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The Part Played by Gentiles in the Flow of Mass Communications: On the Ethnic Utopia of Personal Influence

Author

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  • John Durham Peters

    (University of Iowa)

Abstract

Personal Influence is not only a landmark study within the sociological literature on networks, influence, and decision making. It is also an allegory of Jewish-ethnic identity in mid-twentieth-century America and a side-ways commentary on modern Jewish involvement in communications. The book participates in a utopian imagination of society in which Jews and Gentiles alike would be centrally involved in the flow of communications. It turns from Gentile-style status toward Jewish-style connectivity as the basis of social power; defends socially grounded conceptions of mental life against Gentile individualism; insists in its notion of the two-step flow on the rabbinic principle that a text without a commentary is meaningless; and performs some amazing intellectual-moral-historical footwork with the most inconspicuous of all its central terms, “people.†In all these things, it can be read as a “Jewish†text in some sense.

Suggested Citation

  • John Durham Peters, 2006. "The Part Played by Gentiles in the Flow of Mass Communications: On the Ethnic Utopia of Personal Influence," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 608(1), pages 97-114, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:anname:v:608:y:2006:i:1:p:97-114
    DOI: 10.1177/0002716206292425
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    Cited by:

    1. Jefferson Pooley, 2006. "Fifteen Pages that Shook the Field: Personal Influence, Edward Shils, and the Remembered History of Mass Communication Research," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 608(1), pages 130-156, November.
    2. Sonia Livingstone, 2006. "The Influence of Personal Influence on the Study of Audiences," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 608(1), pages 233-250, November.

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