The Never-Ending Story: Coping With Built-In Dilemmas of the Communicatiom Field.

ABSTRACT In this essay, we examine the idiosyncratic development of the communication field in Israel against the background of structural dilemmas, built in the communication field: first, emphasis on research orientation or on professional, journalistic training; and, second, firm boundaries of the field based on the mother disciplines of the humanities or social sciences or, alternatively, open boundaries ready to adopt research topics and methods anchored in different disciplines that touch upon communication phenomena. The paper relates to the current debate on these issues In US and Europe and suggests a theoretical framework based on criteria anchored in sociology of science. These criteria are then applied to the analysis of the process of institutionalization and development of the Communication Institute (CI) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJ) from its foundation in 1964 through the 1990s. The study is based on documents from the HUJ archive and Guttman Institute for Applied Social Research; curricula and catalogs of communication departments in Israel and interviews with senior researchers in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]