ABSTRACT
During the early stages of the Cold War, and while American social science and the general public were busy embracing the anthropological concept of culture, the British retained the view that culture was ‘the best of everything’ in the humanist sense. In spite of the growing criticism in British literary studies that culture was more popular than exemplary, the humanist concept still dominated large areas of society and thinking. Gradually, however, under the growing influence of the anthropological concept, the British incorporated the idea that culture was a ‘way of life’ in their social and intellectual discourses. We can map the changing fortunes of the idea of culture and its meaning in Britain, to some extent, through the work of International Society theorists.
