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Simon Cottle and Libby Lester (eds), Transnational Protests and the Media

figures in communication studies. So, for instance, rather than taking John Dewey or George Herbert Mead as those speaking to the pragmatist tradition, Robert Brandom, Charles Peirce, William James and Richard Bernstein are chosen. Sandra Harding, closely associated with standpoint epistemology, is the only representative of feminist theory and the mark it has made on thinking about communication. Something of an imbalance there; and only two other women philosophers are given profiles: Hannah Arendt and Seyla Benhabib. (Hannan’s explanation for this imbalance does not convince.) It is good to see Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur both given chapters, though, for hermeneutics holds considerable promise for what it can bring to thinking about communication. No doubt every reader will find omissions, and Hannan is aware of the absence of certain obvious candidates for the volume. At nearly 500 pages there was clearly a limit on how many philosophers could be profiled. In a welcome afterword, John Durham Peters notes the contrast between philosophy’s ancient lineage and communication studies’ lack of the influence of any prestigious intellectual tradition upon its development as a field in the postwar period. One cannot help but wonder at how communication studies may have developed if there had been a closer mutual awareness of, and dialogue between, philosophy and communication theory 50 years or so ago, and of course subsequently. Peters nevertheless grounds his reflections on the relation of academic philosophy and communication theory to what has happened in the past 50-year development of the field of communication studies, and offers a number of sharp insights into the various directions it has taken. His afterword adds a stimulating final note to the volume. Its value as a whole is that it should foster a greater appreciation of the importance of communication as a philosophical theme, and a greater sense of our obligation to attend more closely to it, for as Peters observes, many of those working in communication studies have been awarded PhDs, so they ought to take seriously, and think more concertedly about, what is entailed in being doctors of philosophy.