Wikipedia:Today's featured article/June 2, 2008

Harold Innis in the 1920s

Harold Innis was a professor of political economy at the University of Toronto and the author of seminal works on Canadian economic history, media, and communication theory. In spite of his dense and difficult prose, Innis is considered by many scholars to have been one of Canada's most original thinkers. He helped develop the staples thesis, which holds that Canada's culture, political history and economy have been decisively influenced by the exploitation and export of a series of staples such as fur, fish, wood, wheat, mined metals and fossil fuels. Innis's communications writings explore the role of media in shaping the culture and development of civilizations. He warned however that Western civilization is now imperiled by powerful, advertising-driven media obsessed by "present-mindedness" and the "continuous, systematic, ruthless destruction of elements of permanence essential to cultural activity". Innis laid the basis for scholarship that looked at the social sciences from a distinctly Canadian point of view. Innis also tried to defend universities from political and economic pressures. He believed that independent universities, as centres of critical thought, were essential to the survival of Western civilization. (more...)

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