Technology, Culture, Family Influences on Home Life

This book examines how changes in technologies and in family life both form part of processes of socio-cultural change. It addresses key questions including how does technology shape the ways we relate to each other? What is the significance of how we relate to each other for the technologies we live with? How are the basic needs and activities that define home life and togetherness (like cooking, cleaning and caring) defined by, and accomplished within, socio-technical relations? How does contemporary culture connect technological and relational aspects of close personal relationships such as those of 'family'? How are the 'objective' experiences of the world, expressed in relation with the material and the 'subjective' world, and based on the self and on personal evaluations of relationships with others, defined and expressed in the engagements with everyday home life and the machines we use? Attention is given to the connections between mundane practices in the reproduction of our bodies and our relations with those we live with, and the technological patterns and practices of a world driven by forces that go much beyond any individual or small group.

Elizabeth B. Silva is Professor or Sociology at the Open University, UK, and is a member of the Economic and Social Research Centre on Socio-Cultural Change and of the Centre for Citizenship, Identity and Governance in the Faculty of Social Sciences, Open University. Her publications include Culture, Class, Distinction (co-authored), Cultural Analysis and Bourdieu's Legacy (co-edited), Contemporary Culture and Everyday Life (co-edited) and various journal articles on cultural capital, everyday life, gender, visual art and qualitative methods.