CULTURE gets bandied about a lot
Cultural capital = what you're
familiar with
“High culture” → hierarchy
– upper classes
“Low culture” (pop culture)
– accessible; “everyday”; resonates with a wide audience
(POPular); accepted into “high” cultural spaces more and more
(graffiti → Banksy exhibition)
Originally high culture
(Mozart's operas) was for the masses – our perceptions mutate over
time
“Pornify” - pornography is so influential it's a verb
Fan cultures → used to keep
the working classes healthy – football fans; bronies – their own
sense of identity (subculture); consumer culture (whether you
like it or not)
“We are what we consume;”
spending power = social power
Food controls people – buying
+ ritual preparation (ritual commodity); one of the most basic needs
Context – perfect apples from
a supermarket versus bruised apples from a farmer's market –
context shapes our expectations
The process* of buying something
affects your opinion of it
*PERFORMANCE - a quest (T.K.
Maxx =/= Amazon)
Hall Girls – turn this process
into a public ritual
Subcultures used to be
tied to specific areas, but are now now about shared practices; not
as tied to age as they were
Collective identity – a love
of something
“Kidult” - adults who retain
a childlike joy – a viable market
Celebrity culture – we went
from valorizing great achievers to great actors (known for being
known)
We spend a lot of time with
celebrities – an hour watching a soap (edited versions of people) –
and not as much time with real people
We end up thinking of celebrity
as “normal” and think we all deserve to be famous (X Factor)
Reality TV – we all fantasize
about being rich, and we all love a cautionary tale
We like people who stick it to
the man
Digital cultures – how
“real” is your Facebook page? How much is editorialized?
Bleeds into our everyday lives
Second Life – a space where
anything goes, yet we map real world values onto it (looking like a
porn star > having wings???)
MOOCs – Massive Open Online
Courses – our relationship with KNOWLEDGE has changed
You can google something, but
can you find out what you think?
Knowledge =/= facts
Knowing =/= understanding
The Digital Divide – a tiny
percentage of the planet actually uses the internet
We [the Critical Perspectives
group] are denaturalizing things like culture – what does it
actually mean?
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