Culture: Can you Take it Anywhere?

Abstract

This is a written version of a lecture delivered at the Gevirtz Graduate School of Eduction at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The original series of lectures can be viewed at http://www.education.ucsb.edu/thematicschool/ . In this “culture” lecture, the author explores the difficulties in using the concept in contemporary research with particular reference to its relational nature, its partiality, and the various problems that ethnography now addresses. In the end, the concept might have outlived its technical use, even as popular use increases.