Fast Families, Virtual Children: A Critical Sociology of Families and Schooling / Edition 1

by Ben Agger, Beth Anne Shelton

Overview

The Internet, cell phones, and other technologies have changed the ways in which people conduct their family lives, raise children, and navigate the blurry boundary between work and home. Private life is colonized by employers, teachers, corporations; family time is taken up by work, homework, and shopping. What it means to be parents and children has changed dramatically. This book shows how the nurturance of family has increasingly become a willful, radical idea in an era of pervasive technology. The authors analyze important trends, including the acceleration and attenuation of childhood, and offer a children s bill of rights and accompanying parental responsibilities."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781594513398
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	05/15/2007
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Ben Agger is professor of sociology and humanities at the University of Texas at Arlington. He also directs the Center for Theory there. Agger works in the areas of critical theory, cultural studies, and media studies. Among his recent books are Postponing the Postmodern and Speeding Up Fast Capitalism , and he is currently working on a book about the 1960s titled The Sixties at 40: Radicals Remember and Look Forward . Agger edits the online journal Fast Capitalism (www.fastcapitalism.com)., Beth Anne Shelton is professor of sociology and director of women’s studies at the University of Texas at Arlington. Her primary areas of research include gender, work, and family. Shelton’s published work has focused primarily on the relationship between work and family, with emphasis on the household division of labor between women and men and the implications of this division of labor for women’s employment and earnings.

Table of Contents

Preface; Acknowledgments; Chapter 1 Mapping Families in Fast Capitalism; Chapter 2 Implosion I; Chapter 3 Implosion II; Chapter 4 Home/School; Chapter 5 Class in Class; Chapter 6 Children of Parents, Children of Democracy;

Editorial Reviews

From deep in the heart of Texas comes an unlikely vision of liberatory family values. Fast Families, Virtual Children weds a lucid critical sociology of families to an innovative children’s bill of rights. Take a nostalgic and restorative recess from your cell phones, PCs, home entertainment centers, and iPods to read and discuss this provocative book.”Judith Stacey, Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University

From the Publisher