Lifestyle television

Popular media has a significant but not entirely straightforward relationship with people's sense of gender and identity. Media messages are diverse, diffuse and contradictory. Furthermore, people are changing, building new identities founded not on the certainties of the past, but organized around the new order of modern living, where the meanings of gender and identity are increasingly open. Different aspects of popular media can aid or disturb these processes of contemporary reorientation. Some critics say that the media should offer traditional role models and reassuring certainties, but this view is unlikely to survive. Radical uncertainties and exciting contradictions are what contemporary media, like modern life, is all about. Implicit in the women's magazines' strategies is the notion of a "new" reader, the highly visible woman of the new Indian economic order who is intended to serve as an inspirational model for the wider, non-working audience of women. Implicit also are notions of what constitutes work (i.e work that is performed in the public sphere), what constitutes liberation, and, consequently, what constitutes the normative subject of feminism. There is a marked self-consciousness in the projection of the "new woman", a self-consciousness that is particularly apparent in the use of visuals. The post-feminist New Woman, secure in her modernity, negotiates her different roles as a modern professional and as a traditional home-maker with playful and confident ease. Features mostly represent women as people who are independent, in control of their lives. The evidence in the study demonstrates that women are not the puppets that earlier forms of feminism think they are represented as. They have choices to make about their professional and social lives. They are not simply confronted with situations over which they have no choices to make. For instance, the target market of these magazines or the implied readers are a group of educated professional women who have dreams and know what they want in life. While most of the consumerist persuasion comes in the form of direct advertising, most of it is disguised as editorial material that is in the form of feature articles, advice columns or health and fitness tips. That leads one to the conclusion that advertising has never been a good vehicle for representing women. It has done nothing more than to harm their image and misplace the idea of what it means to be a complete woman. It has never been interested in who women are other than their commercial value. It is also unfortunate that advertising forms such an integral part of popular magazines. This leaves one at a dead end since the media cannot do without advertising as they get most of their revenue from it. So, striving to please both readers and advertisers is a big challenge for magazines and this implies that as long as they depend highly on advertising, chances are that women will still be represented as sex objects and helpless beings. Images in the media generally project a standard to which women are expected to aspire, yet that standard is almost completely impossible for most women to achieve. Women almost always fall short of standards that are expected of them regarding physical appearance. The pervasiveness of the media makes it very challenging for most women to avoid evaluating themselves against the socio-cultural standards of beauty.

International evidence demonstrates the importance of engaging parents in the education of their ‘high potential ’ children, yet limited research has focussed on the involvement of parents from differing economic strata/backgrounds. The current study explored the dilemmas of parenting academically high ability children from economically deprived urban areas in the UK. Data were gathered from a sample of parents whose children attended a University- based sustained intervention programme for designated ‘gifted ’ pupils aged 12-16. Parental perceptions were sought in relation to a) the usefulness/impact of the intervention programme b) parents’ aspirations for their children growing up in economically deprived urban areas and c) parents ’ views on the support provided by the extended family, peer groups and the wider community. The findings have significant implications for both policy and practice and, more specifically, for engaging parents in intervention programmes offered by Univ...

International evidence demonstrates the importance of engaging parents in the education of their ‘high-potential’ children, yet limited research has focused on the involvement of parents from differing economic strata/backgrounds. The current study explored the dilemmas of parenting academically high-ability children from economically deprived urban areas in the UK. Data were gathered from a sample of parents whose children attended a university-based sustained intervention programme for designated ‘gifted’ pupils aged 12–16. Parental perceptions were sought in relation to (a) the usefulness/impact of the intervention programme, (b) parents’ aspirations for their children growing up in economically deprived urban areas and (c) parents’ views on the support provided by the extended family, peer groups and the wider community. The findings have significant implications for both policy and practice and, more specifically, for engaging parents in intervention programmes offered by unive...

International evidence demonstrates the importance of engaging parents in the education of their ‘high potential ’ children, yet limited research has focussed on the involvement of parents from differing economic strata/backgrounds. The current study explored the dilemmas of parenting academically high ability children from economically deprived urban areas in the UK. Data were gathered from a sample of parents whose children attended a University- based sustained intervention programme for designated ‘gifted ’ pupils aged 12-16. Parental perceptions were sought in relation to a) the usefulness/impact of the intervention programme b) parents’ aspirations for their children growing up in economically deprived urban areas and c) parents ’ views on the support provided by the extended family, peer groups and the wider community. The findings have significant implications for both policy and practice and, more specifically, for engaging parents in intervention programmes offered by Univ...

This article examines how a specific form of lifestyle programming indexes both national concerns and transnational financial trends as well as diffuse social fissures in Irish life. Emerging in the late 1990s amid a construction boom, Irish property television adapted and thrived through the subsequent post-2008 crash, the concomitant implementation of austerity policies and an ensuing housing crisis. This boom-to-bust cycle was precipitated by the financialization of property within Ireland, a process whereby housing and commercial property became embedded in transnational financial market cycles. Through an analysis of three key examples of the genre, this article argues that for the most part, Irish property television seeks to hold at bay anxieties generated by a growing wealth and income disparity in the state. While this programming displays an ideological commitment to the "investor subjects" of home-ownership, increasingly the concerns of those excluded from this version of the good life are evident.

When I stood in Downing Street as Prime Minister for the first time this summer, I set out my mission to build a country that works for everyone. Today I want to talk a little more about what that means and lay out my vision for a truly meritocratic Britain that puts the interests of ordinary, working class people first.

This paper explores how the values which are embedded in current discourses around education and social mobility are reinforced, tested and sometimes challenged in lifestyle journalism, reality television and social observation documentary. The focus is on the media articulation of education as the key driver of social mobility, responsible citizenship and equality of opportunity. Paying special attention to political debates around educational achievement in the context of meritocracy and personal responsibility we consider the ways in which educational choice is presented , taken up or passed by. We consider how this presentation of choice as available to all critically impacts on the class status, social mobility and futures of children and their families.

ABSTRACT Background: Existing evidence suggests a relationship between family social contexts, family relationships and interactions, children’s social and cognitive development and educational outcomes. Interventions that support families in relation to parenting and supporting children’s development can have positive effects on both parents’ skills and the educational progress of their children.

Purpose: This article reports on a study conducted in an area with high levels of social and economic deprivation in Scotland, which aimed to investigate the nature and effectiveness of the services in place to support poor families. The project focused on capturing the experiences of parents and what they perceived as effective support from the nursery and school staff in terms of getting them more involved in their children’s learning.

Sample: There was a particular focus on the 4 to 7 years age group, thus covering the crucial transition from pre-school (or non-school) provision to primary school. A sample of three Early Education & Childcare Centres (EECCs) and three schools were selected. The schools and EECCs were all from areas of high social deprivation and had a high proportion of children on free school meals.

Design and methods: The study was qualitative in design and included in-depth semi-structured interviews with 19 service managers and practitioners, 6 focus groups with parents and 6 activity groups with children. Data were analysed using both pre-determined and emerging codes.

Results: While all parents recognised the value of education for their children’s social mobility and opportunities and were keen to engage in activities, they remained aware of the limited resources they could draw upon, mainly in terms of their restricted academic competencies, specialist knowledge and qualifications. The desire to help their children overcome their families’ economic circumstances was also hampered by the absence of strong social and kinship networks that they could draw upon.

Conclusions: We draw on concepts of social and cultural capital to examine parents’ positioning in relation to their children’s education. The conclusion highlights parents’ strategic orientation to school/nurseries, often seen as a resource of cultural capital, and calls for a more positive discourse of parental engagement in relation to disadvantaged groups.

An in-depth analysis of the role of food in television which considers tutorials, reality shows, talent, factual, lifestyle and makeover. From early cooking shows to experimental programs in Italian television of 1950s, to worldwide hits such as Masterchef and Kitchen Nightmares.

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«Buonasera e buon appetito!». Quanto è cambiato il rapporto tra cibo e televisione dal saluto con cui Ave Ninchi accoglieva lo spettatore nello studio di A tavola alle 7? Erano gli anni Settanta e la tv italiana presentava un programma interamente dedicato alla cucina. E oggi?
Basta fare zapping per rendersi conto di quanto si cucini in televisione, dalla presentazione di ricette alle competizioni a suon di piatti degni dei migliori ristoranti stellati.

"Lo spettacolo del cibo. I cooking show nella televisione italiana" si concentra sulla produzione televisiva e sul suo rapporto con i programmi di cucina, tratteggiandone l’evoluzione dall’inizio delle trasmissioni ad oggi, dai primi esperimenti che raccontavano l’Italia post-bellica ai programmi della televisione commerciale, dal tentativo di far emergere le origini culinarie alla volontà di insegnare ricette facili e veloci. Dalla riscoperta dei sapori locali all’esplorazione della tradizione, il cibo televisivo cambia con l’arrivo dei canali tematici, per arrivare alla sua contemporanea spettacolarizzazione, in cui assistiamo ad una pervasività in una cornice di puro intrattenimento, declinato in diversi format: tutorial, reality, talent, factual, lifestyle e makeover.

Un’analisi che ripercorre la storia della televisione italiana, senza però trascurare i cooking show statunitensi e l’affermarsi dei celebrity chef.

Meritocracy, in contemporary parlance, refers to the idea that whatever our social position at birth, society ought to facilitate the means for 'talent' to 'rise to the top'. This article argues that the ideology of 'meritocracy' has become a key means through which plutocracy is endorsed by stealth within contemporary neoliberal culture. The article attempts to analyse the term 'meritocracy', to open up understandings of its genealogy, and to comprehend its current use. It does so through three sections. The first section considers what might be wrong with the notion of meritocracy. The second traces some key points in the travels of the concept within and around academic social theory, moving from Alan Fox and Michael Young's initial, disparaging use of the term in the 1950s, to Daniel Bell's approving adoption of the concept in the 1970s, and on to its take-up by neoconservative think tanks in the 1980s. The third section analyses the use of meritocracy as a plank of neoliberal political rhetoric and public discourse. It focuses on the resonance of the term in relatively recent British culture, discussing how what it terms 'meritocratic feeling' has come to operate in David Cameron's ' Aspiration Nation'. This final section argues that meritocracy has become a potent blend of an essentialised and exclusionary notion of 'talent', competitive individualism and the need for social mobility. Today it is a discourse which predominantly works to marketise the very idea of equality.

What do the Fab Five from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, the Supernanny and celebrity chef Jamie Oliver all have in common? Lifestyle gurus are increasingly intruding on everyday life, directing ordinary people to see themselves as "projects" that can be "made over" through embracing an ethos of relentless self-improvement. Smart Living argues that they represent a new form of popular expertise sweeping the world. Written in a lively and accessible manner, the book examines this cult of expertise across a range of media and cultural sites and offers the reader a range of critical tools for understanding the recent emergence of this popular international phenomenon. Smart Living is a must-read for anyone interested in the relationship between popular media culture and contemporary social life.