Caught in the Crossfire: Kids, Politics, and America's Future (Cultural Politics and the Promise of Democracy) [Paperback]

Lawrence Grossberg (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1594511136 | ISBN-13: 978-1594511134 | Publication Date: May 30, 2005

What's going on in America? Caught in the Crossfire offers an original and compelling vision of the forces changing the ways people live their lives, through the unique lens of America's children. Grossberg reveals how the United States has been gradually shifting 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. Grossberg gathers evidence from the media, schools, courts, medicine, economics, and family life. Caught in the Crossfire locates this alteration in an original understanding of the struggles transforming contemporary America and of the choices Americans face about their future. He documents the relations between economic ideologies and economic realities and explores both the 'culture wars' and the political culture of the nation. Grossberg argues that all of these developments, including those involving the state of kids, only make sense as integral parts of a larger struggle to redefine America's uniqueness and to develop a new sense of itself as a modern society.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Equally at ease in the registers of social movements and public policy, this is a book that deserves to be widely read and taught.... a valuable resource for expanding our political space is its analytic embrace of so many spheres of social life. --Randy Martin, New York University

I relish this book. This is the wisest analysis of America's state and trends . . . since Reagan's turning point. It is loaded with shrewd observations and on-target syntheses. 'Third modernity' will probably enter the canon of all thought about all things American. --Zygmunt Bauman

Grossberg has a more original and insightful angle on the prevailing conservative climate than almost any other social commentator. Breathtaking in its range of reference and argument, Caught in the Crossfire is his most provocative and accomplished analysis of the forces confronting youth today. --ANDREW ROSS, author of Low Pay, High Profile: The Global Push for Fair Labor

About the Author

Lawrence Grossberg is the Morris Davis Distinguished Professor of Communications and Cultural Studies and director of the University Program in Cultural Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is the author most recently of Bringing It All Back Home: Essays on Cultural Studies (Duke University Press 1997).

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Paradigm Publishers (May 30, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594511136
• ISBN-13: 978-1594511134
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,363,746 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Extraordinary Critique of Politics, Economics, and Culture, August 24, 2006

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CS (Tempe, AZ USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Caught in the Crossfire: Kids, Politics, and America's Future (Cultural Politics and the Promise of Democracy) (Paperback)

"Caught in the Crossfire" is a contemporary critique of the current political climate of the United States. Grossberg situates his argument in what seems to be the collective and growing dissatisfaction with our children, e.g. the "war" against kids. The first third of the text addresses how kids have been treated in the past three decades both literally and figuratively, with emphasis upon the latter. It is certainly no secret that children (especially teenagers) are misrepresented often in the media, leading to the demonization and criminalization of our youth. One need not search very far to find glorifying examples of this, take for instance the current status quo on rap music.

Nevertheless, Grossberg provides a compelling argument to the contrary, arguing that the current claims about the behavior of our kids are not only misleading, but also blatantly false. His claims are supported with rich data, including but not limited to media documents, government surveys and criminal data. Grossberg even goes so far as to purport that kids rather are very much like the generations that preceded them. Before reading this text one might be at odds with such a statement, as it seems to fly in the face of conventional wisdom, but wading through his presentation of the data one would be hard pressed to not only consider the statement very compelling, if not downright correct.

Much of the blame concerning the deterioration of kids is placed upon faltering parents, racism, capitalism, the current "family crisis", and of course the media. Grossberg addresses all of the aforementioned. Although the brunt of the blame does not rest squarely upon one or the other, the current rhetoric espoused by political factions on both the right and the left can be largely attributed to a compliant and complacent news media. Grossberg provides us with a plethora of factoids that refute current and widely held assumptions, beliefs, and myths about kids. For instance, a child is three to four times more likely to be struck by lightning than to be a victim of violence in school (p. 41). Nevertheless, he is quick to note that we cannot merely blame the media (as many do) but opt for a more sensible approach, one that would factor the media into the general equation concerning our understanding of kids.

Grossberg proceeds to connect the misrepresentation of the youth crisis to broader struggles and changes that have defined America (and modernity) for at least the past quarter century. The dialogue that follows contributes to a social commentary concerning politics in an entirely new and unique perspective. In the second third of the text Grossberg presents a stifling critique of politics, castigating both the right and the left (few scholars are capable of doing this well and with rigor). Perhaps some might criticize Grossberg for being too "in the middle" but this would simply be missing the point. Besides, he openly admits his preference for left politics (which makes his critique all the more damning), as he remarks that "[c]ritisim can be offered in a spirit of solidarity [and] I write from a desire to forge a more effective left politics" (page 160).

The final third of the book addresses what Grossberg calls the coming American modernity. Modernity is typically understood as a historical period characterized by 19th and 20th century world of science, nation-states, political democracy, capitalism, urbanization, mass literacy, mass media, mass culture, rationality and individualism. Grossberg divides American history into three centuries, each he argues characterized by their different realizations of modernity to discuss the creation and development of American democracy, capitalism, and politics. He argues, among other things, that we are in "the midst of the unsettling of one modernity and the emergence of another" (page 217). It is here Grossberg argues that a space is provided for a restructuring of politics, economics, and culture, whereby we can forge a move toward a more compromising political discourse; as the political climate has quickly deteriorated into an all out war between the right and left, characterized by the absence of rationality (a tenet of modernity) in contemporary political debates and commentary. This perspective is exemplified in the idea that campaigning is constant and ubiquitous, as the goal of politicians it seems is merely to stay in office.

So what do you ask does this have to do with our kids? "Kids' unique relation to time and history in the second modernity made them the most potent symbol of possibility and hope. Childhood and youth became the essence of imagination, the affirmation that there are always alternatives and that resistance to any one future is always possible. Kids remind us that we can always change directions" (page 308). The war against our kids then destroys the possibility of imagining change for the future and even perhaps destroys the possibility of a future. This text is a call for communication, an open dialogue, as "communication is the opening of possibility" (page 317). Communication then fosters the ability to transform our society to a more egalitarian and livable environment, one that would be suitable and enjoyable for the majority of people.

This book was extraordinary and is highly recommended. It was very thought provoking, stimulating, and very intellectually rewarding and will no doubt change the ways in which you approach politics and the social world.