Summary of John Storey’s, What is popular culture?

The central purpose of this reading is to create an understanding in the reader of just how difficult it is to define a term such as popular culture. The trouble with defining such a broad phrase as popular culture lies in the fact that the definition of popular culture is dependent upon the context the phrase is used in. The word popular culture can have multiple meanings to scores of different people within the same language and people of different languages and countries may have a completely different definition. Storey presents six plausible and broad definitions of what popular culture may be. Within each definition there are characteristics of the definition outlined that describe why each definition is not perfect. The first definition is quantitative in that it defines popular culture as the culture which is wide spread and populous. The second definition defines popular culture as the “residual category” that all culture not defined as high culture is placed into. The first and second definitions do not have a definitive political connotation but the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth definitions certainly do. The third definition of popular culture declares all popular culture is merely a commercial product of companies and is distributed to the people in a capitalist fashion. The fourth definition is the opposite of the third in that it defines popular culture as being derived from the people and then transferred to commercial companies. The fifth definition is a combination of the third and fourth definitions because it takes the stance that the materials for creating popular culture are given to the people through commercial companies and the people then create popular culture with the building blocks they are given. The sixth and final definition given says there is no distinction between high and popular culture and that all such past definitions are all part of a postmodern culture. The chapter concludes with a very broad definition of popular culture as the culture that emerged after the Industrial Revolution as a result of social conflicts between different social classes. There are surely more than six possible definitions of popular culture but Storey uses these six as a way to demonstrate how any one definition is faulty in some way. Storey shows that the definitions are faulty in an effort to show the reader just how difficult it is to define popular culture.