Description: "The life of a critical researcher is often a lonely one. As Janet Wasko observed in A Different Road Taken, challenging dominant power structures is difficult, often leading to additional scrutiny from within one's academic department and/or field and generally resulting in few, if any, opportunities for funded research. This volume serves as a guidepost to those wishing to understand the difficulties facing critical researchers and how others have been able to navigate through the challenges. It will be particularly valuable for those interested in learning about the scholars who conducted research that did not conform to mainstream social science standards and challenged established views. In addition, the lives and work of these critical researchers offers a means for understanding ourselves as we try to make sense of the dynamic and complicated world in which we live"--
Review Quotes:
"A revelation twice-over. The interviews collected in this book give us fascinating and perceptive self-portraits, by some of our foremost radical communications scholars: both the prevailing patterns of power, and the individual political commitments needed to challenge them, stand clearly before us. Along the way, the book provides rich insights into the structure of contemporary communications, confirming that critical scholarship has built up a unique capacity to comprehend this crucial domain." - Dan Schiller, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
"This fascinating and incisive collection provides a rare glimpse into the personal histories and academic careers of the foremost thinkers in critical communication studies. In vividly recalling their early lives and professional trajectories, each of the interviewees reveals how their scholarship and activism have been animated by individual struggles with social and political injustices. The candor and sincerity of the conversations speak to Lent and Amazeen's unique strengths as interviewers, and they have succeeded in producing a wonderfully rich and intriguing intellectual history of the political economy of communication." - Brooke Erin Duffy, Temple University, USA
"With critical approaches now well established in many communications programs, this book provides invaluable first-person narratives of the struggle to secure critical communication scholarship, and the ongoing challenges it presents for researchers, activists, and policy-makers worldwide." Terry Flew, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
'Contributors to this volume represent a Who's Who of critical communication scholarship. The insights they provide about their background can help us understand the social and intellectual factors that have motivated their work.' - Joseph Turow, The Annenberg School for Communication, USA