beccaelizabeth (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beccaelizabeth) wrote2006-06-23 03:42 pm
beccaelizabeth) wrote2006-06-23 03:42 pm
Entry tags:
Laughing now
Haralambos & Holborn "Sociology Themes and Practices" 6th edition p855
Turkle (1988) argues that women 'use their rejection of computers... to assert something about themselves as women ... It is a way to say that it is not appropriate to have a close relationship with a machine.' The computer is a cultural symbol of what a woman is not. In rejecting computers women are rejecting something they see as gender-coded.
First I laugh.
Then I remember this was 1988, and computer then did not mean the same thing as computer now. For a start, minimal networks, not so much talking to people. Second, computer games were... were they Pac Man? Bit better than that. I don't recall. But certainly at such a level of lack of sophistication that its hard to see why *anyone* would want a 'close relationship' with them.
I think maybe at that time computers were a thing in themself, that you did things to and about. But now they're a thing to do things with, like talk to all these millions of people out there.
Which fits rather well with gendered theories that say women like to talk, for on here talking I find many women.
(I dislike these silly binary gender theories. People are rainbows, much more complicated.)
I'm finishing the reading from the media chapter.
It gets a bit annoying. The 'representation of sexuality' section spends one paragraph talking about sex, one talking about 'sex related issues' ie safe sex and AIDS, and one paragraph about paedophiles. The paragraph about AIDS says how the media depicted it as 'gay plague' but gay and medical people with access to the media fixed that. Except right here is a textbook talking 'AIDS issues' and 'gay issues' all bundled together. I mean it asks the question "how are gays and lesbians depicted in the media" (and once again I write bisexual in the margin), but the closest it gets to answering it is mentioning the word gay twice in the bit about AIDS.
In the section is a huge lack of the kind of content analysis that characterises every other section, counting percents of appearances and how they are shown. And since I own 'The celluloid closet' on book and DVD I know such analysis has been done, at least for films, which are indeed mass media and belong in this chapter.
Quite inadequate it is.
Actually, the sexuality section seems to not know why it is there. The bits about ethnicity, class, age, disability, they're all talking about the representation of a group of people. The sexuality section keeps on talking about representations of people having sex. People having sex are not a sociological group. (Though people who choose not to probably are, I guess.) I think the person writing it made a mess of their categories. I mean what they're saying about, for instance, how audiences use depictions of sex, is interesting enough. But it belongs up with how audiences use depictions of violence. It don't belong in between gender and ethnicity.
It seems the main focus of the book is the big three sociological categories, class gender and ethnicity. There's some about age, if you dig around a bit, especially since the crime chapter focuses rather on 'delinquents', young criminals. There was a bit about lesbian families in that section, which is good. And it does at least mention 'gays and lesbians' a bunch of times. Like disability gets a mention. Its just, there's chapters and research and depth on class gender ethnicity, but the rest is only small sections. Which I find a bit irritating.
Is sending reviews of textbooks to the publisher likely to be useful? I mean, this book we bought to do our sociology studies with doesn't actually have what we need for this unit in it. They should be told.
Apparently this is the first edition that even had a chapter on the media. (!) They therefore haven't had as much time to get it right yet.
Would telling them where I think they went wrong be... as rude as it sounds? I mean I'm only an Access student. Then again, though I'm only an Access student, I still have knowledge which isn't in the book.
Hmmm.
Turkle (1988) argues that women 'use their rejection of computers... to assert something about themselves as women ... It is a way to say that it is not appropriate to have a close relationship with a machine.' The computer is a cultural symbol of what a woman is not. In rejecting computers women are rejecting something they see as gender-coded.
First I laugh.
Then I remember this was 1988, and computer then did not mean the same thing as computer now. For a start, minimal networks, not so much talking to people. Second, computer games were... were they Pac Man? Bit better than that. I don't recall. But certainly at such a level of lack of sophistication that its hard to see why *anyone* would want a 'close relationship' with them.
I think maybe at that time computers were a thing in themself, that you did things to and about. But now they're a thing to do things with, like talk to all these millions of people out there.
Which fits rather well with gendered theories that say women like to talk, for on here talking I find many women.
(I dislike these silly binary gender theories. People are rainbows, much more complicated.)
I'm finishing the reading from the media chapter.
It gets a bit annoying. The 'representation of sexuality' section spends one paragraph talking about sex, one talking about 'sex related issues' ie safe sex and AIDS, and one paragraph about paedophiles. The paragraph about AIDS says how the media depicted it as 'gay plague' but gay and medical people with access to the media fixed that. Except right here is a textbook talking 'AIDS issues' and 'gay issues' all bundled together. I mean it asks the question "how are gays and lesbians depicted in the media" (and once again I write bisexual in the margin), but the closest it gets to answering it is mentioning the word gay twice in the bit about AIDS.
In the section is a huge lack of the kind of content analysis that characterises every other section, counting percents of appearances and how they are shown. And since I own 'The celluloid closet' on book and DVD I know such analysis has been done, at least for films, which are indeed mass media and belong in this chapter.
Quite inadequate it is.
Actually, the sexuality section seems to not know why it is there. The bits about ethnicity, class, age, disability, they're all talking about the representation of a group of people. The sexuality section keeps on talking about representations of people having sex. People having sex are not a sociological group. (Though people who choose not to probably are, I guess.) I think the person writing it made a mess of their categories. I mean what they're saying about, for instance, how audiences use depictions of sex, is interesting enough. But it belongs up with how audiences use depictions of violence. It don't belong in between gender and ethnicity.
It seems the main focus of the book is the big three sociological categories, class gender and ethnicity. There's some about age, if you dig around a bit, especially since the crime chapter focuses rather on 'delinquents', young criminals. There was a bit about lesbian families in that section, which is good. And it does at least mention 'gays and lesbians' a bunch of times. Like disability gets a mention. Its just, there's chapters and research and depth on class gender ethnicity, but the rest is only small sections. Which I find a bit irritating.
Is sending reviews of textbooks to the publisher likely to be useful? I mean, this book we bought to do our sociology studies with doesn't actually have what we need for this unit in it. They should be told.
Apparently this is the first edition that even had a chapter on the media. (!) They therefore haven't had as much time to get it right yet.
Would telling them where I think they went wrong be... as rude as it sounds? I mean I'm only an Access student. Then again, though I'm only an Access student, I still have knowledge which isn't in the book.
Hmmm.
no subject
Sometimes - but publishers on both sides of the pond usually pay attention to letters from faculty, rather than students.
I mean, this book we bought to do our sociology studies with doesn't actually have what we need for this unit in it. They should be told. textbooks are ordered either by the chair of the department, the individual faculty member, or a commmittee in the department. Writing to the publisher is completely off the mark. If you're studying a unit on media, and the text doesn't cover it, it's incumbent on your instructor to provide you with an appropriate reading.
Textbook writers and publishers have no control over who will order their book for a course. That's the domain of the department, and each department will handle it differently, as I noted above.
They therefore haven't had as much time to get it right yet. It's up to your professor to (1) get it right and to (2) send a notice to the publisher. HE/SHE is the consumer. I know, you bought the book, but it wasn't YOUR choice -- it was chosen for you.
Would telling them where I think they went wrong be... as rude as it sounds? Yes. Not because you're an Access student, but because you are a student, therefore not enough of an expert in the field to provide input into their next edition. Although you may know worlds about media, the textbook writer would challenge your credentials as a SOCIOLOGIST, and there you are: wasting your time.
One of the everyday things about college is that students always complain about their text books - so much so that neither publishers nor faculty often listen to the complaints. The result is that legitimate complaints don't get heard because they aren't listened to.....
From the perspective of the professor, finding the perfect textbook is often a difficult task. That's why so many of us write our own texts --- because we know what we want included.
no subject
teach gave us handouts to cover what the chapter doesn't. lots and lots of bits from stuff like 'psychology review'. So we have what we need to write the essay.
I guess my interests are going a bit beyond what is necessary for the unit, so I run out of useful. We're being taught disability & age stuff, but the sexuality stuff that was bugging me all yesterday is not coming up in lessons because it isn't in the essay question.
Textbooks are tricky, I can see that. I complain both about how big it is and about what isn't in it. Bit of a contradiction in there...
(I still wish they'd do an e-book version. Keyword searchable! And I have to take the laptop to class anyway.)