Abstract
This book proposes to examine the impact of global neoliberal media systems on the availability of environmental discourses in media culture. Such research ambition, although prominent in media and communication research generally, appears at face value to offer much to the often-narrower focus of environmental communication scholarship (the extent of this will be assessed later, however). Following a useful and eloquent introductory chapter, the book discusses environmental discourses in Chapter one and neoliberal and global media in Chapter two before offering three exploratory chapters and a conclusion.
Chapter one begins the investigation into the presence of environmental understandings in media culture. Drawing on the work of Dryzek, it offers a typology of environmental – or earth – discourses. Promethean discourse is discussed first as an often unarticulated view in capitalist societies that expresses ‘the commitment to growth and material wellbeing’ (p. 18) on the basis of exploiting the earth’s resources. The chapter traces its presence through various political discourses and firms up its description in terms of several guiding principles (i.e. small government, agency of economic actors and competition). Discourses on the ‘limits’ of the earth’s resources (or ‘survivalism’ as explained by Dryzek) is introduced next and explained to be, alongside promethean discourse, the most relevant to the forthcoming analysis. Still, a supporting cast of other discourses (including ecological modernism and green radicalism) appear and feature in a final overview.
Equipped then with an outline of environmental discourses and a commitment made earlier in the introduction to applying an ‘interpretative, multifold approach’ (p. 9) loosely based on the thoughts of Fairclough to several ‘sites of enquiry’, the book moves forward to discuss the global media’s promethean logic. It is at this point (Chapter two) that the reader is presented with the central argument of the book. Crudely phrased, this goes as follows: Most media exist within neoliberal systems, these neoliberal media reproduce elements of free market thinking in their products and therein an unarticulated promethean outlook to boot. Much like other works of political economy, the reader is offered evidence of changing media systems and what the book suggests is an ongoing ‘promethean-neoliberal coupling’. Provided then is an outline of the US neoliberal policy reforms in the 1980 and 1990s that replaced earlier interventionist and protectionist’ policies. This is situated in a wider trend of the role of the United States in the reorganisation of the world economy towards a prototype of the consumer society following World War II. At this point, the chapter’s observations of the use of Western communication development theory to prepare developing economies and the growth in the exporting of Western consumer culture via global US media conglomerates treads the theoretical line of the cultural imperialism thesis, as expressed by Herbert Schiller and others. However, to its credit, it reviews developments within different media ‘regions’ (though ‘region’ is a problematic category for such an analysis) and reflects some of the complexities found. Despite these, it concludes that ‘most of the world’s entertainment and information industries have become neoliberal institutions and systems in the service of the promethean discourse’ (p. 66). Such a view, many would note, remains the subject of discussion in media globalisation studies.
With its picture of the global media system established, the book moves to observe the presence of environmental discourses in media culture in the first of its three exploratory chapters. Chapter three focuses on the ‘limits of Green TV’. Acknowledged is the reproduction in media entertainment of claims about the limited resources of planet earth as part of a ‘survivalism’ discourse. A historical discussion of different films demonstrates their early radical content changing to now survivalist narratives found within zombie films or those based on themes of ‘the end of the world’ (nature’s revenge) or environmental justice. A more ‘progressive’ small screen (i.e. TV), by contrast, includes programmes that follow and reflect politically on disaster events (flooding, etc.) in addition to providing ‘after earth’ docudramas and green lifestyle shows. Even the trend to take ‘green mainstream’ is discussed here with the example of the Discovery Channel’s forming of ‘Discovery Planet Green’. These ‘character driven eco-entertainment’ offerings, despite challenging the ‘promethean discourse’s hegemonic status’ (p. 92), share, it is argued, a limited potential to communicate green concerns, to outline problem-solving or to survive in the marketplace. The unsurprising takeaway from this is that market logic is playing a role in shaping US products that will attract audiences. The thornier issue is whether this analysis can stand in for that of products in other media ‘regions’.
The next chapter, ‘the battle of the blogosphere…’, focuses on the discursive activities of organisations – Monsanto in this case. It paints a picture of big business (including examples of Coca-Cola and ExxonMobil) as capitalising on ‘green consumerism’ and as ‘green washing’ its activities to reflect the growing environmental awareness among its customer base. Here, ecological modernization discourse is reproduced in industry’s attempt to project environmental concerns as simple business challenges. Following the case of Monsanto, a self-described ‘chemical company come food company’ (p. 98), the chapter traces its claims to bring (genetically modified) food to the ‘developing world’ alongside its critics and their criticisms. But more important, this argues, is its recent ‘image shaping project’ (p. 105) that is communicated through a varied web presence and one that purposefully fuses ‘survivalism’ and ‘promethean’ discourses in a message that says ‘to advert catastrophe, we need better tools for our food producers.’ (p. 113). While this analysis of Monsanto is insightful, it does not move far from the insights already provided by an established literature on the activities of industry.
The final exploratory chapter focuses on the Amazon rainforest. Part of the chapter discusses the media use and the promotional activities of Amazonian Indians. But, it starts by engaging with the popular representations of the Amazon and its inhabitants, hence its title of ‘the media and the ecologically noble savage’. Outlined is how the Amazon rainforest became meaningful to many after the first space pictures of planet earth appeared in the 1960s and their subsequent use to communicate the problems with deforestation by NGOs. Thereafter, progressive companies, practicing fair trade, devised partnerships with Amazonian Indians and emerging from these relationships, the chapter argues, are ideas of them as ‘natural custodians’ of the Amazon. Recognised as important to their interests, this identifiable ‘indigenousness’ is used by Amazonian Indians in their efforts ‘to be seen’ globally in addition to their embracing of environmental vocabulary ‘to be heard’ (p. 123), it is claimed, and more recently they have utilised technology to record their culture, footprint and to trade. Furthermore, the chapter suggests that this provides an instance of where green radicalism breaks through the promethean discourse. Still, this is racialism with a small ‘r’ in terms of the type of green subjectivities that are projected and further, the chapter notes that the various tribes’ agency continues to be shaped in part according to Western ideas of their authenticity.
In concluding, the book suggests that alternative discourses ‘have not provided a clear or convincing path of escape from this general framing of the economic over the ecological’ (p. 153) and, in turn, it asks us to demand change from our media institutions. While many may agree with this conclusion, they may also raise academic questions about how it has been reached. For example, to bring together insights into the media system and reflections on media output is noteworthy in the context of environmental communication scholarship, but the book’s approach leaves media production and producers as an unexplored ‘black box’ (see Schudson, 1997). Perhaps we would obtain a more complex explanation than that of market logic by analysing producers’ perspectives and the production of these products. In addition, this approach fits neatly with calls from critical political economists for text analysis to support their general theorising of the dynamics of cultural production. But requests for ‘detailed investigations of textual organisation’ to understand the mediating role of cultural forms (see Murdock and Golding, 2003: 75), are not strictly met with the book’s rather selective use of films, TV programmes and online presentation and its ‘readings’ or ‘interpretations’ of them. Perhaps there is also an uneasy alliance between the general review of the complex media regions and the Western media products and organisations that are selected to stand in for them. Certainly, the book’s approach produces an interesting and unique contribution that should be required reading for scholars and students. But equally, there remains the scope to continue to explore the interconnections between cultural production and texts and, moreover, rather than to suggest that the media produce limited green ‘subjectivities’, to actively explore the social context of media audiences that inform their ‘tactics’, ‘authority’ and ‘decodings’ in this regard.