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Where’s Elvis and Trump? Where’s Godzilla and Gaga? Where’s Bowie and Beyoncé? Popular cultures in Social and Cultural Geography, 2000-2020

2018; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 20; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14649365.2018.1559346

1470-1197

John Horton,

Culinary Culture and Tourism

Where's Elvis and Trump?Where's Godzilla and Gaga?Where's Bowie and Beyoncé?Popular cultures in Social and Cultural Geography, 2000-2020 This provocation considers engagements with popular and media cultures in Social and Cultural Geography.I celebrate the journal's major achievement in creating a space for substantial empirical-theoretical consideration of popular and media cultures, notably via sustained work on popular geopolitics, postcolonial cultures, and subcultural scenes.However, I also note the absence of so many iconic figures and forms of popular culture.In short: where are Elvis, Trump, Aretha, Godzilla, Gaga, Bowie, Beyoncé, Micky Mouse, Father Christmas and countless others, and how might we understand their absence from the journal?I argue that engagements with popular and media cultures in Social and Cultural Geography have been weirdly coy, time-lagged and uneven.I call for more scholarship attuned to, and alive with, these affecting, life-changing, identity-defining, power-laden geographies. Preface: searching for popular cultures in Social and Cultural Geography, 2000-2020Try this game.It has occupied, entertained and challenged me for hours while writing this essay.Step 1: Think of an iconic piece of popular culture.Perhaps a song, movie, television show, game, meme, character, technology, event, genre, scene, subculture, artist, artwork, social network, performer or celebrity.Perhaps something that matters to you.Perhaps something of life-changing, identity-defining, zeitgeist-shifting importance for many people, past or present, for better or worse.Step 2: Go to the Social and Cultural Geography homepage and search for this thing, anywhere in the journal, from issue 1 to present, and see how many times it has been mentioned.I wager that the answer will be 'none' or 'maybe once, but it is only a slight, momentary, glancing mention amid a discussion of something else'.