High culture, popular culture : the long debate / Peter Goodall.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 179-190) and index.

Series editor's foreword -- Preface -- Introduction: from high culture to beer culture -- Culture and cultures -- Sacred sites and unvisited graves -- Coincidence of opposites: overview of the book -- A renovated 'English' -- 1. 'A pursuit of our total perfection': theories of culture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries -- The emergence of the debate about high culture and popular culture -- Aesthetics, art and culture -- Industrialism and the division of culture -- Victorian views of 'culture' -- Culture for the many or for the few? -- 2. Twentieth-century theories of high culture and mass culture -- The era of mass society and the decay of culture -- British writing about culture in the 1920s and 1930s -- The critique of mass culture from both political right and left -- Modernist definitions of high art, literariness, and the 'classic' -- The status of the text as a function of social process -- Modernist accommodations to the technology of mass culture -- Status and stratification in the analysis of culture -- 3. Postmodernism and cultural populism -- From modern to postmodern in accounts of mass culture -- Art, culture and consumerism -- Postmodernism as 'double-coding' -- Populism -- Sociologies of 'everyday life' and the search for a counter-aesthetic -- Cultural populism and its critics -- 4. Elitism and populism in the construction of Australian cultural identity -- The Great Dividing Range -- The achievements of colonial culture -- 'Currency' cultural values -- The populist myth of the bushman -- Criticism of populist myths of national identity -- Australian culture, 1930-50 -- The 'great Australian stupor' -- Whitlam and after -- 5. Quality and popularity in the Australian media -- The development of the mass media -- The early history of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation -- The low cultural status of television -- The construction of the 'arts' on radio and television -- Australian television drama -- The possibilities for 'art' television -- The mass media and high culture -- 6. 'Zones of Contestation': English and Cultural Studies -- Oppositional discourses -- The parallel histories of English and Cultural Studies -- Differences between English and Cultural Studies -- Moving beyond the high-popular conflict -- Endnotes -- Bibliography -- Index.

In this provocative analysis, Goodall challenges the current dominance of the contemporary and the popular in cultural studies. He argues that culture should be treated as an historical term, and traces the debate between high culture and popular culture in industrialised society from the 18th century to the present day. Goodall then locates the debate in Australia, arguing that it is of particular relevance to a postcolonial society. More than any other modern culture, Australia has sought its identity in its sense of struggle between populism and elitism. Finally, Goodall broaches the contentious topic of the relationship between the 'new' cultural studies and the 'old' humanities. Rather than simply defending one and denigrating the other, he points the way to a more productive relationship.

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