Understanding Culture

This pioneering textbook explores the theoretical background of cultural variety, both in past and present. How is it possible to study 'culture' when the topic covers the arts, literature, movies, history, sociology, anthropology and gender studies? 'Understanding Culture' examines the evolution of a concept with varying meanings depending on changing norms. Offering a long-duration analysis of the relationship between culture and nature, this book looks at the origins of studying culture from an international perspective. Using examples from the several scholarly traditions in the practice of studying culture, the book is a key introduction to the area. It identifies the history of interpreting culture as a meeting point between the long-standing historical investigation of 'humanism' and 'postmodernism' and is a comprehensive resource for those who wish to further their engagement with culture as both a historical and contemporary phenomenon.

In this concise, lucid, and elegant introduction to the concept and study of "culture" for all those interested and invested in the increasing relevance of humanities in a day and age in which the exponential growth of commerce and communication gives us less and less pause, time to breath and think twice, Babette Hellemans reminds us of a simple but wide-ranging insight and truth: culture matters and the different and often subtle methods for its historical and intellectual inquiry are as many expressions of the variable ways in which we, as modern subjects and citizens, understand and commemorate our past, live and inhabit our present, and anticipate as well as realize our future. Aptly illustrated and richly documented, this book forms a trusted guide through a pantheon of original and influential thinkers and hotly contested debates, whose terms, the author brilliantly shows, are everything but abstract or merely theoretical. To think about culture high and low, in non-Western no less than classical or modern Western contexts, is nothing short of an ongoing "conversation of mankind," and one whose stakes couldn't be higher today. - Hent de Vries, Russ Family Professor in the Humanities and Philosophy, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore & Director, School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University, Ithaca This much-needed and very welcome textbook excels at the challenging task of conveying the intricacies of theory in a crisp and accessible manner to the reader. Abundant in illuminating examples, it is a guide to culture in the best sense of the world: it provides a lasting inspiration for reflection (well after it has been read). - Monika Baár, Professor in Cultural History and the History of Political Thought at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands

Babette Hellemans teaches Cultural History and Medieval History at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. She has published books and articles in English, French and Dutch focusing especially on the French intellectual tradition, the relationship between religion, academic discourse and the anthropology of images.