CULTURAL RE/PERCUSSIONS: THE SOCIAL PRODUCTION OF MUSIC BROADCASTING IN CANADA (REPERCUSSIONS)

The history of music in Canada cannot be understood apart from the history of semi-colonial, semi-public, semi-autonomous institutions. Primary among these is radio, whose social and political history exemplifies the contradictory role of media development in an advanced dependent state. In Canada, radio has provided the primary vehicle for a spatial and discursive manifestation of national culture. The importance of music to radio broadcasting is evident; the thesis demonstrates how music broadcasting expresses contradictory political and social forces, while helping to establish new relations of forces through its reorganization of cultural and social space.;The thesis examines the music broadcasting practices of both commercial and community radio as these have evolved in response to international industrialization, showing that differences in format relate to opposing formulations of broadcasting publics. It concludes with a discussion of the problematic nature and political potential of cultural technology in the context of an advanced, industrialized, and dependent culture, and in relation to the increasing non-homogeneity of social and political space.;Radio discourse has been determined by a complex of economic, cultural, and political apparatuses, whose structuration is the subject of historical analysis insofar as these relate to music broadcasting. The historical context of music broadcasting is introduced through a history of relevant broadcasting and cultural policy. Analysis of this history reveals the changing formulation of public interest in relation to the dominant pluralism of the cultural industries; the relation between music broadcasting as a discourse, and the production of non-homogeneous publics; the formation of a professional music apparatus in response to the cultural legitimation strategies of the Canadian state; and the growing contradiction between the nation and the state. The thesis posits a "legitimation crisis" in public music broadcasting in the 1970s, demonstrating the degree to which the structuration of cultural production and state legitimation has been drawn into collision in response to the dependent development of broadcasting, and its supercession by cultural industrialization and national cultural legitimation.