Popular Culture and the Dissemination of Knowledge

Abstract

Written from the perspective of cultural studies, the chapter seeks to briefly explore the relationship between popular culture and the production of knowledge. To fully understand this relationship we must first address the difficulties that surround the concept of popular culture. While it may seem obvious what it is, once we think about it historically and theoretically it becomes very clear that there is in fact many versions of popular culture. To demonstrate this I outline five ways in which popular culture has been conceptualized and show how each theorisation carries with it a different understanding of what we are doing when we engage in the study of popular culture. Each definition is accompanied by a discussion of the connection between popular culture and the dissemination of knowledge. However, making a connection between popular culture and knowledge is ultimately an empirical question, one that can only really be answered by detailed investigation of the consumption of popular texts and practices. Therefore, any claims made here during this short chapter are inevitably speculative and a little abstract, driven as they are by theoretical extrapolation.