Residual Economics

Residual Economics

There is a lot you can take away from today’s readings for the topic of Residual Economics. For me I heard the word economics and panicked. So hopefully if this was a concept you had trouble understanding this blog post can provide a simpler explanation.

Let’s start with the four types of culture Williams talks about in “Spreadable Media”. From this we have Emergent, Dominant, Residual and Archaic cultures.

“Emergent cultural practices might be represented by “lead users” … adopters whose decisions help manufacturers anticipate future users or identify potential bugs for a newly issued product.” So, I look at this as the “lead users” are influences that say if something is cool or not, creating new culture ideas that we may start seeing more of.

Dominant can be described as “cultural practice that is dominant within a particular political, social or economic entity, in which multiple cultures are present.” Likely norms in society. For example, football is very familiar in American culture. High school football being very dominant in Texas in comparison to other states.

Residual is the influence of old cultural practices on modern societies, consciously or unconsciously. The book argues that content of residual cultural practices “may become a prime candidate for spreadability” (97) For example there have been many times in class where we have discussed toys from our childhood sparking a conversation that the entire class participates in trigging memories of even more childhood memories from TV shows, to games to movies. Another example could be “Only 90s kids remember” threads on twitter.

Archaic “refers to historical forms that no longer serve any recognize cultural functions.” (96) So these are mostly outdated, abandoned practices. While this may currently fall under “Residual” cultural practices, I see wall phones with a cord becoming archaic in just a few years. The only person I know that still has one of these is my great aunt Kathy and my 4-year-old brother had no understanding to what it was or how it worked… even my cousin in his late 30s had a great laugh at the fact she still had one.

Now to incorporate these with our external readings about “haunted” dolls. I think that dolls in general are becoming more residual. My youngest sister is six and primarily plays with “Ever After High Dolls”. Antique dolls at my grandmother’s house must be removed before she enters a room due to the emerging trend of scary doll films like “Anabelle.” Soon I think dolls will become archaic and what will be residual to my sister is the concept that “dolls are scary” from watching movies.

Another example could be Beanie Babies. While these bad boys don’t carry the fear factor that dolls can, at least for me, Beanie Babies carry a sentimental value and to collectors some can be worth a pretty penny similarly to the antique dolls. These have “slid into the residual and archaic” similarly to items found in “Antique Roadshow”. It is easy for people that associate Beanie Babies as stuffed animals to value them the same as a quarter, but easy for people that agree they have a large value to price them at thousands of dollars. I’ve attached a screenshot of a Princess Diana Beanie Baby that is being priced at the LOW LOW price of $92,500.00.

 Does that make Princess Diana Dominant Culture to some extent? My grandma loves her and would love to have that Beanie Baby, she is loved in many cultures and known by even more. ( I also know for a fact she has the hippy beanie baby in a drawer somewhere so I am now on a mission to become 2500 dollars richer haha)

This concept can go into so much more depth, I touched on a small portion and hope it is helpful to you! I look forward to exploring these topics more in our facebook discussion!