Harold Innis
| Harold Innis | |
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Harold Innis in the 1920s
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| Born | November 5, 1894 Otterville, Ontario, Canada |
| Died | November 9, 1952 (aged 58) Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
| Occupation | economic historian and communications scholar |
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Harold Adams Innis (/ˈɪnɪs/; November 5, 1894 – November 8, 1952) was a Canadian professor of political economy at the University of Toronto and the author of seminal works on media, communication theory, and Canadian economic history. Despite his dense and difficult prose, Innis was one of Canada's most original thinkers. He helped develop the staples thesis, which holds that Canada's culture, political history, and economy have been decisively influenced by the exploitation and export of a series of "staples" such as fur, fishing, lumber, wheat, mined metals, and coal. The staple thesis dominated economic history in Canada 1930s-1960s, and continues to be an fundamental part of the Canadian political economy tradition.
Innis's writings on communication explore the role of media in shaping the culture and development of civilizations. He argued, for example, that a balance between oral and written forms of communication contributed to the flourishing of Greek civilization in the 5th century BC. He warned, however, that Western civilization is now imperiled by powerful, advertising-driven media obsessed by "present-mindedness" and the "continuous, systematic, ruthless destruction of elements of permanence essential to cultural activity". His intellectual bond with Eric A. Havelock formed the foundations of the "Toronto School of Communication" which provided a source of inspiration for future members of the school: Marshall McLuhan and Edmund Snow Carpenter.
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