Media, Masculinities, and the Machine

Damion Sturm, PhD, is a Teaching Fellow for Screen & Media Studies, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. Dan Fleming, PhD, is Professor of Screen & Media Studies, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand.

• Chapter 1. Introducing the Social Imagining of High-Tech.; Chapter 2. Fatal Strategies and Affective Play: Towards a new model; Chapter 3. Reflexivity and Method.; Chapter 4. Strategy-Intensity Practices and F1.; Chapter 5. Strategy-Intensity Practices and Transformers.; Chapter 6. Strategy-Intensity Practices and Boys' Toys; (Looking at consumer discourses of 'the machine' to open-out the prior two case studies.); Chapter 7. Smart Masculinities, Dream Machinery, and Masculinized Media.; (Drawing together the role of both mediated masculinities and media technologies as masculinized.).

Fleming and Sturm have achieved a rare success in academic writing, by producing a book that is both important in its arguments and engaging in its style of writing and presentation. This book focuses on the complex relationship between humans, and more specifically men, and machines, but through their dual treatise of Transformers toys and Formula One racing, they provide insights that will have resonance with a wide variety of disciplines and subjects, including the study of masculinity, fandom, play, everyday life, material culture, technology, sport, social theory and media. — Garry Crawford, Senior Lecturer in Cultural Sociology, University of Salford