COMS 360Mass CommunicationMass Media and Cultural Studies

04/22/23 Professor Jeppesen 1

popular culture in 1964 the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies was founded in Birmingham, Englandgenerally seen as the beginning of cultural studies, the study of contemporary popular culture, including: activities of leisure time and entertainment intersections of high art and mass culture relation between power and knowledge potential of cultural practices to anticipate and

work toward social change

04/22/23Professor Jeppesen

popular culturepopular culture is generally speaking contemporarybased on emergent forms of culturethere is a sense of newness, trends, the latest thing

04/22/23Professor Jeppesen

popular culturepopular culture can either challenge or extrapolate from conventions or traditionscan come from underground or rebel culturescan derive from changes in dominant culture

04/22/23Professor Jeppesen

popular culture popular culture is often intended for or suited to the tastes, understanding or means of the general public rather than specialists or intellectualsstudy of popular culture investigates how identities, social values, and meaning are constructed and how this plays a role in constantly shifting global power relationsexamines the circuit of culture

04/22/23Professor Jeppesen

cultural materialismcomes from both anthropology and Marxismanthropologists define it as the relationship between social life and material conditionsMarxists define it as the cultural production of meanings and values which use language and sign systems as a material formculture is a field of mutually constitutive relationships among individual subjects, collectivities and creative and intellectual activities at all levels of society

04/22/23Professor Jeppesen

global perspectivecultural studies has also developed in many other global locations simultaneously, including the US, Australia, Europe, South-East Asia, South America and Canadaoften linked to different fields of study or academic departments, including: English literature, sociology, anthropology, history, humanities, fine arts, media, or communication studies

04/22/23Professor Jeppesen

global popular culturesome new areas of study include: the body, the nation, the globalized city, public and private space, globalization and culturethe emphasis moves away from England and the US as the centres of interestconsiders global circuits and practices of culture, including areas of study such as post-colonialism, diaspora studies, globalization of the film industry (e.g. Hollywood/Bollywood), global sex work, etc.

04/22/23Professor Jeppesen

the circuit of culture

from Stuart Hall, Representation.

04/22/23 9Professor Jeppesen

representation culture produces and is produced by a collective set of shared meanings (representations) and values (ideologies)representation is the process by which we create and circulate meanings about the world we live in, through culturelanguage and image-based systems are crucial to the process of meaning-making

04/22/23Professor Jeppesen

representation & ideology

according to Louis Althusser, ideology is a “system of representation--composed of ideas, concepts, myths, or images--in which people live their imaginary relations to the real conditions of existence”through representation, ideology constructs the individual as a social subject who accepts their role in society as ‘natural’ and inevitableideologies can be either reinforced or challenged by cultural representations

04/22/23Professor Jeppesen

representation & identity

we have seen that, through representation, ideology constructs the individual as a social subjectrepresentations thus facilitate the construction of an identity for each social subjectidentity has many axes, including: race, gender, sex, sexual orientation, class, family, nationality, citizenship status, global location, leisure activities, subcultural group, etc.

04/22/23Professor Jeppesen

representation - mimetic

the mimetic view of representation holds that there is a knowable world out there, and when we produce images or words about it, then we have clearly and truthfully represented itrepresentation thus is seen only to enter the field of culture once material objects or concepts have already been fully imbued with meaning

04/22/23Professor Jeppesen

representation - construction

cultural materialists and social construction theorists argue that representation is an important process in constructing social meanings that are then attached to things, concepts, etc.thus culture consists of not just objects that reflect a neutral set of things or ideas, but processes which determine what those things or ideas mean within our society

04/22/23Professor Jeppesen

next week

Chapter 6. Communications Law and PolicyChapter 8. The Structure and Role of OwnershipTake-home test distributed (due the following week).

04/22/23Professor Jeppesen