Volume I establishes the historical dimension necessary for the study of popular culture, showing how popular culture has developed over the past two centuries in the West, and how it has operated as a site of aesthetic debate and contestation as well as of communal pleasure and social interaction. The second and third volumes are devoted to the different theoretical perspectives and analytical approaches to popular culture. The final volume concentrates on the questions and issues involved in the aesthetics and ethics of popular culture and their relation to the quality of public life.