Wednesday, May 22, 2013
About Mars Hill Audio
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| In Freaks, Geeks, and Cool Kids: American Teenagers, Schools, and the Culture of Consumption, professor Murray Milner, Jr., attends to the complex social structures found among high school students. Milner, who is interested in how people achieve social status and what role it plays in society at large, did not intend to pause long in the world of high schoolers when he set out to study an environment which could help him to understand and to explain various theories of status. His plans changed, however, when he realized the extent to which the hierarchical social worlds of these students explain the workings of the broader society. He set to work examining how teenagers order their social lives and how they attempt entry into the in crowd, and to determining how parents unwittingly support their children's obsessions with popularity and consumerist habits. Milner suggests that amending these trends will require multiple and varied changes to the current structure of high schools. |  Freaks, Geeks, and Cool Kids: American Teenagers, Schools, and the Culture of Consumption (Routledge, 2004) |
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| The bonus track for Volume 68 is available here. (Left click to stream; right click to save.) | Adolescence Consumer Culture Schools Education |