SCC Research Guides: Where to Find Citation Information Plain Text: CREDO Reference Plain Text

Citation Information in CREDO Reference (Plain Text)

popular culture

from The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology

Crudely, popular culture is often understood as the CULTURE of the mass of people or of subordinate classes. The contrast is with high culture, understood as the culture of an educated elite. Popular culture, according to this view, is therefore Hollywood cinema, most television, popular music and romantic fiction. High culture is French cinema, opera on television, classical music and poetry. In public debate, and sociological work up until the early 1970s, the contrast between high and popular culture was also seen as a contrast between the serious and the trivial, the educated and the uneducated, the demanding and the passive, the uncommercial and the commercialized, the authentic and the fake. The FRANKFURT SCHOOL, for instance, tended to describe the contrast in this way. More recently, there has been increased, sociological interest in forms of popular culture, often accompanied by more positive evaluations. Sociological studies of television and rock music, for example, have become branches of the discipline in their own right. Major theoretical approaches to sociology as a whole, such as feminism or POSTMODERNISM, have been very substantially involved in the study of popular culture. This explosion of sociological interest has accompanied a marked increase in the economic importance of the CULTURE INDUSTRIES in the period since the Second World War.

Theories of popular culture can be ranged along a continuum. At one extreme are those theories which propose that popular culture supports a dominant ideology, discourages critical thinking, reinforces conventional stereotypes and produces passive audiences. At the other extreme are arguments that celebrate popular culture as a creative expression of popular sentiments, appealing to an AUDIENCE that is far from passive and is capable of critical thought. While the former emphasizes the power of a constraining text, the latter argues for an active audience. While most sociological theories of popular culture fall short of celebrating all forms of popular culture, there has been a marked shift over the past twenty years towards the pole of the continuum that emphasizes the active audience.

SEE ALSO: dominant ideology thesis; feminist social theory; mass society; subculture; youth culture.

READING: Storey (1993)

Author(s): Nicholas Abercrombie, Stephen Hill and Bryan Turner

Where to Find Citation Information in CREDO Reference

Database: The name of the database is CREDO Reference.

The name of the database can be found in the top left-hand corner of the screen.

Article Title: The title of the article is Popular Culture.

The title of the article will be at the top of the page in a large font.

Reference Book Name: The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology

The name of the reference book that the article was published in can be found under the title of the article. It can also be found underneath the auto-generated citations.

Publisher: The publisher of the reference book, The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology, is Penguin.

The name of the publisher can be found underneath the text of the article. CREDO likes to use the publisher's logo rather than the name on the main page of the article. If you don't recognize the logo, you can click the source title (i.e., The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology) to go to the publication details page. Here you will find publication information.

Publication Date: This article was published in 2006.

The publication date can be found next to the publisher name or logo. Look for the copyright symbol ©, and the publication date should be near that symbol.

Author: Nicholas Abercrombie, Stephen Hill and Bryan Turner are the authors of this article.

The name of the author can be found at the bottom of the page, underneath the title of the reference book. Keep in mind that not every source in CREDO Reference will have an author listed. It is also common to have an editor's name instead.

Edition: 5th edition

The edition number is hidden. In order to locate the edition in CREDO, you must click the underlined title of the main source (i.e., The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology) to go to the publication details page. Here you will find the edition and other publication information.

URL: The URL can be found under "Share."