Introduction: The Digital Mundane: Mothering, Media, and Precarity
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Published:March 2017
Grounded in the family scenes and struggles of a woman named Carly, the introduction details the book’s methodology, theoretical framework, and primary arguments. The authors describe their approach and the feminist, political commitments that guided their work. Determined to undercut the “mommy wars” and give voice to women in their own communities, they draw on theories of affect to understand and articulate mothers’ worlds. The authors elaborate their concept of the digital mundane, where media don’t necessarily stand out as particularly significant but are indistinguishable from the banal movements of everyday life. For mothers, the digital mundane is a mamasphere—a network of networks that pulses with information, advice, and opportunities germane to the challenges of contemporary motherhood. As neoliberalism intensifies and expands women’s work, mothers’ lives become ever more entangled with digital media as they work to privatize family happiness on their own in the face of mounting precarity.