This text offers a broad-ranging survey of social and cultural theory while issuing a challenge to contemporary cultural studies' emphasis on speculation, rather than observation. The authors invite readers to question their participation in both dominant and sub-cultural practices by providing perspectives on the everyday through ethnography, textual reading, discourse analysis and political economy. Following a summary of key ideas on everyday practice, such as "eating" or "talking", each chapter considers the discourses that construct these practices, and concludes with one or more empirical investigation. By acknowledging the historical specificity and mundane character of popular culture and everyday life, and by looking at everyday practices in their own right, rather than as merely representations of something else, the authors seek to open up the possibility of a significant departure in cultural studies.
Toby Miller is a British-Australian-US interdisciplinary social scientist. He is the author and editor of over 30 books, has published essays in more than 100 journals and edited collections, and is a frequent guest commentator on television and radio programs. His teaching and research cover the media, sports, labor, gender, race, citizenship, politics, and cultural policy, as well as the success of Hollywood overseas and the adverse effects of electronic waste. Miller's work has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Swedish, German, Turkish, Spanish and Portuguese. He has been Media Scholar in Residence at Sarai, the Centrefor the Study of Developing Societies in India, Becker Lecturer at the University of Iowa, a Queensland Smart Returns Fellow in Australia, Honorary Professor at the Center for Critical and Cultural Studies, University of Queensland, CanWest Visiting Fellow at the Alberta Global Forum in Canada, and an International Research collaborator at the Centre for Cultural Research in Australia.
Introduction to Popular Culture and Everyday Life Food/Eating Sport Self-Help/Therapy Cultural Devices Talking Glossary A Vocabulary for Popular Culture and Everyday Life
`Taking on such topics as sport, therapy, food, and conversation, McHoul and Miller perform the impressive feat of rethinking the study of popular culture whilst also explaining difficult theoretical concepts. This is a clever book which will give students important new tools for understanding the meaning of the everyday in their lives' - Marita Sturken, University of Southern California
