Popular Culture as the Practice of Creating Meanings

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to conceptualise the phenomenon of modern popular culture as a cultural practice of creating meanings. Methodology. General scientific research methods were applied: analysis and synthesis were used during the review of the main studies of popular culture theorists, by virtue of using systematic method, popular culture was reviewed as a whole, with the coordination of its components, comparative methods was used to collate the features of popular culture with others. The scientific novelty is that the definition of popular culture has been clarified from the perspective of modern Ukrainian cultural studies, considering the meaning-creation processes of its makers. Conclusions. Popular culture is a type of modern culture that recognises the importance of the ordinary, mundane, while everyday life is perceived as an important component of cultural formation. In everyday life, meaning-creation occurs when popular culture makers are not trained specialists, but rather ordinary people, consumers of cultural products, who imbue them with feelings and emotions, give them meaning, based on their own opinions and customs. Such vision allows us to move from a simplified view of the hierarchy of "high" and "low" cultures to a more complex multi-layered picture of the functioning of modern culture.

Key words: popular culture, Cultural Studies, cultural formation, lifeworld, everyday life, cultural practices, sense formation, creation of meanings.