Chapter 4 – An Interaction
Approach to Popular Culture
Robert Wonser
Soc 86 Fall 2011
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The Interaction Approach
• This approach emphasizes how popular
culture is created, diffused, and consumed
as an outcome of social interactions
experienced among small groups of
individuals.
• Who you are, your tastes and values are a
product of those around you.
• Your choice in pop culture is too.
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Foundations of the Interaction
Approach
• The self is created and maintained
through interactions with others
• As Charles Horton Cooley said, individuals
build their self-image from the judgments
of others, or at least from what they
imagine others evaluations to be (lookingglass self)
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Creation of the Self
• In developing and recreating our selves
we rely on our peer groups in many ways:
– We compete against our friends and
acquaintances for status and prestige
– Internalize group-generated cultural attitudes,
orientations, and tastes
– Allow our comfort within the group to inform
our sense of well-being (self-esteem)
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Self in Social Interaction
• Erving Goffman’s term, presentation of
self informs how we present ourselves to
different groups (parents, professors,
friends, etc.)
• Becker’s “on becoming a marijuana user”
– Novice smokers rely on experienced users to
teach them to identify the physical effects as
pleasurable, rather than harmful,
uncomfortable or strange
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The Interaction Approach
• Our knowledge and experience of popular culture
is conditioned by the social contexts in which we
live and interact with others
– Our consumer and cultural tastes—music we like, food
we eat, clothes we wear—are deeply influenced by our
peers, acquaintances and others who surround us in
everyday life
– Even though the production of most pop culture is
done by a handful of corporations, the eventual
success may depend on micro-level processes
illustrative of how chattering individuals within small
groups interact in everyday life.
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Social Networks and the Spread of
Fashion and Fads
• social networks consist of individuals
connected to one another through a variety of
relationships, whether based on kinship,
authority, friendship, romance, or work.
– Dyads, triads
– Weak ties the further reaches of your social network
often provide the most useful info (new job, car etc.).
Why?
– …Help bridge into other networks
• Why do networks matter for pop culture?
– Trends and fads spread through these social networks
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Word-of-Mouth
• Communication among consumers who have no stake in
a product are influential
• 67% of U.S. sales of consumer goods are based on
word of mouth among friends, family and strangers
• Word-of-mouth is a function of:
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Volume – total # of conversations in which it is discussed
Intensity – enthusiasm expressed in those conversations
Valence – evaluative content (good or bad movie?)
Dispersal – numerous social networks or just one?
Duration – how much time does it continue for?
• General rule: people are more likely to talk about
products favorably but negative word of mouth tends to
have a stronger effect on consumer behavior
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Interpretation
• Audiences draw on their own social
circumstances when attributing meaning and
value to popular culture.
• These meanings are patterned according to
persistent systems of social organization
structured by differences in socioeconomic
status, nationality, race, ethnicity, gender,
sexuality, religion, or age.
• These are called interpretive communities
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Interpretive Communities
• Interpretive communities
Consumers whose common social
identities and cultural backgrounds
(whether organized on the basis of
nationality, race, ethnicity, gender,
sexuality, religion, or age) inform
their shared understandings of
culture in patterned and predictable
ways.
• They rely on common social
experiences to frame their
collective readings of popular
culture
Some Latino fans
explain their embrace of
Morrissey and the
Smiths in terms of
shared ethnic heritage
and immigrant
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experience
Culture Wars
• Culture wars are cultural conflicts fought
among ideological adversaries in the
public arena
– Ex: PMRC and heavy metal and rap
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Popular Culture and the Search for
Authenticity
• Perhaps the biggest motivator to consume
popular culture – authenticity
• Authenticity can refer to a variety of
desirable traits: credibility, originality,
sincerity, naturalness, genuineness,
innateness, purity, or realness.
– Can never be truly authentic, instead must
always be performed, staged, fabricated,
crafted or otherwise imagined.
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Art Worlds
• Art Worlds are the collective action of people in
specific cultural communities, a particular social
context complete with established rules, norms,
conventions, styles, and expectations that
ordinarily exert normative control over the
process of cultural production.
– What happens when a good artist bucks people’s
expectations on their latest album?
• Art is the product of art worlds
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• The performance of authenticity always
requires a close conformity to the
expectations set by the cultural context in
which it is situated (this includes the art
world’s expectations).
• Why is authenticity so important? Is it
lacking in our culture?
• The search for authenticity has been a
middle-class reaction to the soullessness of
monopoly capitalism (as expressed by
Marx’s critique of alienated labor).
• Can you think of something that is
authentic? How do you know it is?
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• Consumers attribute
authenticity to cultural
objects and symbols as a
means of creating
distinction, status, prestige,
or value
• Ironic that it is often
associated with hardship
and disadvantage
– Ex: runaway middle-class
punks, hipsters
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Case Study on Authenticity: the
Hipster
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Person A: Are you a hipster?
Person B (obviously a hipster): What?!
No!
Where do we turn when for authenticity?
Hipsters are a subculture of young,
recently settled urban middle class
adults and older teenagers with musical
interests mainly in indie rock.
Julia Plevin argues that the "definition of
'hipster' remains opaque to anyone
outside this self-proclaiming, highlyselective circle."
She claims that the "whole point of
hipsters is that they avoid labels and
being labeled. However, they all dress
the same and act the same and conform
in their non-conformity" to an "iconic
carefully created sloppy vintage look."
Hipsters fetishize authenticity and
borrow it in pastiche form from
everywhere.
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Hipsters
• Ultimate goal here is to
non-conform without an
admission of actually
doing so.
• Successful nonconformity is achieved
through cultural irony—
take anything valued
within a culture, be it
fashion, music,
literature, or art, and use
it or wear it with outright,
yet subtle irony (this is
more difficult to achieve
than one might think).
Key components of the Hipster:
Stuff: authentic material culture, the
correct stuff that indicates you
have…
Taste (remember this for Bourdieu
and cultural capital late on)
Pastiche: the hodgepodge blending
of elements from pop culture to
create a sensibility
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