Insights: In-depth insight into the function and manifestation of culture in western society. This article potentially refutes a stagnant understanding of cultural movements. I will need to qualify my argument appropriately, e.g., discuss a specific manifestation (location and/or time) of hipster culure.
Bibliography: Traube, Elizabeth G. ""The Popular" in American Culture." Annual Review of Anthropology 25. (1996): 127-151. Web. 6 Mar 2011. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/2155821>. Through reflection on anthropological and cultural study of popular culture, Traube relates the spheres of influence for production and reception of popular culture in America. Traube finds that anthropologists tend to treat popular culture as distinct, alternate (to their own cultural consciousness) and autonomous. Within this context, she notes that right-wing studies often reduce popular culture to a primitive expression of lower classes, while the left sees the upper classes using popular culture as a means of social control. Traube compares the reductionist tendencies of anthropology to a redefinition of popular culture (through Marxist studies and Gramscian framework) as an ongoing hegemonic struggle between classes. She (Traube) takes examples from historical and contemporary American culture to posit popular culture as an entanglement of influence with ambiguous consequences.
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