Page 28 - Communication Processes Volume 3 Communication Culture and Confrontation

Introduction 3

IntroductIon

eDitoRS

This first part comprises three preliminary contributions on account of
their wider, theoretical and methodological scopes, thanks in particu-
lar to their emphasis on both the parameters of power and ambivalence.
They give an opportunity to appropriately display their wide-ranging
effects from three general and very contextually different vantage
points, that is, discourse, practice and system, before observing their
working in detail in the other case studies of the book.

Discourses on Popular Cultures

The study ‘From the Popular to the People’ by Guy Poitevin, shows
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how the term ‘popular cultures’ is highly problematic and simply
adds to the confusion. Should the ‘people’ be really equated to the
‘popular’? By pointing to culture as a stake of contention in power
conflicts (Chombart de Lauwe 1975; de Certeau 1990, 1993; Laclau
1977; Ostor 1981; Touraine 1977, 1981), the ‘popular’ might be under-
stood as referring to authentic and free forms emanating from the
‘people’ against, for instance, a debased mass or ‘commercial culture’
(Naremore and Brantlinger 1991), a dominant ‘elite culture’, or a
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repressive ‘ruling class culture’. Various agencies strive either for
controlling the market of cultural goods or for imposing particular
norms of quality control to the same goods.
Culture struggle starts with the very definition of the concepts of
‘culture’ and ‘popular culture’, and must be understood in terms of a
contest to rule over the symbolic systems that give meaning to human
experience and cohesion to human collectives. The ‘popular’ tends thus