1. C h a p t e r s 3 & 6 PA RT I
Globalizing the Body Politics
&
Jamming Media and Popular Culture

2. CHAPTER 3 SUMMARY
• To understand how our bodies are sites where categories of social difference
(race, gender, etc.) are marked and negotiated
• To understand that “race” is a social construct that was “invented” historically to
serve economic and political ends
• To introduce a process of “reading” body politics to reveal the social, economic
and political implications of the meanings we attach to “difference”
• To learn how we, as intercultural communicators, can resist and transform
socially constructed categories that maintain hierarchies of difference

3. CHAPTER 6 SUMMARY
• To understand the impact of media and
popular culture on intercultural
communication in the context of
globalization
• To examine how global and regional flows
of media and popular culture influence
intercultural communication and cultural
identities
• To understand the role of power and
hegemony in mediated intercultural
communication and the representation of
non-dominant groups
• To gain skills and strategies to critically
consume, resist and produce media

4. INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION IS AN
EMBODIED EXPERIENCE
People make meaning about each other through our
physical bodies and appearances
• i.e. skin color, facial features, facial expressions, gesture
Our Communication With Others Is Mediated
Through Our Bodies
People communicate meaning and perform identities
through their bodies
– i.e. clothing, hair style, tattoos.

5. BODY How is power written and
performed symbolically and
POLITICS materially on and through the
body?
Refers to the
practices and
Our bodies are sites where
policies through categories of social
which power is difference are constructed
marked,
regulated and (i.e. gender, race, religion, class, sexual orientation,
etc.)
negotiated on
and through the
body.

6. TYPES OF CULTURE
FOLK CULTURE HIGH CULTURE
Cultural practices that are Cultural activities that are often
enacted for the sole purpose of the domain of the elite or the
people within a particular place. rich.
**Traditional & nonmainstream
cultural activities that are NOT
– Ballet
financially driven. **
• Storytelling – Theatre
• Traditional Dance – Opera
• Graffitti – Fine art
• Spoken Word – Symphony

7. WHAT IS POPULAR
CULTURE?
Systems and artifacts that the
general populous or broad
masses within a society share or
about which most people have
some understanding.

8. Popular Culture
Generates profit.
Produces social norms.
Creates social identities or sense of who we are.
Maintains social boundaries.
Produces a sense of belonging and membership.
Enables social change and resistance.

9. POP CULTURE IS PRODUCED BY CULTURAL
INDUSTRIES.
POP CULTURE CULTURAL INDUSTRIES ARE DEFINED AS:
FULFILLS A
SOCIAL Industries that mass produce
FUNCTION. standardized cultural goods
Economic Growth
– Culture as – Normalize dominant capitalist ideologies
Product
– Marketing of – Create social practices that are uniform and
Ideas & Images homogeneous among people
Representations of
Self & Others – Easily manipulate the masses into docile and
– Generate
Knowledge of
passive consumers
Others
– Reaffirm  Institutions that generate Social, Cultural and Political
Aspects of
Self/Cultural thought through ideas and images.
Identities

10. G LO BALIZ ATI O N
MEDIA & POPULAR
CULTURE:
is shaped by the • Facilitates communication
advances in across cultures
communication • Frame global issues and
technologies, global normalizing particular
cultural ideologies
media, and the spread
• Fragment and disrupt
of popular culture. national and cultural
identities
• Forge hybrid transnational
cultural identities

11. Media, Popular Culture &
Globalization
Three elements of the media:
Media:
Technology
Institution
The modes, means Cultural form
or channels
through which
messages are
communicated.
Network Media

12. Popular Culture, ICC and Globalization
Cultural corruption: Cultural homogenization:
The perceived and The convergence towards
experienced alteration of a common cultural values and
culture in negative or practices as a result of
detrimental ways through global integration
the influence of other
cultures.

13. Popular Culture, ICC and Globalization
Cultural Imperialism: Fragmegration:
The domination of one
culture over others through
cultural forms such as Describes the dual and
popular culture, media, and simultaneous dynamic of
cultural products. integration and
fragmentation that has
emerged in the context of
globalization.

14. POP CULTURE, REPRESENTATION,
QUESTION &
IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION
Cultural texts may or may not
“represent” the identities they
target.
A. True
B. False

15. Many people perceive other cultural groups to be as they are portrayed on popular
television shows.
People often learn about other cultures through the lens of
popular culture.
Popular culture plays a powerful role in how we think about and understand other
groups as well as one’s own group’s representation.
STEREOTYPING
 Pop culture represents
stereotypes that are connected
to social judgments of others
 People tend to remember
negative portrayals of other
groups
 These reinforce negative
stereotypes
UNIQUE ASPECT OF POPULAR CULTURE
Audiences may experience the private lives of people they do not know, in ways that they never could as
tourists.

16. CONSUMING POPULAR CULTURE
Meaning is never FIXED, but is always being CONSTRUCTED
within various contexts through encoding and decoding.
Decoded
Encoded Message
Message
Faced with so
many pop cultural Sender Receiver
messages or
“cultural texts,” Encoding cultural texts
people negotiate
ENCODING: the process of creating a message.
their way through
DECODING: the process of interpreting a message.
popular culture in
different ways. Various industries prepare reader profiles, portrayals of readership
demographics, and respond to the cultural and political needs of
cultural identities in a variety of ways.

17. SOCIAL Social constructs exist because
people agree to follow certain
CONSTRUCTION conventions and rules associated
with the construct.
An idea or phenomenon Examples:
that has been “created,” Language
“invented” or “constructed”
by people in a particular Money
society or culture through Gender
communication Race
Human
beings
participate
in the
creation of
our own
realities
Our knowledge about ourselves, the world, and everyday reality is created through
communication

18. SEMIOTIC APPROACH TO DIFFERENCE
S E M I O T I C S :
Developed in the late
The study of the use of SIGNS in cultures 1800s by Swiss linguist
FERDINAND DE
SAUSSURE
SIGNS CONSIST OF SIGNIFIER AND SIGNIFIED
Signifier Signified
The Body
The Idea
Things
or
Actions Concept
Images
Example: “Go,” “Slow,”
Words “Stop”

19. There Is An Arbitrary Relationship Between the
SIGNIFIER and SIGNIFIED
1. There is NO natural or essential
relationship between SIGNIFIER and
SIGNIFIED
2. SIGNS belong to SYSTEMS and their
meaning comes from their relationship to
other SIGNS within the SYSTEM
3. The meaning of SIGNS is created
through the marking of DIFFERENCE EXAMPLE:
The colors red, yellow or green in a stop sign

20. The Power of Texts
HIERARCHY OF DIFFERENCE: THE POWER OF TEXTS:
System of classification of Texts construct, maintain, and
people predicated on the legitimize systems of inequity and
socially constructed idea of domination by creating authorized
superior and inferior races and preferred versions of history and
leaving out other perspectives,
(can also apply to gender, ethnicity, culture, experiences and stories.
religion, sexual orientation, etc.)
Silenced Histories:
The hidden or absent accounts of history that are suppressed or omitted from
official or mainstream versions of history

21. POP CULTURE, REPRESENTATION,
QUESTION &
IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION
Cultural texts may or may not
“represent” the identities they
target.
A. TRUE
B. False

22. BUT…
People also use popular culture
to reaffirm their own cultural
identities.

23. GENDER DIFFERENCE
Physical differences
in human bodies are
used to construct
two mutually
exclusive gender
categories:
WOMEN & MEN.
Gender differences
are constructed in
binary opposites:
MASCULINE: strong,
How is gender marked through communication? rational, significant
What purpose does this binary system serve? FEMININE: weak,
emotional, and

24. IS GENDER A NECESSARILY BINARY?
Alternatives To The Gender Binary
THIRD GENDER: TRANSGENDER:
People who live across, between or People whose gender identities differ
outside of the socially constructed from the social norms and expectations
two-gender system of categorization. associated with their biological sex.
THE TWO-GENDER SYSTEM REFLECTS & MAINTAINS RELATIONSHIPS OF
POWER
Gender difference shapes and impacts intercultural communication in the global context
EXAMPLE: Assumptions about feminine passivity, submissiveness and subservience leads
to the global exploitation of women
Who benefits from the gendered construction and performance of
unequal power relations?

25. POP CULTURE & CULTURAL SPACES
Some forms of popular culture (e.g., magazines, newspapers, internet sites) may
function like cultural spaces.
People construct their
relationships with their
cultural identities
through popular culture
Cultural texts are presented in products such as TV
shows, movies, magazines, music, toys, and video
games

26. RESISTING POPULAR
CULTURE
Sometimes due to a conflict in culture values and cultural identities, people
actively resist certain popular culture texts.
Much of the
resistance stems
from concerns
about the
representation of
various social
groups.