Thinking through Television

An original and engaging investigation of American television viewing as a distinct cultural form.

Ron Lembo (Author)

9780521584654, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 19 October 2000

270 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm, 0.57 kg

"Lembo artfully and skillfully makes his case... His findings affirm just how complicated television viewing actually is, and how nuanced analysts should be when studying it." Denise D. Bielby, Contemporary Sociology

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.

Subject Areas: Media studies [JFD]