Popular Culture - A User''s Guide

Popular Culture: A User's Guide, International Edition ventures beyond the history of pop culture to give readers the vocabulary and tools to address and analyze the contemporary cultural landscape that surrounds them.
* Moves beyond the history of pop culture to give students the vocabulary and tools to analyze popular culture
* suitable for the study of popular culture across a range of disciplines, from literary theory and cultural studies to philosophy and sociology
* Covers a broad range of important topics including the underlying socioeconomic structures that affect media, the politics of pop culture, the role of consumers, subcultures and countercultures, and the construction of social reality
* Examines the ways in which individuals and societies act as consumers and agents of popular culture
* Numerous learning features including case studies, real-life examples, suggested activities, boxed features, a glossary, and an instructor's manual

List of contents

Preface: A User's Guide to Popular Culture: A User's Guide ix
 
Acknowledgments xiii
 
1 Introducing Popular Culture 1
 
Approaching Popular Culture 1
 
Defining Popular Culture 2
 
Popular Culture Invades the Classroom 12
 
The Americanization of Popular Culture 14
 
The Decolonization of Culture 15
 
Culture and Economics--The Postindustrial Revolution 17
 
Why This? Why Now? Why Me? A Couple of Final Arguments for the Importance of Studying Popular Culture 18
 
Coffee as Popular Culture 19
 
And It All Boils Down To...What Is in a Cup of Coffee? 27
 
Suggestions for Further Reading 28
 
2 The History of Popular Culture 29
 
Taking It from the Streets 29
 
Making the Streets Safe for Commerce 30
 
Popular Recreation before 1830 31
 
Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution 32
 
Popular Recreation and Resistance 38
 
The Production of Commercial Mass Culture--the Birth of the Culture Industry 43
 
Continuities and Changes 49
 
Suggestions for Further Reading 55
 
3 Representation and the Construction of Social Reality 57
 
Truth2Power 57
 
Constructing a Crisis--the Discourse of Violent Youth 58
 
Signification--the Production of Social Sense 59
 
Representing the Youth Crisis 63
 
Truth2Power: The Politics of Representation 75
 
Contexts of Representation 79
 
Representation in Contemporary Culture 86
 
Suggestions for Further Reading 89
 
4 The Production of Popular Culture 91
 
The Business of Culture 91
 
"Money Changes Everything": The Pitfalls of Thinking about Production 93
 
The Culture Industry Thesis 96
 
Shifting Modes of Cultural Production 106
 
Cultural Production Today 112
 
Suggestions for Further Reading and Viewing 122
 
5 The Consuming Life 123
 
Back to "Normal" 123
 
A Brief History of Consumer Culture 126
 
Consumption as Distinction 135
 
Consumption, Desire, and Pleasure 140
 
The Politics of Consumption 142
 
Suggestions for Further Reading and Viewing 148
 
6 Identity and the Body 151
 
Identity--a Necessary Fiction? 151
 
The History of Identity--Some Different Theories 153
 
Hegemonic Masculinity, Postfeminism, and the Third-Wave 161
 
LGBTQ+ 168
 
Different Bodies, Different Selves? 172
 
Altered States 176
 
Suggestions for Further Reading 182
 
7 Identity, Community, Collectivity 183
 
Who Do You Want Me to Be? 183
 
"The People Who Are Ours" 187
 
Modern Identities: Nation, Empire, and Race 191
 
Nation and Empire 197
 
Postcolonial Identities 200
 
Postnational Identities: Melted, Frozen, Reconstituted 204
 
Community or Collectivity? 210
 
Suggestions for Further Reading 212
 
8 Subcultures and Countercultures 213
 
The Mainstream and Other Streams 213
 
Subcultures and Countercultures: What Is the Difference? 217
 
Popular Representations of Subcultures and Countercultures 221
 
The Politics of Subcultures 229
 
Suggestions for Further Reading 240
 
9 Space, Place, and Globalization 243
 
(Dis)Locations of Popular Culture 243
 
Private versus Public Space 246
 
Inside Out 255
 
The Big Picture: Globalization? 262
 
Is Globalization Real? 264
 
Globalization and Popular Culture 271
 
Globalization: What's Next? 279
 
Suggestions for Further Reading 279
 
10 Popu

Summary

Popular Culture: A User s Guide, International Edition ventures beyond the history of pop culture to give readers the vocabulary and tools to address and analyze the contemporary cultural landscape that surrounds them.

Product details

• Authors: Susie O'Brien, Imre Szeman, Imre (University of Alberta Szeman, Szeman Imre
• Publisher: Wiley, John and Sons Ltd
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 08.09.2017
• EAN: 9781119140344
• ISBN: 978-1-119-14034-4
• No. of pages: 384
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > Miscellaneous; Popkultur, Volkskultur, Kulturwissenschaften, Popular Culture, Cultural Studies