Rethinking Popular Culture Introduction:

What is Popular Culture?

Lecture 1

Key Terms Key Questions

popular culture What is popular culture?

High/popular/folk culture
Why does popular culture matter?
cultural practice

cultural artefact
Activity
What is Culture?
Give a list of popular cultural products.

Culture is a fundamental but very complicated term.

Culture refers to aspects of human life that is

NOT transmitted genetically.

Culture is acquired: people learn culture.

In what sense is popular culture important to our lives? In other words, what is inborn, biological or genetic is
usually not cultural, e.g. hunger.

What is Culture?
What is Popular Culture?
Give some examples of what is (not) cultural:

Not cultural (inborn/genetic): cultivation and husbandry

HIGH culture (Art)

vs.
LOW culture (entertainment)
cultural:
 What is Popular Culture?
Generally speaking, popular culture is understood as
the products and practices
that are frequently encountered or widely
accepted, commonly liked or approved,
and is a characteristic of a particular society
at a given time.
(Adapted from Tim Delaney, Pop Culture: An Overview, in
Philosophy Now, 64:6, 2007.)
Objects of Study
cultural practices and artefacts/products that are
usually NOT included in popular culture studies:
i. high culture
(though you should note the increasingly blurred boundary between
high culture and popular culture)
Objects of Study
common objects of study in popular culture:
- cultural practices (activities that we do), and
- cultural artefacts (things that we use/encounter) related to:
television, film, popular music/MVs, news, photography, advertising,
popular fictions, radio, magazines, comics, TV/online games,
stardom/fandom, cyber culture, social media, mobile phones,
mall/shopping, fashion, sports, theme parks, food culture, toys, greeting
rituals, use of slangs, fads, youth culture
- many of these texts come from the mediated popular
culture.
Objects of Study
cultural practices and products/artefacts that are
usually NOT included in popular culture studies:
ii. folk culture ()
* the localized lifestyle of a culture, closely associated with a
traditional mode of life; usually considered not to be individualistic
and commercial in nature (although it may be popularized and
commercialized by mass culture);
* e.g. folk songs, myths & stories, temple worship, Mid-autumn festival,
Chinese Ghost festival, Cantonese opera, rituals such as burning paper
money, old Chinese furniture...
(again, note that the boundary between folk culture and popular culture
is not that rigid).
Objects of Study
references
our interest and concerns about popular culture:
Delaney, Tim. Pop Culture: An Overview. In Philosophy Now,
- How the production of popular cultural practices/products 64: 6-7, 2007.
communicate ideas about our society;
Williams, Raymond. Culture is Ordinary [1958]. In The
- how do we consume popular culture and why do we Everyday Life Reader, edited by Ben Highmore, 91-100.
consume popular culture in the ways that we do; London: Routledge, 2002.

- how the production and consumption of popular cultural

practices/products are related to the complex set of
social, economic and political processes.