Media, State and Nation: Political Violence and Collective Identities (Media Culture & Society series)

`reminds us with wry intelligence and in a consistently lucid fashion that collective identities depend only in part on state decree or the workings of the media.' - Times Higher Education Supplement

`There is no doubt that Schlesinger's work does help to clarify one's thinking about questions such as these. It testifies both to the achievements of contemporary media sociology and to its limits. Aware of both, we are as well prepared to move on as we could hope to be. There are no comforting nostrums here, readers should be grateful for that, we will learn more and make better progress without them. But there are many provocations to further research and study.' - Critique of Anthropology

`There is not one dud essay in the book.... this book is essential reading for anyone concerned with media-state relations and the structure of political communications in the modern world. Schlesinger's work should be required reading by students and specialists alike, and deserves the widest possible audience.' - Media Law and Practice

`Philip Schlesinger has advanced our understanding of how knowledge is produced, distributed, transformed and put to different uses as it moves through different institutional contexts.... This book is a valuable record of Philip Schlesinger's thought over the past decade, and includes several important conceptual refinements as well as fine case studies.' - British Journal of Sociology

`In this scholarly and lucid set of essays, stretching back to the late 1970s, Schlesinger sets a challenging agenda for anyone interested in coming to terms with some of the fundamental issues involved in assessing the power of the media in shaping modern, public, especially national conciousness. The essays also convey a sense of deliberate and sustained development of the intellectual project which has encompassed three major - but linked - problematics. This triad is reflected in the organisation of the book and the progression of chapters, all of which have been published before, but which appear with postscript commentary and in some cases, in English for the first time' - Sociology

`In this incisive text on media and collective identity, Philip Schlesinger develops our understanding of the contemporary struggles over political discourse. By combining analysis of particular political issues and case studies of media-state relations, the book demonstrates the complexity of political communication and its part in the way in which states construct their enemies, both internal and external' - Canadian Journal of Communication