Comm 111G Study Guide

Comm 111G Study Guide
Authors, Concepts, Key terms
Raymond Williams
Keywords Culture and Popular
Culture- William discusses how culture is a very hard word to define and has a range of meanings.
Primary meaning in the 15th century was husbandry, the tending of natural growth
Culture- well-liked, well-favored, constantly changing
Culture- a particular way of life of the people, period, group
Three dimensions of culture
Material
Symbolic
Political
Popular- was originally a legal term and political term, belonging to the people
Chandra Mukeji & Michael Schudson (M&S)
“Introduction: Rethinking Popular Culture”
Popular culture becomes folk culture example Shakespeare
Tracing the Historical resistance to studying popular culture throughout the humanities and social sciences.
There has been objections to studying popular culture because folk culture was seen as ‘authentic’ while mass culture was seen as ‘inauthentic’ and ‘commercial’
Anthropologist- ‘primitive’ cultures are unchanging and live in the (European) past
Historians- focus on the Great Men of history, rather than ordinary people
Sociologists- religion and art are the pinnacle of human creation, not popular culture
Popular Culture: “popular culture refers to the beliefs and practices, and the objects through which they are organized, that are widely shared among a population. This includes folk beliefs, practices and objects generated in the political and commercial centers. It includes elite cultural forms that have been popularized as well as popular forms that have been elevated to the museum tradition.” (M&S, 3-4)
“Elite forms that have been popularized as well as popular form that have been elevated to the museum tradition”
All ‘high art’ was once popular culture
The Emergence of Popular Culture
Literacy
Leisure time
Urbanization
Rosalind Williams
“The Dream of Mass Consumption”
The Flâneur (male) – a figure that embodies new consumer culture
Freedom to move throughout the city
Aloof
Cosmopolitan
Bourgeois
The (invisible) Flâeuse (female)
While men were visible Flâneurs, where were the women?
Public/Private spheres
Women alone in public was seen as scandalous
Women were consumers in the department stores  legitimate public space
“The dream world of mass consumption” is exploiting consumer fantasies in order to sell goods
Intertwining profits with pleasure
Selling Exoticism
The stranger the better
Hodge-podge arrays of anachronism, theme, and style
“If the world of work is unimaginative and dull, then exoticism allows an escape to a dream world.” (Williams, 220)
Is this bad?
“Consumer goods, rather than other facets of culture, become focal points for desire” (Williams 203)
Environments of mass consumption are places where consumers can indulge temporarily in the fantasy wealth.” (Williams, 222)
Even and especially, if they do have it
This where the emergence of store credit lead to credit cards began
Kathy Peiss
“The Homosocial World of Working-Class Amusements”
Theory and Method
In the tradition of Carlo Ginzburg
Social & cultural history
Focus on “the cultural handling of gender among working-class people” (Peiss, 4)
Context: 1880-1920 NYC
Urbanization
Immigration
Poverty
Key Terms
Homosocial Worlds
Single-sex social environments
Separation of spheres (public/private)
Voluntary societies
Often ethically-based
Saloons
“Saloons were defined primarily as homosocial worlds where men gathered to debate politics commiserate over work and family obligations, an wrangle over sports… Bars often encouraged rowdy behavior and vulgar language less acceptable in other areas of social life.” (Peiss, 20)
“Within this homosocial world, rituals of aggression and competition became important mechanisms for male bonding.” (Peiss, 21)
Saloons were where people could escape from work & home
They were ethnically divided (different classes)
Stereotypically masculine space
Anxieties of Nickelodeons/Saloons
Delinquency
Fear of the masses
Rowdiness
Nickelodeons
Small, crowded and cheap (5cents)
Frequented by working men and youth
Married Women
Domestic Labor
Family leisure activities
Church-based leisure
Amusement parks
Consumption
Bric-a-brac for the home
Factors in Turn-of-the-Century Pop Culture
Gender
Race, ethnicity, and immigration
Kathy Peiss
Leisure and Labor/Putting on Style
Single Ladies
The Social Construction of Gender
Gender is not biological or ‘natural’
Gender is socially constructed through many forms of media:
Visual culture: advertising, film, TV
Language
Daily practices of ordinary people
Capital: Pierre Bourdieu
Capital is any form of accumulated labor that translates into assets or productive uses
While economic capital (having money) is easily interchanged into other goods and services, there are other forms of capital
Forms of Capital (Bourdieu)
Economic capital
Money buys goods
Money buys happiness?
Cultural Capital
Embodied
Objectified
Institutionalized
Accumulated wealth of knowledge (school degrees)
Social
Network of associations
Context: 1900 Manhattan
60% of women aged 16-20 worked
Transition between the family and marriage
Many women still lived at home
Changing nature of labor
1880: domestic work (long hours)
1900: factories, department stores, and offices (regulated work hours)
Work as a Social Sphere
Advice and gossip with other women
Talk about sex and dating
“Women sang songs, recited the plots of novels argued politics, and gossiped about social life to counteract the monotony and routine of the work day.” (Peiss, 46)
A Twentieth-Century Flanêuse?
Even though single women worked long hours and made little money, leisure time was a priority
“Treating”- using men for social outings
Clothes and Fashion
Encouraged by employers
Women used “public spaces for flamboyant assertation” (Peiss, 58)
Putting on Style
Playing with class and clothing
“Aristocratic pretensions” with a twist
Flashier style
Prostitutes as models
Single Women and the Forms of Capital
Economic Capital- skipping meals at work, money from elderly women, and sharing rooms
Cultural Capital- knowledge popularity, attending shows
Social Capital- “treating” and men
Clothing and Resistance
Incorporation- the process by which corporations or producers appropriate the styles of subcultures in order to sell more products
Excorporation- the process by which subcultures or individuals make changes to a product in a way that contradicts its original meaning
Jürgen Habermas
“The Public Sphere” (in M&S)
18th & 19th century Europe
Church becomes one institution among many
Emergence of ‘the public’ also correlates with the new sphere of ‘the private
Prerequisites for the Public Sphere
Freedom of assembly
Freedom of speech
Representational government
Media
The Public Sphere- is the place where public opinion is formed
In theory: accessible to all
In practice: exclusive and exclusionary
Locations: Salons and Coffeehouses
The Public Sphere(s)
The political public spheres
Matters explicitly about the running of the state
The public sphere of letters
Culture, literary materials
Steven Topnik
“Coffee as a Social Drug”
Coffee and Capitalism
Rise of the Global market
Role of global slave trade in making coffee a mass product
Coffee-growers (colonies) vs. coffee-consumers (colonial centers)
Coffee as a Commodity
Marx: “to become a commodity a product must be transferred to another.”
Commodities have utility and value
Value comes from being traded for other goods, or money
Coffee is not a commodity until it is traded
Muslim traders helped spread coffee as a global commodity
Coffee as the perfect drug for the industrial revolution
“An alarm clock that marked industrial time” (98)
The “coffee break” at work
Coffee helps laboring bodies adapt to artificial lighting and unconventional work hours
Coffee in the U.S.
Popularization of coffee expanded with the civil war (Soldier rations)
Became branded and trademarked
Tied to youth cultures and counter-cultures
Coffee as a Social Drug
Fears around coffee not as a social drug, but as a social drug
As a drug, a good alternative
Subversive talk in coffee shops
Social rituals surrounding coffee-drinking
Those who couldn’t afford coffee consumed cheaper substitutes
Coffee and Religion
Muslims helped to spread coffee throughout the world
Islam forbids alcohol and other intoxicants
Mormonism is one of the few religions that bans coffee among its adherents (followers)

Coffee conclusion
Coffee is a drug
Coffee is a commodity
For Marx all commodities are ‘social things’
Barry Milligan
“The Plague Spreading and Attacking our Vitals’: The Victorian Opium Den and the Oriental Contagion”
Racialized Drugs
This reading is recounting the late-19th century fears and anxieties around opium in Britain
Actually fears about contagion and incursion of Chinese culture in the West
Increase in Chinese immigration to the UK (although still quite small in numbers)
Popular literary depictions of the opium den
Orientalism (Edward Said)
Women seen as Carriers of Contagion
Fears of Englishwomen being seduced by Chinese men
Anxieties over racial ‘purity’
Fears of Englishwomen being seduced into the opium dens themselves and becoming addicted
“The appeal of the exotic” (Milligan, 100)
Racializing Cocaine
Claims that the drug affects white and black Americans differently
African Americans pushed into a ‘homicidal frenzy’ by cocaine
Thin veil of civility
Disparity in Sentencing: Crack vs. Cocaine
John Storey
“What is Popular Culture?”
Popular Culture
Always defined against other terms
Mass culture, folk culture, dominant culture
An “Empty conceptual category” (Storey, 1)