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The Information Age

Technology, Learning and Exclusion in Wales

Editor(s) Stephen Gorard,Neil Selwyn

Paperback - £9.99

Language: English

Genre(s): Welsh Interest

Series: Politics and Society in Wales

January 2002 · 240 pages ·216x138mm

· Paperback - 9780708317082

About The Book

The Information Age offers a critical examination of the challenges a newly-devolved Wales faces in reinventing itself as a confident and competitive 'e-nation'. The development and exploitation of technology has long been at the core of Welsh economic and social life and has assumed even greater significance over the last few decades with the emergence of new information and communication technologies. Neil Selwyn and Stephen Gorard suggest that small countries will lose out if they fail to adopt appropriate strategies for lifelong learning and combat the danger of a 'digital divide'. At the same time, their extensive empirical research offers early indications of the likely shortcomings of relying on technology alone to promote knowledge and social inclusion. Wales faces major structural, economic and socio-cultural challenges. None of these will be overcome by relying solely on 'technical fixes'.

Endorsements

'... inspiring and challenging ... I found the clear and distinct thinking that has gone into this analysis quite refreshing.' (Education, Communication & Information) '...This is a very good book...well-researched.' The Information Age '...a carefully argued, empirically substantiated appraisal of digital Wales. It deserves to be widely read, not just in the country which is its focus of attention, but elsewhere as well, for the lessons that can be carried into similar nations with newly devolved powers of governance.' European Journal of Communication.

Part 1 Sexual/textual consumption - response to papers by Nicholas Watson: consuming passions - gender and sexuality in book VIII of John Gower's "Confessio Amantis", Diane Watt; consuming the body of the working man in the later Middle Ages, Isabel Davis; reproductive rites - Anne Askew and the female body as witness in the "Acts and Monuments", Kimberly Anne Coles; "such stowage as these trinkets" - trading and tasting women in Fletcher and Massinger's "The Sea Voyage" (1622), Teresa Walters; antipodean tricks - travel, gender and monstrousness in Richard Brome's "The Antipodes", Claire Jowitt. Part 2 Monstrous bodies - response to papers by Margo Hendricks: Sheela's voracity and Victorian veracity, Emma L.E. Rees; bloodsuckers - the construction of female sexuality in medieval science and fiction, Bettina Bildhauer; "ant nes he him seolf reclus i maries somebe?" - the anchorhold and the redemption of the monstrous female body, Liz Herbert McAvoy; fountains and strange women in the bower of bliss - Eastern contexts for Acrasia and her community, Marion Hollings; monstrous tyrannical appetite - "and what wonderful monsters have there now lately ben borne in Englande?", Margaret Healy. Part 3 Consuming genders, races, ractions - response to papers by Andrew Hadfield: the monstrous appetites of Albina and her sisters, Ruth Evans; monstrous (m)othering - the representation of the Sowdanesse in Chaucer's "Man of Law's Tale", Sue Niebrzydowski; monstrous generation - witchcraft and generation in "Othello", Kirstie Gulick Rosenfield; an Ethiopian history - reading race and skin-colour in early modern versions of Heliodorus's "Aithiopika", Sujata Iyengar.

About the Editor(s)

Author(s): Stephen Gorard

Stephen Gorard is Professor of Education and Public Policy, and Fellow of the Wolfson Research Institute at Durham University, and Honorary Professorial Fellow at the University of Birmingham.

Author(s): Neil Selwyn