Book reviews : Multinational Corporations and the Control of Culture, Armand Mattelart, translated by Michael Chanan, The Harvester Press Ltd., Sussex, I979
Abstract
Book reviewsMultinational Corporations and the Control of Culture, Armand Mattelart, translated by Michael Chanan, The Harvester Press Ltd., Sussex, I979 SAGE Publications, Inc.1980DOI: 10.1177/016344378000200208 Leena Paldán 'If a book has not becn translated into English, it does not eYist'-an unfortunate attitude I have learned too many English speaking academics share. The present book hence proves its value even on this xenophobic criterion: the book was originally published in French in i976 and is therefore already widely familiar to French speaking researchers. As the very title of the book suggests, Mattelart sets out to analyse those multinational corporations (henceforth the 3'IliCs)-be their primary branch of operation in military equipment or the publishing of text books-which exert control in the various fields of culture, from electronics and space technology to advertising and education. The main question Mattelart poses is: w-ho controls culture, both the 'material' and 'ideal' aspects of it (or to put it slightly differently, the 'hardware' and `software')-and by which means? In the words of the author the object of the study is ... to specify the contours of the ideological offensive of the ruling classes at the present stage of the international accumulation of capital, to discern