonomy over decisions that affected their own markets, and increasingly managed their own publishing and production programs for these markets, but decisions affecting an international market were referred back to the center. The expansion of OUP in Africa in the 1960s and 1970s was due to the new African nations' investment in education. In Tanzania the Arusha Declaration set out a seven-year program of investment in rural education. In Zambia primary school enrollment doubled between 1964 and 1972...
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The Cuala Press: Women, publishing, and the conflicted genealogies of 'feminist publishing'
Article
  • Nov 2004
  • WOMEN STUD INT FORUM
The Cuala Press, a fine art press run by Elizabeth Yeats around Dublin during the first half of the twentieth century, has long been recognised amongst scholars of Irish literature and history. But the press has been analysed almost exclusively through the interpretative lenses of poet W.B. Yeats, the Yeats family, and the Irish Renaissance. The article challenges such received understandings of Cuala by considering the press as a gendered publishing enterprise: one run by a woman, employing only women, and designed to create work and economic independence for Irish working girls. Through examining the origins of Cuala, the locus of editorial power within the press, and Cuala's complexly ambivalent relationship with modernist Irish suffrage and nationalist women's networks, the article situates the post-1970 feminist publishing boom within a historical trajectory. It suggests that scholarly knowledge of women's publishing history may be crucially dependent upon the health of contemporary feminist presses. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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