Popular culture is so much more than what one consumes. It's how we talk, the ways we interact with people, and so forth. Have you ever seen or heard of people shying away if someone has AIDS? Maybe if they are gay or black or speak a different language? Have you used dialogue that might be considered "politically incorrect?" Have you ever assumed that things are one way because "that's the way they are?" That's deeply embedded popular culture of a negative sort, not the pop consumerism that you associate with pop culture. Different definitions. I'm referring to the things that we imbibed as child to the point where one doesn't think much about the whys of those thoughts/actions anymore. It differs from locale to locale, to be sure, but if I were to say that it was strongest in the rural regions of the South than elsewhere, would those examples you gave be as apt? But what about the examples I give above? Do you find them in a city setting? In the Northeast? In California? Ever wondered where those came from?

Many of those attitudes are based on second-, third-, and beyond -hand beliefs on religious matters. The bit you refer to the OT and divorce sayings doesn't directly apply, since I'm referring to interpretations of biblical beliefs to where a woman's "place" was in the private realm of the home, while a man was to roam and gather. While this certainly predates any formal religion to a degree (Cherokees and other societies where there was a more equal distribution of labor being exceptions), it was indeed legitimatized in Christian practices that extend back millenia. Conversely, this is why women have the upper hand in most court cases. There is a bias that men cannot be as good of a nurturer and provider of emotional comfort in a child's early years as a woman.

As for the pay disparity, you mention willingness to travel. Could this be an indirect result of this belief that women must be more sedentary than men? There is often an implicit condemnation of women who don't marry (although this is certainly changing, but we are looking at the past to now, not toward the future), who "abandon" their "duties" for work elsewhere. While the causes for these attitudes may be half-forgotten, most of them do stretch back to interpretations of religious doctrine regarding proper familial relations.

So while it's probably just a matter of semantical differences, I must disagree with some of your assertations. But hey, that's cool that we can and still see valid points in the other's arguments, right? Of course, defining "culture" is a tricky bitch. You've seen Alana's quote on culture, I know. You know what school that's from, right? I define it based more on the Annalists and their poststructuralist bastard offspring than from a materialist viewpoint. Peter Burke and Peter Gay have some excellent books on popular culture at various times in Britain and Germany that explain things fairly well. Foucault's also good for that. Even Chomsky, the very little I've read of his stuff, has things to add, even if it's just to be a shitkicking sort of discourse Give them a go sometime.


Dylanfanatic

Illusions fall like the husk of a fruit, one after another, and the fruit is experience. - Narrator, Sylvie

OF Blog of the Fallen