John Storey (1)

In Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction, Sixth Edition, John Storey argues, “Popular culture is always defined, implicitly or explicitly, in contrast to other conceptual categories: folk culture, mass culture, high culture, dominant culture, working-class culture” (pg. 1). Further, “Whichever conceptual category is deployed as popular culture’s absent other, it will always powerfully affect the connotations brought into play when we use the term ‘popular culture’” (pg. 1). Of the historiography of popular culture, Storey writes, “This history of cultural theory’s engagement with popular culture is, therefore, a history of the different ways in which the two terms have been connected by theoretical labour within particular historical and social contexts” (pg. 5). He concludes, “Whatever else popular culture is, it is definitely a culture that only emerged following industrialization and urbanization” (pg. 12).
Examining culturalism, Storey writes, “Positively, culturalism is a methodology that stresses culture (human agency, human values, human experiences) as being of crucial importance for a full sociological and historical understanding of a given social formation; negatively, culturalism is used to suggest the employment of such assumptions without full recognition and acknowledgement that culture is the effect of structures beyond itself, and that these have the effect of ultimately determining, constraining and, finally, producing culture (human agency, human values and human experience)” (pg. 51). Examining Marxism, Storey writes, “According to Althusser a problematic consists of the assumptions, motivations, underlying ideas, etc., from which a text (say, an advert) is made. In this way, it is argued, a text is structured as much by what is absent (what is not said) as by what is present (what is said)” (pg. 74). Building on this, Judith Williamson argues “that advertising is ideological in the sense that it represents an imaginary relationship to our real conditions of existence” (pg. 81). Finally, “Post-Marxist cultural studies is informed by the proposition that people make popular culture from the repertoire of commodities supplied by the culture industries” (pg. 91).
Turning to structuralism, Storey writes, “Structuralists argue that language organizes and constructs our sense of reality – different languages in effect produce different mappings of the real” (pg. 115). On the other hand, “Post-structuralists reject the idea of an underlying structure upon which meaning can rest secure and guaranteed. Meaning is always in process” (pg. 128). In terms of gender, Storey writes, “There are at least four different feminisms: radical, Marxist, liberal and what Sylvia Walby (1990) calls dual-systems theory. Each responds to women’s oppression in a different way, positing different causes and different solutions” (pg. 137). Race, on the other hand, “is a cultural and historical category, a way of making difference signify between people of a variety of skin tones. What is important is not difference as such, but how it is made to signify; how it is made meaningful in terms of a social and political hierarchy” (pg. 171). Turning to postmodernism, Storey writes, “Rather than begin with polysemy, cultural studies would being with power. Put simply, a text will survive its moment of production if it is selected to meet the needs and desires of people with cultural power. Surviving its moment of production makes it available to meet the (usually different) desires and needs of other generations of people with cultural power” (pg. 207). Finally, “Perhaps the most significant thing about postmodernism for the student of popular culture is the dawning recognition that there is no absolute categorical difference between high and popular culture” (pg. 209).… (mais)

Storey gives a very interesting look at the developments in cultural theory regarding popular culture over the past century, from early movements like Leavisism through to modern Marxist and post-Marxist, feminist, and other postmodernist theories. This book is very helpful for its application of cultural theory and sociological concepts to popular culture and for the numerous references to excellent books for further reading on each subject encountered. I was somewhat disappointed, however, with its assumption of radical left politics as standard. I'm well aware of a left slant among cultural and sociological academics and I'm fine with authors with biases (purely natural, of course), but the assumption that all readers share these same biases is a bit irritating. It would have been interesting to see Matthew Arnold given a more thorough and fair treatment, and to see those who have followed in his footsteps today mentioned at all.… (mais)