Thinking through Television (Cambridge Cultural Social Studies)
Cambridge University Press
Edition: First Paperback Edition, 10/19/2000
EAN 9780521585774, ISBN10: 0521585775
Paperback, 270 pages, 22.8 x 15.2 x 1.4 cm
Language: English
This original and engaging book investigates American television viewing habits as a distinct cultural form. Based on an empirical study of the day-to-day use of television by working people, it develops a unique theoretical approach integrating cultural sociology, post modernism and the literature of media effects to explore the way in which people give meaning to their viewing practices. While recognising the power of television, it also emphasises the importance of the social and political factors which affect the lives of individual viewers, showing how the interaction between the two can result in a disengagement with corporately produced culture at the same time as an appropriation of the images themselves into people's lives.
Introduction
Part I. Conceptions of Television Use
1. Social theory
2. Social science
3. Cultural studies
Part II. Reconceptualising Television Use
4. Sociality and the problem of the subject
5. Components of a viewing culture
Part III. Documenting the Viewing Culture
6. Methodology and the turn to television
7. The practice of viewing
8. A typology of use
Conclusion
the politics of television reconsidered.