Reviews

Bound by Power: Intended Consequences (2006) edited by Jeffery Klaehn

London: Black Rose Books. 258 pages. ISBN (pbk) 1-55164-282-4. £17.99/$26.99 paperback

The stated objective of this edited collection - a follow-up to the 2005 publication entitled Filtering News: Essays on Herman and Chomsky's Propaganda Model - is to encourage popular re-engagement with the issue of power, more specifically the locus and exercise of power in the contemporary world. This is a long-overdue and critical task. Academia is increasingly fragmented, specialised and driven by the demands of the business sector and the state, whilst corporations expand their control over the mainstream media. The result is that fewer and fewer academics, commentators and journalists are attending to the crucial questions posed by the former Labour MP Tony Benn: who has power in our societies, how did they get it, how do they exercise it and how can we get rid of them?

Taking as its point of departure the definition of power advanced by Bertrand Russell, the ability to impose intended effects, this book explores the intended (and unintended) consequences of power as deployed by academic, economic, media, military and political elites in the West, particularly North America. It also considers how ordinary people's lack of information, self-censorship and internalisation/normalisation of unequal power relationships serves to sustain the capitalist system.

The collection begins with a wide-ranging interview with Noam Chomsky, exploring the deployment of elite power in the post-war period. The collection also includes chapters on the political right's campaign against political correctness in the 1990s and the use of patriotism to suppress dissent in the post-9/11 period; the politics of the workplace; United States policy towards Cuba; the East Asian financial crisis; and academic complicity in the tragic relations between Indonesia and East Timor. It also includes interviews with academics and journalists on subjects such as academic freedom, the 'war on terror' and the concept of power.

Of particular interest to British readers are the interview with David Miller and the chapter by David Cromwell. Miller discusses the relative nature of power (power operates between people, between people and institutions, and between institutions) and the role that ideas and propaganda play in mediating these power relationships. Miller also considers the applicability of Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky's propaganda model to the British media and suggests how their model could form the basis of a wider theory about the role of the media in society. Cromwell focuses upon how environmental non-governmental organisations have (unsuccessfully in his view) attempted to encourage the mainstream media to properly report global climate change and other pressing social concerns. He controversially concludes that such an objective is futile, arguing that the mainstream media is the problem and not the solution.

Although an interesting and often challenging read, this book would have benefited from an introductory chapter about power and a conclusion to draw together the main points. These would have provided the necessary backbone around which the other chapters could have hung. It would also have benefited from an index and a guide to further reading and activist resources. Nevertheless, this is an important book that deserves to be widely read.

Dr Andy Mullen, Northumbria University