Communication Under The Ritual Canopy: A Study Of James W. Carey's Thoughts On Communication

Of many descriptions of communication, the most common and popular interpretation is:"Communication is the transmission of information."In the past century, this is the track communication studies has followed, it dominates the basic framework for communication research and has played a leading role up to now. Such a definition of communication as a basic process has the obvious advantage, that is, it is easy for us to perceive in our daily life experience, and at the same time, it can be employed by the so-called "scientific method"– an increasingly large data model, a professional team, more precise and meticulous analytical skills - to meet and serve the growing bureaucratic or market demands. Communication seems to have become a branch of natural science. But there are some "alternative" refreshing points of view, and Carey's ritual view of communication is one of these.From the perspective of rituals, communication is not, or at least not only the transmission of information, but the most basic social process, one that involves the maintenance of social relationships, the formation of human culture and the composition of human civilization. This is a new vision of communication and new path for communication studies. This is a kind of ultimate questioning of the nature of human social existence in which Carey's human spirit and moral concern are also included: how to create a better human world? As an environmentalist committed to saving rare animals in the deteriorating ecological environment, what Carey wants to do is examine how to protect the social environment upon which our lives rely from serious pollution and damage just like that facing the natural environment, and thus to save human beings themselves?The objective of this paper is to conduct a systematic survey of Carey' s ritual view of communication, and so introduce it into Chinese academic study with the hope that it will benefit domestic research. However, the most fundamental goal is more than that. An attempt is made, on this basis, to develop the studies both vertically and horizontally. Vertically, an academic survey is made of the ritual view of communication, so as to find its origin; horizontally, an analysis is made of the thought trends of communication in the period when Carey lived to explain the climate in which he proposed the ritual view of communication. This is clearly a difficult and complicated task that in fact involves the rethinking of human communication history. This paper, makes no attempt to place moral and value judgments above the research of ritual view, but merely intends to illustrate that research in social sciences will lose its value and significance if it ignores considerations of morality and values.To accomplish this challenging task, this paper is divided, in the arrangements of contents, into seven parts excluding the preface.ChapterⅠ: Carey's lifetime and academic course. The understanding of Carey's life experiences and academic course helps to deepen our understanding of Carey's ritual view of communication. According to the relevant documents, Carey's life can be divided into four stages. The first stage is the "mysterious" street education (1934-1948) from Carey's birth to schooling that is the early youth of Carey. This part is aimed at helping people to comprehend why Carey would put forward the ritual view of communication through the knowledge of his family background and unique experiences in his early youth. The second stage is when he "diverts" to the field of communication (1948-1963), which mainly discusses Carey's education from the middle school period to his Ph.D. graduation, aiming at understanding the formative process of his academic thought through his academic background. The third stage is his teaching period in Illinois University (1963-1979), which is an important period for the formation of Carey's academic thought. During this period, Carey completed his academic shift in his life and presented two theoretical notions of communication, becoming the representative and leading figure of American cultural research. The fourth stage is his teaching period in Columbia University (1992-2006). In this period, he led the Ph.D. program on communication and contributed a great deal to the construction of the discipline of communication. However, in his later years Carey was more concerned about the macro issues, and also expressed strong interest in the Internet. By sorting out his thoughts in his later years, we can easily grasp his ritual view of communication from different points of view.ChapterⅡ: Overall arrangement of Carey's ritual view of communication.In sectionⅠ, the survey of communication and ritual concepts, this paper attempts to find the overlapping and integrating area of "ritual" and "communication" concepts by historic analysis, and puts forward the proposition-"the ritual as communication."In sectionⅡ, this paper puts forward the ritual view of communication, taking telegram as text, map as the metaphor and dialogue as the beginning of ritual view.In sectionⅢ, a "comparison of two communication concepts" is put forward and the discussion is focused on the differences between them, that is, to divide the different origins, concerns and functions and finally come to a universal conclusion: both views of communication are noticeably contrasting and yet highly uniform. It answers the question of what on earth communication is, that is, communication is"the transmission of information"and also"the superficial characteristics of people's shared beliefs."ChapterⅢ: Communication as culture. This is actually a continuation of chapterⅡand it further elaborates several groups of concepts related to the ritual view: culture and communication, technology and communication, journalism and communication. Through the analysis of these groups of concepts, the understanding of Carey's ritual view of communication is deepened.ChapterⅣ: Focusing on exploring the theoretical origins of Carey's ritual view of communication. SectionⅠis about the opposition of transmission view and ritual view of communication that had existed for a long time, and the democratic self-governing philosophy of the ancient Greeks is the source of Carey's ritual view of communication. SectionⅡis about the relationship between Carey's ritual view of communication and the Chicago School of thoughts, emphasizing the influence on Carey of Dewey, Parker, Cooley, and Mead. The ideas of American Pragmatism are the direct source of Carey's ritual view of communication. SectionⅢis about the relationship between Carey's ritual view of communication and technological schools of thought, emphasizing the influence of Innis and Marshall McLuhan on Carey. SectionⅣis about the relationship between Carey's ritual view of communication and Geertz's "understanding other people's understanding", focusing on the influence of Geertz's thoughts on Carey. SectionⅤis about the relationship between Carey's ritual view of communication and the British cultural research school of thought-the Birmingham School of Philosophy, stressing the influence of Williams and Hall on Carey. SectionⅥis about the relationship between Carey and Marxism, especially about the battle among British political and economic philosophers, which had a great impact on Carey's ritual view of communication. SectionⅦis about the relationship between religion and Carey's ritual view of communication, mainly about the religious soil in the United States, the religious beliefs of Carey himself and the religious ideas of Durkheim, which exerted an impact on Carey.ChapterⅤ: Major contributions of Carey's ritual view of communication. SectionⅠis about the contribution of Carey's ritual view of communication to studies in communication. When making assessment on the ritual view of communication, this paper mainly, from looking back at the research history of American communication, regards Carey's ritual view of communication as a challenge to the traditional and predominating studies of empiricism, thus opening up a new path for research on communication. SectionⅡcovers the application and development of Carey's ritual view of communication and centers on analyzing how, inspired by Carey's ritual view of communication, scholars of communication have done research on phenomena and behaviors of ritual communication in daily life and mass communication, and illustrates that "media ritual" and "ritual media" are commonly existing phenomena.ChapterⅥ: Analysis of the major drawbacks of Carey's ritual view of communication. It focuses on analyzing and commenting on, one by one, the contradictions and deficiencies of the ritual view of communication in particular, pointing out its shortcomings and inadequacies.ChapterⅦ: Reference of the ritual view of communication. Reviewing the history of communication of 30 years since the end of 1970s when it was introduced to mainland China, this paper examines the problems and shortcomings of Chinese studies on communication. Grounding on this, it studies and discusses the inspiration and reference of Carey's ritual view of communication towards Chinese studies on communication.In the "epilogue", this paper gives a further descriptive conclusion of Carey's academic thoughts. Carey's academic works are placed as an appendix to this paper for readers' reference in accordance with the time sequence of publication.