ABSTRACT
The problem of cultural populism has resonance outside the academy too. In the second edition of his book, McGuigan might well consider the curious case of the Modern Review, a magazine dedicated to taking popular culture seriously by defining itself against academic cultural studies. In sales terms, the Modern Review is not significant, but it exemplifies the dominant voice of lay cultural populism. Describing itself as providing 'low culture for highbrows' it furnishes a knowing middlebrow consumer guide. For both academics arguing about the curriculum and journalists arguing about the arts pages, what is at issue is 'popular culture'—how one should think about it, how we should study it, how one should value it. McGuigan traces the rise of academic cultural populism to the demise of the 'dominant ideology thesis', the assumption that one could map culture from the top down, from capitalist manoeuvre to audience response.
