Harold Innis

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Harold Adams Innis (November 5, 1894-November 8, 1952) was a professor of political economy at the University of Toronto and the author of many seminal works on Canadian economic history and on media and communications.

He went to McMaster University in 1915. Upon graduation he enlisted and was sent to France to fight in the First World War. Upon his return home he went to the University of Chicago where he received his doctorate in economics. He then returned to Canada where he spent the rest of his career at the University of Toronto.

He is known for the "nuts and bolts" approach of analysing Canada's political economy: focusing on the nation's role as an exporter of raw materials and grains, and using this to explain its regionalism and the working of its political superstructure. This is known as the staples thesis, and it is still the underpinning of the study of Canada's economic history.

Innis' primary contribution to the theory of communication, written in Empire and Communications, was to divide media into time biased (or binding) media and space biased (or binding) media. Time binding media include hand-written and oral sources that are intended to last for many generations, but are only successfully used in relatively small communities. Space binding media include most of the modern media such as radio, and television, as well as newspapers. This is information that is meant to reach as many as possible, but will not last long in time. While time binding media favoured community and metaphysics, space binding media favoured commercialism and imperialism. Marshall McLuhan was a colleague and student of Innis' at the University of Toronto, and he built on many of Innis' ideas, going so far as to describe his breakthrough work 'The Gutenberg Galaxy' (1962) as 'a footnote to the work of Harold Innis'.

Innis died of cancer in 1952. To commemorate him, Innis College at the University of Toronto was named after him as well as Innis Library at McMaster University.

[edit] Works

A History of the Canadian Pacific Railway - (1923)
The Fur Trade in Canada: An Introduction to Canadian Economic History - (1930)
The Cod Fisheries: The History of an International Economy - (1942)
Political Economy in the Modern State - (1946)
The Diary of Simeon Perkins: 1766-1780, ed. - (1948)
Empire and Communications - (1950)
The Bias of Communication - (1951)
The Strategy of Culture - (1952)
Essays in Canadian Economic History - (1956)