popular culture

popular culture Culture is the central concept of anthropology, and denotes all the knowledge, technologies, values, beliefs, customs, and behaviours common to people. While simple societies may have only a single integrated culture that is shared by everyone, complex societies can accommodate many layers and levels of cultures and subcultures.

One important distinction is between popular culture and what is usually called high culture. The latter includes things like classical music, serious novels, poetry, dance, high art, and other cultural products which are usually appreciated by only a relatively small number of educated people. Popular culture, sometimes also called mass culture, is far more widespread and accessible to everyone. The main business of popular culture is entertainment and, in Europe and the United States (for example), it is dominated by sports, television, films, and recorded popular music.

Traditionalists from Wordsworth on have lamented the poor quality of popular culture. Liberal and radical critics have been more inclined to support the popular as an authentic expression of public taste, and to dismiss the remote products of high culture as élitist. Sociologists have become involved in the analysis of popular culture because it provides a window into public consciousness, and is an important element of solidarity within social classes and of division between them. Conflict theorists focus on the production of popular culture by large, capitalist corporations, and suggest that the product may be not only inauthentic but also an instrument of ideological domination.

Studies of popular culture overlap with those of subcultures, youth cultures, ideology, leisure, and the mass media. Ian Chambers , Popular Culture (1986)
and Tony Bennett et al. , Popular Culture and Social Relations (1986)
, indicate the range of topics which can be subsumed under this general heading. See also CULTURAL STUDIES.