| Abstract: | The article examines ways in which the long-standing ambition to democratise culture in France can be applied to popular music, and to French pop particularly. Theoretically, pop should not need to be democratised at all since it is 'popular' by definition. But the rhetoric of 'popular culture' in France has traditionally been more to do with aspiration than reality. The analysis considers how French sociology and cultural policy have 'democratised' pop in one sense, by helping it find acceptance as a 'legitimate' practice, but have in the process constructed it as a social phenomenon, bypassing the much more complex issue of its aesthetic worth. |
