Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

How does television function within society? Why have both its programmes and its audiences been so widely denigrated? Taking inspiration from Richard Hoggarts classic study The Uses of Literacy, John Hartleys new book is a lucid defence of the place of television in our lives, and of the usefulness of television studies.
Hartley re-conceptualizes television as a transmodern medium, capable of reuniting government, education and media, and of creating a new kind of cultural teaching which facilitates communication across social and geographical boundaries. He provides a historical framework for the development of both television and television studies, his focus ranging from an analysis of the early documentary Housing Problems, to the much-overlooked cultural impact of the refrigerator.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Figures (p. vii)
• Acknowledgements (p. ix)
• 1 (Pre-script) Per-sona: selves, knowledge, books (p. 1)
• 2 What are the uses of television studies? A modern archaeology (p. 15)
• 3 TV studies as cross-demographic communication (p. 27)
• 4 Television as transmodern teaching (p. 38)
• 5 Teaching not power: ideological atrocities and improper questions (p. 48)
• 6 Knowledge, television and the 'textual tradition' (p. 55)
• 7 Brief encounters, khaki shorts and wilful blindness: television without television (p. 71)
• 8 Housing television: a film, a fridge and social democracy (p. 92)
• 9 Democracy as defeat: the social eye of cultural studies (p. 112)
• 10 Schools of thought: desire and fear; discourse and politics (p. 127)
• 11 People who knead people: permanent education and the amelioration of manners (p. 140)
• 12 Democratainment: television and cultural citizenship (p. 154)
• 13 Influx of the feared: democratization, schooling, cultural studies (p. 166)
• 14 Clueless? Not! DIY citizenship (p. 177)
• 15 (Post-script) Suburbanality (in cultural studies) (p. 189)
• Appendix 1 Glossary of concepts and neologisms (p. 204)
• Appendix 2 Do-It-Yourself TV studies (p. 225)
• References (p. 235)
• Index (p. 242)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

One of the UK's most seminal thinkers on media, Hartley (Univ. of Cardiff) provides a survey of the many varied uses people have made of television over the more than half century of its existence. He does not merely describe: he poses questions on the role and value of television--and studies of television--in the larger scene of daily life. Taking a basically positive approach, he seeks to define a widely criticized medium's many different functions. Chapters discuss and illustrate what Hartley calls a modern archaeology of television studies, studies of such things as cross-demographic communication, television as transmodern teaching, television and the textual tradition, living without television, housing television (how the tube fits into one's environment compared with, for example, kitchen appliances), the social eye of cultural studies, television and political discourse, television's role in permanent education, television and cultural citizenship, do-it-yourself citizenship and television. He includes a brief postscript and a glossary of concepts and neologisms. Well illustrated with examples, most of them British or European, the volume makes for one of the more thoughtful assessments of television's role and potential. For extensive collections supporting course work in international communication at the upper-division undergraduate level and above. C. Sterling George Washington University