"Mass Media" and "Exchange" in the greater scheme of things

I like reading micro-histories.  Books like "Salt" by Mark Kurlansky and "Fortune Cookie Chronicles" by Jennifer 8 Lee and "At Home" by Bill Bryson are an interesting way to look at interactions and history, filtered through the lens of a traded commodity, Chinese food in America and the house, respectively. So the readings this week were interesting for me in the way they tracked the influence of broad concepts over time.

From the context of the Benjamin and Adorno and Horkheimer essays, I may have been predisposed to find political structures and hierarchy. In "Mass Media," John Durham Peters describes the top-down structure of many forms of public address. The one-way communication -- he references the "be it known to all present" idea, which assumes that all present are concerned with the message, or ought to be -- applies to much of broadcast media and commercial media. Further, Durham Peters writes that the notion of audience implies passivity. He references the ancient Athenian "democracy" and states that though it was their right to participate, few Athenian citizens exercised it, because it would have meant standing out in front of their peers. With this, he sets up the idea of the ideological stance for the bias toward established power. Much more energy has been expended to study communication by the few to the many, than its converse, the author writes.

The nature of mass media establishes barriers to entry. Costly equipment is necessary to put out a message, along with the expertise to operate the equipment. An organization is most likely to own such equipment, and access to it is gained through it. Typically, the few whose communications to the many are the subject of study are connected with established power structures such as religious, militaristic or governmental organizations, Durham Peters summarizes.

In "Exchange," David Graeber dismantles assumptions about the evolution of social and financial transactions within societies. Examining currency's role in mediating the person-to-person exchanges and explaining the evolution of money's symbolic power and actual power allowed him to point out power structures and how they influence human relationships.

Exchanges create a social bond between parties, with wealth as a means for expressing and defining relationships. Most of the long-term relationships he discussed were between parties of unequal power. (The only equal exchange he describes is reciprocal exchange, a short term bond in which the obligation between parties ends once the round of drinks, compliment or favor is repaid in kind.) In the other forms of exchange Graeber describes, parties of unequal means or stature posture for the upper hand by giving or receiving or obligating each other.

Over the centuries, power structures have both established and regulated financial systems, according to Graeber. Empires were maintained through war; wars were fought by paid soldiers. Militaries were funded by taxes, and the taxes had to be paid with the currency established by the Empire. No choice but to opt in; isolation would result if one chose not to participate in the established currency and the means of financial exchange. Religious institutions regulated credit and lending in the middle ages and exchanges became more closely tied to social trust. Upon breaking that link to religious regulation, Graeber explains, exploitation and plunder ruled the day and money took on a life of its own.