The Individual, Communication, and Society

The Individual, Communication, and Society is a collection of original essays on communication written by leading scholars in honor of the work of the late Gregory Bateson. Bateson, who began his career as a zoologist at Cambridge University, was one of the most provocative social scientists of the twentieth century. His major contribution was a theory of communication that integrated biological, psychological, and social phenomena. The theory had an important impact on the thinking of a number of influential anthropologists, psychologists, zoologists, and psychiatrists, who found Bateson's ideas not only relevant in their own research settings, but productive for the practical insights they offered into the nature of broader cultural systems. All of the chapters were written by scholars whose own work has been inspired by Bateson. The contributions are diverse, but each extends the implications of Bateson's concepts to the problems of human communication. The volume is designed not only as a tribute to Gregory Bateson, but also as an effort to advance the study of diverse problems involving communication across disciplinary boundaries that engaged Bateson in his lifetime.