Reviews for Communication models for the study of mass communications

The average rating for Communication models for the study of mass communications based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-10-04 00:00:00 Anthony Hollingsworth Charles Joyner takes us on an engaging and enlightening voyage up the Waccamaw River, to All Saints Parish in the South Carolina lowcountry, in his book Down by the Riverside. He vividly recreates life the way it was, when rice was king, in places like Prospect Hill, Brookgreen, and Georgetown. These plantations and others like them were the home to tens thousands of African-American slaves, whose ceaseless toils over generations in the horrid conditions and sweltering heat of the rice paddies and mills, made their owners among the wealthiest of Americans by the antebellum period. Joyner acknowledges this is a unique microcosm of Southern life, dependent both upon the local environmental and topographical conditions which ideally suited for the wholesale cultivation of rice and further that without the muscle, and even more importantly the knowledge of tens of thousands of African slaves, none of this could have been created nor maintained for generations. It is through their eyes, which Joyner eloquently portrays the texture and fabric of life in the Waccamaw neck by studying the things they used to work, cook and eat with like baskets and pottery. But just as importantly through careful study of the music, cooking, cuisine, religion, traditions, and most especially the unique language, which is spoken almost exclusively in the lowcountry and coastal islands of the American Southeast. It is through the perspective of these Gullah speaking slaves and their ancestors and their language, customs, and folklore, that Joyner sought to view this microcosm of American slavery. Doing so because as he complained, previous attempts to define American slavery had done so without careful examination of the environs of any one slave community. By every measure this is such an intense survey of a tightly defined slave community, told from not only from a wide variety of traditional primary sources relied upon by previous historians, like census data, probate and plantation records, letters and diaries of both residents and visitors, which presented the white world's view of the region. He delved further however, looking deeper into the very fabric of slave society as well, considering intangibles like oral and folk history through the things which truly make up a culture. He studied customs, clothing, the ceremonies of life and death, music, religion, and superstitions that are all part of the weave of the fabric of every community, regardless of size or location or ethnic makeup. Joyner relies on people like Ben Horry who had survived slavery, reconstruction and more than three decades of the 20th century when he spoke with Genevieve Wilcox Chandler during the Great Depression to relate a Black vision of this world. A view from the other side of the looking glass, which while both interesting and revealing is at the same time suspect by the mere passage of time and one's natural tendency toward nostalgia, particularly in such trying times as those found in 1930's America. His interdisciplinary approach to the study meticulously builds upon itself, showing how influences from Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean converged here, each leaving an indelible mark on the culture which continues to evolve as all societies do. His study and narrative begin as all good history ought to, at the beginning with the Spanish and French, who were followed by other Europeans from the British Empire, many by way of the Caribbean, who brought along their slaves who were of various African and West Indian descent. Scotsman, Irish, and others followed as well, all of which blended and intermingled over time and generations to make up the unique culture of the rice coast which is discussed in great detail. Thus he fulfills amply, the goal of recreating the live of the slave community and of the rice country as it evolved and blended the myriad of influences which he refers to as creolization. The author's Carolinian roots he admits helped to fuel his passion for the topic which pours readily from the volume's pages. Building upon his doctoral dissertation Slave folklife on the Waccamaw Neck : antebellum Black culture in the South Carolina Lowcountry, (Univ. of Michigan, 1977), it showcases the author's extensive and all encompassing knowledge of the topic, his careful and diligently documented research evidences the credibility of his thesis, which is well-explained and exhaustively carried by a wealth of evidence presented. It also parallels closely in many respects, and could be seen as itself a microcosm, of Ira Berlin's earliest work Slaves Without Masters: the free Negro in the antebellum South, (Oxford Press, 1974). Both volumes provide an enlightening view of the slave as a knowledgeable master craftsman whose talents and skills were highly sought after, thus affording those individual slaves who were carpenters, boatmen, and blacksmiths for example, a limited degree of autonomy. His in-depth analysis of the task system of slave labor management which suited itself well to the demands of rice cultivation and processing is splendidly informing as well, but again tells only a part of the story of slave labor in America. It fails to contrast this system against that of the gang system of labor which was far more widely used in the cotton belt as Berlin and others have presented as well. Berlin's subsequent Many Thousands Gone: The first two Centuries of Slavery in North America, (Harvard Press, 1998) also expounds upon Joyner's creolization concept, looking more distantly perhaps into the history of the Creole. In doing so it portrays this more fully as a distinct and separate class or race, which itself sought to distinguish its own place in the world, by exploiting the roots of its birth. Still Joyner clearly achieves his three stated goals of recreating life in All Saints Parish, exposing the fabric of slave life in the lowcountry and how it evolved over time and in relation to the demands of the circumstances at hand. The book's longevity as one of the most prominent secondary sources in the study of African-America history, as well as the accolades rightfully bestowed upon it, stand as ample testimony to its importance in the genre. However one can easily come away with a filtered view of slavery that provides only a limited understanding of the full trauma and turmoil which slaves live everyday of their lives. While he does touch upon the ever present, unspoken threat of violence which constantly hung like a shadow over the head of every slave, the issues this raises for the psyche of those enslaved individuals could be seen as lacking or at least as being soft peddled. Particularly so in regards to women and the sexual violence which they so often endured at the hands of White men and for which they were just as often vehemently despised by White women. The birth of a "yellow" child to a slave woman might easily end with a demand by the madam for the banishment of the offending reminder of her husband or son's transgressions along with its hussy mother. This leads to the final and perhaps most lacking aspect of the study, that of the domestic slave trade which always lurked as an ominous unknown, that none returned from, nor were generally ever heard from again. As bad as a slave's life was in the lowcountry, there were worse things out there and the threat of being "sold south" was definitely one of them, as was the prospect of being hired out to do particularly unpleasant work or to an abusive white man. This is again touched upon, but never really fully elaborated on, which is unfortunate. Joyner does point out that the Waccamaw region was unique, in that the exhaustive labor demands of rice cultivation negated the effects of any natural increase through reproduction among the slaves, unlike plantations further north in tobacco country or further west in the land of cotton. Because no surplus of slave labor existed here, the ravages of the slave trade were not visited as often upon the lowcountry slaves as those of other regions of the country like the Chesapeake or lower Mississippi Valley. Here again this would be echoed and reinforced by other prominent scholars and writers such as Walter Johnson in Soul by Soul (Harvard Press, 1999), which vividly recreates the domestic slave trade and the reaction of the slaves to the principles of chattel slavery. Down by the Riverside remains a most essential work in the field despite these drawbacks mentioned. It has reinforced by and in turn been lent additional credibility from Joyner's scholarly contemporaries like Berlin. It has also been a spring board of ideas, that has inspired and propelled many others to look harder and deeper in order to gain a more complete of vision of slavery and slaves' lives by those like Johnson and will continue to do so for some time. For it is above all a great start towards understanding slavery in America, however it should be remembered that African-Americans were not the only people enslaved in this country's formative years. Which brings to light the only glaring error or omission in the book on page 226, where Joyner declares that after 1865, "never again would men and women be bought or sold in America." While indeed there were no more slave markets in the Old South of America, on its Southwestern frontier there remained a lively and lucrative trade in Native Americans, mostly women and children in the New Mexico territory into the late 1860's.1 Despite all of this however, Joyner's voyage up the Waccamaw is a splendid journey to take for all serious scholars from many disciplines.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-08-03 00:00:00 Bradley Scott On a reading list provided by the Old Slave Mart Museum in Charleston, SC.