ABSTRACT
This last point concerning the contemporary (re-)emergence of interest in the conceptualization of culture, particularly within intellectual circles, is perhaps a good one from which to proceed. Every generation, it is rightly supposed, creates new objects, ideas and meanings – such is
the nature of social change, for better or worse. However, preceding generations, and later the reflexive investigations of historical studies, quite often assert that far from such creations embodying originality they are rather re-invocations of ideas or states of affairs that went before. This is not some crude espousal of a doctrine of eternal returns nor even an argument in support of a theory of the universal properties of social life. What I am recommending is that any such creativity must be understood in relation to its social context. Just so with ‘culture’. It has not been invented in the latter part of the twentieth century; however, the contemporary upsurge in interest centred on the idea of culture must surely tell us something about the times we are living through. Indeed, this is what Chaney (1994) refers to as the ‘cultural turn’ in the humanities and social sciences. Part of my purpose in this account of the concept of culture will be to place it within a history of ideas, part also will be to review and synthesize different arguments and perspectives on the topic, and to look critically at the character and status of some of the modern debates around the issue.
