Młodzież i popkultura : dyskursy światopoglądowe, recepcja i opór

Abstract

The monograph constitutes the analysis of the subject-matter at the borderline of sociology, theory of education, social pedagogy and pedagogy of culture. In the theoretical part, the emphasis was put on the presentation of the importance of the studies on pop-culture for the contemporary understanding of educational phenomena in which mass media play more and more significance. What was shown was an already historical argument on the status of the popular culture (low culture vs high culture). Also, a purely theoretical discussion of a social category young people constitute, and relations between the notion of identity and world view was included. Theoretical analyses close with an important subchapter devoted to the issue of reception, decoding and interpretation of cultural texts in which the author’s understanding of semantic phenomena was completed with the analyses of such classics as U. Eco, L. Grossberg, S. Hall, J. Fiske, R. Rorty, as well as Polish authors of studies on media and their message, i.e M. Mrozowski, T. Goban-Klas, J. Gajda, Z. Melosik. In the empirical part, the author discusses two selected popular discourses — a message of young people’s magazines and hip-hop music. Next, it analyses the reception of this content by young people, taking into account a critical reception level and decoding models distinguished by Stuart Hall. Making use of the method of content analysis by young people, the author makes a categorization of the most important worldview notions included in the young people’s magazines, such as sex, health, identity, stars, girl-boy, school, parents, etc. and hip-hop texts, such as blocks of flats, drugs, girlfriend, emotions, identity, life, money, police, politicians. In understanding the notion of world view (Weltanschauung), the author follows Wilhelm Dilthey who distinguished its three components: life experience, world image and life ideal. The world view notions popularized by pop-culture reveal the contemporary processes taking place within the scope of identity, axiology and theology of a contemporary teenager. These involve moving the identity problems to the body surface (identity somatisation), perceiving other people mainly as the objects of a sexual conquest or potential rivals in the battle of social promo- tion, the need of an authentic and independent life free from obligations and laws imposed on in advance. The dissertation answers the question on the educational influence the discourses under examination may have on young receivers, and shows the competences of young people in the area of meaning selection. The aim of media education is the state in which young people start selecting (rejecting) the messages transmitted according to defined criteria and conviction that, as a result of the reception of these messages, they either (intellectually, emotionally) gain or lose and waste time. An important empirical achievement of this work seems to be a statement that young people, often criticized for mindlessness, functional illiteracy and ignorance, show a high level of reflexivity in their contact with the pop-culture transmission. To prove that, the author presents his own classification of the critical reception level distinguished in the course of the empirical analyses (a critical reception of a negotiation, affirmation, selection, incurable optimism nature, and unreflective opposition). The work is directed at teachers, parents and educators, as well as all interested in the influence of pop-culture on young people.