AMERICAN POP:

AMERICAN POP:

EMBRACING THE SOCIOLOGY OF POPUAR CULTURE

Mark Rubinfeld’s American Pop: Embracing the Sociology of Popular Culture provides a comprehensive introduction to the sociology of popular culture. Combining sociological insights with relevant examples from film, television, music, fashion, magazines, books, video games, the Internet, and other forms of popular culture, as well as exploring people’s everyday uses of popular culture, American Pop critically examines how popular culture is produced, distributed, consumed, interpreted, experienced, and practiced in the United States.

From the Preface:

This is an academic book about popular culture. And if thought of this makes some of you snicker, that’s OK. Snicker away. After more than fifteen years studying, teaching, and writing about popular culture, I’ve heard it all, starting with the question: “What in the world is academic about popular culture?” Well, think about it. Scratch your earliest memories. Reflect on your most recent experiences. And if you are anything like me, you’ll quickly realize that popular culture was your “teacher” long before you had any teachers and, in many ways, never stopped being your teacher long after many of you stopped having teachers. So then, what in the world is not academic about popular culture?

Simply put, in different ways, in varying degrees, popular culture touches on just about every aspect of our social lives, whether we are talking about our social perceptions, behaviors, relationships, arrangements, or organizations. And yet, in a critical sense, there is a great deal more that we do not know about popular culture than we do know. Certainly, most of us know what our favorite TV shows are. What good movies we’ve seen lately. What kind of music riles us up or calms us down. What fashions we like to sport, on what occasions, to fit what moods.

We may even know that, individually and collectively, a great many of us spend more time talking about, engaging in, and reflecting on various forms of popular culture than just about anything else in our lives. But do we really know, critically speaking, what popular culture is all about? How much critical understanding do we truly have of its many forms and functions, actors and actions, ambiguities and contradictions, conflicts and resistances? And what does being critical mean, anyway?

To be critical, at least in this sense of the word, means to be analytical. To want to know every detail from every angle about the things that most affect our lives including, and perhaps especially, the things that we often take for granted. To be prepared to pierce through appearances – dig through deceptions – to mine out what it is that is most important about these things and, maybe even more important, what it is about us that makes these things so important.

None of us are born critical thinkers. We all must learn how to become critical thinkers. If we are lucky enough, if we have good instructors, many of us will become proficient at it. A select few of us will then go on to use that proficiency to make substantive, positive, lasting changes in the world we live in, which, admittedly, seems a long way removed from the world of popular culture which, itself, may seem only indirectly related to sociology. That is, until we begin to “connect the dots.”

For nearly two decades now, this is exactly what I’ve been doing: teaching generations of college students how to connect the sociological dots of popular culture. What is popular culture? Why does it matter? And how might connecting the dots between “what is popular culture” and “why does it matter” contribute to a better understanding of who we are and what kind of world we live in? For in a final analysis, as we will see, the sociology of popular culture is the study of our society, our times, and ourselves. And if you understand this, then you have already begun to connect the dots…

Mark Rubinfeld is associate professor and chair of the sociology and anthropology program at Westminster College in Salt Lake City. American Pop: Embracing the Sociology of Popular Culture will be published by Pine Forge Press in 2009. Please submit any comments to: mrubinfeld@westminstercollege.edu