Anthropology of Popular Culture
Popular culture has become one of the central arenas through which contemporary societies negotiate identities, values, political imaginaries, and cultural belonging. The rapid development of media, digital technologies, and social media has transformed not only the forms of popular culture but also the ways in which it is produced, circulated, experienced, and studied. These developments have generated sustained scholarly interest in the fluid and rapidly evolving forms of contemporary popular culture.
The blurring of boundaries between producers and consumers of cultural content, between artistic genres and media, between the popular and the avant-garde, together with the emergence of new actors and practices within the cultural economy, calls for new analytical perspectives and theoretical approaches.
The Editorial Board of Anthropology: Journal for Socio-Cultural Anthropology invites original contributions for a special issue entitled “Anthropology of Popular Culture.” We welcome submissions from scholars working in cultural anthropology, ethnology, folklore studies, cultural studies, history, philosophy, sociology, political science, economics, media and communication studies, and related disciplines.
We particularly welcome ethnographic, historical, comparative, and interdisciplinary contributions that explore the production, circulation, consumption, and social meanings of popular culture across diverse historical periods and cultural settings. Contributions may engage with contemporary debates on digital media, platform cultures, creative industries, cultural heritage, memory, globalization, identity, and everyday life, while also revisiting earlier forms of popular culture from new theoretical and methodological perspectives.
Submissions may address, but are not limited to, the following themes:
- New theoretical approaches and debates in the study of popular culture;
- Media, digital technologies, and popular culture;
- Cultural production, circulation, and consumption;
- Audiences, fandom, and cultural markets;
- The political economy of popular culture;
- Institutions, infrastructures, and cultural industries;
- Regulation, censorship, power, and cultural hierarchies;
- Popular culture and politics;
- Mainstream culture, subcultures, and the avant-garde;
- Genre boundaries, hybrid forms, and cultural innovation;
- Heritage, memory, and the contemporary uses of popular culture;
- Local, regional, and global dimensions of popular culture;
- Comparative perspectives on popular culture.
The special issue aims to bring together innovative empirical research and theoretical reflections that advance anthropological understandings of popular culture in a rapidly changing world.
Guest Editor: Assistant Professor Anton Angelov, PhD
Submission deadline: 30 May 2027
Publication date: 30 October 2027
Submission email:
