Cultural diversity
The current Belgian society is characterized by cultural diversity. This diversity has been contributed by the diverse cultures in the society by means of factors like colonization, migration. This diversity from different origins, traditions etc. has been the running motor of this contemporary society. (Rayen, 2008) .There have been several initiatives by people to promote and celebrate diversity in Belgium. An example was the “Verdraagzaamheid” concert which was organized in Antwerp, Brussels and Ghent.
In this case study, I will focus on the influence of the East Asian countries; China, Japan and South Korea. Further analysis would be made to demonstrate how these three countries have influence the Belgian community in popular culture and a brief analysis about culture.
Popular culture definition
Popular culture is term that many authors and writers would like to hesitate in definition. It is huge and broad making it difficult define. John Storey defined Popular culture in six different contexts:
Popular culture as:
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Popular culture comprises of number of elements generally accepted which includes: rapid changes like the current highly technological world brings people together through media. (Delaney, 2017) Popular culture allows various individuals to be identified collectively. It plays significant role in the bringing different people with same interest together alongside the creation of sense of identity which connects individuals to the greater society. Popular culture comes in different forms including: popular music, sports, entertainment, cyber culture, leisure, televisions and advertising. There are various sources of which popular culture is made up of. The principal source of popular culture is the mass media which consist of television, radio, video games, online games, books, internet
The website provided all of the major nationally celebrated traditions and customs, as well as the social practices, performing arts, and holidays with historic or monumental origins. Specific customary practices that are less common such as in rural areas by the Swiss Alps, are included with detailed description about each. It presented the various traditions that are established in Switzerland, adding onto the acceptance of the wide range of customs describing the country to have “unity, but no uniformity.”
Although we have taken monumental strides in the past fifty years towards racial equality and diversity, it is still commonly argued that popular culture lacks some sort of racial representation. In the United States, the people who live here are vastly diverse when it comes to race and culture, yet in the media people of color get marginalized and stereotyped everyday in film, music, and etc.
The term ‘Popular Culture’ was developed by Adorno and Horkheimer who describe it as a form of cultural expression associated with the common ‘people.’ The term is contextual and is always evolving within social situations. Storey (1998, pp. 6) describes it as an “arena of consent and resistance…not a sphere where socialism, a socialist already fully formed – might be simply ‘expressed’. But it is one of the places socialism might be consituted.” Popular culture is something that produces meaning, and is symbolic with human nature. This includes how we live, what we like and why we like it. Danesi (2012, pp. 2) describes Popular Culture as a system for human beings that specify all forms expressive, intellectual, ritualistic and communicative
In the beginning, the relationship between everyday culture and mass media culture are closed but there are some difference between popular culture and traditional culture. The traditional culture is known as ‘high culture’ which refer to literature, art, music etc. However, popular culture is the produced by mass media, may know it as low culture. People used to entertainment or relaxation. It shared and spread rapidly in groups, communities, societies and so on. Some people may say popular culture help us to understand more about the world because of the globalization factor.
Popular culture is often dismissed as frivolous, unimportant or simply mindless entertainment, both by media critics and by academics. However, it is important to examine and think critically about popular culture and what it can tell us about the society that we live in. In the specific case of the relationship between gender and popular culture, popular culture is informed by the way gender is structured and the structure of gender is, in part, reinforced by popular culture.
In his article ‘Folklore to Populore’ Ray Browne offered same definition of popular culture. He explained that popular culture involves the elements of behaviours, attitudes, beliefs, tastes and customs which define the individuals of any society (Browne, 2004). In the historic context it can be seen that popular culture is termed as the culture of the
Popular culture embodies the beliefs, ideas, perspectives, attitudes, and images of various cultures. Popular culture is heavily influenced by mass media, key celebrity figures, movies and related entertainment, as well as sports and news. However, in the past decade, the Internet and social media has come to be a significant influence on pop culture.
There are many ways to define popular culture. Many individuals have grappled with the question what is popular culture? And how to critically analyze and deconstruct the meanings. Looking at the root words of popular culture is where to begin. Raymond Williams states ‘popular’ means: “well liked by many people" or “culture actually made for the people themselves (Storey, p.5). This is part with the word ‘culture’ combine to look at how the two words have been connect by theoretical work within social and historical context. John Storey approaches popular culture in six categories, they are as followed: “Popular culture is simply culture that is widely favoured or well liked by many people”, Popular culture is “the culture that is left over after we have decided what is high culture”, Popular culture is “mass culture”, “Popular culture is the culture that originates from ‘the people.” and “Popular culture as a site of struggle
... challenge to the major assumptions about globalisation and the west to the rest traditional vector. Not only is it a transnational journey of a commodity, it is also a journey of Japanese popular culture and its ability to resonate in the hearts and minds of global consumers. This globalisation of Japanese popular culture emanates through Appadurai’s notion of scapes, in technoscapes, mediascapes, consumerscapes and ultimately, ideoscapes, creating new flows of global culture.
“In more traditional definitions of the term, culture is said to embody the “best that has been thought and said” in a society (Hall, 1997: 2). When applying this to popular culture, the assumption that could be made is if something is consumed by many people such as products, ideas, and experiences, are “popular”. Popular culture can be derived from a range of genres such as sport, music, cyberculture, entertainment, and television. A way you could monitor aspects of popular culture is through the numbers including sales, watches, and participants. One example of this would be pop music. “The official UK Chart is calculated by both sales and streams, with a streaming ratio of 150:1 (Ditto, online 2018)” with the artist calculating the highest number being awarded the UK number 1 on a Friday. Faults can be found in this idea because whilst something could be popular with a majority, it doesn't take into account the ideas and views of the subcultures. Whilst something may be accessible and enjoyed by a majority, it does not mean that this idea/experience or product is the best overall, contradicting the claim Hall made previously. In addition to this, the idea of popular culture being liked by many can only go so far which Hall also looks into when introducing the interpretation that popular culture is “the culture that is left over after we decide what is high culture” (2009: 6). By this definition, popular culture is a residual category, an inferior culture, which is “there to accommodate texts and practices that fail to meet the required standards to qualify as high culture
What popular culture and mass culture are, their significance to society and how they are consumed are very multifaceted questions that have been subject to wide debate is the fields of Sociology and Cultural Studies. Many theorists have chimed in on the debate to answer these questions. Two notable theories on this topic are that of Dwight MacDonald in his work “A Theory of Mass Culture” and John Fiske in his work “Popular Culture”. MacDonald argues that mass culture is a phenomenon that is detrimental to society. He believes that although mass culture is something that produced “by and for human beings” that is ultimately is what leads to the loss of individuality and individual thought and expression in favor
“Culture” is a term that over the years, has taken many forms, served many purposes and has been defined in a variety of contexts. At the rise of the industrial era, inhabitants of rural areas began to migrate to cities, thus starting urbanization. As this new era began to unfold, urbanization, mass production, and modernization became key ingredients in the transformation of culture. As more people became literate and the production of mass media such as magazines, pamphlets, newspapers etc. increased, many had the option and desire to identify collectively – popular culture began to rise. Popular or “mass” culture can be described as a “dynamic, revolutionary force, breaking down the old barriers of class, tradition, taste, and dissolving
Nevertheless, it binds people together and dictates what is socially acceptable, while reflecting what we believe and love. It allows individuals to change prevailing norms of behavior from the inside out. Pop culture helps us evolve from living in small homogeneous villages to coinciding in large heterogeneous cities, where a population thrives on differences. Pop culture gives each member of a society a sense of belonging, and the most obvious example would be the World Cup, a worldwide event that happens every four years. It paved the way for social and technological innovation, especially with the expansion of the internet everyone has equal access to information that was not previously available. Pop culture and its immediate effects are essential to individual and societal
It incorporates the daily interactions, needs, desires and cultural moments that make up the everyday lives of the society. It finds expression in day to day practices such as cooking, fashion, newspapers, magazines, television, mass media and the many facets of entertainment such as sports, music, dance and literature. Thus popular culture becomes “culture actually made by people for themselves” (Williams 111). In the essay “Notes on Deconstructing the Popular”, Stuart Hall defines popular culture as all the cultural activities of the people, or their “distinctive way of life” which is considered as popular within social context, and is popularly accepted within the society in any particular period (449). Popular Culture also accommodates cultural texts and practices which fail to qualify as the high or elite culture. This residual nature makes it a site of struggle between the marginalized and the dominant groups in society, where forces of incorporation and resistance against them come into
The textbook definition of popular culture is the accumulation of attitudes, ideas, trends, fads, icons, symbols, (etc.) that embodies the culture of a large mass of people at a point of time. Though when I think of what makes up popular culture, I think of all the popular fashion, trends, language, activities, technology, and basically everything popular in our society today. Popular culture can be seen everywhere, in how we eat, how we talk, what we wear, activities we do for fun, and technology we use. Popular culture changes constantly, it never stays the same. As time passes people change, and our popular culture changes with us. Not to mention everyone is different, so other’s popular culture is different than ours in different places, as well as time period.