ABSTRACT
Human beings, says Clifford Geertz in a famous image, are animals suspended in webs of significance they themselves have spun. 1 'Culture' is the name for those webs. It is what we make of the world, materially, intellectually and spiritually. These dimensions cannot be separated: the Word is necessarily flesh. In constructing the world materially we interpret it, set values on it. To talk of values is to talk of a culture's self-understanding, its account of its priorities. The everyday world, the built environment, rituals, symbols, ideals and practices all rest on these values. At the end of his discussion of cultural imperialism John Tomlinson remarks that the failure of modernity is a specifically cultural one, namely the inability to decide what people should value, believe in, and what sense they ought to make of their everyday lives.2
