Dead Ground Fallacies of Understanding Global Divides, Policy-Making and Communication

Abstract

This chapter addresses cultural production and global divides from a media geographer’s point of view by introducing ‘dead ground’ as its central concept. This concept is borrowed from strategic thinking, originally a military term, and refers to ground that cannot be observed or experienced empirically – but (in this case) is often subjected to inference based on conventional thinking, ‘common knowledge’ based on experiences from other systems, or other epistemological environments that do not necessarily bear the required truth value. ‘Dead ground’ is explored as an ontological and epistemological concept, related to fallacies that are present in the globalisation discussion. It will particularly analyse three different fallacies: the single trajectory fallacy, the single rationality fallacy, and the single moral fallacy. The chapter raises the question as to whether these fallacies have been inherent in Western media studies, and if they have, if they might have facilitated cognitive colonisation of the analysis of changing cultures.