Mediating the Family: Gender, Culture and Representation

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Taking as its starting point the 'problem' of how the family has been mediated in popular film, television, literature and social policy over the last 50 years, Mediating the Family: Gender, Culture and Representation explores the ways in which struggles over sexuality, identity, gender and power have informed the conceptualisation and representation of the family as an institution and as a site of discursive complexity. Mediating the Family: Gender, Culture and Representation 'unpacks the family', looking in detail at the different generational and identificatory components: motherhood, fatherhood, adolescence and childhood. Using theoretical and critical frameworks from cultural studies, sociology, textual analysis and cultural history, and drawing on original research, case studies and critical analysis from a range of sources from around the world, the book examines the relationship between the intersecting discourses of: youth; childhood innocence; post-war companionate marriage; 'bad' families; entrepreneurial femininity in the 1980s; in order to interrogate the representation - and - reinvention of the family. Mediating the Family: Gender, Culture and Representation is an important intervention in debates about family relationships and will be essential reading for scholars and students of cultural, film and media studies, sociology and cultural history.

Reviews

'Mediating the Family is incisively written... The book is valuable for bringing together a range of different sources about post-war life and media, and for conveying a sense of the profound shifts in gender relations in the last few decades.' * Rosalind Gill, King's College, London, in the International Journal of Cultural Studies *
'Estella Tincknell's book offers a comprehensive analysis of ...representations of the family and its complexities. Her knowledge of popular culture is extensive and her choice of examples enriches her theoretical discussion.' * Gordana Rabrenovic, Northeastern University, Boston, USA, in the European Journal of Communication *

Author Bio

Estella Tincknell is Associate Head of the School of Cultural Studies at the University of the West of England. She is the co-author of The Practice of Cultural Studies (Sage, 2004) and is on the editorial board of Body and Society.