The Experience of Culture

Over the last 20 years culture has become a key concept in intellectual disciplines across the social sciences and humanities. However, it is a notoriously difficult concept to pin down, having very different meanings in different contexts. This book seeks to chart a route through the maze. It engages with the subject of culture by examining it through the prism of experience. This approach reveals the variety of meanings of culture. It demonstrates that culture is not something that emerges from out of human activity, but rather is part and parcel of it.


This book looks at how culture emerges and manifests itself in human life, and how it is experienced in the life of individuals and collectivities. It also explores the ways in which globalizing processes and changes in technology are affecting cultural identity, and whether we are seeing a fundamental change in the ways in which culture is formed and experienced.

Penetrating, accessible and refreshing, this book outlines new ways of studying culture. It will be required reading for students of sociology, cultural studies and cultural anthropology.