ARTICLES & IDEAS

The articles below are listed more or less alphabetically by title. After the publication citation, you will see a set of parentheses listing keywords and theorists related to or directly cited in the article.  This might help you pinpoint an article to reinforce your understanding of a particular theory, or demonstrate a particular type of cultural analysis.  Abstracts, unless specifically noted, are from either the author’s own abstract or as provided by the database.  Excerpts are taken from the body of the article.

How to access these articles:  To access any of the articles listed below, simply click on the title.  Articles listed from the EBSCO database will first require you to log in to the library system before accessing either the HTML Full Text file or downloading the PDF file.  Articles not classified as EBSCO or other database sources are available on the web without restriction.  If you have difficulty linking to a database article directly, try logging in to the library system, selecting the proper database, and pasting the title into the search engine yourself.

THE AMERICAN NUDIST MOVEMENT: FROM COOPERATIVE TO CAPITAL, THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME by Ellen E. Woodall

from Journal of Popular Culture, Fall2002, Vol. 36 Issue 2, p264, 21p

EBSCO PDF File:  http://ida.lib.uidaho.edu:2077/direct.asp?an=9641440&db=f5h/

Keywords:  Marxism(s); compromise equilibrium; political economy; ideology

Excerpt:  "The appeal and success of nudism in America is due to economic factors which,while seeming to contradict the stated ideals of the nudist movement as ‘‘free ’’and ‘‘natural,’’actually ensure its success.  Nudism, while purporting to free its members from the ills of the capitalist, industrialized system,is a part of that system and, in fact,could not function without it.  [. . .]  The growth and structure of the nudist movement is analyzed from a political economy perspective, emphasizing the ways in which nudism has been incorporated into the structure of capitalism in order to become a profitable enterprise,as well as one that is compatible with capitalist ideology.

THE AMERICAN STORY OF MEAT: DISCURSIVE INFLUENCES ON CULTURAL EATING PRACTICE by Barbara E. Willard

from Journal of Popular Culture, Summer2002, Vol. 36 Issue 1, p105, 14p

EBSCO PDF File:  http://ida.lib.uidaho.edu:2077/direct.asp?an=9641428&db=f5h

Keywords:  Structuralism; Poststructuralism; signs; signifiers; eating practices; ideology; Burke; Bourdieu; Barthes

Excerpt:  “Food is a system of communication, a collection of images, and a cultural set of conventions for usages, situations and behavior” (Barthes, 47).  Our food selection is more than just a matter of preferences and choices; it is imbued with social meaning, cultural practice, and political ideology . . .  .  The cultural influences that train our taste and the political relationships that govern its regulation are part of a network of social relationships that includes our private world, the home, and our public world, the public sphere, of cultural and political life. And of all of our food choices, “those coming from animal sources such as meat, eggs, and dairy are by far the most commonly avoided, forbidden, and regulated”foods in the world (Fiddes 18). This paradox, the “forbidden” aspect of meat and yet its vast consumption in the Western world, suggests that meat and other animal products are foods particularly rich in social and political meaning and are themselves the sites of political and social contestation."

BAKHTIN'S "CARNIVALESQUE" IN 1950S BRITISH COMEDY by Tom Sobchak

from the Journal of Popular Film & Television, Winter96, Vol. 23 Issue 4, p179, 7p, 4bw

EBSCO HTML Full Text:  http://ida.lib.uidaho.edu:2077/direct.asp?an=9604100799&db=f5h

Keywords:  carnivalesque; culture&civilization debate; high/low culture; binary oppositions; cultural hierarchies; television

Excerpt:  "Essentially, the carnivalesque is the atmosphere of satire and parody. It aims at social change by uncovering the truth about the emperor's new clothes: the difference: between king and peasant is arbitrary, relative, and merely an accepted convention. But, of course, in reality, such conventions of difference are enforced with a variety of powerful means, from public opinion to actual weapons, which often make the egalitarian urge at the core of the carnival nothing more than an idle daydream. Nevertheless every representation produced by the carnival spirit shows traces of the utopian ideal of a democratic society that lies at the heart of the urge to ridicule authority, even when literally no chance of unseating such authority exists. The British comedies of the late forties and fifties are perfect examples of this conundrum. They display a deep-seated antagonism toward authority, but finally relinquish in the final reel any advocacy for sweeping change, keenly aware of the weight of traditional social norms.

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER: POSTFEMINISM, POSTMODERNISM, AND THE VAMPIRE METANARRATIVE by A. Susan Owen

from Journal of Popular Film & Television, 1999, Vol. 27 Issue 2, p24, 9p

EBSCO HTML Full Text:  http://ida.lib.uidaho.edu:2077/direct.asp?an=2345370&db=f5h

Keywords:  feminism; postmodernism; Marxism(s); metanarrative; television

Abstract:  Explores the television series `Buffy the Vampire Slayer' through the intersections of postfeminism, postmodernity, and the vampire metanarrative. Appropriation of body rhetorics and narrative agency from masculinist metanarratives;How the characters negotiate the politics of feminism and postmodernity; Discussion on the series' episodes.

CHICANO IDEOLOGY REVISITED: RAP MUSIC AND THE (RE)ARTICULATION OF CHICANISMO by Fernando Pedro Delgado

from Western Journal of Communication, 1998, Vol. 62 Issue 2, p95, 20p

EBSCO HTML Full Text:  http://ida.lib.uidaho.edu:2077/direct.asp?an=689224&db=f5h

Keywords:  Neo-Gramscianism; hegemony; articulation; ideology; compromise equilibrium; rap music; Chicano culture

Abstract:  In “Chicano Ideology Revisited: Rap Music and the (Re)Articulation of Chicanismo,” Fernando Pedro Delgado argues that contemporary Chicano rap artists rearticulate the ideologies and critical consciousnesses of the previous generation.  Specifically, Delgado focuses on the lyrics of Chicano rap artists (mainly Kid Frost and Chicano 2 Da Bone) and the ways in which they express “hallmarks of Chicanismo”by affirming a national, cultural identity, employing critiques of dominant American ideology and practice, and issuing “calls to action” to Mexican Americans with the express aim of redressing past and present wrongs.

COUNTING STARS BY CANDLELIGHT: AN ANALYSIS OF THE MYTHIC APPEAL OF THE GRATEFUL DEAD by Nancy Reist

from Journal of Popular Culture; Spring97, Vol. 30 Issue 4, p183, 27p

EBSCO HTML Full Text:  http://ida.lib.uidaho.edu:2077/direct.asp?an=9711171586&db=f5h

Keywords:  myth; Shamanism; popular music; Jung

Excerpt:  “Many Dead Heads feel they have a kindred relationship with other fans, a bond which frequently is described as a significant part of the Dead Heads' attraction to the concerts. Communication between fans is rich in mythic symbolism and ritual. Dead Heads share a rhetorical community based in symbolism which is overtly mystical and introduces a mythic dimension to their mundane experiences.”

DISNEY-MEDIATED IMAGES EMERGING IN CROSS-CULTURAL EXPRESSION ON ISLA MUJERES, MEXICO by Batya Weinbaum

from Journal of American Culture; Summer97, Vol. 20 Issue 2, p19, 11p, 11bw

EBSCO HTML Full Text:  http://ida.lib.uidaho.edu:2077/direct.asp?an=284339&db=f5h

Keywords:  folk culture; cultural imperialism; colonialism; myths; Adorno; multiculturalism

Abstract:  Focuses on the way Disney characters appeared in popular expression on an island developed for tourism off the coast of Quintana Roo in southeastern Mexico for a period of 25 years. Influence which the international mass marketing of popular film and television have on the Maya cultural heritage for images manufactured within the United States; Description of the island; Information on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)

EVANGELISM AND CONSUMER CULTURE IN NORTHERN TANZANIA by Amy Stambach

from Anthropological Quarterly; Oct2000, Vol. 73 Issue 4, p171, 9p

EBSCO HTML Full Text (also available as PDF):  http://ida.lib.uidaho.edu:2077/direct.asp?an=3917366&db=f5h

Keywords:  culture industry; consumerism; colonialism; youth consumer culture

Abstract:  "Ethnographic description of a revival camp in Northern Tanzania illustrates how the social idea of 'youth as consumers' emerges in the context of government downsizing and expanding international markets. An evangelical message effects a link between religion and consumerism. It imbues decisions about what to buy with moral understandings of good and evil. At the same time, the interconnection of evangelism and consumerism gives rise to a paradox: that "youth" who are supposed to be Born Again, and as such, removed from the temptations of consumer culture, in many cases identify themselves as experts in consumption. Participants' descriptions of themselves as consumers point to the consumerist values that underlie revivalism. They also show how "youthful consumption" itself is influenced by alternative registers of value and understandings of personhood."

HEGEMONY, DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, AND COPS by Mia Consalvo

from Journal of Popular Film & Television; Summer98, Vol. 26 Issue 2, p62, 9p

EBSCO HTML Full Text:  http://ida.lib.uidaho.edu:2077/direct.asp?an=1289341&db=f5h

Keywords:  media representations; concordance; reality-based television; Gramsci; dominant ideology; hegemony; feminism; Storey

Excerpt:  “Although the issue of violence on television has received great attention (now as in the past), one aspect of it remains largely unexamined. Perhaps the reason is its name, which some feminist theorists say hides the tree nature of the crime. That crime is domestic violence. Domestic violence is hardly new, yet serious media coverage of it is quite recent. [. . .] Media attention to the issue of domestic violence in both news and entertainment has increased, but with unknown results. Very little scholarly work has looked at media depictions and coverage of domestic violence  (see Meyers). What, then, are the accounts "saying"? Who is doing the telling? What is the underlying message being conveyed?”

A HOLISTIC APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF POPULAR CULTURE: CONTEXT, TEXT, AUDIENCE, AND RECODING by Harold E. Hinds

from Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, 1996, Vol. 15, p11, 19p

EBSCO HTML Full Text:  http://ida.lib.uidaho.edu:2077/direct.asp?an=9609033905&db=f5h

Keywords:  critical analysis; coding; audience; context

Abstract:  In his article “A Holistic Approach to the Study of Popular Culture,” Harold E. Hinds advocates a largely unemployed method of studying popular culture—a method that includes analyzing the conversation among context, text, audience, and recoding to draw out discussions of how meaning is made.

`I FOUGHT THE LAW (AND I COLD WON!)': HIP-HOP IN THE MAINSTREAM by Greg Wahl

from College Literature; Winter99, Vol. 26 Issue 1, p98, 15p

EBSCO HTML Full Text:  http://ida.lib.uidaho.edu:2077/direct.asp?an=1631512&db=f5h

Keywords:  resistance and incorporation; culture industry; popular music

Excerpt:  “Too often, the role of the specific socioeconomic system of the music and entertainment industry, with its simultaneous and conflicting constructions of rebellious resistance and commercial stardom, is minimized, simplified, or ignored by critics . . . . If, however, we see the problems of the marketplace as primary in relation to the moral content of entertainment, a more complex picture emerges, one in which it is not so easy or useful to differentiate rappers' social production from their marketing strategies, or indeed from the uses made of rap by consumers.  [. . .]  Perhaps no historical moment in the music industry has illuminated the negotiations surrounding these subtle dynamics of socioeconomics, race, and power in a consumer society as thoroughly as the emergence of hip-hop into the mainstream during the years 1986 to 1989.”

POWER PLAY AND PARTY POLITICS: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF RAVING by Daniel Martin

from Journal of Popular Culture; Spring99, Vol. 32 Issue 4, p77, 23p

EBSCO HTML Full Text:  http://ida.lib.uidaho.edu:2077/direct.asp?an=2154267&db=f5h

Keywords:  Baudrillard; postmodernism; symbol; subculture; Foucault; discourse and power; Bourdieu; Adorno

Excerpt:  “The limited academic discourse surrounding rave culture has so far struggled to come to any concrete conclusions concerning the political significance of the largest, most dynamic, and longest lasting youth sub- or counterculture of the postwar era. In attempting to reconcile rave culture with the theories of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (henceforth CCCS) or the work of Jean Baudrillard, academics have become lost in the ambiguity of the experience of raving and rave culture's differences from previous youth movements. In this article, I will examine the existing literature about rave and come to some conclusions about its cultural and political significance. I argue that the practice of raving and the values ravers espouse, when combined with its size . . . pose a significant challenge to many aspects of dominant western values.”

PERMITTED AND PROHIBITED WEALTH: COMMODITY-POSSESSING SPIRITS, ECONOMIC MORALS, AND THE GODDESS MAMI WATA IN WEST AFRICA by Barbara Frank

from Ethnology, Fall95, Vol. 34(4), p331, 16p

EBSCO HTML Full Text:  http://ida.lib.uidaho.edu:2077/direct.asp?an=9512014968&db=f5h

Keywords:  consumption; materialism; political economy

Abstract:  Discusses a West African belief which holds that individual wealth is gained through a criminal pact with spirits to whom human beings must be given as compensation.  Evaluation of different forms of wealth acquisition expressed in a belief concerning permitted and prohibited approaches to wealth-owning spirits; Case of the Ron people of Nigeria.

 “PLEASE CALL NOW, BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE”: SPECTACLE DISCOURSE IN THE JERRY LEWIS MUSCULAR DYSTROPHY TELETHON by Christopher R. Smit

from Journal of Popular Culture, Spring2003, Vol. 36 Issue 4, p687, 17p

EBSCO PDF File:  http://ida.lib.uidaho.edu:2077/direct.asp?an=9697880&db=f5h

Keywords:  Structuralism; Poststructuralism; spectacle discourse; the Other; discourse and power; “freak shows”; television; Foucault

Excerpt:  "This article aims to push the intellectual pursuits of the MDA telethons beyond issues of social (in)justice and political identity.To achieve this,it is argued that the telethon event, produced by MDA,answers a contemporary need for the spectacularized Other;it is in this sense that the MDA telethon can be seen as a contemporary version of the historical freak show.The major difference between these events,of course,is the fact that the freak show occurred in the public space of towns across the country,while the MDA telethon is a tele-visual event,occurring within the private spaces of domestic life."

THE POPULAR IN AMERICAN CULTURE by Elizabeth G. Traube

from Annual Review of Anthropology; Oct 1996, Vol. 25, pp. 127-151

Online Full Text:  http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev.anthro.25.1.127

Keywords:  hegemony; Gramsci; discourse; Bourdieu; Fiske; Stuart Hall; Janice Radway; identity

Abstract:  This review contrasts the relative lack of interest in "popular culture" within anthropology with the close, increasingly critical attention this concept has received within cultural studies. Rejecting both a production-oriented model of a manipulative mass culture imposed from above and a reception-oriented model of an expressive culture of the people, cultural studies scholars broke with essentialized conceptions and redefined the popular in Gramscian terms, as a zone of contestation, a site where the struggle for hegemony unfolds. The review uses this approach to relate the production of popular culture to class formation in the United States. Against overemphasis on the ideological effectivity of popular culture and a revisionist tendency to redefine it in affirmative, politically essentialized terms, the review suggests that contradictions and instabilities characterize all stages of the popular cultural circuit: commodity, text, and lived culture.

SERIOUS LEISURE by Robert A. Stebbins

from Society; May/Jun2001, Vol. 38 Issue 4, p53, 5p

EBSCO HTML Full Text:  http://ida.lib.uidaho.edu:2077/direct.asp?an=4326130&db=f5h

Keywords:  leisure; work; identity

Abstract:  Talks about serious leisure in North America; Types of leisure; Social rewards experienced in several serious leisure activities; Lifestyle of leisure.

SIMULATED TOURISM AT BUSCH GARDENS: THE OLD COUNTRY AND DISNEY'S WORLD SHOWCASE, EPCOT CENTER by Lawrence Mintz

from Journal of Popular Culture; Winter98, Vol. 32 Issue 3, p47, 12p

EBSCO HTML Full Text:  http://ida.lib.uidaho.edu:2077/direct.asp?an=1883329&db=f5h

Keywords:  simulation; hyperreality; Baudrillard; signs; semiotics; social construction of reality; postmodernism

Excerpt:  “Tourists are seeking more meaningful, even profound satisfaction, but what they actually experience is a "staged authenticity," an encounter which is essentially engineered both by the "industry" which controls the plan of the visit and by the cultural expectations of the visitor.”

`THE SPECTACLE OF EXCESS': THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING IN THE UNITED STATES AND AUSTRALIA by John Rickard

from Journal of Popular Culture; Summer99, Vol. 33 Issue 1, p129, 9p, 2bw

EBSCO HTML Full Text:  http://ida.lib.uidaho.edu:2077/direct.asp?an=2535295&db=f5h

Keywords:  Barthes; myth; spectacle

Excerpt:  “Growing up in a respectable, middle-class (but by no means wealthy) family in the Sydney of the 1940s, I was fascinated by the raffish and bizarre world of professional wrestling.  [. . .]  In this article, I want to look at the transition of professional wrestling from a legitimate sport, with its roots in folk traditions, to Barthes' "spectacle of excess," a morality play and, increasingly, an exotic entertainment.”

SPORT AND POPULAR CULTURE:  THE TEMPORARY TRIUMPH OF PROCESS OVER PRODUCT by Garry Whannel

from The European Journal of Social Sciences, 1993, Vol. 6 Issue 3, p341, 9p

EBSCO HTML Full Text:  http://ida.lib.uidaho.edu:2077/direct.asp?an=9707202877&db=f5h

Keywords:  Marxism(s); pleasure; identification; carnivalesque; jouissance

Abstract:  This article examines the question of pleasure in popular culture Specifically it discusses the pleasures involved in the consumption of sport, and the role heroes, as figures for identification, play. The analysis draws on three separate elements; Richard Dyer's, concept of utopian sensibility Roland Barthes' concept of jouissance and Bakhtin's concept of the carnivalesque. It is argued that because it is a form of performance rather than an artifact, the sport event, at its best, represents the temporary triumph of process over product, the moment when the spontaneous inspiration of performance escapes, fleetingly, the tendency of capitalist commodity production to transform all such cultural processes into calculated packaged objects for consumption. Sport holds out the possibility of remaining playful, of grasping pleasure and of holding reality at bay.

STRANDS IN THE WEB: COMMUNITY-BUILDING STRATEGIES IN ONLINE FANZINES by Matthew J. Smith

from Journal of Popular Culture; Fall99, Vol. 33 Issue 2, p87, 13p, 1bw

EBSCO HTML Full Text:  http://ida.lib.uidaho.edu:2077/direct.asp?an=2872942&db=f5h

Keywords:  comic books; e-zines; online communities

Excerpt:  “Among the most intriguing aspects of the Internet are the possibilities it presents for the development, growth and maintenance of distance-transcending relationships.  Anyone who has become reacquainted with a friend because of electronic mail (e-mail) can affirm the usefulness of Internet technologies. Yet computer-mediated communication (CMC) can contribute to more than just one-to-one relationships. Indeed, CMC promotes the growth, development and maintenance of communal relationships as well.”

THE SUBCULTURE OF THE BEATS: A SOCIOLOGICAL REVISIT by Mel van Elteren

from Journal of American Culture; Fall99, Vol. 22 Issue 3, p71, 29p

EBSCO HTML Full Text:  http://ida.lib.uidaho.edu:2077/direct.asp?an=3813019&db=f5h

Keywords:  media images; subculture; cultural practice; culture industry; Bourdieu; Stuart Hall

Abstract:  Focuses on the Beat subculture and its constituting enclaves and scenes. Historical and sociological perspective on the Beats; Intricate interplay between the media images and the real identities of the Beats; Analysis of the substance of the Beats' cultural practices.

TELEVISION TALK SHOWS AND CULTURAL HIERARCHIES by Jason Mittell

from Journal of Popular Film & Television, Spring2003, Vol. 31 Issue 1, p36, 11p

EBSCO PDF File:  http://ida.lib.uidaho.edu:2077/direct.asp?an=9985787&db=f5h

Keywords:  Culture&Civilization debate; high/low culture; talk t.v.; audience reception; identity; Bourdieu; Fiske; Radway

Abstract:  Mittell looks at audience responses to and evaluations of both daytime and late night talk shows.  He argues that responses to the talk show genre are governed by cultural hierarchies and assumptions of value and identity.

THE VISIBLE EVIDENCE OF CULTURAL PRODUCERS by Maureen Mahon

from Annual Review of Anthropology; Oct 2000, Vol. 29, pp. 467-492

Online Full Text:  http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev.anthro.29.1.467

Keywords:  cultural practice; discourse; Bourdieu; de Certeau; Fiske; Foucault; Gramsci

Abstract:  This review discusses anthropological research that analyzes the practices through which individuals and groups produce music, video, film, visual arts, and theater, and the ideological and institutional frameworks within which these processes occur. Viewing these media and popular culture forms as arenas in which social actors struggle over social meanings and as visible evidence of social processes and social relations, this research addresses the social, political, and aesthetic dimensions of these productions. The review considers the ways these studies treat the material and discursive practices of cultural producers as complex, often contradictory, sites of social reproduction and as potential sites of social transformation. It also considers the ways this research responds to the challenges associated with conducting fieldwork and producing ethnography in and about a global economy and "media-saturated" world.

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE: A DEFENSE OF CHEESEHEADS, THE CHOP, AND ECSTATIC RELIGION IN THE STANDS by Barbara Ehrenreich

from Civilization; Jun/Jul2000, Vol. 7 Issue 3, p84, 2p

EBSCO HTML Full Text:  http://ida.lib.uidaho.edu:2077/direct.asp?an=3324511&db=aph

Keywords:  spectacle; carnival; fan culture

Excerpt:  “Sports fans don't usually attract much attention unless they get violent--hurling missiles at "enemy" players, rushing the field, brawling after the game. But in the last three decades, in a trend almost unnoticed by sports commentators and sociologists, fans have been expressing themselves in more colorful and peaceable ways, potentially even upstaging the games themselves.  [. . .] Spectators don't get much respect, at least compared to athletes, but you can't call them passive anymore.”

XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS AS FEMINIST CAMP by Joanne Morreale

from The Journal of Popular Culture, 1998, Vol. 32 Issue 2, p79, 8p

EBSCO HTML Full Text:  http://ida.lib.uidaho.edu:2077/direct.asp?an=1585569&db=f5h

Keywords:  Feminism; Postmodernism; queer theory; discourse and power; television; gender; identity

Excerpt:  The ambiguity and contradictions that define both the Xena character and the show itself may account in part for the show's widespread appeal. Her character is simultaneously masculine and feminine; the show is both male-oriented action-adventure and female-oriented fantasy. Moreover, on the level of its story, or content, Xena: Warrior Princess is overtly feminist, yet its discourse, the way the story is told, remains traditionally patriarchal. These contradictions, along with the show's postmodern format, enable viewers from different subject positions to read their own meanings into Xena. As one of these many possible readings, this essay discusses Xena as feminist camp which subverts traditional female stereotypes despite its formal acquiescence to the discourse of patriarchy.