ABSTRACT
Few words in the English language are more complex than culture . Its history is interesting. It derives from “coulter,” a word originally used to name the blade of a plow. Thus, it has its roots literally in the concept of farming – or better yet, “cultivation” (Eagleton, 2000, p. 1). The great British cultural scholar Raymond Williams reminded us that “culture is ordinary.” By this, he meant that there was a danger that by restricting the idea of culture to intellectual life, the arts and “refinement,” we risk excluding the working class, the poor, the culturally disenfranchised, the racialized “Other” and diasporic populations from the category of cultured (Williams, 1958; see also Williams, 1976, 1982).
