Raymond Williams

Keywords
A vocabulary of
culture and
society

Revised edition

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

New York
Copyright © Raymond Williams 1976, 1983 For Kirsti, Annika,
First edition published in 1976 in Great Britain by Fontana Paperbacks and in the United States by David and Rosalind
Oxford University Press, New York
This revised and expanded edition first published in Great Britain in 1983 by Fontana Paperbacks,
London, and in the United States in 1985 by Oxford University Press, 200 Madison Avenue, New
York, NY 10016

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Williams,

Raymond.
Keywords : a vocabulary of culture and society.
Bibliography; p.
1. English language-Etymology. 2. English
language-Glossaries, vocabularies, etc. 3- Sociolinguistics.
4. Culture-Terminology. 5. Society-Terminology. I. Title.
PE1580.W58 1985 422 85-264 ISBN
0-19-520469-7 (pbk.)

Printing (last digit): 9 8 7 6 5 Printed in the

United States of America

86 Criticism Culture 87
variously specified, originally as learning or scholarship, later as cultivation and
taste, later still as SENSIBILITY (q.v.). At various stages, forms of this confidence
have broken down, and especially in C20 attempts have been made to replace it
by objective (cf. SUBJECTIVE) methodologies, providing another kind of basis for
judgment. What has not been questioned is the assumption of ‘authoritative CULTURE
judgment’. In its claims to authority it has of course been repeatedly challenged,
and critic in the most common form of this specialized sense - as a reviewer of Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English
plays, films, books and so on - has acquired an understandably ambiguous sense. language. This is so partly because of its intricate historical development, in
But this cannot be resolved by distinctions of status between critic and reviewer. several European languages, but mainly because it has now come to be used for
What is at issue is not only the association between criticism and fault-finding important concepts in several distinct intellectual disciplines and in several
but the more basic association between criticism and ‘authoritative’ judgment as distinct and incompatible systems of thought.
apparently general and natural processes. As a term for the social or professional The fw is cultura, L, from rw colere-, L. Colere had a range of meanings:
generalization of the processes of reception of any but especially the more formal inhabit, cultivate, protect, honour with worship. Some of these meanings
kinds of COMMUNICATION (q.v.), criticism becomes ideological not only eventually separated, though still with occasional overlapping, in the derived
when it assumes the position of the consumer but also when it masks this position nouns. Thus ‘inhabit’ developed through colonus, L to colony. ‘Honour with
by a succession of abstractions of its real terms of response (as judgment, taste, worship’ developed through cultus, L to cult. Cultura took on the main meaning
cultivation, discrimination, sensibility; disinterested, qualified, rigorous and so of cultivation or tending, including, as in Cicero, cultura animi, though with sub-
on). The continuing sense of criticism as fault-finding is the most useful sidiary medieval meanings of honour and worship (cf. in English culture as
linguistic influence against the confidence of this habit, but there are also signs, in ‘worship’ in Caxton (1483)). The French forms of cultura were couture, oF,
the occasional rejection of criticism as a definition of conscious response, of a which has since developed its own specialized meaning, and later culture, which
more significant rejection of the habit itself. The point would then be, not to find by eC15 had passed into English. The primary meaning was then in husbandry,
some other term to replace it, while continuing the same kind of activity, but to the tending of natural growth.
get rid of the habit, which depends, fundamentally, on the abstraction of response Culture in all its early uses was a noun of process: the tending of something,
from its real situation and circumstances: the elevation to ‘judgment’, and to an basically crops or animals. The subsidiary coulter - plouglishare, had travelled
apparently general process, when what always needs to be understood is the by a different linguistic route, from culter, L - plouglishare, culter, oE, to the
specificity of the response, which is not an abstract ‘judgment’ but even where variant English spellings culter, colter, coulter and as late as eC17 culture
including, as often necessarily, positive or negative responses, a definite practice, (Webster, Duchess of Malfi, III, ii: ‘hot burning cultures’). This provided a
in active and complex relations with its whole situation and context. further basis for the important next stage of meaning, by metaphor. From eC16
the tending of natural growth was extended to a process of human development,
See AESTHETIC, CONSUMER, SENSIBILITY, TASTE and this, alongside the original meaning in husbandry, was the main sense until
1C18 and eC19. Thus More: ‘to the culture and profit of their minds’; Bacon:
‘the culture and manurance of minds’ (1605); Hobbes: ‘a culture of their minds’
(1651); Johnson: ‘she neglected the culture of her understanding’ (1759). At
various points in this development two crucial changes occurred: first, a
88 Culture Culture 89
degree of habituation to the metaphor, which made the sense of human tending from mC18, rather later than similar occasional uses in English. The independent
direct; second, an extension of particular processes to a general process, which noun civilization also emerged in mC18; its relationship to culture has since
the word could abstractly carry. It is of course from the latter development that been very complicated (cf. CIVILIZATION and discussion below). There was at
the independent noun culture began its complicated modern history, but the this point an important development in German: the word was borrowed from
process of change is so intricate, and the latencies of meaning are at times so French, spelled first (1C18) Cultur and from C19 Kultur. Its main use was still as
close, that it is not possible to give any definite date. Culture as an independent a synonym for civilization: first in the abstract sense of a general process of
noun, an abstract process or the product of such a process, is not important before becoming ‘civilized’ or ‘cultivated’; second, in the sense which had already been
1C18 and is not common before mC19. But the early stages of this development established for civilization by the historians of the Enlightenment, in the popular
were not sudden. There is an interesting use in Milton, in the second (revised) C18 form of the universal histories, as a description of the secular process of
edition of The Readie and Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth (1660): human development. There was then a decisive change of use in Herder. In his
‘spread much more Knowledg and Civility, yea. Religion, through all parts of the unfinished Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind (1784-91) he
Land, by communicating the natural heat of Government and Culture more wrote of Cultur: ‘nothing is more indeterminate than this word, and nothing
distributively to all extreme parts, which now lie num and neglected’. Here the more deceptive than its application to all nations and periods’. He attacked the
metaphorical sense (‘natural heat’) still appears to be present, and civility (cf. assumption of the universal histories that ‘civilization’ or ‘culture’ - the historical
CIVILIZATION) is still written where in C19 we would normally expect culture. self-development of humanity - was what we would now call a unilinear process,
Yet we can also read ‘government and culture’ in a quite modern sense. Milton, leading to the high and dominant point of C18 European culture. Indeed he
from the tenor of his whole argument, is writing about a general social process, attacked what he called European subjugation and domination of the four
and this is a definite stage of development. In C1S England this general process quarters of the globe, and wrote:
acquired definite class associations though cultivation and cultivated were more
commonly used for this. But there is a letter of 1730 (Bishop of Killala, to Mrs Men of all the quarters of the globe, who have perished over the ages, you
Clayton; cit Plumb, England in the Eighteenth Century) which has this clear have not lived solely to manure the earth with your ashes, so that at the end
sense: ‘it has not been customary for persons of either birth or culture to breed up of time your posterity should be made happy by European culture. The very
their children to the Church’. Akenside (Pleasures of Imagination, 1744) wrote: thought of a superior European culture is a blatant insult to the majesty of
‘. . . nor purple state nor culture can bestow’. Wordsworth wrote ‘where grace of Nature.
culture hath been utterly unknown’ (1805), and Jane Austen (Emma, 1816) ‘every It is then necessary, he argued, in a decisive innovation, to speak of ‘cultures’ in
advantage of discipline and culture’. the plural: the specific and variable cultures of different nations and periods, but
It is thus clear that culture was developing in English towards some of its also the specific and variable cultures of social and economic groups within a
modern senses before the decisive effects of a new social and intellectual nation. This sense was widely developed, in the Romantic movement, as an
movement. But to follow the development through this movement, in 1C18 and alternative to the orthodox and dominant ‘civilization’. It was fir^t used to
eC19, we have to look also at developments in other languages and especially in emphasize national and traditional cultures, including the new concept of
German. folk-culture (cf. FOLK). It was later used to attack what was seen as the
In French, until C18, culture was always accompanied by a grammatical MECHANICAL’ (q.v.) character of the new civilization then emerging: both for its
form indicating the matter being cultivated, as in the English usage already noted. abstract rationalism and for the ‘inhumanity’ of current industrial development.
Its occasional use as an independent noun dates It was used to distinguish between ‘human’ and ‘material’ development.
Politically, as so often in this period, it
90 Culture
Culture 91
veered between radicalism and reaction and very often, in the confusion of major
of a general process of intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic development was
social change, fused elements of both, (It should also be noted, though it adds to
applied and effectively transferred to the works and practices which represent and
the real complication, that the same kind of distinction, especially between
sustain it. But it also developed from the earlier sense of process; cf. ‘progressive
‘material’ and ‘spiritual’ development, was made by von Humboldt and others,
culture of fine arts’, Millar, Historical View of the English Government, IV, 314
until as late as 1900, with a reversal of the terms, culture being material and
(1812). In English (i) and (iii) are still close; at times, for internal reasons, they
civilization spiritual. In general, however, the opposite distinction was dominant.)
are indistinguishable as in Arnold, Culture and Anarchy (1867); while sense (ii)
On the other hand, from the 1840s in Germany, Kultur was being used in very
was decisively introduced into English by Tylor, Primitive Culture (1870),
much the sense in which civilization had been used in C18 universal histories.
following Klemm. The decisive development of sense (iii) in English was in 1C19
The decisive innovation is G. F. Klemm’s Allgemeine Kulturgeschichte der
and eC20.
Menschheit - ‘General Cultural History of Mankind’ (1843-52) - which traced
Faced by this complex and still active history of the word, it is easy to react by
human development from savagery through domestication to freedom. Although
selecting one ‘true’ or ‘proper’ or ‘scientific’ sense and dismissing other senses as
the American anthropologist Morgan, tracing comparable stages, used ‘Ancient
loose or confused. There is evidence of this reaction even in the excellent study
Society’. with a culmination in Civilization, Klemm’s sense was sustained, and
by Kroeber and Kluckhohn, Culture: a Critical Review of Concepts and
was directly followed in English by Tylor in Primitive Culture (1870). It is along
Definitions, where usage in North American anthropology is in effect taken as a
this hne of reference that the dominant sense in modern social sciences has to be
norm. It is clear that, within a discipline, conceptual usage has to be clarified. But
traced.
in general it is the range and overlap of meanings that is significant. The complex
The complexity of the modern development of the word, and of its modern
of senses indicates a complex argument about the relations between general
usage, can then be appreciated. We can easily distinguish the sense which
human development and a particular way of life, and between both and the works
depends on a literal continuity of physical process as now in ‘sugar-beet culture’
and practices of art and intelligence. It is especially interesting that in archaeology
or, in the specialized physical application in bacteriology since the 1880s, ‘germ
and in cultural anthropology the reference to culture or a culture is primarily to
culture’. But once we go beyond the physical reference, we have to recognize
material production, while in history and cultural studies the reference is
three broad active categories of usage. The sources of two of these we have
primarily to signifying or symbolic systems. This often confuses but even more
already discussed: (i) the independent and abstract noun which describes a
often conceals the central question of the relations between ‘material’ and
general process of intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic development, from C18; (ii)
‘symbolic’ production, which in some recent argument - cf. my own Culture -
the independent noun, whether used generally or specifically, which indicates a
have always to be related rather than contrasted. Within this complex argument
particular way of life, whether of a people, a period, a group, or humanity in
there are fundamentally opposed as well as effectively overlapping positions;
general, from Herder and Klemm. But we have also to recognize (iii) the
there are also, understandably, many unresolved questions and confused answers.
independent and abstract noun which describes the works and practices of
But these arguments and questions cannot be resolved by reducing the complexity
intellectual and especially artistic activity. This seems often now the most
of actual usage. This point is relevant also to uses of forms of the word in
widespread use: culture is music, literature, painting and sculpture, theatre and
languages other than English, where there is considerable variation. The
film. A Ministry of Culture refers to these specific activities, sometimes with
anthropological use is common in the German, Scandinavian and Slavonic
the addition of philosophy, scholarship, history. This use, (iii), is in fact relatively
language groups, but it is distinctly subordinate to the senses of art and learning,
late. It is difficult to date precisely because it is in origin an applied form of sense
or of a general process of human development, in Italian and French. Between
(i): the idea
languages as within a
92 Culture Culture, Democracy 93
language, the range and complexity of sense and reference indicate both ment. The recent use of culturalism, to indicate a methodological contrast
difference of intellectual position and some blurring or overlapping. These with structuralism in social analysis, retains many of the earlier
variations, of whatever kind, necessarily involve alternative views of the difficulties, and does not always bypass the hostility.
activities, relationships and processes which this complex word indicates.
The complexity, that is to say, is not finally in the word but in the problems See AESTHETIC, ANTHROPOLOGY, ART, CIVILIZATION, FOLK, DEVELOPMENT,
which its variations of use significantly indicate. HUMANITY, SCIENCE, WESTERN
It is necessary to look also at some associated and derived words.
Cultivation and cultivated went through the same metaphorical extension
from a physical to a social or educational sense in C17, and were especially
significant words in C18. Coleridge, making a classical eC19 distinction
between civilization and culture, wrote (1830): ‘the permanent distinction,
and occasional contrast, between cultivation and civilization’. The noun in
this sense has effectively disappeared but the adjective is still quite
common, especially in relation to manners and tastes. The important
D
adjective cultural appears to date from the 1870s; it became common by
the 1890s. The word is only available, in its modern sense, when the
independent noun, in the artistic and intellectual or anthropological senses,
has become familiar. HostiUty to the word culture in English appears to DEMOCRACY
date from the controversy around Arnold’s views. It gathered force in 1C19
and eC20, in association with a comparable hostility to aesthete and Democracy is a very old word but its meanings have always been
AESTHETIC (q.v.). Its association with class distinction produced the complex. It came into English in C16, from fw democratic, F, democratia,
mime-word culchah. There was also an area of hostility associated with mL - a translation of demokratia, Gk, from rw demos -people, kratos - rule.
anti-German feeling, during and after the 1914-18 War, in relation to It was defined by Elyot, with specific reference to the Greek instance, in
propaganda about Kultur. The central area of hostility has lasted, and one 1531: ‘an other publique weal was amonge the Atheniensis, where
element of it has been emphasized by the recent American phrase equalitie was of astate among the people . . . This manner of governaunce
culture-vulture. It is significant that virtually all the hostility (with the was called in greke Democratia, in latine, Popularis potentia, in englisshe
sole exception of the temporary anti-German association) has been the rule of the comminaltie.’ It is at once evident from Greek uses that
connected with uses involving claims to superior knowledge (cf. the noun everything depends on the senses given to people and to rule. Ascribed
INTELLECTUAL), refinement (culchah) and distinctions between ‘high’ art and doubtful early examples range from obeying ‘no master but the law’ (?
(culture) and popular art and entertainment. It thus records a real social Solon) to ‘of the people, by the people, for the people’ (? Cleon). More
history and a very difficult and confused phase of social and cultural certain examples compare ‘the insolence of a despot’ with ‘the insolence
development. It is interesting that the steadily extending social and of the unbridled commonalty’ (cit. Herodotus) or define a government as
anthropological use of culture and cultural and such formations as democracy ‘because its administration is in the hands, not of the few, but
sub-culture (the culture of a distinguishable smaller group) has, except in of the many’; also, ‘all that is opposed to despotic power, has the name of
certain areas (notably popular entertainment), either bypassed or democracy’ (cit. Thucydides). Aristotle (Politics, IV, 4) wrote: ‘a
effectively diminished the hostility and its associated unease and democracy is a state where the freemen and the poor, being in the majority,
embarrass- are invested with the power of the state’. Yet much depends here on what
is meant by ‘invested with power’: whether it is