Marvin, Carolyn
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Publication Embracing the Written Word(1981) Marvin, CarolynPublication "All Under Heaven" -- Megaspace in Beijing(2008-01-01) Marvin, CarolynStaging the 2008 Olympics is heady stuff for the modern descendants of the Middle Kingdom. Though its emperor once possessed a divine mandate to rule "All Under Heaven," China's international role has been far more circumscribed during the last century and a half. Now the Chinese believe their luck has changed. Playing host to the largest of all modern peacetime extravaganzas perfectly suits the current Chinese political imagination, succinctly if not subtly expressed in the Beijing Olympic Slogan, "One World, One Dream." Through the magic of media, the 2008 Games will certainly reach all under heaven, a scale the Chinese have embraced by sending an Olympic flag to orbit the earth for five days in 2005 aboard China's second manned space mission, Shengzhou VI (Zhao 2005).Publication The Totem Myth: Sacrifice and Transformation(1999) Marvin, Carolyn; Ingle, David WThe flag symbolizes the sacrificed body of the citizen. This label has meaning only in reference to the group that defines it, the nation. Blood sacrifice links the citizen to the nation. It is a ritual in the most profound sense, for it creates the nation from the flesh of its citizens. The flag is the sign and agent of the nation formed in blood sacrifice. Still, raising a piece of cloth and calling it a flag will not declare territory and form groups, at least not territory that will be respected, or groups that will endure and fight to produce borders. The power of a flag must be sacrificially established. The point was made by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, whose challenge to Boris Yeltsin in Russia's first parliamentary elections caught the attention of the West. Opposing the division of Russia into republics, Zhirinovsky complained that the countries created by these new flags were abstract symbols only. "They don't understand that you have to pay with blood for this process."Publication When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking About Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century(1988) Marvin, CarolynPublication Review of Michael J. Hyde, ed., Communications Philosophy and the Technological Age(1985) Marvin, CarolynPublication Computer Systems: Prospects for a Public Information Network(1978) Marvin, CarolynPublication Avery Brundage and American Participation in the 1936 Olympic Games(1982-04-01) Marvin, CarolynAvery Brundage liked to say that revolutionaries were not bred on the playing field. That theme neatly expressed Brundage's distrust of any challenge to the established political and social order he cherished and garnished his speeches to countless audiences during the forty years in which he was the single most powerful figure in both the American and international Olympic movements, first as president of the American Olympic Committee (1929-53), and then as president of the International Olympic Committee (1952-72). Although the Iron Chancellor of amateur sport regarded himself as the last true defender of the strict separation of sport and politics, he also frequently insisted that more than the future of amateur sport was at stake in shielding sport from political manipulation. Upon sport for sport's sake depended the healthy psychological valuation of individual effort and excellence that was at the very heart of a democratic way of life. Moreover, fit bodies and competitive spirits were in Brundage's view essential for the continued success of American capitalism at home and abroad. Though he never acknowledged the political coloring of his vision of the Olympics, he regarded them as a kind of international mission for spreading democratic values in the continuing ideological battle between Communism and the American way of life.Publication Telecommunications Policy and the Pleasure Principle(1983-03-01) Marvin, CarolynMost serious discussion of telecommunications policy is governed by a utilitarian framework in which the success of communications networks is measured by some criterion of productivity. This exclusive emphasis creates undesirable rigidities in large communications systems upon which industrialized societies are so dependent. An analysis of productivity constraints on the social flexibility of existing networks is offered in support of an argument for deliberately building playfulness, In line with certain modest proposals, into the organization of emerging networks of communication.Publication Experts, Black Boxes and Artifacts: New Categories in the Social History of Electric Media(1989) Marvin, CarolynPublication Constructed and Reconstructed Discourse: Inscription and Talk in the History of Literacy(1984-10-01) Marvin, CarolynThis article considers a theoretical problem at the center of historical research on literacy, the solution to which has implications for studies of contemporary literacies as well. Four models of literacy are identified. The (1) traditionally received skills model still flourishes in educational policy, but is increasingly rejected by literacy scholars who employ either (2) a functional model of literacy as an instrument of power relations or (3) a semiotic “marker” model of literacy. While traditional communications history has evinced little interest in historical studies of literacy, (4) a highly visible grand theory model of literacy associated with McLuhan, Innis, and Ong has its origins in the received model. Where the received model is optimistic about the long-term social and political effects of literacy, however, the grand theory model is pessimistic. Although a growing body of scholars has argued that the definition of any literacy must be located in its actual practices, and although many scholars now believe that oral-literate dichotomies are overly simple historical categories, this article takes that thinking farther and argues that literacy does not merely coexist or interact with oral practices and skills, but includes them. That is, the definition of literacy consists in the written and oral practices and skills, but includes them. That is, the definition of literacy consists in the written and oral practices organized around texts in a particular culture. Support for this argument is taken from pertinent evidence in the history of literacy.