From television, film, and music to sports, comics, and everyday life, this book provides a comprehensive view of working-class culture in America. The terms "blue collar" and "working class" remain incredibly vague in the United States, especially in pop culture, where they are used to express and connote different things at different times. Interestingly, most Americans are, in reality, members of the working class, even if they do not necessarily think of themselves that way. Perhaps the popularity of many cultural phenomena focused on the working class can be explained in this way: we are endlessly fascinated by ourselves. Blue-Collar Pop Culture: From NASCAR to Jersey Shore provides a sophisticated, accessible, and entertaining examination of the intersection between American popular culture and working-class life in America. Covering topics as diverse as the attacks of September 11th, union loyalties, religion, trailer parks, professional wrestling, and Elvis Presley, the essays in this two-volume work will appeal to general readers and be valuable to scholars and students studying American popular culture.

Blue-Collar Conservatism examines the blue-collar, white supporters of Frank Rizzo—Philadelphia's police commissioner turned mayor—and shows how the intersection of law enforcement and urban politics created one of the least understood but most consequential political developments in recent American history.

In Constructing Blue-Collar Leaders in a White-Collar World . . . "Dr. LaMar Herndon considers a group of leaders often overlooked and occasionally denigrated-the-bivocational pastor. Constructing Blue Collar Leaders in a White Collar World integrates important theoretical leadership concepts with spiritual and practical realities. Dr. Herndon explores important topics such as trends and issues facing the global church and its leaders, leadership models, values and ethics, character and integrity, cultural effects, creativity and innovation, reverse mentoring, and strategic planning. This book is a profoundly honest hands-on guide to what constitutes a true leader serving as a bivocational minister." -Dr. Gary Oster Regent University School of Business & Leadership, Virginia Beach, VA "Down through my thirty plus years of education, ministry, and leadership I have read many books on the subject of leadership. Some have challenged me and inspired me, but none have done so at the level of Constructing Blue Collar Leaders in a White Collar World. As a State Minister, I work with many bivocational and blue collar Pastors. I will be using Dr. Herndon's book as a primary resource to assist me in working with those Pastors in challenging and inspiring them in their leadership development." -Dr. Darryl Allen State Minister KY Church of God Ministries, Adjunct Professor at Nazarene Bible College & Mid-America Christian University "It [Constructing Blue-Collar Leaders in a White-Collar World] is an excellent presentation of leadership issues every pastor needs to understand to some degree. The chapter on "Values and Ethics" is worth the price of the book. Thanks for sharing the results of your many hours of study and hard work." -Ray Gilder National Coordinator Bivocational and Small Church Leadership Network, Bivocational Small Church Ministries Specialist Tennessee Baptist Convention "Dr. LaMar Herndon presents leadership from a very down to earth and practical approach. This book seeks to help the bivocational church leader be effective while balancing these two worlds. I believe this book needs to be in every pastor, minister, and leaders library; whether bivocational or not." -Rev. Jewel D. Williams, M.R.E. (Church of God, Anderson, IN Author of Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, Living our Theology, and the Path of a Preacher

This book observes and analyzes transnational interactions of East Asian pop culture and current cultural practices, comparing them to the production and consumption of Western popular culture and providing a theoretical discussion regarding the specific paradigm of East Asian pop culture. Drawing on innovative theoretical perspectives and grounded empirical research, an international team of authors consider the history of transnational flows within pop culture and then systematically address pop culture,digital technologies, and the media industry. Chapters cover the Hallyu—or Korean Wave—phenomenon, as well as Japanese and Chinese cultural industries. Throughout the book, the authors address the convergence of the once-separated practical, industrial, and business aspects of popular culture under the influence of digital culture. They further coherently synthesize a vast collection of research to examine the specific realities and practices of consumers that exist beyond regional boundaries, shared cultural identities, and historical constructs. This book will be of interest to academic researchers, undergraduates, and graduate students of Asian media, media studies, communication studies, cultural studies, transcultural communication, or sociology.

This book explores how notions of suburbia have developed in our collective imagination, examining novels, cinema, popular music and television in the US and UK.

Contemporary popular culture is engaged in a rich and multi-levelled set of representational relations with austerity. This volume seeks to explore these relations, to ask: how does popular culture give expression to austerity; how are its effects conveyed; how do texts reproduce and expose its mythic qualities? It provides a reading of cultural texts in circulation in the present ‘age of austerity’. Through its central focus—popular culture—it considers the impact and influence of austerity across media and textual categories. The collection presents a theoretical deconstruction of popular culture’s reproduction of, and response to, mythical expressions of ‘austerity’ in Western culture, spanning the United Kingdom, North America, Europe and the Middle East and textual events from political media discourse, music, videogames, social media, film, television, journalism, folk art, food, protest movements, slow media and the practice of austerity in everyday life

Alphabetically arranged entries cover such work issues as health insurance, immigration, sweatshops, drug testing, affirmative action, and the effects of globalization and information technology on work processes.

Popular Culture: An Introductory Text provides the means for a new examination of the different faces of the American character in both its historical and contemporary identities. The text is highlighted by a series of extensive introductions to various categories of popular culture and by essays that demonstrate how the methods discussed in the introductions can be applied. This volume is an exciting beginning for the study of the materials of everyday life that define our culture and confirm our individual senses of identity.