GUÍA DE LECTURA TRABAJO INDIVIDUAL CLASE N° 11

HARRY POTTER AND THE FUNCTIONS OF POPULAR CULTURE

Kidd, Dustin: “Harry Potter and the Functions of Popular culture” in The
Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 40, No. 1, 2007 , Blackwell Publishing, Inc

ANTICIPATION
1. Look at the paratextual information (title, author, source and quote). Why do you
think the author includes Harry Potter in the title? Can you relate Harry Potter to another
concept from the title? (¿Podés relacionar Harry Potter con algún otro concepto del
título?)

2. Focus on the quotation (cita) at the beginning of the text and scan the text for proper
names. Notice the name that is repeated many times?

3. Read the first lines of each paragraph. Which two concepts does the author relate?
Which paragraph do you anticipate as important? Why?

4. Think of what “This list...” in paragraph 5 (referencia anafórica) refers to.

NOTA
ESTRATEGIA: cada vez que encontramos UN ENUMERADOR debemos buscar
más, es decir identificar cuántos hay. Para esto escaneo tratando de ver dónde
comienza y dónde termina la lista de enumeración. Una vez delimitado el
comienzo y el fin de la lista, sabemos que se enumeran una cantidad X de ....?
¿De qué? Y ahí está la estrategia, siempre delante del primer enumerador
detectado encontraré qué se enumera. Entonces me remito a esa línea
particular y la leo.

5. Circle enumerators and connectors present in the 4th paragraph. ¿Cuántos

enumeradores encontraste? ¿Viste algún otro conector importante en este párrafo?

6. Look at the whole text, underline keywords that are repeated. Check your answers
the video
with this VIDEOonTUTORIAL
campus

7. Study the graph below. Pay attention to the way the author’s argumentation
is presented and complete the empty spaces. (Completá los espacios en blanco)
 …………….. Sociedad
Para
capitalista
DURKHEIM actual
Abordaje
funcionalista
e
Identificación de Normal y
elementos
…………….. necesario
positivos

Sociedad sana

Para KIDD

FUNCIONES

1)
2)
3)
4)
5)

COHESIÓN SOCIAL

en el campus
Podes autocorregir esta actividad clickeando: Autocorrección Anticipación

8. Write a specific hypothesis of the text. (Habilitada en el e-portfolio)

9. Now read the text. Remember to SKIP what you do not know. (Ahora podés leer el texto
detenidamente )
Kidd, Dustin: “Harry Potter and the Functions of Popular culture” in The Journal of
Popular Culture, Vol. 40, No. 1, 2007 , Blackwell Publishing, Inc

Harry Potter and the Functions of

Popular Culture
DUSTIN KIDD
“For Sociology really to be a science of things, the generality of
phenomena must be taken as the criterion of their normality”.
(Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method 104)

HEAVY METAL MUSIC HAS BEEN DESCRIBED AS A THREAT TO ‘‘OUR’’ children 1

and rap is touted as a threat to ‘‘our’’ society (Binder). Music videos provide a framework that
justifies rape and other forms of sexual violence (Jhally). The reproduction of artwork in
mass-produced books has destroyed the special ‘‘aura’’ of art (Benjamin), and television has made
cultural consumers passive (Horkheimer and Adorno). Sociological analyses have produced a
lengthy list of critiques of popular culture such that we must wonder why we bother with popular
culture at all. What could be more pathological than a social element that threatens a society and
its members while also reducing the good life to a commodity and reducing persons to
consumers? Utopian visionaries have long hoped to one day eradicate crime. Should popular
culture be an additional target? To address this question, I turn to Emile Durkheim’s The Rules of 10
Sociological Method, which argues that crime is actually normal and necessary for a healthy
society. Durkheim’s principles for the necessity of crime are applicable to the study of popular
culture and raise to the surface the often-overlooked functions that popular culture serves in
contemporary society. The evidence for this claim comes from the existing literature on the
relationship between cultural consumption and social structure, particularly the literature of
cultural sociology and of cultural studies. I also offer a brief study of one specific example, that of
the hugely successful Harry Potter novels, as an illustration.
The Rules of Sociological Method includes a chapter on ‘‘Rules for the Distinction of the
Normal from the Pathological,’’ in which Durkheim uses a functionalist approach to identify
those elements of social structure that are conducive to social health and to distinguish them from 20
those that are pathological and destructive. Healthy elements are those whose functions actually
30 are elements that are found in all societies. Durkheim
benefit social cohesion, and generally they
takes crime as his key example because, given the obvious negative associations with crime, it is
surprising that crime persists and is so widespread. Why has it not been eradicated if we all agree
that it is bad? Durkheim argues that the sociological approach to crime needs to look past the
detrimental effects upon the victim in order to identify the benefits that crime offers to the society
in which it occurs.
Durkheim begins from the premise that crime is normal because it is found in all societies, in all
time periods. He goes on to formulate a list of reasons why crime is necessary. First, he claims that
crime defines the norms of a society. By this, he means that the negative sanctions that are 30
associated with crime serve to isolate a particular set of behaviors within a larger range of possible
behaviors and label them as ‘‘normal’’ or acceptable. The remaining possible behaviors are labeled
as deviant. Second, Durkheim finds that crime establishes social boundaries. Those who are at the
fringes of society, by virtue of economic disadvantages, cultural differences, or moral
displacement, are least likely to follow the norms of the society. Their behaviors are sanctioned
against when they diverge from the social mainstream—they are at or beyond the boundaries of
the social group. Moreover, a range of behaviors is possible even within the narrow set of
acceptable norms, and crime reveals which of these behaviors are at the boundaries, in contrast to
those at the center. Third, for those within the acceptable boundaries, crime provides a set of
40
rituals that helps to build solidarity. These rituals come in the form of trials, executions, and other
forms of public punishment that unite observers in their position of not being tried or punished,
reminding them of their collective right to social legitimacy, in contrast to the illegitimacy of the
criminal. Fourth, Durkheim argues that crime produces innovation. This can occur when a
criminal action is revealed to be helpful to society, as in the case of Napster, an online music
trading service that was at first sued by the large music corporations, and then subsumed into one
of them once its uses were discovered. Or, innovation may result in response to criminal behavior.
For instance, after the 1996 kidnapping and murder of nine-year-old Amber Hagerman in
Arlington Texas, local residents developed an early warning system that became known as Amber
Alert and has since spread to many other 50 states. Fifth and finally, crime can provide the necessary

impetus for social change, particularly when it comes in the form of actions that call into question 50
the social mainstream or social authority. Consider, for instance, the various criminal offenses that
resulted in hate crime legislation. So, crime produces norms, establishes boundaries, provides
rituals, produces innovation, and leads the way for social change.

This list will guide my argument that popular culture, like crime, is a necessary and healthy
element of modern society. But first, we must consider that popular culture is a normal component
of all advanced capitalist societies. Within these societies, popular culture has become necessary,
in that it establishes norms, social boundaries, rituals, and innovations, while also paving the way
for social change. And so, the critique of popular culture must always be tempered by a
discussion of the important role that this culture plays in social cohesion.
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VERIFICATION

1. DEFINING CONCEPTS: Choose 2 important ideas/ concepts from the text. 2.

What relationship does the author establish between crime and popular culture? 3.

Why is crime necessary?

4. Why do you think “Harry Potter” appears in the title but it is not present in the
excerpt? Which relationship do you think the author will establish between the
introduction you read and Harry Potter? ¿Por qué les parece que Harry Potter aparece
en el título si no está en este texto, qué relación establecerá el autor en el resto del
artículo?

en el campus.
Podes autocorregir toda la “Verificación” clickeando Autocorrección Verificación

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INTERNALIZATION
 Write the main idea of the text in a well-written sentence. (Actividad obligatoria en
el campus. Será evaluada con puntaje del 1-10)

MOVING FORWARD

TEXT FEATURES

1. Which structure predominates in the text you read? Choose the

correct structure from the list.

● Description.
● Sequence
● Comparison/contrast
● Cause/effect
● Problem/solution
2. Which lexical choices can you identify in the text to support your previous
answer? (¿Qué unidades léxicas, o palabras son usadas por el autor para la
estructura textual que elegiste en el punto anterior? You can use the
D.G.F.)

en el campus
Podes autocorregir las actividades 1 y 2 clickeando:
Autocorrección MForward

METACOGNITIVE REFLECTION

STRATEGIES

1. A continuación, verán una lista de las distintas formas en las que un esquema
gráfico puede ayudar a promover la comprensión textual. Outlines (esquemas)
are effective tools to promote reading comprehension. They help readers to:

● Show graphically concept relationships in a text

● Write summaries or main ideas in an organized way
● Remember information
● Connect, synthesize and compare ideas
● Establish visual hierarchy
● Represent text structure
● Others…
● ¿Te ayudó el esquema de la parte de anticipación en alguno de estos
puntos? ¿Agregarías algo más a esta lista? (opcional, habilitada en e-portfolio)
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