ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book talks about the directions in which mediatization pushes contemporary culture. It provides not just a critical account of mediatization; it is also an exploration of mobile middle-class lifestyles and life trajectories. The term middle class is applied here as a relational construct, following the theorizations of Bourdieu. The book focuses on the middle classes is motivated precisely by their intermediary role within mediatization processes, the fact that their lifestyles and life trajectories are founded upon a relatively open-ended habitus. It assesses the value of cultural materialism for developing a critical approach to mediatization. Such a critical approach can be seen primarily as a response to the difficulty of identifying what is not mediatization in the realm of culture and everyday life, a way of providing sharper contours to what we mean by mediatization.
