Cultural Theory and Popular Culture

John Storey is Emeritus Professor of Cultural Studies at the Centre for Research in Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Sunderland, UK. He has published widely in cultural studies, including twelve books. The most recent is Theories of Consumption (2017).

Contents 1. What is popular culture? Culture. Ideology. Popular culture. Popular culture as other. Further reading. 2. The ‘culture and civilisation’ tradition Matthew Arnold. Leavisism. Mass culture in America: the post-war debate. The culture of other people. Further reading. 3. Culturalism Richard Hoggart: The Uses of Literacy. Raymond Williams: ‘The analysis of culture’. E.P. Thompson: The Making of the English Working Class. Stuart Hall and Paddy Whannel: The Popular Arts. The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. Further reading. 4. Marxisms Classical Marxism. The English Marxism of William Morris. The Frankfurt School. Althusserianism. Hegemony. Post-Marxism and cultural studies. Further reading. 5. Psychoanalysis Freudian psychoanalysis. Lacanian psychoanalysis. Cine-psychoanalysis. Slavoj Žižek and Lacanian fantasy. Further reading. 6. Structuralism and post-structuralism Ferdinand de Saussure. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Will Wright and the American Western. Roland Barthes: Mythologies. Post-structuralism. Jacques Derrida. Discourse and power: Michel Foucault. The panoptic machine. Further reading. 7. Class and Class Struggle. Class and Popular Culture, Class in Cultural Studies, Class and Class Struggle, Consumption as Class Distinction, Popular Culture and Class Struggle, The Ideological Work of Meritocracy. Notes.Further Reading8. Gender and sexuality Feminisms. Women at the cinema. Reading romance. Watching Dallas. Reading women’s magazines. Post-Feminism. Men’s studies and masculinities. Queer theory. Further reading. 9. ‘Race’, racism and representation ‘Race’ and racism. The ideology of racism: its historical emergence. Orientalism. Whiteness. Anti-racism and cultural studies. Further reading. 10. Postmodernism The postmodern condition. Postmodernism in the 1960s. Jean-François Lyotard. Jean Baudrillard. Fredric Jameson. Postmodern pop music. Postmodern television. Postmodernism and the pluralism of value. The global postmodern. Convergence culture. Afterword. Further reading 11. The Materiality of Popular Culture. Materiality. Materiality as Actor. Meaning and Materiality. Materiality without Meaning. Material Objects in Different Cultures. Futher reading.12. The politics of the popular The cultural field. The economic field. Post-Marxist cultural studies: hegemony revisited. The ideology of mass culture. Further reading. Notes Bibliography Index