by Kalexander2010
“Culture” is a word that can mean a lot of different things. Even among anthropologists who specifically study human culture, it can be difficult to nail down exactly what it means to talk about “culture” or “a culture.” I’ve heard it said (jokingly) that one way to recognize an anthropologist is that she will never use the word “culture.” This may be exaggerating things a bit, but anthropologists do tend to be very conscious of the extra baggage the word can carry, and if they can’t avoid using it altogether, they will invest a lot in proposing or defending a particular definition before moving ahead.
As members of the I-Inquire community, we need to take similar care in naming “culture” as the subject of our conversation. We need to agree, on some level, as to what territory we mean to explore together. And it might be helpful, before we get too lost in things, to get a sense of what different objects, materials, and forces we might find at play there.