Popular Culture and Everyday Life Book

Popular Culture and Everyday Life offers a broad-ranging survey of social and cultural theory, whilst issuing an audacious challenge to contemporary cultural studies' emphasis on speculation, rather than observation. Toby Miller and Alec McHoul invite us to question our participation in both dominant and sub-cultural practices by providing perspectives on the everyday through ethnography, textual reading, discourse analysis and political economy. Following a summary of key ideas on an everyday practice, such as `eating' or `talking', each chapter considers the discourses that construct these practices, and concludes with one or more empirical investigations.By acknowledging the historical specificity and mundane character of popular culture and everyday life and by looking at everyday practices in their own right, rather than as merely representations of something else, the authors open up the possibility of a significant departure in cultural studies. Read More