ABSTRACT
In the introduction to this book, culture was defined broadly as being made up of individual and collective efforts to interpret and represent the world by means of language, gestures and symbols. Following the work of the British theorist Raymond Williams, culture here will also be considered in relation to technological innovation and societal change, and not in purely artistic or aesthetic terms. Thus, according to Williams, modern understandings of the word ‘culture’ are intimately linked to evolving usages of other key words like ‘industry’, ‘democracy’, ‘nation’, ‘family’ and ‘class’. Together these developments in meaning:
bear witness to a general change in our characteristic ways of thinking about our common life: about our social, political and economic institutions; about the purposes which these institutions are designed to embody; and about the relations to these institutions and purposes of our activities in learning, education and the arts. 1
