Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

John Storey, a leading figure in the field of Cultural Studies, offers an illuminating and vibrant account of the development of popular culture. Addressing issues such as globalization, intellectualism, and consumerism, Inventing Popular Culture presents an engaging assessment of one of the most debated concepts of recent times.

Provides a lively and accessible history of the concept of popular culture by one of the leading experts in the field.
Traces the invention and reinvention of the concept of popular culture from the eighteenth-century "discovery" of folk culture to contemporary accounts of the cultural impact of globalization.
Examines the relationship between the concept of popular culture and key issues in cultural analyses such as hegemony, postmodernism, identity, questions of value, consumerism, and everyday life.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Preface (p. ix)
• Acknowledgments (p. xiii)
• 1 Popular Culture as Folk Culture (p. 1)
• Nature and Nationalism (p. 2)
• Pastoral Life as Primitive Culture (p. 6)
• Music Hall and the Masses (p. 10)
• Imagining the Past to Make the Present (p. 13)
• 2 Popular Culture as Mass Culture (p. 16)
• Culture Against Anarchy (p. 16)
• The Culture of Hyperdemocracy (p. 24)
• The Marxist Masses (p. 27)
• Ways of Seeing Other People as Masses (p. 30)
• 3 Popular Culture as the "Other" of High Culture (p. 32)
• The Making of High Culture (p. 32)
• The Modernist Revolution (p. 41)
• The Politics of Cultural Exclusion (p. 43)
• Culture and Class (p. 45)
• 4 Popular Culture as an Arena of Hegemony (p. 48)
• Hegemony: From Marxism to Cultural Studies (p. 48)
• Wandering from the Path of Righteousness (p. 53)
• Side Saddle on the Golden Calf (p. 56)
• An Inclusive Cultural Studies (p. 61)
• 5 Popular Culture as Postmodern Culture (p. 63)
• The New Sensibility (p. 63)
• Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine: The Postmodern Condition (p. 64)
• Postmodern Hyperconsciousness (p. 70)
• Back to the Future: Opera Postmodern? (p. 74)
• 6 Popular Culture as the "Roots" and "Routes" of Cultural Identities (p. 78)
• Postmodern Identities (p. 79)
• The Roots of Cultural Identities (p. 81)
• The Routes of Cultural Identities (p. 86)
• Mixing Memory and Desire: Dusty Springfield and "The Land of Love" (p. 89)
• Coda: Performing Identities (p. 91)
• 7 Popular Culture as Popular or Mass Art (p. 92)
• Cultural Power (p. 92)
• When Gravity Fails: An Aesthetics of Popular Culture? (p. 95)
• Beyond Aesthetic Essentialism (p. 104)
• 8 Popular Culture as Global Culture (p. 107)
• Globalization (p. 107)
• Trading Commodities for Culture in the American Global Village (p. 109)
• The "Local" as the New Folk Culture (p. 116)
• Notes (p. 121)
• References (p. 130)
• Index (p. 140)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Director of the Centre for Research in Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Sunderland, U.K., Storey is a well-known and respected author in the field of cultural studies. In his latest offering, he provides an accessible examination of the concept of popular culture. He follows the development of this concept from the rediscovery of folk culture at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution-it was a way for the middle and upper classes to look back on the "good old days" before industrialization brought millions of peasants to the cities, upsetting the old order-to the continuing and profound impacts of globalization, media, and instant communications. Instead of analyzing specific books, movies, songs, and other artifacts, Storey explores the changing views of intellectuals in regard to popular culture and how these views relate to dominance and power in cultures. His fundamental argument is that "popular culture" is a notion developed by intellectuals, and his book seeks to support this assertion with examples from the past 200 years. An excellent resource for academic libraries; as an introduction to cultural studies, this is hard to beat.-Mark Bay, Cumberland Coll. Lib., Williamsburg, KY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

CHOICE Review

Storey (media and cultural studies, Univ. of Sunderland, UK) leaves no doubt about who is inventing popular culture, for the meager 120 pages offer little about non-British inventors. Storey claims to study "changing intellectual ways of constructing texts and activities as popular culture" and discusses topics such as mass culture, political economy, and folk culture. But he never mentions American thinkers such as David Manning White, Russel Nye, Ray Browne, Gilbert Seldes, Marshall Fishwick, Ed Herman, Noam Chomsky, Dallas Smythe (actually Canadian-born), et al., a formidable list. Nor does he acknowledge the significant contributions of 19th- and early-20th-century Japanese folk/popular culture researchers. In some instances, Storey cites recent writers on certain concepts--e.g., hybridization--without tracing the real "inventors" of those notions, and he reworks other theories--e.g., of memory--that are well known in elementary psychology. Admittedly, much of what he synthesizes about British (and European) roots of cultural studies and popular culture is well done, with thorough documentation and interspersed anecdotes and quotes. This treatise would have worked better had it been titled "Inventing" (or "Reinventing") "Popular Culture in England" (or "Europe"). ^BSumming Up: Optional. Comprehensive graduate and research collections. J. A. Lent Temple University