Myth of the Month 22: Culture

Unlocked after one year on Patreon for patrons only: What is "culture"? And how did a metaphor from gardening invade social-science discourse in 19th-century Germany and America and then take the world by storm? Am I doing "podcast culture" right now? We consider the myriad, often contradictory, ways that "culture" is deployed in current rhetoric, usually to sneak in hidden value judgments; then we trace how an ancient Latin term for gardening came to refer to the "cultivation" of good charater, then to the shaping of society by high art and refined customs, and then ultimately, under the influence of German and American imperial politics, to a supposed unfied, organic whole encompassing the sum total of all learned behaviors in a given society. However you define it, I make the case that it is the defining myth of our time, and that we should get rid of it. Image: "Old New York" diorama, Museum of Natural History, New York Suggested reading: Michael A. Elliott, "The Culture Concept: Writing and Difference in the Age of Realism"