Review: Greening the Media

Abstract

Review: Greening Media By Richard Maxwell and Toby Miller Maxwell, Richard and Miller,Toby. Greening Media, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, 246pp. ISBN 9780195325201, paper.As his previous publications have proven, a new book by prolific scholar Toby Miller is always instructive, clear, thought-provoking, and enlightening. For this interdisciplinary collaborative work, distinguished professor of studies at University of California is now working with Professor Richard Maxwell (from University of New York) in order to investigate environmental hazards linked with production and disposal of new technologies, especially cell phones, HD television sets, computers and laptops. The authors argue that all these apparently neat, new technologies are in fact highly polluting, not only because they are short-lived, easily obsolete and frequently replaced, but primarily because of their very dangerous components that have to be manipulated during both production and disassembly before recycling process.As authors write, students in communication and studies are not taught these issues because most university professors are not aware of environmental dimensions related to electronic they use daily: media students and professors generally arrive at, inhabit, and depart universities with a focus on textuality, technology, and/or reception; they rarely address where texts and technologies physically come from or end up (p. 10). The focus here is on these metal boxes full of electronics and dangerous chemical poisons, that are produced and consumed, bought and cherished, as if their real existence was only limited to short period of time they are actually part of our lives. However, things are beginning to change: curiosity about material provenance of commodities has begun to pose new ethical challenges to corporate defenders of consumer society (p. 24). In Chapter 2, authors highlight fact that too many experts are looking in wrong direction, and therefore, they aim to examine the tendency to regard each emergent medium as awe inspiring and world changing relies on recurring myths of technological power in absence of acknowledging environmental and labor realities (p. 43).Greening Media begins at heart of problem: endless consumption of new technologies (p. 22). Consumerism remains main contradiction in environmental issues because it is obsessively linked with growth ideology and a green commodity discourse, which promotes magical fusion of environmentalism with growth, profits, and pleasure (p. …