In this ninth edition of his award-winning introduction, John Storey presents a clear and critical survey of competing theories of, and various approaches to, popular culture. Its breadth and theoretical unity, exemplified through popular culture, means that it can be flexibly and relevantly applied across a number of disciplines.
Retaining the accessible approach of previous editions and using appropriate examples from the texts and practices of popular culture, this new edition remains a key introduction to the area.
New to this edition:
- updated throughout with contemporary examples of popular culture
- revised and expanded sections on Richard Hoggart and Utopian Marxism
- brand new discussions on Black Lives Matter and intersectionality
- updated student resources at www.routledge.com/cw/storey
This new edition remains essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students of cultural studies, media studies, communication studies, the sociology of culture, popular culture and other related subjects.
1. What is popular culture?
Culture
Ideology
Popular culture
Popular culture as other
The contextuality of meaning
Notes
Further reading
2. The ‘culture and civilization’ tradition
Matthew Arnold
Leavisism
Mass culture in America: the post-war debate
The culture of other people
Notes
Further reading
3. Culturalism into cultural studies
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 of Contemporary Cultural Studies
Notes
Further Reading
4. Marxisms
Classical Marxism
The English Marxism of William Morris
The Frankfurt School
Althusserianism
Hegemony
Post-Marxism and cultural studies
Utopian Marxism
Notes
Further Reading
5. Psychoanalysis
Freudian psychoanalysis
Lacanian psychoanalysis
Cine-psychoanalysis
Slavoj Žižek and Lacanian fantasy
Notes
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
Notes
Further reading
7. Class and class struggle
Class and popular culture
Class in cultural studies
Class struggle
Consumption as class distinction
Class and popular culture
The ideological work of meritocracy
Notes
Further reading
8. 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
Intersectionality
Notes
Further reading
9. ‘Race’, racism and representation
‘Race’ and racism
The ideology of racism: its historical emergence
Orientalism
Whiteness
Anti-racism and cultural studies
Black Lives Matter
Notes
Further reading
10. Postmodernism
The postmodern condition
Postmodernism in the 1960s
Jean-François Lyotard
Jean Baudrillard
Fredric Jameson
Postmodernism and the pluralism of value
The global postmodern
Afterword
Notes
Further reading
11. The materiality of popular culture
Materiality
Materiality as actor
Meaning and materiality
Materiality without meaning
Material objects in a global world
Notes
Further reading
12. The politics of the popular
The cultural field
The economic field
Post-Marxist cultural studies: hegemony revisited
The ideology of mass culture
Notes
Further reading
Biography
John Storey is Emeritus Professor of Cultural Studies at the Centre for Research in Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Sunderland, UK, and Chair Professor of the Changjiang Scholar Programme at the Comparative Cultural Studies Centre, Shaanxi Normal University, China. He has published widely in cultural studies, including twenty-six books. The most recent is Radical Utopianism and Cultural Studies (2019).
This classic text explains how we can use cultural theory to understand the kaleidoscope of popular culture that surrounds us and shapes our lives. It is an outstandingly clear, beautifully written and authoritative book - and its breadth and depth will spark connections for old and new readers alike.
Professor Jo Littler, City, University of London, UK
Since its first publication in 1993 this has been my go-to introduction to cultural theory and popular culture. In part, this is because Storey writes with admirable clarity and concision but also because it is broad-ranging and full of useful and insightful examples that help students see how theory works in practice. Other reasons for choosing this as a course book are that it is constantly updated to take account of developments in cultural studies and that it is linked to a reader in which students can explore some of the texts that are discussed and illustrated in this book.
Dr David Walton, Universidad de Murcia, Spain
