ABSTRACT
It is easy to be critical of the ‘culture and civilization’ tradition’s approach to popular culture. Although the ‘culture and civilization’ tradition, especially in its Leavisite form, created an educational space for the study of popular culture, there is also a real sense in which this approach to popular culture ‘actively impeded its development as an area of study’. The study of popular culture in the modern age can be said to begin with the work of Matthew Arnold. However, it must be remembered that from a historical point of view, the tradition’s work is absolutely foundational to the project of the study of popular culture in British cultural studies. Acceptance brought into being ‘high society’ and ‘high culture’, to be distinguished from society and culture or, better still, mass society and mass culture. In the first fifteen or so years following the end of the Second World War, American intellectuals engaged in a debate about so-called mass culture.
