Watching TV Is Not Required

Thinking About Media and Thinking About Thinking

Bernard McGrane author John Gunderson author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd

Published:21st Oct '09

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

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Watching TV Is Not Required cover

This book uses a social world–today's undergraduate students' ubiquitous everyday experience of television–as a vehicle for helping awaken students to the true possibilities for learning and their responsibilities inherent in achieving those goals. The book also introduces students to the social construction of reality embedded in the experience of TV. The lead author Barney McGrane is one of the most accomplished and successful teachers of sociology in the United States today and is also the co-author with John Gunderson and the late Inge Bell of the classic book for teaching This Book Is Not Required: An Emotional Survival Manual For Students.

"McGrane and Gunderson have put together an extraordinarily provocative stream of sociologically inspired responses to television. Nothing could be more "relevant" to students, and in the right hands, this is a resource for a learning experience that at once maximizes critical and creative thinking. McGrane and Gunderson give new life to sociological thinking."

—Jack Katz, Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles

"A proper companion for a course in intellectual self-defense, this book guides the reader through an intense contemplation of our culture’s most popular form of meditation: watching TV. McLuhan, Huxley, and Postman inform this firmly grounded exploration of the everyday manipulations which we happily invite into our lives. Why is the television so powerful? Because we think it’s not."

—Terri L. Anderson, Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles

"Here's a delightful kiss to break the enchantment that TV has held over our lives for too long—or maybe a bracing slap. In any event, what an important and powerful book."

—Bill McKibbin, author, Deep Economy


"McGrane and Gunderson have put together an extraordinarily provocative stream of sociologically inspired responses to television. Nothing could be more "relevant" to students, and in the right hands, this is a resource for a learning experience that at once maximizes critical and creative thinking. McGrane and Gunderson give new life to sociological thinking."—Jack Katz, Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles

ISBN: 9780415994873

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 750g

240 pages