Relevant for multiple disciplines, Popular Culture as Everyday Life offers readers a unique (and even experimental) perspective on popular culture that at times reads like a diary, at other times like a history lesson, and at still other times promises to be a time capsule or snapshot representing popular culture as it currently exists in the early twenty-first century. Whether they are embracing the culture, resisting the culture, or merely co-existing with the culture, the authors in this volume collectively document and examine the place, function, meaning, and value that the culture in question has in their everyday lives.
Carol Rambo, University of Memphis Peter Berger argued that the most important thing you can know about someone is what they take for granted, and these days, it is largely about popular culture. The gripping essays show the richness of the mundane doings of people and their ways of life in constructing social and moral orders, even as they celebrate the profoundly trivial. The chapters will motivate students to do their own investigations of everyday life.
David Altheide, Arizona State University Popular Culture as Everyday Life celebrates how daily commonplaces can become rich subjects for deep sociological insights. The diverse chapters reveal the mundane doings of people to be anything but. A must read for anyone who has ever slept, gotten dressed, drank coffee, put on makeup, gone to the bathroom, has never smoked or kicked ass, has watched television, or has had sex.
Eugene Halton, University of Notre Dame