What is Culture?

Culture has always generated controversy for its innate ability to elude any exact meaning. What is culture? Anthropologists have strived to explain and define culture, but as always conflicting ideas arose. An anthropologist, Clifford Geertz, and philosopher, Matthew Arnold, tried to give meaning to culture. With little more than a century between the two thinkers, each person held different definitions of culture. Clifford Geertz has identified culture as “the total way of life of a …

…With a century spanning the two, the drift from “Arnoldian conception of culture” to Geertz’s view of culture displays the shift in what culture really was. Culture has never held any permanent meaning and has therefore shifted and changed through centuries. Culture as explained by Clifford Geertz and Matthew Arnold shows the ever changing view of culture. As in time past, culture will always show that it cannot be explained by any one person.