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Political Science Cultural Policy

Hearts and Mines

The US Empire’s Culture Industry

by (author) Tanner Mirrlees

Publisher
UBC Press
Initial publish date
Jan 2016
Category
Cultural Policy, General, Globalization
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780774830140
    Publish Date
    Jan 2016
    List Price
    $39.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780774830171
    Publish Date
    Jan 2016
    List Price
    $34.99
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780774830157
    Publish Date
    Jun 2016
    List Price
    $34.95

Classroom Resources

Where to buy it

Description

The US security state is everywhere in cultural products: in army-supported news stories, TV shows, and video games; in CIA-influenced blockbusters and comics; and in State Department ads, broadcasts, and websites. Hearts and Mines examines the rise and reach of the US Empire’s culture industry – a nexus between the US’s security state and media firms and the source of cultural products that promote American strategic interests around the world. Building on Herbert I. Schiller’s classic study of US Empire and communications, Tanner Mirrlees interrogates the symbiotic geopolitical and economic relationships between the US state and media firms that drive the production of imperial culture.

About the author

Contributor Notes

Tanner Mirrlees is an assistant professor in the Communication and Digital Media Studies Program at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT). He is the author of Global Entertainment Media: Between Cultural Imperialism and Cultural Globalization and co-editor of The Television Reader.

Editorial Reviews

Tanner Mirrlees’ most exquisite book on the US culture industry starts with a rhetorical question: Is ‘the relationship between the US government and the culture industry one of conflict or symbiosis?’ (p. xiii). Mirrlees answers this with ‘symbiosis’… While Mirrlees’ book is most insightful and illuminating it is also devastatingly pessimistic, perhaps even dystopian.”

European