Premium
TOWARD A DEFINITION OF POPULAR CULTURE
Author(s) -
PARKER HOLT N.
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
history and theory
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.169
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1468-2303
pISSN - 0018-2656
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-2303.2011.00574.x
Subject(s) - presentism , marxist philosophy , popular culture , sociology , consumption (sociology) , culture theory , neoclassical economics , cultural capital , cultural studies , epistemology , class (philosophy) , capital (architecture) , social science , positive economics , economics , anthropology , political science , history , philosophy , politics , media studies , law , archaeology
The most common definitions of popular culture suffer from a presentist bias and cannot be applied to pre‐industrial and pre‐capitalist societies. A survey reveals serious conceptual difficulties as well. We may, however, gain insight in two ways. 1) By moving from a Marxist model (economic/class/production) to a more Weberian approach (societal/status/consumption). 2) By looking to Bourdieu's “cultural capital” and Danto's and Dickie's “Institutional Theory of Art,” and defining popular culture as “unauthorized culture.”