Introduction to Pop Culture, Subculture, and Cultural Change

What you’ll learn to do: examine pop culture, subculture, and cultural change

In the foreground a hand holds a remote control pointed at a television. In the background there is a large black TV screen with the word "Netflix" in big red letters.

Figure 1. Netflix is an American subscription based streaming service for television and movies, media considered part of popular culture. (Photo courtesy of freestocks.org/unsplash)

It may seem obvious that there are a multitude of cultural differences between societies in the world. After all, we can easily see that people have different beliefs and engage in different practices from one society to the next. It’s natural that a young woman from rural Kenya would have a very different view of the world from an elderly man in Mumbai—one of the most populated cities in the world. Additionally, each culture has its own internal variations. Sometimes the differences between cultures are not nearly as large as the differences inside cultures. You’ll examine these differences in this section.