Proposes a new theory of communication called "comparative media theory."

Primal Scenes of Communication argues that the materiality of communication media constitute social relations and that social relations should be understood as "technology-identity complexes." This theory is employed to characterize consumer society, and the social movements that criticize consumer society, as a unique epoch of communication.

Ian Angus is currently professor of humanities at Simon Fraser University. He has written several books on contemporary philosophy and communication, as well as on English Canadian social and political thought, among them A Border Within: National Identity, Cultural Plurality and Wilderness and Identity and Justice. He is also the author of the more popularly oriented Emergent Publics: An Essay on Social Movements and Democracy and Love the Questions: University Education and Enlightenment. He lives in East Vancouver with his wife and daughter.

Ian Angus' profile page

"Through a rigorous deployment of comparative media study, Ian Angus develops a conceptual scheme of mediation and articulation that addresses the key questions at the forefront of the philosophy of communication. Readers in any discipline who take the social and political practice of communication seriously with respect to questions of identity and new social movements will learn from this valuable book." — Ramsey Eric Ramsey, author of The Long Path to Nearness: A Contribution to a Corporeal Philosophy of Communication and the Groundwork for an Ethics of ReliefM

"This book's focus on the materiality of communication is a central but often undertheorized problematic that haunts communication studies. The author's argument as to the primacy of the media of communication is a novel and effective answer to the charge of communication studies' inability to account for the 'real.' Angus's use of political examples and problematics is a nice change of pace from much of the social constructionist work in communication studies which tends to focus on interpersonal and organizational contexts." — Darrin Hicks, University of Denver