Overview

Fisherkeller begins her insightful examination into the uses and power of television in youth culture from the question ""why talk with young people about television?"" She studies the experiences of young adults watching television and talking about television with their peers at home and at school. They discuss their hopes for the future as well as the challenges they currently face, and reveal how television plays a role in their everyday life. As the most significant cultural symbol in America, television is a powerful educational and socializing force; Fisherkeller examines how youths are attracted to TV programmes and persona that help them work through their own personal dilemmas. Also, television as a system shows them how ""making it"" is as much a question of image creation as it is a process of hard work. Throughout the book there is a range of young adult's voices talking about how they live with television and an essential acknowledgement of the power that television has on individuals and social relations. The text should speak to many disciplines on the educative and social power of this uniquely ubiquitous medium.

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9781566399531

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Reviews

Growing Up with Television is an engaging and highly informative account of the meaning that young people give to television and the power it carries in their everyday lives. With clarity and a careful attention to detail, Fisherkeller documents the richness that her informants find in television and situates their viewing practices amidst family, school, and peer culture. What is perhaps most extraordinary about this book is Fisherkeller's ability in gaining the trust of her informants and affording them the opportunity to speak for themselves about television; and they do, revealing to her not only what, how, and why they watch, but more importantly, what they are drawn to identify with and compelled to be critical of when it comes to the characters and personalities, the settings, situations, and stories-and the myths, even-that we know of as television. Growing Up with Television challenges us to re-examine commonplace and sometimes superficial notions that this culture generates about television, young people, and the experience they have coming of age in a media-saturated society. -Ron Lembo,Associate Professor of Sociology, Amherst College JoEllen Fisherkeller approaches television-unusually-not as a negative force in the lives of young people, nor even as a vast, hegemonic capitalist institution dedicated to profit, [but] from an anthropological, rather than a political or a behavioural perspective-and this means suspending the value judgments. -Anthropology and Education Quarterly

""Growing Up with Television is an engaging and highly informative account of the meaning that young people give to television and the power it carries in their everyday lives. With clarity and a careful attention to detail, Fisherkeller documents the richness that her informants find in television and situates their viewing practices amidst family, school, and peer culture. What is perhaps most extraordinary about this book is Fisherkeller's ability in gaining the trust of her informants and affording them the opportunity to speak for themselves about television; and they do, revealing to her not only what, how, and why they watch, but more importantly, what they are drawn to identify with and compelled to be critical of when it comes to the characters and personalities, the settings, situations, and stories--and the myths, even--that we know of as television. Growing Up with Television challenges us to re-examine commonplace and sometimes superficial notions that this culture generates about television, young people, and the experience they have coming of age in a media-saturated society."" --Ron Lembo, Associate Professor of Sociology, Amherst College

Growing Up with Television is an engaging and highly informative account of the meaning that young people give to television and the power it carries in their everyday lives. With clarity and a careful attention to detail, Fisherkeller documents the richness that her informants find in television and situates their viewing practices amidst family, school, and peer culture. What is perhaps most extraordinary about this book is Fisherkeller's ability in gaining the trust of her informants and affording them the opportunity to speak for themselves about television; and they do, revealing to her not only what, how, and why they watch, but more importantly, what they are drawn to identify with and compelled to be critical of when it comes to the characters and personalities, the settings, situations, and stories--and the myths, even--that we know of as television. Growing Up with Television challenges us to re-examine commonplace and sometimes superficial notions that this culture generates about television, young people, and the experience they have coming of age in a media-saturated society. --Ron Lembo, Associate Professor of Sociology, Amherst College

Author Information

JoEllen Fisherkeller is Associate Professor in the Department of Culture and Communication at New York University.

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