Week 1: A few questions to consider...
What is "culture"?
Oxford English Dictionary, some definitions:
What do we mean by "culture," cultural objects, cultural texts?
Think methodology:
What would we need to know or to believe in order to answer the question "What is 'culture'?"?
I.e., what are the conditions of cultural knowledge? And is "knoweldge" even the best word here? Is it knowledge, affect, or perception?
Keep these binaries in mind:
Oxford English Dictionary, some definitions:
1.Worship; reverential homage. Obs.
rare
.
2.The action or practice of cultivating the soil; tillage, husbandry...
3. The cultivating or rearing of a plant or crop...
4.fig.
The cultivating or development (of the mind, faculties, manners, etc.); improvement or refinement by education and training.
5. a.absol.
The training, development, and refinement of mind, tastes, and manners; the condition of being thus trained and refined; the intellectual side of civilization.
5. b. (with a and pl.) A particular form or type of intellectual development. Also, the civilization, customs, artistic achievements, etc., of a people, esp. at a certain stage of its development or history. (In many contexts, esp. in Sociology, it is not possible to separate this sense from sense 5 a.)
What do we mean by "culture," cultural objects, cultural texts?
Think methodology:
What would we need to know or to believe in order to answer the question "What is 'culture'?"?
I.e., what are the conditions of cultural knowledge? And is "knoweldge" even the best word here? Is it knowledge, affect, or perception?
Keep these binaries in mind:
- culture vs. nature
- culture vs. civilization
- culture vs. politics
- culture vs. religion
- culture vs. ethnicity
No comments:
Post a Comment