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 Connecting Social Problems and Popular CultureWhy Media Is Not the Answerby Karen Sternheimer Aug 10, 2009
DescriptionIs violence on the streets caused by violence in video games? Do hip-hop lyrics increase misogynistic and homophobic behavior? Are teens promiscuous because of what they see in movies? Popular culture is an easy answer for many of society’s problems, but it is almost always the wrong answer. This innovative book goes beyond the news-grabbing headlines claiming that popular culture is public enemy number one to consider what really causes the social problems we are most concerned about. The sobering fact is that the roots of poverty, child abuse, and unequal public education are much more complicated than the media-made-them-do-it explanations. Karen Sternheimer deftly illustrates how welfare “reform,” a two-tiered health care system, and other difficult systemic issues have far more to do with our contemporary social problems than Grand Theft Auto or 50 Cent. Reviews“In this well researched book, Karen Sternheimer gives lie to a full spectrum of false fears about the effects of popular culture on young people. She provides valuable correctives to innumerable myths promulgated by opportunistic politicians, advocacy groups, and journalists.”
“The media and popular culture are routinely blamed for causing all the ills of the modern world. Karen Sternheimer’s book shows how blaming the media distracts attention from the real problems that affect young people today, and prevents us from understanding how they use the media in their everyday lives. Clearly written and powerfully argued, this book deserves a wide readership well beyond the academy.”
“Sternheimer delivers a scholarly, highly readable debunking of the enthroned culture-war herd's facile blaming of ‘pop culture’ and ‘the media’ for everything about today’s richly diverse young people the fear-mongers don’t like. Sternheimer articulately challenges those who care about youth to stop letting perpetual panics over fictional bogeys obscure genuine threats like poverty, abuse, inequality, and rising anxiety toward healthy social change.”
“In Connecting Social Problems and Popular Culture, Karen Sternheimer delivers a necessary synthesis, with a devastating media analysis, in response to the prevalent cottage industry of exaggeration, myth, and invention about popular culture’s impacts on youth behavior. And in layering a critique of society, class, and race over actual evidence she produces a work of great value to those working with or teaching about youth."
"Sternheimer unpacks the media's penchant for sensationalizing and misdirecting public discourse about the real causes of poverty, disease, materialism, sexual license and substance abuse. ... Revealing how frequently—and perniciously—social research is manipulated, Sternheimer demonstrates how to hold the media accountable while addressing the more entrenched and salient problem of child poverty that she believes is to blame." Selling TerritoryWorld |
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