ABSTRACT
This chapter compares the disciplines of economics and communication studies. Despite the differences in emphasis, political economy, whether undertaken by those grounded in economics or by those schooled in communication studies, melds the material and the symbolic, economics and communication studies, a most vital enterprise in a world facing environmental decay. The chapter describes and analyzes characteristics of mainstream economics, emphasizing particularly the unduly limited conception of communication countenanced by the orthodox version of this discipline. Methodological individualism in neoclassicism's reformulation of the economics of Adam Smith is apparent in its "theory of the firm", and in its "theory of consumer behavior", which, when combined, purport to explain, in the absence of historical context, relative prices and resource allocation. Mainstream communication researchers tend not to address all the questions, but they at least agree that the act of communication entails the exertion of influence, if not indeed control, by a sender over a recipient.
