This extensively revised and updated 5th edition of Storey's market-leading textbook provides an engaging, clear and coherent introduction to cultural theory. Popular culture is used to critically examine the theories and main approaches of cultural theory, and ensures that the accessible approach of previous editions is retained. Content has been expanded and widely illustrated throughout, and relevant and appropriate examples from the field of popular culture help to exemplify how theory relates to practice. New chapters include coverage of topics such as race, racism and representation; the text is supported by the fully revised and improved companion website that encourages further independent study and helps the student to grasp a broad and widely relevant understanding of cultural theory. This new edition remains essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students of cultural studies, media studies, communication studies, the sociology of culture, popular culture and other related subjects.

Table of Contents

1. What is popular culture? Culture. Ideology. Popular culture. Popular culture as other. Further reading. 2. The culture and civilization' tradition. Matthew Arnold. Leavisism. Mass culture in America: the post-war debate. The culture of other people. Further reading. 3. Culturalism. Richard Hoggart: The Uses of Literacy. Raymond Williams: The analysis of culture'. E. P. Thompson: The Making of the English Working Class. Stuart Hall and Paddy Whannel: The Popular Arts. The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. Further reading. 4. Marxisms. Classical Marxism. The Frankfurt School. Althusserianism. Hegemony. Post-Marxism and cultural studies. Further reading. 5. Psychoanalysis. Freudian psychoanalysis. Lacanian psychoanalysis. Cine-psychoanalysis. Slavoj Zizek and Lacanian fantasy. Further reading. 6. Structuralism and post-structuralism. Ferdinand de Saussure. Claude Levi-Strauss, Will Wright and the American Western. Roland Barthes: Mythologies. Post-structuralism. Jacques Derrida. Discourse and power: Michel Foucault. Further reading. 7. Gender and sexuality. Feminisms. Women at the cinema. Readingromance. Watching Dallas. Readingwomen's magazines. Men's studies and masculinities. Queer theory. Further reading. 8. Race', racism and representation. Race' and racism. The ideology of racism: its historical emergence. Orientalism. Anti-racism and cultural studies. Further reading. 9. Postmodernism. The postmodern condition. Postmodernism in the 1960s. Jean-Francois Lyotard. Jean Baudrillard. Fredric Jameson. Postmodern pop music. Postmodern television. Postmodernism and the pluralism of value. The global postmodern. Convergence culture. Afterword. Further reading. 10. The politics of the popular. A paradigm crisis in cultural studies? The cultural field. The economic field. Post-Marxist cultural studies: hegemony revisited. The ideology of mass culture. Further reading. Notes. Bibliography. Index.