ABSTRACT
Caught in the Crossfire reveals how the United States has been gradually changing from a society that celebrates childhood into one that is hostile to and afraid of its own children. Today kids are often seen as a threat to our social and moral values. In schools, some behavior is criminalized, and growing numbers of kids find themselves in penal and psychiatric confinement. This breakdown is often too readily attributed to bad parenting, the crisis of the family, or the greed of capitalism. Grossberg offers a new and original understanding of the changes transforming contemporary America, and of the choices Americans face about their future. He documents the relations between economic ideologies and economic realities and explores what is going on in the "culture wars" as well as on the Internet and other new media. Caught in the Crossfire argues that all of these changes and tn struggles, including those involving the state of kids, only make sense as integral parts of a larger transformation to define America's uniqueness and to develop its own sense of modern culture. Part of the Cultural Politics and the Promise of Democracy Series.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part |96 pages
America's War on Its Children
chapter |22 pages
Kids, the Enemy Within
chapter |39 pages
Life in the War Zone
chapter |32 pages
Accounting for the Kids
part |87 pages
The Contemporary Political Field
chapter |17 pages
Neoliberalism
chapter |29 pages
The New Conservatism
chapter |16 pages
Liberalism and the Left
chapter |21 pages
Kids Out of Time (Unsettling Modernity)
part |109 pages
The Coming American Modernity