CAC 3

Concepts of Culture: 1

Essentialist culture - distant, aloof, unattainable…

Changing conceptions of the notion of ‘culture’. How did we get to where we are now? Culture as ‘growth’, culture as a ‘standard’, the emergence of ‘mass’ culture. Essentialist attitudes to culture.

Tasks

• Read the brief excerpts from Arnold - it’s quite difficult but try to see if you can understand how Arnold is defining culture; there are a couple of places where he talks about culture and refers to what it ‘is’ and what it ‘does’.

Slides

Download slides - PDF

Reading

Excerpts from Arnold, M. (1911) Culture & anarchy: an essay in political and social criticism. Macmillan and Company, London.

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Other material

Culture and Anarchy, Matthew Arnold - complete version is available as an eBook PDF at ‘Project Gutenberg’…

Wikipedia on ‘Culture and Anarchy’

“Where does culture come from?”

This is a recording of a lecture given by Terry Eagleton on the subject of culture; it covers a vast range of ideas, and contains a couple of decent jokes… and a song!

If you would prefer to read rather than listen/watch, there’s a written version here: