My Account Wish List
Advanced Search
Print - Close Window
www.greenwood.com/catalog/C7445.aspx
All Greenwood Products
The Idea of Propaganda A Reconstruction
(Click to Enlarge)
Stanley B. Cunningham
ISBN: 0-275-97445-6
ISBN-13: 978-0-275-97445-9
248 pages
Praeger Publishers
Publication: 5/30/2002
List Price: $98.95 (UK Sterling Price: £68.95)
Availability: In Stock
Media Type: Hardcover
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects:
Description: To understand properly the use of propaganda, it is necessary to move beyond the conventional, largely descriptive treatments that have been the scholarly norm, and to move deeply into a sustained theoretical analysis of the concept in terms of its primary cognitive and ethical deficits. Through a sequential consideration of the epistemology, ethics, and metaphysics of propaganda—that is, one that emerges from a historical review of theories and definitions of the subject—author Stanley B. Cunningham provides a radical new window on a much-discussed discipline. He aims to secure a concept of propaganda that reflects the complexity and sophistication of contemporary mass persuasion practices, while avoiding the trivializations and cliches that mark much of propaganda scholarship.

Utilizing an assortment of philosophical analyses and arguments, Cunningham contends that the culture of propaganda is primarily and originally rooted in a wide range of epistemological disservices—that, indeed, propaganda is neither ethically neutral nor indeterminate, and that its lack of ethics constitutes part of its very definition. Eschewing the methodology of social science, this radical study represents the first-ever systematic and philosophically structured approach in the 80-year history of propaganda analysis.
Table of Contents:
  • Introduction
    The Problem of Defining Propaganda
    The Notion of Propaganda
    The Utility of the Notion of Propaganda
    Approaches to the Concept of Propaganda
    Approaching Propaganda Through Definitions and Classifications
    Beyond Definitions: Approaching Propaganda Through Method
    The Philosophy of Propaganda
    The Epistemology of Propaganda
    The Ethics of Propaganda
    The Metaphysics of Propaganda
    Moving Beyond Propaganda
    Responding to Propaganda: An Ethical Enterprise
    Conclusion
    References
About the Author: STANLEY B. CUNNINGHAM is Professor Emeritus at the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada. He is the co-author and co-editor of Television Advertising in Canadian Elections: The Attack Mode, (1993).
LCC Class: 303
All rights reserved. Copyright © 1999-2009 ABC-CLIO
130 Cremona Dr., Santa Barbara, CA 93117 805-968-1911