Popular culture in industrialising England

Griffin, Emma (2002) Popular culture in industrialising England. The Historical Journal, 45 (3). pp. 619-635. ISSN 1469-5103

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

This review traces historians' use of the concept of popular culture, since its entry into the discipline in the 1970s. ‘Popular culture’ was initially loosely understood as the values, pleasures, and pastimes of the poor, and research in the field was heavily influenced by both Marxism and cultural anthropology. By the 1990s, earlier conceptions of popular culture appeared crudely reductionist, and heterogeneity, diversity, and ‘appropriation’ were firmly established as key terms and concerns for the historian of popular culture. But in the search for social and cultural complexity, the role of politics and the simple force of power and social inequality have been neglected. I argue here that wealth and power have long been key determinants shaping the character of popular cultural practice, and that their operation needs to be incorporated into our analyses. In this way, the study of popular culture offers the promise of research that is both of intrinsic interest and of broader historical significance.

Item Type: Article
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of History
Related URLs:
Depositing User: EPrints Services
Date Deposited: 01 Oct 2010 13:56
Last Modified: 12 Mar 2024 08:52
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/9066
DOI: 10.1017/S0018246X02002571

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item