Cultural Theory and Popular Culture

and consumption. These are not matters that can be decided once and for all (outside
the contingencies of history and politics) with an elitist glance and a condescending
sneer. Nor can they be read off from the moment of production (locating meaning,
pleasure, ideological effect, the probability of incorporation, the possibility of resistance,
in, variously, the intention, the means of production or the production itself):
these are only aspects of the contexts for ‘production in use’; and it is, ultimately, in
‘production in use’ that questions of meaning, pleasure, ideological effect, incorporation
or resistance, can be (contingently) decided.
Such an argument will not satisfy those ideologues of mass culture whose voices
seemed to grow suddenly louder, more insistent, during the period of writing the first
edition of this book. I am thinking of the British and American media panic about
the threat to high culture’s authority – the debates about dumbing down, ‘political
correctness’ and multiculturalism. The canon is wielded like a knife to cut away at
critical thinking. They dismiss with arrogance what most of us call culture. Saying
popular culture (or more usually, mass culture) and high culture (or more usually,
just culture) is just another way of saying ‘them’ and ‘us’. They speak with the authority
and support of a powerful discourse behind them. Those of us who reject this
discourse, recognizing its thinking and unthinking elitism, find ourselves often with
only the discursive support of the (often equally disabling) ideology of populism. The
task for new pedagogies of popular culture is to find ways of working which do not
fall victim to the disabling tendencies of, on the one hand, a dismissive elitism, and
on the other, a disarming anti-intellectualism. Although this book has not established
any new ways of working, I hope it has at least mapped the existing approaches in
such a way as to help make future discoveries a real possibility for other students of
popular culture.
Further reading
Further reading 235
Storey, John (ed.), Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader, 4th edition, Harlow:
Pearson Education, 2009. This is the companion volume to this book. It contains
examples of most of the work discussed here. This book and the companion Reader
are supported by an interactive website (www.pearsoned.co.uk/storey). The website
has links to other useful sites and electronic resources.
Bennett, Tony, Culture: A Reformer’s Science, London: Sage, 1998. A collection of essays,
ranging across the recent history and practice of cultural studies, by one of the leading
figures in the field.
During, Simon (ed.), The Cultural Studies Reader, 2nd edn, London: Routledge, 1999. A
good selection of material from many of the leading figures in the field.
Gilroy, Paul, Grossberg, Lawrence, Hall, Stuart (eds), Without Guarantees: In Honour of
Stuart Hall. An excellent collection of essays engaging with the work of Stuart Hall.