Looking at how the family is represented by the media, and by scrutinizing the manner in which it is regulated, this book uncovers the ways in which academic research and welfare policy have colluded with political rhetoric and the popular media to re-invent a mythical ideal family. Representing the Family: combines perspectives from a range of theories including media and cultural studies, sociology, and social history to show how certain types of family life are pathologised; highlights the discrepancies between contemporary representations of the "ideal" family and lived experience; and compares the British experience with that of the United States and Australia.
I've been blessed and chosen to be a writer for God To express his beauty for today and tomorrow Its the privilege given to me to help erase someone's sorrow and misery He's poured into me if you'll just read A world of beauty that I've traveled through in test and trials when I felt O' so blue As you read this book I pray you'll discover too The beauty of suffering that has poured out love through God's great instructions My private thoughts I do share from my heart While whispering a prayer that they too will impart to your heart The glory of God's beauty in heart
Family relations are undergoing dramatic changes globally and locally. At the same time, certain features of family life endure. This popular book, now in a fully updated second edition, presents a comprehensive assessment of recent research on 'family', parenting, childhood and interpersonal ties. A Sociology of Family Life queries assumptions about a disintegration of 'the family' by revealing a remarkable persistence of commitment and reciprocity across cultures, within new as well as traditional family forms. Yet, while new kinds of intimate relationships such as 'friends as family' and LGBTQ+ intimacies become commonplace, such personal relationships can still be difficult to negotiate in the face of wider structural norms. With a focus on factors such as class, gender, race, ethnicity and sexuality, this new edition highlights inequalities that influence and curb families and personal life transnationally. Alongside substantial new material on cultural and digital transformations, the book features extensive updates on issues ranging from demography, migration, ageing and government policies to reproductive technologies, employment and care. With a global focus, and blending theory with real-life examples, this insightful and engaging book will remain indispensable to students across the social sciences.
Deborah Chambers draws on the metaphor of friendship as a strategy for exploring contemporary changes in informal social ties. She traces the shift from fixed and permanent ties of family, neighbourhood and community to fluid and transient ties typified by computer mediated communication.
Media technologies have played a central role in shaping ideas about home life over the last two centuries. Changing Media, Homes and Households explores the complex relationship between home, householders, families and media technologies by charting the evolution of the media-rich home, from the early twentieth century to the present. Moving beyond a narrow focus on media texts, production and audiences, Deborah Chambers investigates the physical presence of media objects in the home and their symbolic importance for home life. The book identifies the role of home-based media in altering relationships between home, leisure, work and the outside world in the context of entertainment, communication and work. It assesses whether domestic media are transforming or reinforcing traditional identities and relations of gender, generation, class and migrancy. Mediatisation theory is employed to assess the domestication of media and media saturation of home life in the context of wider global changes. The author also develops the concept of media imaginaries to explain the role of public discourses in shaping changing meanings, values and uses of domestic media. Framed within these approaches, four chapters also provide in-depth case studies of the processes involved in media’s home adoption: early television design, family-centred video gaming, the domestication of tablet computers, and the shift from "smart homes" to today’s "connected" homes. This is an ideal text for students and researchers interested in media and cultural studies, communication, and sociology.
Spanning the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries, this book investigates how home is imagined, staged and experienced in western culture. Questions about meanings of ‘home’ and domestic culture are triggered by dramatic changes in values and ideals about the dwellings we live in and the dwellings we desire or dread. Deborah Chambers explores how home is idealised as a middle-class haven, managed as an investment, and signified as a status symbol and expression of personal identity. She addresses a range of public, state, commercial, popular and expert discourses about ‘home’: the heritage industry, design, exhibitions, television, social media, home mobilities and migration, smart technologies and ecological sustainability. Drawing on cross-disciplinary research including cultural history and cultural geography, the book offers a distinctive media and cultural studies approach supported by original, historically informed case studies on interior and domestic design; exhibitions of model homes; TV home interiors; ‘media home’ imaginaries; multiscreen homes; corporate visions of ‘homes of tomorrow’ and digital smart homes. A comprehensive and engaging study, this book is ideal for students and researchers of cultural studies, cultural history, media and communication studies, as well as sociology, gender studies, cultural geography and design studies.
This book explores how digital communication generates new intimacies and meanings of friendship in a networked society, developing a theory of mediated intimacies to explain how social media contributes to dramatic changes in our ideas about personal relationships, through themes of self, youth, families, digital dating and online social capital.
`This is a tour de force... It combines luminous discussion of the core conceptual issues of cultural studies, with a hard-headed, practical sense of how research in the field gets done. The result is a seriously smart, comprehensive survey of the whole terrain of cultural studies itself. This is a book on methods which readers will be able to make their own; and which -- uniquely in the genre -- will keep them buzzing′ - Bill Schwarz, Queen Mary University of London ′The Practice of Cultural Studies is an original introduction to the field. It offers a sophisticated "how-to" guide to doing research in cultural studies. From the difficulties of formulating a problem to the unique articulations of specific methodologies in cultural studies, students will find this book both useful and challenging′ - Professor Lawrence Grossberg, University of North Carolina What is distinctive about cultural research? How does one do Cultural Studies? Unlike many other disciplines, cultural studies has not been explict about the nature of its practice. This book aims to redress the balance in favour of those who are studying culture by providing a comprehensive guide to researching and writing. Based on the methods course at Nottingham Trent and addressed to advanced undergraduates, Masters Level students and those just commencing a PhD, this book aims to provide an overview of specific research traditions in cultural studies, whilst also situating those traditions in their historical context. The Practice of Cultural Studies: · Identifies the main methods of researching culture · Demonstrates how theory can inform and enable the practice of research · Explores the ways in which research practices and methods both produce and are produced by knowledge · Looks at the implications of the ′cultural turn′ for disciplines other than cultural studies The Practice of Cultural Studies will be an essential text for students of cultural studies and a useful guide to others studying culture in a range of disciplinary contexts across the humanities and social sciences.
This book offers a rich and comprehensive analysis of the roles, status and experiences of women journalists in the United States and Britain, from nineteenth century pioneers to modern day women war correspondents.
Despite what would seem some apparent likenesses, single men and single women are perceived in very different ways. Bachelors are rarely considered "lonely" or aberrant. They are not pitied. Rather, they are seen as having chosen to be "footloose and fancy free" to have sports cars, boats, and enjoy a series of unrestrictive relationships. Single women, however, do not enjoy such an esteemed reputation. Instead they have been viewed as abnormal, neurotic, or simply undesirable-attitudes that result in part from the long-standing belief that single women would not have chosen her life. Even the single career-woman is seldom viewed as enjoying the success she has achieved. No one believes she is truly fulfilled. Modern American culture has raised generations of women who believed that their true and most important role in society was to get married and have children. Anything short of this role was considered abnormal, unfulfilling, and suspect. This female stereotype has been exploited and perpetuated by some key films in the late 40's and early 50's. But more recently we have seen a shift in the cultural view of the spinster. The erosion of the traditional nuclear family, as well as a larger range of acceptable life choices, has caused our perceptions of unmarried women to change. The film industry has reflected this shift with updated stereotypes that depict this cultural trend. The shift in the way we perceive spinsters is the subject of current academic research which shows that a person's perception of particular societal roles influences the amount of stress or depression they experience when in that specific role. Further, although the way our culture perceives spinsters and the way the film industry portrays them may be evolving, we still are still left with a negative stereotype. Themes of choice and power have informed the lives of single women in all times and places. When considered at all in a scholarly context, single women have often been portrayed as victims, unhappily subjected to forces beyond their control. This collection of essays about "women on their own" attempts to correct that bias, by presenting a more complex view of single women in nineteenth- and twentieth-century United States and Europe. Topics covered in this book include the complex and ambiguous roles that society assigns to widows, and the greater social and financial independence that widows have often enjoyed; widow culture after major wars; the plight of homeless, middle-class single women during the Great Depression; and comparative sociological studies of contemporary single women in the United States, Britain, Ireland, and Cuba. Composed of papers presented to the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis project on single women, this collection incorporates the work of specialists in anthropology, art history, history, and sociology. It is deeply connected with the emerging field of singleness studies (to which the RCHA has contributed an Internet-based bibliography of more than 800 items). All of the essays are new and have not been previously published.
RAND Corporation, in partnership with the American Institutes for Research, evaluated implementation of key elements of the Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching in three public school districts and four charter management organizations.
Childhood experiences have altered dramatically in the past 50 years, with many of today's children experiencing changing family relations, accelerated contact with consumer culture and social media and a so-called "privatisation" of childhood. In this socio-cultural study, Chambers interrogates the contrasting interpretations of childhood: the idea of childhood agency versus the romantic ideal of children as innocent with a right to be childlike. A rare examination of both family and childhood studies, the text argues for the 'right' balance between parents, children, the state and other agencies in the raising of children across different countries.
Get connected, get clicking, and get what you need from the Internet, whether that’s answers from Google, bargains from E-bay, music from iTunes, or merchandise from the thousands of shopping sites. The Internet Gigabook For Dummies has almost 900 pages jam-packed with information, how-tos, tips, techniques, advice, and short-cuts to help you use the Internet for all it’s worth! Whether you’re an experienced Web surfer or just daring to get your feet wet for the first time, you’ll discover how to get the most from the Internet and its most popular sites with information on: The basics—everything from installation to browsing, navigation, and setting up your e-mail account Googling—searching for information, photographs, newsgroups, bargains, and more Yahooing— searching, mail, shopping, chatting, playing games, doing financial research, and more Buying and selling on eBay—finding collectables, hard-to-find items, and bargains; bidding, buying, and paying online; and selling your own trash and treasures Making beautiful music together with iTunes—buying and playing music, burning CDs, organizing your music collection with playlists, and even editing on your iPod Creating your own Web Pages—building your first site, including the essentials and working with HTML, FrontPage, Dreamweaver, posting your Web site, and more Edited by Peter Weverka, author of many For Dummies books, The Internet Gigabook For Dummies includes information culled from eight For Dummies books. It’s like a greatest-hits collection! Even experienced surfers will discover some new tricks such as how to: Use Yahoo! Finance to get stock quotes, do financial research, and create an online portfolio Use Instant Messaging with AOL, MSN Messenger, or Yahoo! Messenger Shop Google Catalogs or use Froogle for online comparison shopping Use advanced techniques and bidding strategies to help you win in eBay auctions Use Yahoo! People Search to find old friends. search Yahoo! Personals to find true romance (or someone semi-compatible). place your own personal ad, and more Use Google News to scan the headlines, search for specific topics, follow related links to go in-depth, or track a story over time Whether you’re new to the Internet and want to learn how to set up your e-mail or have a great e-tail idea and want to set up an online business, this Gigabook, complete with an in-depth index, helps you get GigaValue from your online experience.
When Helen’s lesbian partner of twenty years dies unexpectedly in minor surgery, Helen and her daughter want answers. Confused by the hospital’s silence around the death, they bring a lawsuit against the doctors. Now Dr. Becca Neal must confront her feelings about losing her patient while she juggles the demands of a lawsuit. LOVE ALONE tracks the fallout in both the patient’s and the doctor’s homes, as both households navigate uncharted waters of anger, humor, and longing. This powerful story of how we grieve and how we heal speaks to an essential truth: We will all be patients one day.
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