This book is about what 'popular culture' means in France, and how the term's shifting meanings have been negotiated and contested. It offers an informed study of the way that popular culture is lived, imagined, fought over and negotiated in modern and contemporary France. It covers a wide range of overarching concerns: the roles of state policy, the market, political ideologies, changing social contexts and new technologies in the construction of the popular. But it also provides a set of specific case studies showing how popular songs, stories, films, TV programmes and language styles have become indispensable elements of 'culture' in France.