This volume is an up-to-date account of communication theories from around the world. Authored by a group of eminent scholars, each chapter is a history and state-of-the-art description of the major issues in international communication theory. While the book draws on an understanding of communication theory as a product of its socio-political and cultural context, and the challenges posed by that context, it also highlights each author's lifetime effort to critique the existing trends in communication theory and bring out the very best in each multicultural context.

Contents: Kaarle Nordenstreng: Preface: Toward a Better World - Robert A. White: Keeping the Public Sphere(s) Public - Brenda Dervin/Peter Shields: Talking Communicatively About Mass Communication in Communication Theories: Beyond Multiplicity, Toward Communicating - Denis McQuail: Social Scientific Theory of Communication Encounters Normativity: A Personal Memoir - Janet Wasko: Understanding the Critical Political Economy of the Media - Peter Golding/Karen Williamson: Power, Inequality, and Citizenship: The Enduring Importance of the Political Economy of Communications - Roger Bromley: Cultural Studies: Dialogue, Continuity, and Change - Michael Real/David Black: A Mutually Radicalizing Relationship: Communication Theory and Cultural Studies in the United States - Jesús Martin-Barbero: Thinking Communication in Latin America - Joseph Oládèjo Fáníran: Toward a Theory of African Communication - Keval J. Kumar: Theorizing About Communication in India: Sadharanikaran, Rasa, and Other Traditions in Rhetoric and Aesthetics - Thomas Tufte: Voice, Citizenship, and Civic Action: Challenges to Participatory Communication - Stewart M. Hoover: Media, Culture, and the Imagination of Religion - Pradip N. Thomas: Theorizing Development, Communication, and Social Change - Cees J. Hamelink: Human Rights and Communication: Reflections on a Challenging Relationship - Ruth Teer-Tomaselli/Keyan G. Tomaselli: Struggle, Vatican II, and Development Communication Practice - Paul A. Soukup, SJ: Media Ecology - Theodore L. Glasser/Isabel Awad: Journalism, Multiculturalism, and the Struggle for Solidarity - Clifford G. Christians: Media Ethics in Transnational, Gender Inclusive, and Multicultural Terms.