Popular culture refers to expressive behaviors shared by a group that spread due to media, technology, and business partnerships. It plays an important role in societal evolution. Popular culture is produced collectively through interconnected individuals and consumed based on shared meanings attached within social contexts. It reflects ever-changing generational tastes in a way that is not tied to traditions and can be produced by anyone at any time.
2. WHAT IS POPULAR CULTURE?
What is Culture?
As a means of organizing and stabilizing
communal life through specific beliefs, rituals,
rites, performances, art forms, symbols,
language, clothing, food, music, dance and any
other mode of human expressive, intellectual
and communicative behavior that is associated
with a group of people at a particular period of
time.
3. • Popular culture concept’s spread is a
result of media-technology-business
partnership.
• It has played an important role in the
overall evolution of American society and
virtually every other modern society.
4. • Franz BOAS ‘Culture Shapes how
people perceive reality.’ (cultural relativism)
• Ruth BENEDICT ‘Every culture
developed it canons of morality and lifestyle
that largely influenced how individuals viewed
themselves and the world.’
5. • In the history of human cultures, pop culture
stands out as typical, since it is not tied to any
particular folk or artistic traditions.
• It can ben produced at any time by anyone.
• It is thus, populist, unpredictable,reflecting
the ever-changing tastes of one generation
after another.
• It is not cathartic and empowering, allowing
themselves, to gain recration through music,
dance, stories and other forms of expressions.
6. POP CULTURE
• Pop art movement of 1950s.
• Artists eventually started to create playful
works.
• The unnamed leader of the pop art
movement- Andy Warhol.
8. POPULAR CULTURE AND
COLLECTİVE ACTIVITY
• Sociologists as Howard Becker who works on the
social organization of culture and the arts, believe
that pop culture’s production is first and foremost
a collective activity.
• Popular culture objects are produced by
collaborative webs of interconnected individuals
working together toward a common goal and
eventually consumed and experienced by people
who attach shared meanings to them.
9. POPULAR CULTURE AND
COLLECTİVE ACTIVITY
• Given the collective nature of producing
popular culture, it only makes sense that
in a complex society (like Turkey),
networks of creative personnel are
organized according to a highly
segmented division of labor.
10. THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF
POPULAR CULTURE
• People’s lifestyles, living habits, the physical
and social structure of our cities and towns
also determines the fate of popular culture as
well.
• House types, television habits, transit systems
usage,government involvment, local and
national laws, etc.
11. AUDIENCES AND THE CONSUMPTION
OF POPULAR CULTURE
• Since the audiences draw on their social
circumstances when attributing meaning and
value to popular culture, these meanings are
often patterned according to persistent systems
of social organization structured by differences in
socio-economic status, nationality, race, ethnicity,
gender, sexuality, religion or age.
• People’s social circumstances not only influence
the kinds of meanings they attribute to cultural
objects, events and experiences but also the
kinds of pop culture they choose to consume in
the first place.
12. AUDIENCES AND THE CONSUMPTION
OF POPULAR CULTURE
• Pop cultural consumer habits and experiences
are also shaped by the impact of outside
social actors and structural forces.
• Cultural activities at one person’s town or city,
media, tv programmes that one person
watches, newspapers and magazines that one
person chooses to read.
