| About The Book | Approach | Short Contents | Detailed Contents | Other books |
Other Books by Paschal Preston
Paschal Preston (2001) Reshaping communications:
technology, information and social change
London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi: SAGE Publications
[pp.320; ISBN 0-8039-8563-0 (paperback) £18.99;
ISBN 0-8039-8562-2 (hardback) £50]
Brief Description (from Book Cover) :
If one writer in the early 1970s could note that ‘to admire technology is all out of fashion’ the situation has changed radically since then. Today, the new information and communication technologies are admired, indeed feted, and their effects highly vaunted. They are restructuring our economy, we are told, as well as radically changing the social and cultural fabric of our industrial world.
Drawing on a range of disciplinary perspectives and original empirical research, Paschal Preston critically interrogates many of the prevailing ideas concerning new communication technologies, the new economy and an emerging “information society”. He advances an alternative and more grounded account of the complex interplay between the new technology and contemporary changes in the social and communications environment.
Comments from Reviews & Readers : -
‘This is a stimulating, well argued book on an important contemporary subject and based, as is rare in this field, on up-to date empirical data.’ -- Nicholas Garnham, University of Westminster.
‘Paschal Preston ... has produced a noteworthy book which will have considerable influence on those concerned with information and communication matters. It is extraordinarily wide ranging, encompassing just about every matter of significance in this sprawling field, while presenting a forceful, even polemical, thesis. It has the enormous virtue of being empirically grounded, yet simultaneously capable of soaring with the best of the theorists (in a vastly over-theorized arena). ... ... A great strength of this book is its capacity to offer a coherent and integrated vision of our “information age”. It is a major achievement to juxtapose the post-industrial analysis and the post-modern, to identify similar presuppositions, yet manage to integrate their concerns with his own neo-Schumperetian approach. ... This is a rich book that will necessarily engage the mind of thinkers on social change. ... ’ -- Frank Webster, review in ‘Information, Communication & Society’ journal (2001) 4:4 634-41.
Dr. Preston: I just wanted to write you a quick congratulatory note on your book ‘Reshaping Communications’. .... I am completing a thesis on the political economy implications of search engines. ... I am close to completion ... I must say that your book is probably the best single one I have read in terms of understanding the important issues ... I feel you bring them together and present them very well in a readable manner. ... I would highly recommend your book to someone wanting a very good comprehensive understanding of emerging communication issues. I also would adopt it if teaching a class in the area. ... -- Don Best, Dept. of Sociology at the University of Saskatchewan [e-mail: 12 June 2003].
Carol MacKeogh & Paschal Preston (eds) (2004)
Strategies for Inclusion and Gender in the Information Society:
Private & Voluntary Sector Initiatives
Trondheim, Norway: NTNU Press. [ISSN: 0802-3581]
This book addresses the role of private and voluntary sectors' ‘inclusion’ initiatives related to women in the production and use of digital technologies and new media. The book is based on research conducted by the multi-country SIGIS project (‘Strategies for Inclusion and Gender in the European Information Society’). Linking research centres in 6 EU member states and conducted between 2001-2004, this is one of the largest ever studies focused on gender and technology issues. This book provides a wealth of empirical studies examining gender aspects of in/exclusion processes and other features of the changing role of women in the production and consumption/use of digital technologies and new media in Europe.
Peter Hall and Paschal Preston (1988)
The Carrier Wave : New Information Technology and the Geography of Innovation
London: Unwin Hyman.
[ISBN 0-04-445081-8]
Paschal Preston and Farrel Corcoran (eds) (1995)
Democracy and Communication in the New Europe:
Change and Continuity in East and West
Cresskill, New Jersey: Hampton Press.
[ISBN 1-881303-89-6]
Author Prof. Paschal Preston : Brief Biog
Paschal Preston holds a research professorship
in the
School of Communications
in Dublin City University, Ireland.
Formal Education
St. Murdedach's College, Ballina, Co.Mayo, Ireland.
B.A. (Hons) Social Science, Polytechnic of Central London,
England.
Ph.D., University of Reading (UK), School of Planning Studies
and Dept. of Human Geography (1986).
Career Summary
My own interests in communication and media preceded my work in the
university sector. My working career commenced in a print publishing house,
where I spend three years as a trainee and journalist. This was followed by
posts in two charitable organisations and a one-year post in local government.
University of Reading, Reading, England
1979-1982: I was awarded an ESRC-funded doctoral studentship based in the
School of Planning Studies and Dept. of Human Geography, University of Reading,
England. My doctoral studies were focused on economic and employment change
in the old industrial cities and the role of state planning.
1983: Research Officer on research projects addressing new ICT and 'high-tech' industrial development in the 'M4 Corridor', to the west of London.
1983-1986, Research Fellowship: In 1983, I devised an international study of the patterns of innovation in ICT supply sectors and related industrial growth processes. This was refined in collaboration with Prof. Peter Hall, and we were successful in obtaining the required funding from the Leverhulme Trust. I was Senior Research Fellow and co-principal investigator on this 30-month project. The main findings were summarised in Hall and Preston (1988) The Carrier Wave, London and New York: Unwin Hyman.
My doctoral and post-doctoral research led to an interest in the spatial dimension of socio-economic and cultural change, a central concern in communication studies. It also sparked an interest in understanding long-run shifts in major new technical systems, industrial innovation processes and their relationship to broader patterns of socio-economic and spatial change.
PICT Programme, Economic and Social Research Council, London
Research Associate in the central co-ordinating unit of the Programme on
Information & Communication Technologies (PICT). Here I was involved
in advising the Director (Prof. W.H. Melody) on the selection of the six
university-based PICT research centres and in the subsequent
co-ordination and management of the research programme.
Innovation Studies Unit, University of East London
In 1988, I was appointed Senior Lecturer in the Innovation Studies Unit,
University of East London. Here I was responsible for media and communications
studies stream (within an interdisciplinary teaching and research unit).
School of Communications, Dublin City University
Since 1989, I have been based in the School of Communications at
Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland.
My main teaching interests include the following:
• The political-economy and regulation of communications and media services;
• The evolving role of information and communication in IR/IPE
(International Relations/International Political Economy)
• The socio-cultural implications of technology and changing role of information;
• Communication theory and new/digital media
• Production, regulation and consumption aspects of the digital media services sector
and new ICT more broadly.
I also supervise a number of postgraduate research students working in these fields.
Other recent teaching activities include: I proposed and led the development of new teaching programmes focused on digital media launched by the DCU School of Communications in 1999. I also contributed to the development of a new Masters programme in International Relations, together with colleagues from the Schools of Communication and Business studies. Here I lead the Modules dealing with the role of communications and information in international relations.
| About The Book | Approach | Short Contents | Detailed Contents |