ITASIA Lecture: Professor Mathieu Deflem

On 2023 May 9, Professor Mathieu Deflem presented a lecture to the ITASIA Program on “The Norms of Popular Culture: Towards a Comparative-Transnational Perspective.” Professor Deflem teaches in the Department of Sociology at the University of South Carolina (USA). He is a specialist in the sociology of culture and law, and has recently co-authored (with  Anna S. Rogers) Doing Gender in Heavy Metal: Perceptions on Women in a Hypermasculine Subculture (2022) and authored Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame: The Rise of a Pop Star in an Age of Celebrity (2017) among other works.

The lecture presented a framework for the study of selected sociological aspects of popular culture, with a particular focus on legal and normative dimensions. Specifically, Professor Deflem proposed a theoretical basis to study legal issues of popular culture in the context of the United States in comparison with similar developments in Japan.