The Individual, Communication, and Society

This collection of original essays on communication is written by leading scholars in honor of the work of the late Gregory Bateson. The volume is equally an effort to advance the study of diverse problems involving communication across conventional disciplinary boundaries that engaged Bateson in his lifetime. Bateson, who began his career as a zoologist at Cambridge University, became 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. This volume will benefit psychologists, psychiatrists, anthropologists, and sociologists interested in the analysis of communication, as well as advanced graduate students in all of these areas.