SOURCE: "Culture, Geography, and Communications: The Work of Harold Innis in an American Context," in Culture, Communication, and Dependency: The Tradition of H. A. Innis, William H. Melody, Liora Salter, Paul Heyer, eds., Ablex Publishing Corporation, 1981, pp. 73-91.

In the following essay, Carey evaluates Innis's contribution to the social sciences.

What is it about the ponderous and often unreadable texts of Harold Innis that makes them the subject of continuing interest, indeed, of a revival of interest some twenty-five years after his death? Despite their opacity, their maddening obscurity, their elliptical quality, I find myself drawn back to these texts precisely when seeking fresh departures in the study of communications. And the texts continue to yield because they combine an almost studied obscurity with a gift for pungent aphorism, producing, thereby, sudden flashes of juxta-position and illumination. There was to Innis a natural depth, excess, and complexity, a...