Consuming Technologies: Media and Information in Domestic Spaces

Consuming Technologiesopens for analysis some crucial but rarely examined areas of social, cultural, and economic life. At its core is a concern with the complex set of relationships that mark and define the place of the domestic in the modern world, and an explanation of the relationship between the domestic and public spheres as they are mediated by consumption and technology. Debate over the commodification and privatization of everyday life has been preoccupied with the impact of technological change on established social structures and cultural values. Yet much of the discussion has lacked any substantive empirical work on the understanding of modern industrial society: on the nature of consumption, and the contradictory significance of the domestic sphere. The contributors address these questions in a series of essays, suggesting that in essence, information and communications technologies require us to see them as social and symbolic as well as material objects, cruciallyembeddded in the structures and dynamics of our consumer culture.