Free essay on culture study

Culture Study

Introduction

Popular culture is the making of commercial products to suit the tastes and preferences of consumers all over the globe. Over time, popular culture has become a trend amongst the world’s biggest commercial producers. Many companies and manufacturers are embracing popular culture to advance their global appeal and to make more money. This is the reason why popular culture is fast becoming a largely marketed phenomenon all over the world. Companies are trying to enhance their capitalist approach of doing business at the global level.

Culture is the way of life of a community. This includes the community’s behavior patterns, what the people do for a living, how they interact and their general human activities. This is a broad topic that covers the social, linguistic, economic and political aspect of a given group of human beings. Culture is some trait that must be shared by a certain population with the following characteristics. Culture is adaptive, cumulative, ideological, social, acquired, and transmittable and it bounds a people. This implies how culture is a way of livelihood of a group of people, creating a unique identity of those people. Culture changes with time and can be adapted by other people or passed on from one generation to another.

Popular culture refers to cultural activities and commercial products that have been made to reflect and suit the tastes and preference of the general public. This aspect of making products to be attractive and suitable to the general population is what is referred to as popular culture. Popular culture, just like culture, has been spreading and has been adopted by other people and is fast becoming a way of life for people in many countries. This is actually in an economic sense where most companies are adopting the popular culture approach to make their products acceptable and marketable to people of different culture, background and class.

Popular culture has been known after the post war period for commercial purposes. The commercial purposes of popular culture spread across various fields of commerce like television, movies, cyberspace, radio, toys, advertising and other products that are for sale. Popular culture has become a beneficial part of most country’s economies like the United States. In fact, popular culture was a very important component of the United States economic, material and political culture. To date, popular culture is among the United States’ most attractive export commodities such as movies from Holly Wood and Levi’s jeans.

Popular culture can be identified and distinguished in different ways. It is very unique from other kinds of culture such as folk lore and culture. Popular culture has different outcomes which make it a very important aspect of global marketing and capitalism. The outcomes of popular culture are that it plays a role in the analysis of the relationships between and within cultural and social groups of people. It also helps in accounting for the common factor and cultural diversity within various cultures and societies. This is basically the range and number of activities and trends that can be referred to as popular culture. The other outcome of popular culture in relation its global phenomenon is that it leads to the application of concepts and language associated with culture and society.

The characteristics of popular culture help bring out the capitalism and global market aspect of it. Popular culture is shaping the world’s capitalist economies through its commercially attractiveness to the world population. There are four main characteristics that can be used to easily identify and distinguish popular culture.

Popular culture has develops its appeal from a local community, rises to a national level then finally goes global. International or global level appeal is the distinction of genuine popular culture. It is the difference between local cultures and popular culture success. The progress from a local culture to the national then the global appeal is not always clearly defined but it can be traced back to its original local culture through comprehensive studies. The development that grows from the local network through the national network to a global stage is what gives a popular culture its global phenomenon status. It shows that a certain brand of a product is known all over the world and anybody in the world can purchase that product because they know it is a quality product. The capitalistic aspect of the popular culture is that it encourages industrialization and commercialization of businesses and promotes marketing of different products with the aim of making them popular cultures. It promotes commercial activities all over the world hence promoting economic growth. Examples of such companies that have grown from local networks to global trends are; the rock ‘ n’ roll progress in the early 1950s in America. This started at several local levels such as Chuck Berry who started in Chicago with Chess. Rock went national on television shows such as Milton Berle. Thereafter, there were international tours, films and record releases.

Popular cultures are also very much associated with commercial products. Ideally, popular culture is a way of making money through commercial transactions on the global market. The products are usually marketed and sold on the global market for one main reason, to make profits. In other cases, the motivation behind some popular cultures is always pure and non-financially motivated; however, the reason why any popular culture can thrive is through its commercial enterprises.

Popular cultures always allow customers to have adequate accessibility to the products. The accessibility of a given product on the global market is important to the success of the popular culture. Normally, there are challenges, mainly economic challenges that hinder an open and universal access to a popular culture. Such economic challenges should be considered during focus studies to identify them and deal with them.

Popular cultures are always changing and evolving. For a popular culture to remain fashionable and in demand, it has to change with time so as to adapt to the changing times. People usually tend to go for new things on the market, therefore, the popular cultures have to be changed and evolved to remain appealing and retain its customer share on the global market. Such an evolution and changing path can be traced right to its origin when the popular culture made it to the global market.

One of the popular cultures in the world today is the rock ‘ n’ roll music. This is a commercial product that includes T shirts, CDs and magazines and many other products. Rock ‘ n’roll started its progress in the 1950s in America. This started at several local levels. There was Chuck Berry and chess that started in Chicago, Elvis Presley on Sun Records in Memphis and Little Richard on Specialty who started in New Orleans. Rock music went national with the help of television shows such as Milton Berle and Ed Sullivan which were televised throughout the nation. Thereafter, rock music became global through record releases, tours and films. From the beginning, rock music was sold to the market as music for the youth. Therefore, its initial customers were mainly teenagers who accessed it through radio, records, concerts, magazines, TV and films. Rock music has always changed to suit the changing times. For example, rock music changed from Elvis to a more fashionable group, the Beatles. This later changed to Jimi Hendrix then the Sex Pistols. The trend continued to Michael Jackson then the latest of them all, Nirvana. This is proof that popular culture should change and evolve with the changing times.

Conclusion

Therefore, popular culture has become a way of life. Many countries are now earning a lot of foreign exchange thanks to popular culture. It is easily distinguished from other forms of culture by its global appeal, its spread from local to global gradually. The importance of popular culture keeps growing by the day because it spurs economic growth, international business, and industrialization and consumer welfare. The capitalism aspect of popular culture is brought about by the fact that the global marketing is driven by the urge to make money. Therefore, popular culture is a global marketing phenomenon that is motivated by capitalism to enhance commercial business worldwide.

Cultural Research Group. (2012). Arab Popular Culture. Journal for Cultural Research , 16 (2-3), 117-334.

Danesi, M. (2008). Popular Culture: Introductory Perspectives. New York: Rowman & Littlefield.
Fiske, J. (2010). Understanding Popular Culture (2, illustrated ed.). New york: Taylor & Francis.
Freccero, C. (1999). Popular Culture: An Introduction. New York: NYU Press.
Guins, R. (2005). Popular Culture: A Reader (reprint ed.). New York: SAGE.
Harrington, C. L., & Bielby, D. D. (2001). Popular Culture: Production and Consumption (illustrated, reprint ed.). london: Blackwell Publishers.