.gif){kind=spacer}
| About the book |
Lifestyle media ' books, magazines, websites, radio and television shows that focus on topics such as cookery, gardening, travel and home improvement ' have witnessed an explosion in recent years. Ordinary Lifestyles explores how popular media texts bring ideas about taste and fashion to consumers, helping audiences to fashion their lifestyles as well as defining what constitutes an appropriate lifestyle for particular social groups. Contemporary examples are used throughout, including Martha Stewart, House Doctor, What Not to Wear, You Are What You Eat, Country Living and brochures for gay and lesbian holiday promotions. The contributors show that watching make-over television or cooking from a celebrity chef's book are significant cultural practices, through which we work on our ideas about taste, status and identity. In opening up the complex processes which shape our taste and forge individual and collective identities, lifestyle media demand our serious attention, as well as our viewing, reading and listening pleasure. Ordinary Lifestyles is essential reading for students on media and cultural studies courses, and for anyone intrigued by the influence of the media on our day-to-day lives. Contributors: David Bell, Manchester Metropolitan University; Frances Bonner, University of Queensland, Australia; Steven Brown, Loughborough University; Fan Carter, Kingston University; Stephen Duncombe, Gallatin School of New York University, USA; David Dunn; Johannah Fahey, Monash University, Australia; Elizabeth Bullen, Deakin University, Australia; Jane Kenway, Monash University, Australia; Robert Fish, University of Exeter; Danielle Gallegos, Murdoch University, Australia; Mark Gibson; David B. Goldstein, University of Tulsa, USA; Ruth Holliday, University of Leeds; Joanne Hollows, Nottingham Trent University; Felicity Newman; Tim O'Sullivan, De Montfort University; Elspeth Probyn; Rachel Russell, University of Sydney, Australia; Lisa Taylor; Melissa Tyler; Gregory Woods, Nottingham Trent University. |
| About the authors |
David Bell teaches Cultural Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University. His recent publications, as author or editor, include The Sexual Citizen, Cyberculture: the Key Concepts, City of Quarters, and Science, Technology and Culture.
Joanne Hollows teaches Media and Cultural Studies at Nottingham Trent University. She is the author of Feminism, Femininity and Popular Culture and co-author of Food and Cultural Studies. |
| Table of contents |
1. Ordinary Lifestyles SECTION I: MEDIA FORM AND INDUSTRY 2. From Television Lifestyle to Lifestyle Television 3. Whose Lifestyle is it Anyway? 4. Recipes for Living: Martha Stewart and the New American Subject SECTION II: HOME FRONT 5. Home Truths? 6. Monoculture versus Multiculinarism: Trouble in the Aussie Kitchen 7. Cookbooks as Manuals of Taste SECTION III: THE GREAT OUTDOORS 8. It was Beautiful Before You Changed it All: Class, Taste and the Transformative Aesthetics of the Garden Lifestyle Media 9. Entertaining Tourists: Television Holiday Programmes, Performance, and the Tourist Destination 10. Holidays of a Lifestyle: Representations of Pleasure in Gay and Lesbian Holiday Promotions 11. Countryside Formats and Ordinary Lifestyles SECTION IV: LEARNING LIFESTYLES 12. It's a Girl Thing: Teenage Magazines, Lifestyle and Consumer Culture 13. Gender, Childhood and Consumer Culture 14. A Taste for Science: Inventing the Young in the National Interest SECTION V: WORK/LIFE BALANCING 15. Sabotage, Slack and the Zinester Search for Non-Alienated Labour 16. The Worst Things in the World: Life Events Checklists in Popular Stress Management Texts 17. Thinking Habits and the Ordering of Life Bibliography |
