Taḥqīqāt-i Farhangī-i Īrān (Jun 2013)
The Construction of the Subject in the Process of Popular Culture Consumption
Abstract
The plurality of the cultural types and goods can be highlighted as one of the most important characteristics of the popular culture. It seems that plurality in societies in transition, which are not the original homeland of this culture, has caused a kind of heterogeneity, which is also evident in Iran as a society in transition. In addition, the consumption space of this culture in Iran, because of the limitations on the production of some types of popular culture, has turned this heterogeneity into conflicting interactions. The challenge between the official and unofficial types of this culture in Iran is an old and problematic one. In the present study, carried out on Tehran's consumers of official and unofficial types of popular music as significant manifestations of popular culture, attempt is made to address this question: how are the consumers of official and unofficial types of popular music constructed? For this purpose, the theoretical and methodological constructionist approach is adopted, and the focus group technique is employed to collect data; finally, the collected data is analyzed using the thematic analysis technique. Based on the extracted themes in each thematic analysis, it was concluded that the consumers of the official type are non-essentialist, nostalgic and lenient subjects, while the consumers of the unofficial type are essentialist, non-traditionalist, monopolist and universalist subjects. This fundamental difference in the subjectivity of the two groups of consumers results in a static conflicting interaction in the space of popular culture consumption.
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