By Toby Miller & Alec McHoul
Sage, 1998

Reviewer: Michael R. J. Roth
University of New Mexico

The authors of this book start from a premise that is critical of previous cultural studies, charging them with focusing on the "spectacular" (e.g., pop stars) and interpreting them in a "speculative" fashion that imposes meanings on its subjects, assuming that "everyday cultural objects stand on behalf of, or represent, wider social forces" (p. ix). This books attempts to reinvigorate the study of popular culture by taking a different approach, mixing cultural studies and ethnomethodology to examine how people make meaning in specific, mundane situations. According to the authors, cultural studies focus on "who controls communication and culture and how they do so (p. 1), while "Ethnomethodology examines social relations via everyday meaning, as it is constructed by talking, listening, moving, exchanging, reading, and so on" (p. 2). Popular culture, as they define it, consists of an intersection between people, markets, and value, and "stands opposed to dominant culture" (pp. 3-5). The introduction reviews previous studies, primarily influenced by Marxist theories, that have examined the meaning of popular culture as well as key concepts that have influenced the field (e.g., myth, denotation, connotation, hegemony, identification, and encoding and decoding) in the works of Garfinkel, Sacks, Williams, Marx, Hall, Gramsci, and other contributors to the field.

The book is divided by the type of activity that is examined: "Food/Eating," "Sport," "Self-Help/Therapy," and "Talking." None of the studies presented in these chapters pretends to be comprehensive, but rather attempts to provide an example of both a subject of study and a methodology appropriate for eliciting meaning from the activity. The results are, as a result, uneven and somewhat idiosyncratic, but each is revealing after its own fashion. One benefit of this presentation is a degree of insight into the variety of approaches that may be taken in the investigation of popular culture.

For example, the "Food/Eating" section examines the historical, cultural and economic forces that have influenced eating habits in various times and places, affecting personal dietary choices through "food myths" that affect the social perception of various foods. This chapter is rich with fascinating trivia, but also provides a detailed ethnographic study of the food-ordering processes at fast-food franchises. "Sport" examines the development of sports in various societies, their commodification, the spectator/participant aspects of sports, and the various values that have been socially associated with sports and physical development ("Muscular Christianity had complete faith in the transformation of individuals through continuous exercise") (p. 67).

One entertaining example of "Talking" takes the reader through the solution of a crossword puzzle in the London Times. This exercise provides an intriguing look at how an artifact functions as a communication device, taking the reader through the thought processes of the puzzle-solver (McHoul) as he attempts to decrypt each clue. The puzzle, imbued with its British idiosyncrasies, can be seen as the focal point of a dialogue between crossword authors and solvers, the latter of which must familiarize themselves with not only purely linguistic references but also the encrypting methodologies of the creators. It would have been interesting if McHoul had taken this exercise one step further and done a cross-cultural comparison with, say, The New York Times crossword, which takes a very different approach in the construction of its puzzles. Nonetheless, it provides a fascinating insight into an artifact that has created its own rhetorical community. McHoul rounds out his investigation by providing texts of correspondence with a puzzle writer, who largely confirms McHoul's hunches about the construction of clues.

Despite its quirks, this readable text succeeds in providing some novel approaches to the study of popular culture, and it helps draw attention to the communicative function of popular artifacts, apart from the study of discourse. It does not succeed insofar as it attempts to be free of ideological bias, blithely holding to a constructivist stance ("The raw stuff of human beings, then, is not individuals: people become individuals through discourse and institutions") (p. 91). However, as a tool for examining the role of things in the construction of human communication, it provides some perspectives that are often overlooked by communication researchers, as well as material that would get students to consider ways of thinking out of the prefabricated boxes of communication theory.