Popular Culture

Imre Szeman is Professor of Drama & Speech Communication, and English Language & Literture at the University of Waterloo, Canada.  He is the founder of the Canadian Association of Cultural Studies and a founding member of the US Cultural Studies Association. His main areas of research are in energy and environmental studies, social and political philosophy, and critical theory and cultural studies. He is the author or editor of more than 16 books, including Cultural Theory: An Anthology (Wiley Blackwell, 2010) and After Globalization (Wiley Blackwell, 2011).Susie O'Brien is Associate Professor in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University, Canada. Her research and teaching focus on postcolonial and environmental cultural studies.  She has published on postcolonial literature, the slow and local food movements, scenario planning, and the temporality of globalization.  She is co-editor of Time, Globalization and Human Experience (forthcoming 2017) and is currently working on a monograph on the power and vulnerability of resilience stories.

• Preface: A User’s Guide to Popular Culture: A User’s Guide ixAcknowledgments xiii1 Introducing Popular Culture 1Approaching Popular Culture 1Defining Popular Culture 2Popular Culture Invades the Classroom 12The Americanization of Popular Culture 14The Decolonization of Culture 15Culture and Economics—The Postindustrial Revolution 17Why This? Why Now? Why Me? A Couple of Final Arguments for the Importance of Studying Popular Culture 18Coffee as Popular Culture 19And It All Boils Down To…What Is in a Cup of Coffee? 27Suggestions for Further Reading 282 The History of Popular Culture 29Taking It from the Streets 29Making the Streets Safe for Commerce 30Popular Recreation before 1830 31Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution 32Popular Recreation and Resistance 38The Production of Commercial Mass Culture—the Birth of the Culture Industry 43Continuities and Changes 49Suggestions for Further Reading 553 Representation and the Construction of Social Reality 57Truth2Power 57Constructing a Crisis—the Discourse of Violent Youth 58Signification—the Production of Social Sense 59Representing the Youth Crisis 63Truth2Power: The Politics of Representation 75Contexts of Representation 79Representation in Contemporary Culture 86Suggestions for Further Reading 894 The Production of Popular Culture 91The Business of Culture 91“Money Changes Everything”: The Pitfalls of Thinking about Production 93The Culture Industry Thesis 96Shifting Modes of Cultural Production 106Cultural Production Today 112Suggestions for Further Reading and Viewing 1225 The Consuming Life 123Back to “Normal” 123A Brief History of Consumer Culture 126Consumption as Distinction 135Consumption, Desire, and Pleasure 140The Politics of Consumption 142Suggestions for Further Reading and Viewing 1486 Identity and the Body 151Identity—a Necessary Fiction? 151The History of Identity—Some Different Theories 153Hegemonic Masculinity, Postfeminism, and the Third-Wave 161LGBTQ+ 168Different Bodies, Different Selves? 172Altered States 176Suggestions for Further Reading 1827 Identity, Community, Collectivity 183Who Do You Want Me to Be? 183“The People Who Are Ours” 187Modern Identities: Nation, Empire, and Race 191Nation and Empire 197Postcolonial Identities 200Postnational Identities: Melted, Frozen, Reconstituted 204Community or Collectivity? 210Suggestions for Further Reading 2128 Subcultures and Countercultures 213The Mainstream and Other Streams 213Subcultures and Countercultures: What Is the Difference? 217Popular Representations of Subcultures and Countercultures 221The Politics of Subcultures 229Suggestions for Further Reading 2409 Space, Place, and Globalization 243(Dis)Locations of Popular Culture 243Private versus Public Space 246Inside Out 255The Big Picture: Globalization? 262Is Globalization Real? 264Globalization and Popular Culture 271Globalization: What’s Next? 279Suggestions for Further Reading 27910 Popular Culture in the Twenty]First Century 281In with the New? 281Many Popular Cultures? 283New Technology and Its Discontents 287Lost Generation? 301What Is Next? 309Suggestions for Further Reading and Viewing 310Glossary 311Works Cited 327Index 345