Reflective Writing II: Popular Culture

  Throughout the knowledge of culture and society this semester, I could briefly discuss the meaning for each culture and society disciplines. To express a deeply understanding of the culture and society, I will use the topic popular culture as an example.

   Initially, I will give the difinition of popular culture. According to the article, this is the culture which is trendy in present society, it is the opposite of historic culture and against hegemony and tradition (Danesi, 2015). Popular culture always attract the people who is contemporary, and it is often create by the youth generation in a particular age. In another words, it is a trend set by youth people. Then, as popular culture is such influential, it cannot separate with culture and society. Society is consists by people gathering together, such as community, group or tribe. As a place which is gathering with people, it has different culture. Danesi (2015) reveals that as culture is a system, it includes beliefs, music, variety art forms, communicative behavior, language and so on. As popular culture are either affected or consisted by these factors, therefore is is always influence by culture and society. In another hand, culture and society can also affected by popular culture. For instance, a successful pop-star can lead a youth age to copy the style or even the way of the pop-star talking, then, the pop-trend can change the way of how people think and talk for a specific moment. Hence, a influential popular culture can affect the traditions and a society from in a certain extent.

   There is a fact that the society has variety and full of diversity, the popular culture are involve with and influence by diversity as well. Diversity contains a large range of concept, such as age, gender, race, education level and nationality. In different group of society, people have different requirements. A study shows that, a increasing diversity marketing target increasing a diversity of music product (Alexander, 1996). To use music as an example, most of elderly people prefer classic music, but teenagers prefer RNB music. As long as diversity exists, the popular culture will remain the variety and creatation. In addition, the popular culture will expand the dimensions of diversity in some circumstances. As the popular culture growing, for instance, the internet. Internet basically contains, by scan the information from internet, different people engaged in different group. For example, some people became game enthusiasts, but some of people became excel at academic area.

  Because of the diversity, the popular culture is never stop changing in this world. Because many different factors and trends are developing in modern society, popular culture also will have some impacts in it. First, the labor is getting less because of the popular culture of technology. In most of the work place, human being are more easily to drive by emotion and influence by negative mood. However, as the technology is one of the popular culture which is highly developing today, to engage the smart technologies in work place is more efficient and well-organized. For example, an article found that almost 5.7 million driver is going take place by Google’s smart self-driving car (Evans, 2014). To make my country as another vivid example, China. At earlier 80s in China, people start to having interaction with eastern world. They found that to promote individuality and not bound by rules is popular in western, and this is exactly what they trying to find at that generation: self-awareness. Therefore, people began to try new and fresh things, or trying to break rules that bounded people, that become a popular culture. However, it has both positive and negative impact for Chinese society in that moment. For the positive aspect, the artist in that time is strongly increased, until 1990s, there still a great amount of art product has been produced. Such as rock music, purely art design, and also movie industry was developing extremely fast. In another hand, the negative effects were people obsessed with promote individuality and breaking rules, a lot of people start to becoming rude and savage.

 Thus, the precondition of developing a popular culture is based on a positive effect, and base on the belief, value and identity as well. For some of the circumstances, developing popular culture is positive for society progressing, such as technology, art industry, culture environment and so on. But in some other circumstances, a blindly popular development could be a crush for beliefs, values and identity. For instance, teenagers obsessed with video games. They spend a lot money to buying the online products for the game or they take a long time to play the game. For play the game they argue with their families they used to valued and have no time to study, which is lost their identity as a student. For another instance, young ages keen to engaged with cell phone in their daily life. In most of the time they use cell phone or social media to communicate with each other, but the directly human interaction is increasing, this is also a tradition loss. Hence, a correctly, positively developing of popular culture is important to our values and identity.

  Because it is significant for culture and society discipline to raise the awareness of human rights, therefore it is a perfect chance to build human rights awareness by popular culture. Music is a world language, and also it is a major part of popular culture, the display of a positive human right can have a globally influence. A article mentioned that an Indian music video which talked about a woman who against her violence husband and becomes a truck driver (http://www.vawnet.org/Assoc_Files_VAWnet/Dutt.pdf.) It is positively associate with women rights and it makes a good influence.

  Finally, the relation between hospitality and popular culture. As the popular culture is involved with people, and people always have diversity. Hence to working in a service career, it is important to know the popular culture. But in hospitality indutry, it is more important to know that the beliefs, communication behavior, life performance and traditional habits. It is important to know the popular culture of people from different places, because all the understanding need to do in hospitality is contain the diversity and supply a comfortable service experience for customers. Different from hospitality, in Sociology discipline popular culture is not only involve with habits and traditions such specific things, it roughly contains every major variety of popular culture. Such as art, religions, race, history and so on.         

Word count: 1131

References

Danesi, M. (2015). Popular culture: Introductory perspectives. Rowman & 

Littlefield. 

Alexander, P. J. (1996). Entropy and popular culture: product diversity in the popular music recording industry. American Sociological Review, 61(1), 171-174.

Evans, R. (2014). Retrieved March, 06, 2014, from http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-world-changing-trends-that-will-transform-pop-culture/

Dutt, M. (n.d.) from http://www.vawnet.org/Assoc_Files_VAWnet/Dutt.pdf

Reflective Writing 1

At first, I was not really clear about the concept of  “Culture and Society”. But when I finished our first photo board task, I was able to understand how the society related to culture and what is the concept of it. Furthermore, I have known that how can those significant factors structured a Culture background, and how is that affect people and society.

  I have uploaded four photos are respectively about culture, history, human, and identity. First, at culture aspect, I have talked about in China it is important to be together with all the family members at the end of the year which is a typical culture symbol in China. But when I browse the community, I found out that there is a lot of common grounds between my country and those who from other countries. This is somehow we are related as human beings even we are from the different race or area. Secondly, it is about identity. When I browse the identity part, indeed that we are sharing commons in some aspects, however, individually, we are still totally different from one another. Generally, this is also the reflect of how individually culture background affects people, people only notice the difference and individual particularity when they into another country or culture. ( Ryan, 2010, p. IX)

  

  Then comes to the human part which I was most considered about. I wrote about racism and all the other kinds of discrimination.  There is still a lot of people disturbed by all the different kinds of discrimination such as sexual preference, gender or appearance. This is a horrible thought pattern that ingrained in some people’s mind, and it is also intangible which means it is not easily to change. To achieve human equality rights, there is still a long way to go.

  

  To the history range, I felt really delightful to share the abundant history of China, but it’s too long to talk about so I choose the China traditional uniform. Actually, there are thousands of forms of traditional uniform for ancient China, but the most representative one is Han Fu. This is complicated because China has experienced 24 different dynasties, and it is interesting that some Western country like to criticize China but they do not really understand the complicated situation. There is 5000 years history of China and there have 56 different races in China. Besides the behavior or beliefs, there is still invisible part of the social system. Hall (1976) believes that to totally understand a culture people need to actively involve in this culture. Therefore, there is no one actually have the right to make any criticisms of other culture or society. It is important to be respect and understanding.

  To viewing the photo board posting was really an experience of enriching my knowledge of culture and society. It made me understand the difference between cultures and how is that affect people and society. In addition, it makes me more comprehensive and respect for others.

Words count: 505

Reference   

Ryan, M. (2010)

  Preface

  Cultural studies: A Practical Introduction

Hall, E., T. (1976)

  Edward T. Hall’s Iceberg Model

  Beyond Cultures