Fast Families, Virtual Children: A Critical Sociology of Families and Schooling [Hardcover]

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. 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.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 childrens 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 UniversityPreface; 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;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 editslCK