Popular culture, political economy and the death of feminism

Popular culture is often deemed to be ‘unworthy’ of analysis, yet it is essential in producing our knowledge of the world and each other. This is especially true for women, who historically have been represented in film, television and literature through narratives of sexual violence and/or derision. However, within Penny Griffin's field—International Political Economy (IPE)—popular culture is not recognized as an important site of investigation (p. 4). Griffin's book, therefore, is a highly important and exciting contribution to the field. She states that IPE scholars need to put their ‘gendered lenses’ on to make true sense of politics (p. 4) and offers an exploration into the ways that popular culture has produced and maintained damaging narratives surrounding feminism. Overall, she makes the point that ‘representations matter’ (p. 1) and that dismissing popular culture ignores its enormous impact on current politics and our understandings of gender, which are inextricably linked. Griffin collected data for her book through general discussions around the analysis of popular culture, citing Angela McRobbie's The aftermath of feminism (London: Sage, 2008) and Janet Halley's Split decisions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006) as foundational texts for her analysis. She also collected online survey data from participants who answered in-depth questions relating to feminism and popular culture, which formed the basis of a qualitative analysis of their responses

Art · Feminism · Griffin · Literature · Media studies · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Popular culture · Sociology · Gender Politics and Representation · Gender Studies · History · Law