Description

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.

Author Info

Ben Agger is Professor of Sociology and Humanities at the University of Texas, Arlington, where he also directs the Center for Theory. He edits the journal Fast Capitalism, which can be found at www.fastcapitalism.com. He works in the areas of critical theory and cultural/media/Internet studies. Among his recent books are The Sixties at 40: Leaders and Activists Remember and Look Forward (Paradigm 2009) and Oversharing: Presentations of Self in the Internet Age.

Beth Anne Shelton, Professor of Sociology and Director of Women’s Studies at the University of Texas at Arlington, is the author of Women, Men, and Time (Greenwood, 1992).

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