CfP: Changes – Pop culture in the present moment (Universität Wien, 11-13.06.2026) Deadline: 09.01.2026
Changes: Pop culture in the present moment
9th Conference of the Popular Culture Studies Working Group in the German Association of Cultural Studies and European Ethnology (DGEKW), together with the Conjunctural Analysis Working Group in the Association of Critical Social Studies (AkG)
University of Vienna, Department of European Ethnology
11th – 13th June 2026
Since their beginnings, pop culture and pop music have been understood by many observers and participants alike to have a privileged relation to the contemporary. It is a well-established—and frequently questioned—belief that understanding pop culture offers a path to better understanding the present and even the emergent. The attunement to the present means that pop culture is in a state of constant change, both reacting to and acting upon the dynamic forming of sociopolitical and cultural power relations. Thus, studying pop culture can make a significant contribution to analysing past and present conjunctures—the organisation of power formations through economic, social, political, and cultural struggles. Despite the constant change, the very conditions of possibility that constituted the changing presents pop culture was emphatically devoted to remained comparatively constant. Pop culture as we know it is an offspring of the early postwar period (with important precursors and models dating back to the early 19t h century, of course). For Western Europe and North America at least, this time was characterised by relative economic and political stability, US-American cultural hegemony and soft power, and an expectation of—maybe slow and contested, but nonetheless continuous—social progress. These sociopolitical, cultural and economic contexts have been formative for producers, consumers, critics and scholars of pop culture and popular media. Now, after years of a crisis-ridden interregnum, many foundational cornerstones characterising this period are likely coming to an end. What does this mean for the production, distribution and reception of pop culture in the present moment and the upcoming conjuncture?
The conference wants to turn researchers’ attention to popular culture’s entanglements in and its engagements with the rapid changes shaping the present historical moment: through studies of aesthetic production, of co-creation, reflection and reception, by fans and fandoms, and of (meta-)communication in a variety of media. We identify three key thematic areas of major transformation for contemporary pop culture:
A Transformation of Pop Culture Politics
Pop culture has always been a site of political controversy and struggles for cultural hegemony. During the hegemony of progressive neoliberalism since the 1990s, the majority of pop cultural communities had formed a seemingly steadfast connection with liberal politics and progressive values—this connection is increasingly called into question. In the face of the second Trump administration’s authoritarian takeover of the state and attacks on the very communities which shaped and cared for pop culture (e.g. queer, migrant, PoC/Black communities), the silence of many US stars across all fields of cultural production is deafening—not to speak of the growing number of those being outright complicit. In Europe as well, pop culture is used with increasing success by authoritarian actors. Right-wing authoritarian parties or religious fundamentalist groups are trying to benefit from pop cultural aesthetics, often in close correspondence with extremist activists such as the Identitarian movement or various Christfluencers (among them famous football players or musicians). Authoritarian state propaganda is also increasingly relying on pop cultural aesthetics (e.g. Russia). The hard-earned and tentative progress in challenging established power relations in the pop culture industries (e.g. the fight against gender-based violence in the music industries) is threatened by the growing influence of right-wing authoritarian pop culture. Despite these developments, pop culture and pop music in particular also remain sources of resistance and hope, e.g. Ukraine’s successful use of pop music and meme culture for building up geopolitical soft power or the importance of rap music and artists for the Women, Life, Freedom movement in Iran. This provides further evidence for the widely perceived shift in pop culture geographies, locating its centres of greatest innovation and relevance beyond the traditional hot spots in Western metropolises.
Pop Culture in Times of Ecological Catastrophe
Historically, pop and counter cultural aesthetics and modes of communication played an important role in raising environmental awareness and sense of responsibility. Nature has always been an important source of inspiration, aesthetic theme as well as a place of longing in pop culture. Current pop culture continues these aesthetic and political considerations, searching for narratives, sounds, images and social forms reflecting on life (and popular art) in the Anthropocene and under conditions of anthropogenic climate change, mass extinction and other ecological catastrophes. Only very recently and reluctantly, however, are the pop culture industries turning their attention towards the actual ecological impact of their own business models. While Taylor Swift’s private jet or Katy Perry’s space flight have received wide public criticism, the energy consumption and concomitant CO2 emissions of global touring or the streaming of music, movies and series are only seldom taken into consideration by artists, managers and fans alike. A recently growing number of studies indicate that the ecological implications of pop culture cease to be a blind spot for popular culture scholarship.
Transforming Technological and Economic Conditions of Possibility
Since its emergence in the 1950s, pop culture has always embraced technological change, especially when it affected its media of production and distribution. Despite this openness, it frequently struggled with the consequences these new technologies had on the established business models. In the face of artificial intelligence and the further refinement of algorithms, massive changes in how pop culture is produced, distributed and consumed are imminent. The increasingly visible complicity of many tech companies in authoritarian politics renders pop culture’s dependence on their infrastructures further problematic—and has already prompted some activist reactions, as the boycott campaign against Spotify exemplifies. Similarly to other fields of cultural practice such as journalism or visual arts, protest against the use of artificial intelligence by the music industry is gaining traction as more and more generic musical ‘AI slop’ is filling up the feeds of social media and streaming platforms, incorporating the intellectual property and talent of singers, instrumentalists and producers. And while concert ticket prices for a few superstars are skyrocketing due to dynamic pricing mechanisms, the vast number of smaller artists and venues are struggling to make ends meet and are left competing for continuously truncated public funding by broadcasting companies and city/state culture departments. This situation has only been worsened by the Covid-19 pandemic, which has resulted in a widely-recognised mental health crisis among artists. While new models of fan-based financial support are gaining popularity (e.g. crowdfunding or Spotify fan support), a business model that is fair, healthy and sustainable for pop cultural production in its width feels almost like an unreachable utopia.
Announcements of pop culture’s demise—or death, even!—have been published with some regularity for decades already—and so have their rebuttals, claiming that these fears are exaggerated. The conference does not want to participate in such fruitless either-or debates. But it is safe to say that pop culture is undergoing massive transformations and will continue to do so in the near future:
Which transformations is pop culture facing now and which can be expected in the near future?
How do these relate to past transformations and turning points of pop culture and what can be learned from these past moments of change?
How are these transformations and processes of social/cultural change aesthetically and politically reflected in pop culture products?
How will these changes affect the creative practices of amateur and professional artists as well as fan cultures and the reception of pop culture in everyday life?
How will they challenge the academic and critical engagement with pop culture and affect related disciplines such as cultural and media studies, cultural anthropology, (ethno-)musicology?
How will we as researchers, critics and fans of pop culture have to adapt our research practices, methodologies and concepts to be ready for the present moment and the upcoming conjuncture?
We invite scholars in all stages of their careers to contribute papers in English or German. We want to encourage a diversity of perspectives on pop culture and popular media, including diverse regional contexts and methods (ethnography, historical research, media analysis, artistic research etc.).
Please submit your abstracts (max. 500 words) for a 20 minutes presentation until 9th of January 2026 to changes.iee[at]univie[dot]ac[dot]at. Panel submissions are also possible: Accepted panels get a two-hour time slot for a maximum of four presentations. Please include in your abstract (max. 1'500 words) a short description of all individual contributions. If you consider submitting alternative formats (round tables, practice-based workshops, films or videos, artistic or experimental formats and so on), please do not hesitate to get in touch with the organisers to discuss how these can be made possible.
The notification of acceptance will be sent out by 31st January 2026.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to the organisers: Maximilian Jablonowski (maximilian.jablonowski[at]univie[dot]ac[dot]at)