What is popular culture?

Popular culture is the culture of our everyday lives. Popular culture is not limited to any one class, gender, ethnicity, or status group, and is embedded in "economic circumstances, nationalism, history and heritage, human migration and transnational cultural flow, political environment and cultural resistance, religious organization, and social relations." Popular culture plays a powerful role, whether on a local or global scale, in social and political commentary. Popular culture has become a rich resource for anthropologists expanding their inquiry and analysis of the nature of human culture. Generalizing about the characteristics of popular culture is challenging, given its complex and fluid nature. Homogenization results in forms of popular culture, such as ethnic music, being overwhelmed or deeply modified by other forms of music. Popular culture, in particular mass media, has received a great deal of criticism for being over-commercialized, presenting skewed values, and not having any cultural (elite) value.