University of British Columbia Kinesiology 381: Sport, Leisure and Popular Culture Cultural Studies meets Sports Studies Power, Sport, and Popular Culture Class Outline - Housekeeping - Our Lecture - Break (10 or so minutes) - Discussion - Tutorial Groups (breakout) - Group Assessment Organization [email protected]1 University of British Columbia Kinesiology 381: Sport, Leisure and Popular Culture Coffee as popular culture Coffee: Brown liquid substance? Polysemic signiAier? or both 1. The Representation of Coffee What meanings does coffee evoke for you? How does coffee acquire its meanings? How is it made to signify? 2. The Production of coffee Coffee, capitalism, and colonialism Where does coffee come from? What does it promote? 3. The Consumption of coffee As if by ‘magic,’ our consumption of coffee obscures the process of production How? 2 University of British Columbia Kinesiology 381: Sport, Leisure and Popular Culture “Commodity fetishism describes what happens under a capitalist system in which material objects are bought and sold: commodities come to stand in for relationships between people as symbols of meaning and value, while people and social relationships themselves become objectiAied (they are turned symbolically into objects)” (O’Brien and Szeman, 2014, 27) The ‘magic’ of consumption Karl Marx, a key @igure for us, called this process the fetishization of commodities 3 University of British Columbia Kinesiology 381: Sport, Leisure and Popular Culture How is it that objects conceal their relations of production? (as if by magic) We know that Starbucks and Nike are popular...but this doesn’t tell us much, if anything, about how popularity is produced, is policed, or changes, or of what is at stake in studying popular culture 4
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Cultural Studies Coffee4as4popular4culture4 meets …blogs.ubc.ca/kin381/files/2014/12/Week2Lecture-Cultural...Kinesiology 381: Sport, Leisure and Popular Culture THESIS #2 - IDEOLOGY
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University of British ColumbiaKinesiology 381: Sport, Leisure and Popular Culture
Cultural Studies meets Sports Studies
Power, Sport, and Popular Culture
Class Outline - Housekeeping!- Our Lecture !- Break (10 or so minutes)!- Discussion!- Tutorial Groups (breakout)!- Group Assessment Organization
University of British ColumbiaKinesiology 381: Sport, Leisure and Popular Culture
THESIS #2 - IDEOLOGY AS FALSE CONSCIOUSNESS
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University of British ColumbiaKinesiology 381: Sport, Leisure and Popular Culture
THESIS #2 - IDEOLOGY AS FALSE CONSCIOUSNESS
Generally, ideology is “the process by which the set of values and beliefs that bind individuals together become
‘naturalized’” (O’Brien and Szeman, 2014, 41)
For our purposes, in this example, ideology refers to the difference between how things appear to us (ideology)
and how they really are (reality)
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THESIS #2 - IDEOLOGY AS FALSE CONSCIOUSNESS
--------------------------The Economic Base!
capitalism, socialism, feudalism, etc
The !‘Superstructure’!
!!
Religion, Education, Media, Family, Law, ....pretty much everything in society
outside of the economic base ... including Sport
He'attempted'a'science'
of'history'and'society
Marx'concluded'that'the'‘mode'of'
production’'J'that'is,'how'things'are'
produced'in'and'for'society'J'
determines'the'culture'of'that'society
Marx'wrote'about'the'
capitalism'through'the'
industrial'revolution'
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THESIS #2 - IDEOLOGY AS FALSE CONSCIOUSNESS
“The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.
The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means
of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental
production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material
relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas.” (Marx, circa 1846)
Marx is saying here that our ideas about ourselves and the world around us are determined by those who own and control the infrastructure of our society; that is, those who own and control the modes of production
Marx on ideology:
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FOR EXAMPLE
• Nick Turse (2008) argues that the military invades our everyday lives in ways we simply do not register!
• If only we could see it, we would change...?
THESIS #2 - IDEOLOGY AS FALSE CONSCIOUSNESS
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University of British ColumbiaKinesiology 381: Sport, Leisure and Popular Culture
Does Tough Mudder, and perhaps sport in general, represent a deceptively simplistic and egalitarian model of performance and reward? And if so, who is falling for this?
University of British ColumbiaKinesiology 381: Sport, Leisure and Popular Culture
THESIS #2 - IDEOLOGY AS FALSE CONSCIOUSNESS
But, what about resistance, or chance, or change? !!
In Marx, because the ruling class determine the ruling ideas, the only hope for change is overthrowing the economic base: Revolutionary change. Consequential changes cannot be effected in culture (for example, sport) itself, because it is
determined by capitalism...!!
...so why study popular culture?
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University of British ColumbiaKinesiology 381: Sport, Leisure and Popular Culture
THESIS #3 - HEGEMONY AND THE CONSENT TO RULE (AND BE RULED)
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THESIS #3 - HEGEMONY AND THE CONSENT TO RULE (AND BE RULED)
Kinesiology 381: Sport, Leisure and Popular Culture
GROUP ASSESSMENT
2. Tutorial Facilitation 20%!Presentation and Class Activity!- Weeks 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, and 11, will conclude with student-led tutorials. You will be asked to undertake two broad tasks on the day that you and your group lead the tutorial. The first will be an approximately ten minute presentation, in which you will introduce, contextualizing, and elaborate the key concept(s) you have chosen from that’s week’s allocated readings. The second will be an activity in which the class can somehow experiment, apply, and otherwise learn about that key concept . How they do so is up to you. In detail:!First, an approximately 10 minute presentation. Each of the readings listed in this course outline are followed by, in brackets, key concepts that are crucial to, and discussed within, that particular article/chapter. Each of the readings listed in this course outline include key concepts, detailed by the author(s). For example, in week 2, commodity fetishism is a key concept in O’Brien and Szeman’s opening chapter from their Popular Culture: A User’s Guide textbook. As a group you will be asked to select one (or more) of these concepts, and prepare a presentation detailing it. This could include its origins, its history, its meaning and applicability, its context in the featured article, other instances in which it has been used in relation to popular culture (in journal articles or book chapters), and crucially, what it is intended to analyse or explain, and why it is important.!Second, an approximately 20-30 minute class learning activity. You will be asked to design an activity through which the class can experiment with that concept or concepts. This is meant to be a creative, pedagogical exercise that demonstrates and animates - brings to life - the ‘real world’ applicability of the concept, but also a chance to think critically about it and the material to which it is being applied. For example, you might show a video clip, hand out magazines, hand out the transcripts of an interview, show an advertisement or series of advertisements, use video game footage - the more creative and the more potential there is to experiment with the key concept(s), the better!!
IMPORTANT NOTE: will all be expected to meet with one or both of us in the build-up to your group’s tutorial to discuss your plans. The rest of the class need only prepare by reading that week’s articles. But, and crucially, we will all be active parts of these sessions, and your collective support and engagement will be paramount to making the tutorials enriching and rewarding.