Page 143 - CULTURE IN THE COMMUNICATION AGE

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SUPERCULTURE FOR THE
COMMUNICATION AGE

James Lull

How can people find their way in a world where the stabilizing influence of
culture as a communal project is being transformed into a far more symbolic,
personalized panorama of images and dreams, fantasies and illusions, journeys
and retreats? The historically unparalleled development of communications
technology and the sweep of globalization that surrounds us today are changing
the very nature and meaning of culture. Although ‘community’ remains a key
characteristic, culture is becoming more an individualistic and highly discursive
enterprise now. Moreover, cultural communities themselves are being formed
in new ways, signaling a fundamental transformation of human experience.
The empirical and imaginary space between the communal and the individual
is precisely where much cultural work is undertaken in the Communication
Age. A discussion of how that work is accomplished, and what some of the
major consequences are, is the main purpose of this writing.
The focus of this chapter is a concept I call the superculture. As the name
implies, the superculture transcends traditional categories of culture and cul-
tural analysis. It continues to reflect culture as community, taking form even at
the global level, but it is based primarily on the idea of culture as personal
orientation and experience and on the dynamic ways that meaningful social
interaction, activities, and identities are constructed by people through contem-
porary modes, codes, and processes of human communication. Supercultures
are customized clusters, grids, and networks of personal relevance – intricate
cultural multiplexes that promote self-understanding, belonging, and identity
while they grant opportunities for personal growth, pleasure, and social
influence.
The superculture is the cultural matrix that individuals create for themselves
in a world where access to ‘distant’ cultural resources has expanded enor-
mously. At the same time, however, the superculture embodies traditional or
‘close’ cultural resources too – the values and social practices characteristic of
‘local’ cultures as they are learned and reproduced by individuals and groups.
The essence of the superculture resides in the dynamic interfaces that link and

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