Within popular culture studies, one finds discussions about quantitative sociology, Marxism, psychoanalysis, myth criticism, feminism, and semiotics, but hardly a word on the usefulness of phenomenology, the branch of philosophy concerned with human experience. In spite of this omission, there is a close relationship between the aims of phenomenology and the aims of popular culture studies, for both movements have attempted to redirect academic study toward everyday lived experience. The fifteen essays in this volume demonstrate the way in which phenomenological approaches can illuminate popular culture studies, and in so doing they take on the entire range of popular culture.

The mass of the Roman people constituted well over 90% of the population. Much ancient history, however, has focused on the lives, politics and culture of the minority elite. This book helps redress the balance by focusing on the non-elite in the Roman world. It builds a vivid account of the everyday lives of the masses, including their social and family life, health, leisure and religious beliefs, and the ways in which their popular culture resisted the domination of the ruling elite. The book highlights previously under-considered aspects of popular culture of the period to give a fuller picture. It is the first book to take fully into account the level of mental health: given the physical and social environment that most people faced, their overall mental health mirrored their poor physical health. It also reveals fascinating details about the ways in which people solved problems, turning frequently to oracles for advice and guidance when confronted by difficulties. Our understanding of the non-elite world is further enriched through the depiction of sensory dimensions: Toner illustrates how attitudes to smell, touch, and noise all varied with social status and created conflict, and how the emperors tried to resolve these disputes as part of their regeneration of urban life. Popular Culture in Ancient Rome offers a rich and accessible introduction to the usefulness of the notion of popular culture in studying the ancient world and will be enjoyed by students and general readers alike.

This book argues that the transition by Western society to late modernity has weakened the social order, creating a quasi-anomic state that favors those conditions that place culture in a position of prominence. The preponderance of culture over social, with its affinity for profane and its immanent nature, is posited by the author to have a major impact on the fabric of social life and its implications especially on social solidarity. Gabriel A. Barhaim employs a number of ideas and concepts to illuminate the central theme of a feeble social order. Such concepts are, among others, crisis of reference, desacralization of the social order, the predominance of individual networks as a new form of social solidarity, overpowering of the public sphere, and the reduction in authority of collective representations. The persistent crisis of the social order-strongly visible in the disappearance of major ideologies on the one hand, and in the disintegration of the state and its institutions on the other hand-has been the impetus to cultural phenomena whose prevailing themes encode the fate of individuals, both symbolically and expressively. Barhaim regards the social order as the inspiring scene of action, while culture, with its diverse modes of expressions, provides guiding commentaries. In grappling with these topics in each chapter, the analysis reveals the many facets of culture and the many symbolic forms it takes. All of this provides the necessary commentaries needed to make sense of a bewildered social life, in the context of late modernity. These commentaries should be viewed mostly as a path to understanding the pressing social arrangements, interactions, practices, of contemporary life. Three out of the eight chapters are concerned with the East-Central European experience.

During the first decade of its existence, from 1999 to 2008, the Society for Phenomenology and Media held annual international conferences in San Diego (California), Puebla (Mexico), Krakow (Poland), Helsinki (Finland), Buenos Aires (Argentina), Provo (Utah), and Monmouth (Oregon). Papers delivered at these conferences were published in the Society's journal, Glimpse. The current volume is an anthology of essays drawn from the first ten years of Glimpse. From its birth, the Society sought to bridge the gap between contemporary media theory and practice and phenomenological insight. Essays in this anthology include work on digital representation, film, mobile communication, cyberspace, medieval manuscripts, print, radio, the stage, TV, virtual reality, and other media, as well as theoretical papers dealing with media aesthetics, epistemology, ethics, politics, and ontology.

“Subjectivism and Interpretative Methodology in Theory and Practice” uses the subjectivist approach originated in Max Weber’s interpretation method, Alfred Schutz’s phenomenology, and Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s sociology of knowledge to understand economic and social phenomena. This method brings human agency back into the forefront of analysis, adding new insights not only in economics and management, but also in sociology, politics, psychology and organizational behavior.

Cultural Studies -- Ethnomusicology Why would a punk band popular only in Indonesia cut songs in no other language than English? If you're rapping in Tanzania and Malawi, where hip hop has a growing audience, what do you rhyme in? Swahili? Chichewa? English? Some combination of these? Global Pop, Local Language examines how performers and audiences from a wide range of cultures deal with the issue of language choice and dialect in popular music. Related issues confront performers of Latin music in the U.S., drum and bass MCs in Toronto, and rappers, rockers, and traditional folk singers from England and Ireland to France, Germany, Belarus, Nepal, China, New Zealand, Hawaii, and beyond. For pop musicians, this issue brings up a number of complex questions. Which languages or dialects will best express my ideas? Which will get me a record contract or a bigger audience? What does it mean to sing or listen to music in a colonial language? A foreign language? A regional dialect? A "native" language? Examining popular music from a range of world cultures, the authors explore these questions and use them to address a number of broader issues, including the globalization of the music industry, the problem of authenticity in popular culture, the politics of identity, multiculturalism, and the emergence of English as a dominant world language. The chapters are written in a highly accessible style by scholars from a variety of fields, including ethnomusicology, popular music studies, anthropology, culture studies, literary studies, folklore, and linguistics. Harris M. Berger is associate professor of music at Texas A&M University. He is the author of Metal, Rock and Jazz: Perception and the Phenomenology of Musical Experience (1999). Michael Thomas Carroll is professor of English at New Mexico Highlands University. He is the author of Popular Modernity in America: Experience, Technology, Mythohistory (2000) and co-editor, with Eddie Tafoya, of Phenomenological Approaches to Popular Culture (2000).

A Companion to Popular Culture is a landmark survey of contemporary research in popular culture studies that offers a comprehensive and engaging introduction to the field. Includes over two dozen essays covering the spectrum of popular culture studies from food to folklore and from TV to technology Features contributions from established and up-and-coming scholars from a range of disciplines Offers a detailed history of the study of popular culture Balances new perspectives on the politics of culture with in-depth analysis of topics at the forefront of popular culture studies