The Resonance of “Culture”: Framing a Problem in Global Concept-History

Abstract

In the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, "culture" achieved the status of a truly global concept. We find discourses of "culture" emerging to prominence in the German-speaking world during the second half of the eighteenth century (with the closely associated linguistic arenas of the Netherlands and Scandinavia rapidly following suit); in the English-speaking world starting in the first half of the nineteenth century; in Eastern Europe, East Asia, and South Asia starting in the second half of the nineteenth century; and just about everywhere else in the course of the twentieth century. "Culture" began to circulate far beyond the European sites of its modern genesis, sometimes through the direct transfer of lexical items from Western European languages (e.g., Russian kulHtura; the use of kalcar in various South Asian languages); and more often through the construction of new translative equivalencies with preexisting words or concepts most often signifying purification, refinement, or improvement (e.g., Japanese bun-ka; Chinese wen-hua; Bangla and Hindi sanskriti; Urdu tamaddun). 1 However creatively deployed in however divergent a range of contexts, the power, resonance, and usefulness of any conceptual vocabulary must surely derive from the denotative and connotative baggage accumulated in the course of the history of its prior deployment. Any attempt to understand the global dimensions of the dissemination and circulation of modern cultural discourses must proceed, then, from some initial understanding of what was being disseminated and circulated. Without for a moment thinking that a global concept-676 0010-4175/05/676-699 $9.50

Islam and Culture: Dis/junctures in a Modern Conceptual Terrain

“…To understand the specific assumptions that underlie my interlocutors’ positive evaluations of culture, I want to pause here in order to scrutinize a different moment in the history of the culture concept, one that in fact precedes the anthropological formulation I addressed earlier. From the Enlightenment onward, the term “culture” became integrated into a humanist project and began to stand in for what distinguishes humans from animals and their biological determinism, so as to delineate the nature-commanding human, endowed with rational control (Sartori 2005: 685). Historian Andrew Sartori, who investigates the evolving modern culture concept, shows that culture in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century debates refers not only to the human capacity for mastering nature, but also to the process that enables humans to do so.…”

“…In the words of Matthew Arnold, culture is the “idea of perfection as an inward condition of the mind and spirit” (2006: 37). With Herder, the term becomes intrinsically linked with Volk , which turns culture into “the process of unfolding the inner propensities of each people” (Sartori 2005: 687), thereby laying the groundwork for the later anthropological culture concept I discussed above 26…”

“… 6 Tylor employed the term “culture” to grasp the “progressive evolution of human moral, intellectual, and technical capacities in society” (Sartori 2005: 689) that transcends biological determinism. This is clearly indicated in his famous definition: “Culture or civilization … is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society” (1958 [1871]: 1).…”

Civilizing Muslim youth: Egyptian state culture programmes and Islamic television preachers

“…The two most common concepts of culture invoked in state projects are also two of the most popular concepts world‐wide (see Sartori ): culture as those practices, ideas, and objects which characterize a group of people (anthropological/national); and culture as ‘the best that has been thought and said in the world’ (from Matthew Arnold). Both of these have deep roots in Egypt.…”

Den «legitime kulturens» moralske forankring

“…Etter hvert finnes det også flere forsøk på å reflektere over begrepets genealogi, og flere har tematisert nasjonale, historiske og faglige forskjeller i hvordan begrepet blir brukt og forstått (jfr. Sewell 1999;Walker 2001;Sartori 2005). Det er ikke innenfor rammene av denne artikkelen å utvikle den teoretiske diskusjon av kulturbegrepet.…”