This innovative textbook explores a variety of every facets of culture, both in past and present. How is it possible to study 'culture' when the topic covers the arts, literature, film, history, sociology, anthropology and gender studies? Culture examines the evolution of a concept with varying meanings depending on changing norms. Offering the first long-duration analysis of the relationship between culture and nature, this book looks at the origins of 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 phenomen...

The common saying is that people have a culture. This book argues that people live a culture – which may explain why they are so affectively attached to it. By considering cultural interactions on a global scale, this book investigates how cultures can be understood in terms of conflict and cooperation, in relation to the nationstate, a multiplicity of worlds, society, civilization and community. It considers how culture is at the basis of the construction of individual and collective selve...