What anchors cultural practices

Recent conceptions of culture as ‘practice’ have made great headway (see Williams 1973; Ortner 1984; Greenstone 1993; Biernacki 1995). But they have also brought new obscurities in their wake. Most important among these is the question of whether there is some sort of hierarchy among cultural practices, and whether and how some cultural practices organize, anchor, or constrain others.