ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the discursive coordinates that shaped a distinctive episode in the political career of the cultural concept: that comprised by the role it played in the development of assimilationist conceptions of multiculturalism in the inter-war period through to the early post-war period. It looks at the definitional issues associated with the concept of culture as a way of life across its relations between anthropology and cultural studies. The chapter discusses the Boasian and post-Boasian interpretations of the concept within American anthropology, focusing particularly on its aesthetic properties and the differential interpretation of these across its application to the cultures of Native Americans, Caucasians, African-Americans and European migrants. It examines deployment of the concept in the early years of the development of American assimilationist policies and particularly the political logics informing the exclusions effected by these policies. The chapter concludes by reflecting on current critical re-engagements with the relations between Boasian culture concept and the category of race.
