Identity: Political Not Cultural

Authors

Kwame Anthony Appiah, New York University School of LawFollow

Files

Description

In my dictionary I find as a definition for "culture": "The totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought." Like most dictionary definitions, this one could be improved. But it surely picks out a familiar constellation of ideas. In fact, it captures the sense in which anthropologists commonly use the term nowadays. The cultures of the Ashanti or the Zuni comprise, for the anthropologist, every object they make-material culture-and everything they think and do.

Source Publication

Field Work: Sites in Literary and Cultural Studies

Source Editors/Authors

Marjorie Garber, Paul B. Franklin, Rebecca L. Walkowitz

Publication Date

1996

Recommended Citation

Appiah, Kwame Anthony, "Identity: Political Not Cultural" (1996). Faculty Chapters. 167.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/167