ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to problematize the two key concepts of the book, the ‘popular’ and the ‘material.’ Both concepts have helped produce two general categories, popular culture and material culture. In the course of my analysis I will try to show some of the complexities and contradictions that can arise if we treat either of these categories as self-evident. I will argue that it is impossible to really understand the texts and practices of what we call ‘popular culture’ without a critical engagement with the different concepts of popular culture. In order to do this, I will outline five ways in which popular culture has been theorized and show how each theorization carries with it a different understanding of what we are doing when we engage in the study of popular culture. In the second part of the chapter I will approach the concept of the material in a slightly different way. Rather than present a critical discussion of the definitional difficulties we might encounter with competing concepts, I will tighten the critical focus to the materiality of popular culture. This will inevitably involve a discussion of what cultural studies means by culture and how this connects to its understanding of the material.
