From Hank Williams to hip hop, Aunt Jemima to the Energizer Bunny, scrap-booking to NASCAR racing, this volume--edited by a pioneer in the field-invites readers to reflect on a sampling of modern myths, icons, archetypes, and rituals. Ray B. Browne has mined both scholarly and mainstream media to bring together penetrating essays on fads and fashions, sports fandom, the shaping of body image, the marketing of food, vacationing and sightseeing, toys and games, genre fiction, post-9/11 entertainment, and much more.

Surveying a range of topics, this lively and informative survey provides an up-to-date, thematic global history of popular culture focusing on the period since the end of the Second World War.

Popular Culture: A User’s Guide, International Edition ventures beyond the history of pop culture to give readers the vocabulary and tools to address and analyze the contemporary cultural landscape that surrounds them. Moves beyond the history of pop culture to give students the vocabulary and tools to analyze popular culture suitable for the study of popular culture across a range of disciplines, from literary theory and cultural studies to philosophy and sociology Covers a broad range of important topics including the underlying socioeconomic structures that affect media, the politics of pop culture, the role of consumers, subcultures and countercultures, and the construction of social reality Examines the ways in which individuals and societies act as consumers and agents of popular culture

In Popular Culture and Everyday Life Phillip Vannini and Dennis Waskul have brought together a variety of short essays that illustrate the many ways that popular culture intersects with mundane experiences of everyday life. Most essays are written in a reflexive ethnographic style, primarily through observation and personal narrative, to convey insights at an intimate level that will resonate with most readers. Some of the topics are so mundane they are legitimately universal (sleeping, getting dressed, going to the bathroom, etc.), others are common enough that most readers will directly identify in some way (watching television, using mobile phones, playing video games, etc.), while some topics will appeal more-or-less depending on a reader’s gender, interests, and recreational pastimes (putting on makeup, watching the Super Bowl, homemaking, etc.). This book will remind readers of their own similar experiences, provide opportunities to reflect upon them in new ways, as well as compare and contrast how experiences relayed in these pages relate to lived experiences. The essays will easily translate into rich and lively classroom discussions that shed new light on a familiar, taken-for-granted everyday life—both individually and collectively. At the beginning of the book, the authors have provided a grid that shows the topics and themes that each article touches on. This book is for popular culture classes, and will also be an asset in courses on the sociology of everyday life, ethnography, and social psychology.

"The selection of essays here is outstanding. The Reader is particularly strong in bridging between founding figures and cutting edge work by newer writers."- Henry Jenkins, MIT "An extraordinarily well considered selection of articles and essays, arranged with skill and style." - Charlie Blake, University College NorthamptonPopular Culture: A Reader helps students understand the pervasive role of popular culture and the processes that constitute it as a product of industry, an intellectual object of inquiry and an integral component of all our lives.The volume is divided into 7 thematic sections, and each section is preceded by an introduction which engages with, and critiques, the chapters that follow. The book contains: Classic writings from all the ′big names′ including Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Frederic Jameson, Dick Hebdige, Angela McRobbie, Paul Gilroy and many more. Contemporary cultural references throughout - this is not simply an historical account. Pieces drawing on diverse national, disciplinary and subdisciplinary contexts. Sensitivity to issues of gender, race and sexuality. This reader is a key resource for students of media and communication studies, cultural studies, and the sociology of the media.

A third edition of this book is now available. Now in a fully revised and updated edition, this concise and insightful book explores the ways American popular products such as movies, music, television programs, fast food, sports, and even clothing styles have molded and continue to influence modern globalization. Lane Crothers offers a thoughtful examination of both the appeal of American products worldwide and the fear and rejection they induce in many people and nations around the world. Concluding with a projection of the future impact of American popular culture, this book makes a powerful argument for its central role in shaping global politics and economic development.

This book challenges traditional organizational theory, looking to representations of work and organizations within popular culture and the ways in which these institutions have also been conceptualized and critiqued there. Through a series of essays, Rhodes and Westwood examine popular culture as a compelling and critical arena in which the complex and contradictory relations that people have with the organizations in which they work are played out. By articulating the knowledge in popular culture with that in theory, they provide new avenues for understanding work organizations as the dominant institutions in contemporary society. Rhodes and Westwood provide a critical review of how organizations are represented in various examples of contemporary popular culture. The book demonstrates how popular culture can be read as an embodiment of knowledge about organizations – often more compelling than those common to theory – and explores the critical potential of such knowledge and the way in which popular culture can reflect on the spirit of resistance, carnivalisation and rebellion.