Texting Toward Utopia: Kids, Writing, and Resistance

ISBN-13: 9781612053080 / Angielski / Miękka / 2014 / 192 str.

Ben Agger

Opis

Parents complain that kids today don't do their homework because they are distracted by the Internet, texting, and video games. Many kids experience schooling as nothing more than endless homework, distracted teachers, and helicopter parents. It is easy to conclude from these factors that young people lack cultural literacy. By presenting the writings of today's kids, however, Agger develops an alternative perspective: This is the most literary of times, and the young people of today write furiously, albeit often below the adult radar. Here, where texting replaces textbooks, the writing may be emoticon-laden, slangy, or terse, but there is something profound going on, as kids (and their parents, too) engage in resistance and write toward utopia-a better world. Much texting and tweeting occur at night, when kids form egalitarian online and offline relationships and operate in a world in which a person can have many friends and explore opportunities previously unavailable to them. This book is a guide to understanding a new generation and its ideals, including democracy.

Spis treści

Preface and Acknowledgments; Part I New Sites of Writing, Writers, Writings; Chapter 1 The Book Unbound; Chapter 2 Secret Writing; Chapter 3 Reading Kids’ Writing Politically; Chapter 4 The Pulpless Generation(s); Chapter 5 E-Sociologies of Virtual Selves; Part II Time Rebels; Chapter 6 iTime; Chapter 7 Slacking toward Slowmodernity; Chapter 8 Time Robbers, Time Rebels; Chapter 9 Time Wars and Night Moves; Chapter 10 “I Hate School”; Part III Writing toward Identity and Democracy; Chapter 11 Text Messages in a Bottle; Chapter 12 Bodies of Knowledge; Chapter 13 Democracy in the First Person;

O autorze

Ben Agger is Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas, Arlington, where he directs the Center for Theory. His most recent book is Oversharing: Presentations of Self in the Internet Age.