Cultural diversity
The current Belgian society is characterized by cultural diversity. This diversity has been contributed by the diverse cultures in the society by means of factors like colonization, migration. This diversity from different origins, traditions etc. has been the running motor of this contemporary society. (Rayen, 2008) .There have been several initiatives by people to promote and celebrate diversity in Belgium. An example was the “Verdraagzaamheid” concert which was organized in Antwerp, Brussels and Ghent.
In this case study, I will focus on the influence of the East Asian countries; China, Japan and South Korea. Further analysis would be made to demonstrate how these three countries have influence the Belgian community in popular culture and a brief analysis about culture.
Popular culture definition
Popular culture is term that many authors and writers would like to hesitate in definition. It is huge and broad making it difficult define. John Storey defined Popular culture in six different contexts:
Popular culture as:
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Popular culture comprises of number of elements generally accepted which includes: rapid changes like the current highly technological world brings people together through media. (Delaney, 2017) Popular culture allows various individuals to be identified collectively. It plays significant role in the bringing different people with same interest together alongside the creation of sense of identity which connects individuals to the greater society. Popular culture comes in different forms including: popular music, sports, entertainment, cyber culture, leisure, televisions and advertising. There are various sources of which popular culture is made up of. The principal source of popular culture is the mass media which consist of television, radio, video games, online games, books, internet
The website provided all of the major nationally celebrated traditions and customs, as well as the social practices, performing arts, and holidays with historic or monumental origins. Specific customary practices that are less common such as in rural areas by the Swiss Alps, are included with detailed description about each. It presented the various traditions that are established in Switzerland, adding onto the acceptance of the wide range of customs describing the country to have “unity, but no uniformity.”
On an individual basis, popular culture helps establish and mold the subjective self. It influences the way individuals think, act and respond, and this becomes part of how people develop their personalities, preferences, beliefs, and their overall identity. For example, most people idolize certain fashion statements or fads which determines their preference of clothing. This process of self-formation coincides with both elements of personal choice and the responses and attitudes of others. Furthermore, the identity that an individual asserts is influenced by and helps determine the development of social relationships; it influences the communities and groups to which an individual will identify with and how that identification is processed. In the establishment of communal bonding, mass culture helps with, as Leavis describes, a “leveling down of society” (35). The lines of class distinction have been blurred which, to Leavis is not a good thing, but it unites us nonetheless. Popular culture also promotes unity in that it “blurs age lines” (29). As stated earlier, the products of popular culture are targeted towards a variety of audiences; adults read comic books, children watch adult films, etc. (Macdonald 29). Similarly, teenagers and young adults are brought together through night clubs, fashion, and music; college students come together to enjoy campus events; book fans wait in line hours for new releases, etc. Each of these instances produce feelings of belonging, acceptance and connection with members of society over a common
The term ‘Popular Culture’ was developed by Adorno and Horkheimer who describe it as a form of cultural expression associated with the common ‘people.’ The term is contextual and is always evolving within social situations. Storey (1998, pp. 6) describes it as an “arena of consent and resistance…not a sphere where socialism, a socialist already fully formed – might be simply ‘expressed’. But it is one of the places socialism might be consituted.” Popular culture is something that produces meaning, and is symbolic with human nature. This includes how we live, what we like and why we like it. Danesi (2012, pp. 2) describes Popular Culture as a system for human beings that specify all forms expressive, intellectual, ritualistic and communicative
The term ‘popular culture’ is a particularly difficult one to define. The word ‘culture’ alone is, according to Ray Williams, “one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language” (Storey; 2006, 1). Popular culture must also be a term that is equally hard to define. Popular culture is an ambiguous phrase in cultural theory. In its simplest form: popular culture can be seen as the culture of the working class and minority cultures such as; folk and youth culture.(Brooker; 2003).
Popular culture is often dismissed as frivolous, unimportant or simply mindless entertainment, both by media critics and by academics. However, it is important to examine and think critically about popular culture and what it can tell us about the society that we live in. In the specific case of the relationship between gender and popular culture, popular culture is informed by the way gender is structured and the structure of gender is, in part, reinforced by popular culture.
Popular culture embodies the beliefs, ideas, perspectives, attitudes, and images of various cultures. Popular culture is heavily influenced by mass media, key celebrity figures, movies and related entertainment, as well as sports and news. However, in the past decade, the Internet and social media has come to be a significant influence on pop culture.
Storey, John. Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction. Fourth Edition. Athens: University of Georgia Press. 2006. Print.
There are many ways to define popular culture. Many individuals have grappled with the question what is popular culture? And how to critically analyze and deconstruct the meanings. Looking at the root words of popular culture is where to begin. Raymond Williams states ‘popular’ means: “well liked by many people" or “culture actually made for the people themselves (Storey, p.5). This is part with the word ‘culture’ combine to look at how the two words have been connect by theoretical work within social and historical context. John Storey approaches popular culture in six categories, they are as followed: “Popular culture is simply culture that is widely favoured or well liked by many people”, Popular culture is “the culture that is left over after we have decided what is high culture”, Popular culture is “mass culture”, “Popular culture is the culture that originates from ‘the people.” and “Popular culture as a site of struggle
... challenge to the major assumptions about globalisation and the west to the rest traditional vector. Not only is it a transnational journey of a commodity, it is also a journey of Japanese popular culture and its ability to resonate in the hearts and minds of global consumers. This globalisation of Japanese popular culture emanates through Appadurai’s notion of scapes, in technoscapes, mediascapes, consumerscapes and ultimately, ideoscapes, creating new flows of global culture.
In the beginning, the relationship between everyday culture and mass media culture are closed but there are some difference between popular culture and traditional culture. The traditional culture is known as ‘high culture’ which refer to literature, art, music etc. However, popular culture is the produced by mass media, may know it as low culture. People used to entertainment or relaxation. It shared and spread rapidly in groups, communities, societies and so on. Some people may say popular culture help us to understand more about the world because of the globalization factor.
“In more traditional definitions of the term, culture is said to embody the “best that has been thought and said” in a society (Hall, 1997: 2). When applying this to popular culture, the assumption that could be made is if something is consumed by many people such as products, ideas, and experiences, are “popular”. Popular culture can be derived from a range of genres such as sport, music, cyberculture, entertainment, and television. A way you could monitor aspects of popular culture is through the numbers including sales, watches, and participants. One example of this would be pop music. “The official UK Chart is calculated by both sales and streams, with a streaming ratio of 150:1 (Ditto, online 2018)” with the artist calculating the highest number being awarded the UK number 1 on a Friday. Faults can be found in this idea because whilst something could be popular with a majority, it doesn't take into account the ideas and views of the subcultures. Whilst something may be accessible and enjoyed by a majority, it does not mean that this idea/experience or product is the best overall, contradicting the claim Hall made previously. In addition to this, the idea of popular culture being liked by many can only go so far which Hall also looks into when introducing the interpretation that popular culture is “the culture that is left over after we decide what is high culture” (2009: 6). By this definition, popular culture is a residual category, an inferior culture, which is “there to accommodate texts and practices that fail to meet the required standards to qualify as high culture
The term “popular culture” has different meaning however its meaning depends upon the context and the person who is defining it. Generally it is known as culture of people or vernacular that prevails in a society. In his book “Rhetorical Dimensions of Popular Culture” Brummett explains that pop culture includes the characteristics of social life which are actively practiced by the public (Brummett, 1991). Popular culture is culture of people so it is determined by the communications, interactions and exchange between people in their daily activities which include the use of slang, styles of dress, foods that people eat and greeting rituals. Mass media plays important role in propagation of popular culture.
It incorporates the daily interactions, needs, desires and cultural moments that make up the everyday lives of the society. It finds expression in day to day practices such as cooking, fashion, newspapers, magazines, television, mass media and the many facets of entertainment such as sports, music, dance and literature. Thus popular culture becomes “culture actually made by people for themselves” (Williams 111). In the essay “Notes on Deconstructing the Popular”, Stuart Hall defines popular culture as all the cultural activities of the people, or their “distinctive way of life” which is considered as popular within social context, and is popularly accepted within the society in any particular period (449). Popular Culture also accommodates cultural texts and practices which fail to qualify as the high or elite culture. This residual nature makes it a site of struggle between the marginalized and the dominant groups in society, where forces of incorporation and resistance against them come into
What popular culture and mass culture are, their significance to society and how they are consumed are very multifaceted questions that have been subject to wide debate is the fields of Sociology and Cultural Studies. Many theorists have chimed in on the debate to answer these questions. Two notable theories on this topic are that of Dwight MacDonald in his work “A Theory of Mass Culture” and John Fiske in his work “Popular Culture”. MacDonald argues that mass culture is a phenomenon that is detrimental to society. He believes that although mass culture is something that produced “by and for human beings” that is ultimately is what leads to the loss of individuality and individual thought and expression in favor
Popular culture is very important in our society, staying “in” with everything popular, gains a person popularity and respect by others. By researching popular culture we can understand why this is such a big deal in our society, how we got to where we are