Week 9 - Analysis

Inventing Popular Culture by John Storey treated the concept of popular culture from a historical perspective and traced its origins back to a desire by the middle class to idealize the past and condemn the present (Storey 2003:10). Storey also highlighted the correlation between creating a popular and high culture with economic inequality. He did not say that economic inequality was a direct result of high culture but rather quoted philosopher Pierre Bourdieu who suggested that “the making, marking, and maintaining of social difference, help[ed] to secure and legitimate forms of power and domination which are rooted in economic inequality” (Storey 2003: 43). These concepts are important to our understanding of how the poor and marginalized are oppressed and remain oppressed.

Trafficked peoples are part of this stigma. They generally are economically hard-pressed and are trafficked either because they are easy to prey upon by others or seek a new start somewhere that they perceive is better. They are people who have been kept underfoot by society’s desire to maintain social difference. This occurs all over the world…not just in the west and is not necessarily perpetuated by western influence.

It is not unusual for people in many nations to experience this kind of social categorization, even among some prior to industrialization. History records many examples of this kind of social and economic class structure. This is not a new phenomenon.

Storey cautions those who would too quickly say that globalization is really the Americanization of other nations. That implies that it is a one-way influence and that those who are influenced do not interact with the ideas with which they are presented. Both of these assumptions are false. First of all, America itself is the product of many different influences from other nations and is constantly changing. Secondly, other nations do receive a lot of American products and marketing but also mix it with their own culture. It is a two-way, not a one-way street.

So given the fact that this kind of stratification occurs everywhere and it is not necessarily the ideals of one nation over another, it must be dealt with in each nation’s context. Of course the challenge in a world with increasingly blurred boundaries, who decides how to deal with these issues and how are those plans adaptable for future years?