Transnational Enterprises by Krishna Kumar

Author:Krishna Kumar [Kumar, Krishna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, General, Sociology
ISBN: 9781000010022
Google: 0qybDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-06-04T04:56:00+00:00

6

The Impact of Transnational Book Publishing on Knowledge in Less-Developed Countries

Keith B. Smith

Books are frequently a central feature of intellectual activity and intellectual communications. They are vehicles for transferring knowledge internationally and within countries. Along with other media they capture and carry the knowledge, culture, information, and entertainment of societies. Although books are one of the oldest media products, book publishing is the least-researched communications industry. It has never received the attention given to the newer media such as broadcasting and newspapers. In most countries publishing remains shrouded in a fascinating blend of trade folklore and mystique, breached only by publishers' memoirs and company histories. Yet it is known that books are influential. They have provided resources for religions, inspiration for revolutions; they have taught, destroyed, guided, humored, and in hundreds of ways influenced peoples' lives.

Writers, publishers, educationalists, librarians, and book distributors determine what books people can read. Publishers also appear to decide the fate of authors and their manuscripts, when they select from the vast number of manuscripts they receive. What real control do publishers have over manuscripts and what guides their choice? In particular what results from publishing being transnational rather than local or national? In what way are the intellectual activities and structures of societies affected by publishers acting as agents of knowledge?

No particular category of book has exclusive influence on the development of intellectual knowledge. The division of books into intellectual and cultural categories is itself a cultural distinction dependent on how functionally a society views art and culture. Nevertheless this paper focuses primarily on non-fiction publishing rather than fiction publishing and within non-fiction on the areas of publishing variously termed scholarly, academic, tertiary, educational, and reference. To widen the focus would be to overgeneralize. These categories cover the books most likely to be found in use by university and college personnel, in schools and non-formal and informal education, in reference libraries and being read by individuals wanting to learn and inform themselves. I will generalize so widely over the continents of Africa, Asia, and Latin America that the exceptions may sometimes prove as instructive as the generalizations. Part of the fascination of looking at the international aspects of publishing is that it is largely this very trade in books that distributes theories on the transnational system. Yet this book trade may be a part of that very system.

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