John Storey, a leading figure in the field of Cultural Studies,
offers an illuminating and vibrant account of the development of
popular culture. Addressing issues such as globalization,
intellectualism, and consumerism, Inventing Popular Culture
presents an engaging assessment of one of the most debated concepts
of recent times.
* * Provides a lively and accessible history of the concept of
popular culture by one of the leading experts in the field.
* Traces the invention and reinvention of the concept of popular
culture from the eighteenth-century ‘discovery’ of folk
culture to contemporary accounts of the cultural impact of
globalization.
* Examines the relationship between the concept of popular
culture and key issues in cultural analyses such as hegemony,
postmodernism, identity, questions of value, consumerism, and
everyday life.
Table of Content
Preface.
1. Popular Culture as Folk Culture:.
Nature and Nationalism.
Pastoral Life as Primitive Culture.
Music Hall and the Masses.
Imagining the Past to Make the Present.
Notes.
2. Popular Culture as Mass Culture:.
Culture Against Anarchy.
The Culture of Hyperdemocracy.
The Marxist Masses.
Ways of Seeing Other People as Masses.
Notes.
3. Popular Culture as the ‘Other’ of High
Culture:.
The Making of High Culture.
The Modernist Revolution.
The Politics of Cultural Exclusion.
Culture and Class.
Notes.
4. Popular as an Arena of Hegemony:.
Hegemony: From Marxism to Cultural Studies.
Wandering from the Path of Righteousness.
Side Saddle on the Golden Calf.
An Inclusive Media and Cultural Studies.
Notes.
5. Popular Culture as Postmodern Culture:.
The New Sensibility.
Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine: The Postmodern Condition.
Back to the Future: Opera Postmodern.
Notes.
6. Popular Culture as the ‘Roots’ and
‘Routes’ of Cultural Identities:.
Postmodern Identities.
The Roots of Cultural Identities.
The Routes of Cultural Identities.
Mixing Memory and Desire: Dusty Springfield and ‘The Land
of Love’.
Coda: Performing Identities.
Notes.
7. Popular Culture as Popular Art:.
Cultural Power.
When Gravity Fails: An Aesthetics of Popular Culture?.
Beyond Aesthetic Essentialism.
Notes.
8. Popular Culture as Global Culture:.
Globalisation.
Trading Commodities in the American Global Village.
The ‘Local’ as the New Folk Culture.
Notes.
References.
Index.
About the author
John Storey is Professor of Cultural Studies and Director of the Centre for Research in Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Sunderland. His publications include Cultural Studies and the Study of Popular Culture: Theories and Methods (1996), What is Cultural Studies?: A Reader (1996), Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader (second edition, 1998), Cultural Consumption and Everyday Life (1999), and Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction (third edition, 2001).