同一出版社也出版 Raymond Williams的《馬克思主義與文學》翻譯本。
《政治與文學 》Politics and Letters 自述和訪談
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 叢書名稱： |
人文科學譯叢 |
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| 作 者： |
(英)雷蒙德‧威廉斯 |
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| 出版單位： |
河南大學 |
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| 出版日期： |
2010 |
在文化研究領域，無論怎樣讚美雷蒙德·威廉斯的貢獻都不過分。馬修·阿諾德和利維斯把文化視為人類“所思所言的精華”，宣稱只有少數人才享有文化， 他們強調了文化本身超越物質性的一面，以精神貴族自居，壟斷了文化話語權。威廉斯則把文化定義為“一種整體生活方式”，彰顯文化的物質性和日常性，從而顛 覆了精英主義的文化觀念，用文化來詮釋大眾的日常生活。毫不誇張地說，威廉斯對文化定義的拓展預設了當代文化研究的疆域，奠定了文化研究的理論基石。從事 文化研究，威廉斯是必須加以瞭解的一個人物，本書是《新左派評論》三位編輯對威廉斯的學術訪談，內容涉及威廉斯個人生活和學術發展的幾乎全部主要歷程，對 於理解威廉斯的學術思想有著不可替代的重要價值。
目錄：前 言
雷蒙德·威廉斯年表
Ⅰ.傳記
1.少年時代
2.劍橋
3.戰爭
4.重返劍橋
5.《政治與文學》
6.成人教育
7.五十年代
Ⅱ.文化
1.《文化與社會》
2.《長期革命》
3.《關鍵詞》
Ⅲ.戲劇
1.《戲劇：從易卜生到艾略特》
2.布萊希特和布萊希特之後
Ⅳ.文學
1.《閱讀與批評》
2.《英國小說：從狄更斯到勞倫斯》
3.威爾士三部曲與《志願者》
4.《鄉村與城市》
5.《馬克思主義與文學》
Ⅴ.政治
1.英國：1956~1978
2.《奧威爾》
3.俄國革命
4.通向變革的兩條道路
參考書目
此書為佳作，很有洞識力，不過作者很不滿意。
Culture and Society 1780-1950
文化與社會╱威廉斯(Raymond Williams)著著；彭淮棟譯譯, 聯經, 民74 [1985]. 中國機讀編目格式, 文化與社會: 1780 至1950 年英國文化觀念之發展╱威廉斯著著
Culture and Society 1780 1950
Raymond Williams - 1983 - 388 頁
http://tulips.ntu.edu.tw:1081/search~S5*cht/?searchtype=X&searcharg=raymond+williams&searchscope=5&sortdropdown=-&SORT=DZ&extended=0&SUBMIT=%E6%9F%A5%E8%A9%A2&searchlimits=&searchorigarg=X{214757}{21376f}{213774}{213d7e}%26SORT%3DD
Raymond Williams’ Conclusion to Culture and Society
The history of the idea of culture is a record of our reactions in thought and feeling, to the changed conditions of our common life. Our meaning of culture is a response to the events which our meanings of industry and democracy most evidently define. (285).In making his conclusions, a triad of influence that has preoccupied the book is raised again in the shape of culture, democracy and industry. Culture is according to Williams’ a reaction to changes ‘in the condition of our common life’ (285). Different reactions and resulting situations have created different cultures and consequently there are many different kinds of culture:
Of the three major issues at stake in these developments (art, industry, democracy), each has three phases which Williams proceeds to describe. I outline his findings in the table below.
The idea of culture describes our common inquiry but our conclusions are diverse, as our starting points were diverse. The word, culture, cannot automatically be pressed into service as any kind of social or personal directive. (285)
| PHASE | Industry | Democracy | Art |
| 1. 1790 – 1870: a phase of working out new attitudes to industrialism and democracy. | The rejection of production and the social relations of the factory system | Concern at the threat of minority values by popular supremacy of the new masses. | A period of questioning the intrinsic value of art and its importance to the common life. |
| 2. 1870 – 1914: narrower fronts, specialism in the arts, direct politics. | Sentiment versus the machine. | Emphasis on community, society versus the individual ethic. | Defiant exile: art for art’s sake. |
| 3. 1914 – 1945: a phase of large scale organisations and the mass media. | Acceptance of machine production. | Fears of the first phase are renewed in the context of ‘mass-democracy’ and ‘mass communications’. | The reintegration of art with the common life of society centred on the word ‘communication’. |
Some of these opinions concerning art, industry and democracy did of course cross periods, but they were not the common or general view according to Williams.
Mass and Masses
Williams notices that the word ‘masses’ is often associated with a ‘mob’ and he sees this emerging from three social tendencies:
- the concentration of population in industrial towns;
- the concentration of workers in factories;
- and the development of an organized and self-organizing working class prone to social and political massing.
Yet the masses was a new word for mob, and the traditional characteristics of the mob were retained it its significance: gullibility, fickleness, herd-prejudice, lowness of taste and habit. The masses, on this evidence, formed a perpetual threat to culture. Mass-thinking, mass-suggestion, mass-prejudice would threaten to swamp considered individual thinking and feeling. Even democracy, which had both a classical and a liberal reputation, would lose its savour in becoming mass-democracy. (288)
But if this is so, it is clear that what is in question is not only gullibility, fickleness, herd-prejudice or lowness of taste and habit. It is also from the open record, the declared intention of the working people to alter society in many of its aspects, in ways which those to whom the franchise was formerly restricted deeply disapprove. (288)
For Williams, Mass-democracy does not exist, there is only democracy: ‘Masses=majority cannot be glibly equated with masses=mob’ (289).
In continuing to challenge the term, ‘masses’, Williams considers the notion of the individual or ‘man in the street’. Williams asks, are we each only the man on the street or are we something more than that? In a collective image, the masses are different to us as we are unique individual yet they are similar so that the public includes us yet is not us.
This way of seeing others is sometimes exploited though for political and cultural motives.
I do not think of my relatives, friends, neighbours, colleagues, acquaintances, as masses ; we none of us can or do. The masses are always the others, whom we don’t know, and can’t know. Yet now, in our kind of society, we see those others regularly, in their myriad variations, stand, physically, beside them. They are here and we are here with them. And that we are with them is of course the whole point. To the other people, we also are masses. Masses are other people. (289)
Mass Communication
The rise of the printing press was intensified in 1811 by the invention of the steam driven press and by rotary presses in 1815. Transport links have improved as have telecommunications. Broadcasting, television and film have emerged. From these developments, Williams notes a greater number of paper publications at a lower price, more bills and posters, the rise of RV and broadcasting programmes and the art of film. How valuable are these developments?
The development of the media has brought a means of communication that is more impersonal: using photography of actors rather than actors, radio broadcasts rather than meetings. However Williams says that we cannot always compare conventional and mass communication fairly. The result of mass communication has simply been a change in the activities on which time is spent. Some critics dislike the one-way sending of information, but Williams points to reading, which has been providing information with no immediate possibility of response for centuries.
Williams uses the term ‘multiple transmission’ to describe the expansion of audience that mass communication has provided. The audience has grown as a result of growing general education and technical improvements and by some it is labelled mass communication. With such a large audience, the media can no longer retain such a personal feel, yet Williams bel;ieves that it is useful for some kinds of address. His question though is, what information is being communicated and how? It depends of course on the intentions of the broadcaster. Williams suggests that broadcasts can be, ‘art. education, the givingf of information and opinion’ or ‘manipulation – the persuasion of a large number of people to act, feel, think, know, in certain ways’ (292).
Mass Observation
Are the masses a mob? If it were so, then this would be a negative aspect to mass communication and also to mass culture or popular culture. Williams believes though that it is a question of interpretation. There is always bad popular art, ‘written by skilled and educated people for a public that hasn’t the time, or hasn’t the education, or hasn’t, let’s face it, the intelligence to read anything more complete, anything more careful, anything nearer the known canons of exposition or argument’ (294). However there is some popular art that is ‘bright, attractive, popular’ even if it is mediocre in comparison with high art (294).
Popular culture supposedly emerged after the Education Act of 1870 when a mass literate public developed. However points to the 1730s and 40s when a middle class reading public demanded ‘that vulgar phenomenon, the novel’ (295). Williams points out that there was literacy before 1870.
Williams notes also that much of the art produced for the working classes came from institutions on high, ‘for conscious political or commercial advantage’ (295). The working classes did produce some publications such as radical pamphlets, political newspapers and publicity, but this was quite different to the literature produced for them. This new bad literature from institutions was also absorbed by the middle classes and the masses cannot so easily be equated with the mob.
Contemporary historians concentrate on this bad literature and ignore the fact that as an introduction of a greater literate society, followers of all art forms have increased. Williams thinks that the problem is that of the high art critic comparing his own tastes to popular ones. What Williams calls strip papers (probably equivalent to our tabloids) reproduce the kind of communication that go on in working class communities to produce ‘that complex of rumour and traveller’s tales which then served the majority as news of a kind’ (298). Popular culture is not necessarily low in taste although appreciation of literature should be significant in a society’s education.
The problem with the mass media is that in order to make profit it needs huge audiences, and thus it will draw audiences in as much as it can and profit from people’’s ignorance. Williams praises the local newspaper which is higher in quality than the strip newspaper and is read by working class people: ‘Produced for a known community on the basis of common interest and common knowledge, the local newspaper is not governed by ‘mass’ interpretation’ (300). The regional newspaper is not based on the reader’s lack of education but on a regional and social grouping.
Communication and Community
Williams notes that communication, ‘is not only transmission, it si also reception and response’ (301). Williams shows anxiety about mass communications use of enticing psychological and linguistic strategies, but he states that, ‘any real theory of communication is also a theory of community’ (301). Williams believes that there has been a dominative theory of communication that has called for the science of penetrating the mass mind:
It is easy to recognize a dominative theory if, for other reasons, we think it to be bad, A theory that a minority should profit by employing a majority in wars of gain is easily rejected. A theory that a minority should profit by employing a mass of wage slaves is commonly rejected. A theory that a minority should reserve the inheritance of knowledge to itself, and deny it to the majority, is occasionally rejected. (301)
Mass communication has been though to be a minority exploiting a majority, yet Williams states that we are all democrats now. Some may wish to educate the majority through mass communication, but Williams questions their methods, because what is really called for is, ‘telling as an aspect of living; learning as an element of experience’ (302). Where education fails, it indicates a failure of communication which produces a reaction. Williams is adamant that people will not be told what to believe but must learn by experience. A dominative attitude indicates distrust concerning the masses with their strikes and riots, but Williams explains that there are not marks of untrustworthiness, but ‘symptoms of a basic failure in communication’ (303). Strike are then, ‘a confused, vague reaction against the dominative habit’ (303). Some governments rely on apathy and inertia to control the masses (this strikes a chord), but this is disastrous for democracy and the common interest. Transmission must be ‘an offering’ that recognises equality of being (304).
Culture and Which Way of Life?
Williams points out that while in the past culture was the pastime of ‘the old leisured classes’ it is now ‘the inheritance of the new rising class’ (306). For Williams, ‘working class culture’ is key. Working class culture is not the dissident element of proletarian writing such as post-Industrial ballads. Neither is it a simple alternative to Marxist-defined, ‘bourgeois culture’, a term that evokes Williams’ scepticism. Williams writes that, ‘even in a society in which a particular class is dominant, it is evidently possible both for members of other classes to contribute to the common stock, and for such contributions to be unaffected by or in opposition to the ideas and values of the dominant class’ (307). Williams is not then setting up Working Class Culture as an opponent to tradition, but suggests something more complex.
In the development of culture, Williams believes that the common language of English plays an important role. Williams criticises the upholding of standard English and he wonders whether the English language could be put to more interesting uses (308-309).
Williams wonders whether there is ‘any meaning left in “bourgeois” ’ and he notes that education has enabled a more even access to culture. Yet a culture is in turn dictated by a subject’s way of life:
We may now see what is properly meant by ‘working-class culture’. It is not proletarian art, or council houses, or a particular use of language; it is rather the basic collective idea, and the institutions, manners, habits of thought, and intention which proceed from this. Bourgeois culture, similarly, is the basic individualist idea and the institutions, manners, habits of thought, and intention which proceed from that. […] The culture which it [the working class] has produced […] is the collective democratic institution, whether in the trade unions, the co-operative movement or a political party. Working-class culture, in the stage through which it has been passing, is primarily social (in that it has created institutions) rather than individual (in particular intellectual or imaginative work). When it is considered in context, it can be seen as a very remarkable creative achievement. (313)
The Idea of Community
Williams believes that there are two notions of community: one of service (middle class) and the other of solidarity (working class). Williams describes his experience of growing up in a community of solidarity and his difficulty in understanding the servant system in England. He turns to a political pamphlet entitled How we are Governed which demands conformity in a kind of national service system, but Williams states: ‘The idea of service, ultimately, is no substitute for the idea of active mutual responsibility’ (316). The notion of service offers someone a role in which they simply perform a function and without the solidarity of Williams’ community must climb the ladder of promotion and success alone.
The Development of a Common Culture
Solidaity in contrast with service is, ‘potentially the real basis of a society’, yet Williams realises that the negative, defensive aspects of solidarity must be changed (318). Williams recommends that ‘diversity has to be substantiated within an effective community which disposes of majority power’ and that the aim must be that of ‘achieving diversity without creating separation’ (318, 319). Solidarity does not mean exclusion: ‘A good community, a living culture, will […] not only make room for but actively encourage all and any who can contribute to the advance in consciousness which is the common need’ (320). Neither does solidarity mean being closed to possibilities, since ‘while the closed fist is a necessary symbol, the clenching ought never to be such that the hand cannot open, and the fingers extend, to discover and give shape to the newly forming reality’ (320).
Reference
Williams, Raymond. Culture and Society 1780 - 1950. 1958. London: Penguin, 1985.文化與社會: 1780至1950 英國文化觀念之發展 彭淮棟譯 台北:聯經 1985
2008.7.6
2005年某天辜先生向我提Raymond Williams（簡稱 RW）寫過小說。
今天讀到John Mullan 在英國報紙The Observer 寫的介紹文 Rebel in a tweed suit，知道RW的 KEY WORDS有新版。
http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/scienceandnature/story/0,6000,1493871,00.html
我對照巨流2003出版的『關鍵詞：文化與社會的詞彙』（第二版），知道這的確是新版，並查出它的專文介紹：New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society
edited by Tony Bennett, Lawrence Grossberg and Meaghan Morris
427pp, Blackwell, £16.99
http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/politicsphilosophyandsociety/0,6121,1483396,00.html
----
Raymond Williams[英]雷蒙、威廉斯 著《關鍵詞：文化與社會的詞彙》劉建基譯，台北：巨流，2003。
大陸本用同一翻譯 關鍵詞---文化與社會的辭彙 . 北京：生活、讀書、新知三聯
書店出版社. 日期：2005年3月.
日本：完訳 キーワード辞典
レイモンド ウィリアムズ (著), Raymond Williams (原著), 椎名 美智 (翻訳), 越智 博美 (翻訳), 武田 ちあき (翻訳), 松井 優子 (翻訳)
我一開始覺得很奇怪：為什麼需要用三人合作。後來才發現，這本書對於非以英文為母語者的負擔太大，許多字眼的意思不斷演化，所以其中引句之古今字義都需要專業者之推敲，……. 劉建基譯的《關鍵詞：文化與社會的詞彙》同一字條中，「可能多」以當今字義翻古字義之問題，待討論……
我去年讀台灣版，翻譯上有些我不太滿意之處（這些其實都是小毛病），又，巨流出版的人是舊識，所以沒撰文。
這回查一下網路相關的中文資料，竟然發現大陸版的資訊多。 幾乎 「喧賓奪主」。
我無原書，不過網路上可找到兩字眼：popular和 culture之文本，可資對照。
讀完之後發現: 光是這兩條就需要專文討論。
這非本文之主旨。
這本中文放棄編譯索引，這相當可惜的，因為此書的一精神是：強調字組之間有關連(connections)，所以可能某同一字需要參見「書中每字之後的『非參見』條目」。
英文拼音或大寫（如寫成Adam smith）之錯誤「不少」，連Jane Austen（p. 180）都如此：「糖果」（p. 398）。馬克福音（p. 69）；鮭非 saumon（p. 332）。
不一致，原書名有的有翻譯，有的無。連最重要的（q. v. 參見本書都是如此）
第82頁：We can easily distinguish the sense which depends on a literal continuity of physical process as now in 'sugar-beet culture or, in the specialized physical application in bacteriology since the 1880s, 'germ culture'.
隔數年hc不知當年為什麼這樣說:「甜菜文化」和「細菌文化」應該都是誤會。專門說法應為「培養」。
原書引許多英文名文，都只引幾字，沒整句和上下文，所以翻譯時應設法了解，我只舉Jane Austen的兩本小說Emma 和Persuasion (第五章) 之兩語為例說明：
例一（p.180）："A state of alteration, perhaps of improvement"翻譯成：「處於改造的狀態，或許是在改善的狀態中。」
這原文為……The Musgroves, like their houses, were in a state of alteration, perhaps of
improvement. The father and mother were in the old English style,…..
其實 alternation 採用「變更」等意思較好。improvement 原先為增加土地・不動産的価値所做的"改良工事" 如果用在人身上呢 可能與改良或改善都不一樣......
勸導 裘因譯 上海譯文 p.41
"Musgrove一家 同他們這幢房子一樣 正經歷著變遷或演化的過程 " )'
hc評: "演化" 等也不妥
例二（p.180）： Austen (Emma, 1816) ''every advantage of discipline and culture. 舉此為culture之用法之一史例。
（『關鍵詞：文化與社會的詞彙』（第二版）翻譯為『每一種教養與文化（culture）的優點。』）
我們抄些Emma的翻譯；「這就是簡‧費爾法克斯的身世。她落到好人手裡，在坎貝爾家受到百般關懷，得到良好的教育。由於成天跟思想純正、見多識廣的人生活在一起，她的心靈和智力受到充分的訓練和薰陶；……」（孫致禮；p.145）
----原文
Such was Jane Fairfax's history. She had fallen into good hands, known nothing but kindness from the Campbells, and been given an excellent education. Living constantly with right-minded and well-informed people, her heart and understanding had received every advantage of discipline and culture;
以下的翻譯取自：Raymond Williams 著《關鍵詞：文化與社會的詞彙》（Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society）劉建基譯，台北：巨流，2003，頁287。
【】表示我的一些翻譯看法供參考
Popular was originally a legal and political term, from popularis, L-belonging to the people. An action popular, from C15, was a legal suit which it was open to anyone to begin. Popular estate and popular government, from C16, referred to a political system constituted or carried on by the whole people, but there was also the sense (cf. COMMON) of 'low or 'base.
.......從16世紀起，指的是一個由全體百姓組成或管理的政治體系，但是也包含了低下的(low)或卑下(base)的意涵…….popular的字義後來演變為「受喜愛的」、「受歡迎的」；這即是現代的主要意涵。【hc案：標點；用法奇特】
The transition to the predominant modern meaning of 'widely favored or 'well-liked is interesting in that it contains a strong element of setting out to gain favor, with a sense of calculation that has not quite disappeared but that is evident in a reinforced phrase like deliberately popular….
這種演變是有趣的，因為它包含了「討人歡心」 的特質，並保有「刻意迎合」【hc案：a sense of calculation 這應為「心計」】的舊意涵；很明顯可以在加強語氣的片語裡發現【hc案：將先前的a strong element of 調到這兒？】；例如，deliberately popular（刻意討人歡心）。……
幻燈機下的老朋友們之幻想曲（0）：前述
十天前，辜先生提Raymond Williams（rw）寫過小說。今天讀到John Mullan 在英國報紙The Observer 寫的介紹文Rebel in a tweed suit，知道RW的KEY WORDS有新版。
http://books.guardian.co.uk/
我對照巨流2003出版的『關鍵詞：文化與社會的詞彙』（
edited by Tony Bennett, Lawrence Grossberg and Meaghan Morris
427pp, Blackwell, £16.99
http://books.guardian.co.uk/
----
Raymond Williams 著《關鍵詞：文化與社會的詞彙》劉建基譯，台北：巨流，
關鍵詞---文化與社會的辭彙. 作者：[英]雷蒙、威廉斯. 出版社：生活、讀書、新知三聯
書店. 日期：2005年3月.
日本：完訳 キーワード辞典
レイモンド ウィリアムズ (著), Raymond Williams (原著), 椎名 美智 (翻訳), 越智 博美 (翻訳), 武田 ちあき (翻訳), 松井 優子 (翻訳)
【我一開始覺得很奇怪：為什麼需要用三人合作。後來才發現，
----
我去年讀台灣版，翻譯上有些我不太滿意之處（
我無原書，不過網路上可找到兩字眼：popular和 culture之文本，可資對照。
這本中文放棄編譯索引，這是相當可惜的，因為此書的精神之一是：
英文拼音或大寫（如寫成Adam smith）之錯誤「不少」，連Jane Austen（p.180）都如此：「糖果」（p.398）。
第 82頁：We can easily distinguish the sense which depends on a literal continuity of physical process as now in 'sugar-beet culture or, in the specialized physical application in bacteriology since the 1880s, 'germ culture. 「甜菜文化」和「細菌文化」應該都是誤會。專門說法應為「培養」
原書引許多英文名文，都只引幾字，沒整句和上下文，
例一（p.180）："A state of alteration, perhaps of improvement"翻譯成：「處於改造的狀態，
這原文為……The Musgroves, like their houses, were in a state of alteration, perhaps of
improvement. The father and mother were in the old English style,…..
所以alternation 其實採用「變更」等意思較好。
例二（p.180）： Austen (Emma, 1816) ''every advantage of discipline and culture. 舉此為culture之用法之一史例。
翻譯為『每一種教養與文化（culture）的優點。』（『
我們抄些較長的翻譯；「這就是簡‧費爾法克斯的身世。
----
Such was Jane Fairfax's history. She had fallen into good hands, known nothing but kindness from the Campbells, and been given an excellent education. Living constantly with right-minded and well-informed people, her heart and understanding had received every advantage of discipline and culture;
----
rl本；「她遇見了貴人，甘貝爾夫婦對她非常和藹，
Keywords: a vocabulary of culture and society - Google 圖書結果
Raymond Williams - 1985 - Fiction - 349 頁Excerpts from Raymond Williams, Keywords(1)
Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language. This is so partly because of its intricate historical development, in several European languages, but mainly because it has now come to be used for important concepts in several distinct intellectual disciplines and in several distinct and incompatible systems of thought.
The fw is cultura, L, from rw colere, L. Colere had a range of meanings: inhabit, cultivate, protect, honor with worship. Some of these meanings eventually separated, though still with occasional overlapping, in the derived nouns. Thus 'inhabit developed through colonus, L to colony. 'Honor with worship developed through cultus, L to cult. Cultura took on the main meaning of cultivation or tending, including, as in Cicero, cultura animi, though with subsidiary medieval meanings of honor and worship (cf. in English culture as 'worship in Caxton (1483)). The French forms of cultura were couture, OF, which has since developed its own specialized meaning, and later culture, which by eC15 had passed into English. The primary meaning was then in husbandry, the tending of natural growth.
Culture in all its early uses was a noun of process: the tending of something, basically crops or animals. The subsidiary coulter -- ploughshare, had travelled by a different linguistic route, from culter, L -- ploughshare, culter, OE, to the variant English spellings culter, colter, coulter and as late as eCl7 culture (Webster, Duchess of Malfi, III, ii: 'hot burning cultures). This provided a further basis for the important next stage of meaning, by metaphor. From eCl6 the tending of natural growth was extended to process of human development, and this, alongside the original meaning in husbandry, was the main sense until lC18 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 degree of habituation to the metaphor, which made the sense of human tending direct; second, an extension of particular processes to a general process, which the word could abstractly carry. It is of course from the latter development that the independent noun culture began its complicated modern history, but the process of change is so intricate, and the latencies of meaning are at times so close, that it is not possible to give any definite date. Culture as an independent noun, an abstract process or the product of such a process, is not important before 1C18 and is not common before mCl9. But the early stages of this development were not sudden. There is an interesting use in Milton, in the second (revised) edition of The Readie and Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth (1660): 'spread much more Knowledg and Civility, yea, Religion, through all parts of the Land, by communicating the natural heat of Government and Culture more distributively to all extreme parts, which now lie num and neglected. Here the metaphorical sense ('natural heat) still appears to be present, and civility (cf. CIVILIZATION)is still written where in C19 we would normally expect culture. Yet we can also read 'government and culture in a quite modern sense. Milton, from the tenor of his whole argument, is writing about a general social process, and this is a definite stage of development. In C15 England this general process 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 Clayton; cit. Plumb, England in the Eighteenth Century)which has this clear sense: 'it has not been customary for persons of either birth or culture to breed up their children to the Church. Akenside (Pleasures of Imagination, 1744) wrote: '... nor purple state nor culture can bestow. Wordsworth wrote 'where grace of culture hath been utterly unknown (1805), and Jane Austen (Emma, 1816) 'every advantage of discipline and culture.
It is thus clear that culture was developing in English towards some of its modern senses before the decisive effects of a new social and intellectual movement. But to follow the development through this movement, in lC18 and eC19, we have to look also at developments in other languages and especially in German.
In French, until C18, culture was always accompanied by a grammatical form indicating the matter being cultivated, as in the English usage already noted. Its occasional use as an independent noun dates from mC18, rather later than similar occasional uses in English. The independent noun civilization also emerged in mC18; its relationship to culture has since been very complicated (cf. CIVILIZATION and discussion below). There was at this point an important development in German: the word was borrowed from French, spelled first (lC18) Cultur and from C19 Kultur. Its main use was still as a synonym for civilization: first in the abstract sense of a general process of becoming 'civilized or 'cultivated; second, in the sense which had already been established for civilization by the historians of the Enlightenment, in the popular C18 form of the universal histories, as a description of the secular process of human development. There was then a decisive change of use in Herder. In his unfinished Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind (1784--9 1) he wrote of Cultur: 'nothing is more indeterminate than this word, and nothing more deceptive than its application to all nations and periods. He attacked the assumption of the universal histories that 'civilization or culture -- the historical self-development of humanity -- was what we would now call a unilinear process, leading to the high and dominant point of C18 European culture. Indeed he attacked what be called European subjugation and domination of the four quarters of the globe, and wrote:
Men of all the quarters of the globe, who have perished over the ages, you have not lived solely to manure the earth with your ashes, so that at the end of time your posterity should be made happy by European culture. The very thought of a superior European culture is a blatant insult to the majesty of Nature.
It is then necessary, he argued, in a decisive innovation, to speak of 'cultures in the plural: the specific and variable cultures of different nations and periods, but also the specific and variable cultures of social and economic groups within a nation. This sense was widely developed, in the Romantic movement, as an alternative to the orthodox and dominant 'civilization. It was first used to emphasize national and traditional cultures, including the new concept of folk-culture (cf. FOLK). It was later used to attack what was seen as the MECHANICAL (q.v.) character of the new civilization then emerging: both for its abstract rationalism and for the 'inhumanity of current Industrial development. It was used to distinguish between 'human and 'material development. Politically, as so often in this period, it veered between radicalism and reaction and very often, in the confusion of major social change, fused elements of both. (It should also be noted, though it adds to the real complication, that the same kind of distinction, especially between 'material and 'spiritual development, was made by von Humboldt and others, until as late as 1900, with a reversal of the terms, culture being material and civilization spiritual. In general, however, the opposite distinction was dominant.)
On the other hand, from the 1840s in Germany, Kultur was being used in very much the sense in which civilization had been used in C18 universal histories. The decisive innovation is G. F. Klemms Allgemeine Kulturgeschichte der Menschheit -- 'General Cultural History of Mankind (1843-52)-- which traced human development from savagery through domestication to freedom. Although the American anthropologist Morgan, tracing comparable stages, used 'Ancient Society, with a culmination in Civilization, Klemms sense was sustained, and was directly followed in English by Tylor in Primitive Culture (1870). It is along this line of reference that the dominant sense in modern social sciences has to be traced.
The complexity of the modern development of the word, and of its modern usage, can then be appreciated. We can easily distinguish the sense which depends on a literal continuity of physical process as now in 'sugar-beet culture or, in the specialized physical application in bacteriology since the 1880s, 'germ culture. But once we go beyond the physical reference, we have to recognize three broad active categories of usage. The sources of two of these we have already discussed: (i) the independent and abstract noun which describes a general process of intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic development, from C18; (ii) the independent noun, whether used generally or specifically, which indicates a particular way of life, whether of a people, a period, a group, or humanity in general, from Herder and Klemm. But we have also to recognize (iii) the independent and abstract noun which describes the works and practices of intellectual and especially artistic activity. This seems often now the most widespread use: culture is music, literature, painting and sculpture, theater and film. A Ministry of Culture refers to these specific activities, sometimes with the addition of philosophy, scholarship, history. This use, (iii), is in fact relatively late. It is difficult to date precisely because it is in origin an applied form of sense (i): the idea of a general process of intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic development was applied and effectively transferred to the works and practices which represent and sustain it. But it also developed from the earlier sense of process; cf. 'progressive culture of fine arts, Millar, Historical View of the English Government, IV, 314 (1812). In English (i) and (iii) are still close; at times, for internal reasons, they are indistinguishable as in Arnold, Culture and Anarchy (1867); while sense (ii) was decisively introduced into English by Tylor, Primitive Culture (1870), following Klemm. The decisive development of sense (iii) in English was in lC19 and eC2O.
Faced by this complex and still active history of the word, it is easy to react by selecting one 'true or 'proper or 'scientific sense and dismissing other senses as loose or confused. There is evidence of this reaction even in the excellent study by Kroeber and Kluckhohn, Culture: a Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions, where usage in North American anthropology is in effect taken as a norm. It is clear that, within a discipline, conceptual usage has to be clarified. But in general it is the range and overlap of meanings that is significant. The complex of senses indicates a complex argument about the relations between general human development and a particular way of life, and between both and the works and practices of art and intelligence. It is especially interesting that in archaeology and in cultural anthropology the reference to culture or a culture isprimarily to material production, while in history and cultural studies the reference is primarily to signifying or symbolic systems. This often confuses but even more often conceals the central question of the relations between 'material and 'symbolic production, which in some recent argument -- cf. my own Culture -- have always to be related rather than contrasted. Within this complex argument there are fundamentally opposed as well as effectively overlapping positions; there are also, understandably, many unresolved questions and confused answers. But these arguments and questions cannot be resolved by reducing the complexity of actual usage. This point is relevant also to uses of forms of the word in languages other than English, where there is considerable variation. The anthropological use is common in the German, Scandinavian and Slavonic language groups, but it is distinctly subordinate to the senses of art and learning, or of a general process of human development, in Italian and French. Between languages as within a language, the range and complexity of sense and reference indicate both difference of intellectual position and some blurring or overlapping. These variations, of whatever kind, necessarily involve alternative views of the 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 which its variations of use significantly indicate.
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 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. Hostility to the word culture in English appears to date from the controversy around Arnolds views. It gathered force in lC19 and eC20, in association with a comparable hostility to aesthete and AESTHETIC (q.v.). Its association with class distinction produced the mime-word culchah. There was also an area of hostility associated with anti-German feeling, during and after the 1914-18 War, in relation to propaganda about Kultur. The central area of hostility has lasted, and one element of it has been emphasized by the recent American phrase culture-vulture. It is significant that virtually all the hostility (with the sole exception of the temporary anti-German association) has been connected with uses involving claims to superior knowledge (cf. the noun INTELLECTUAL),refinement (culchah) and distinctions between 'high art (culture) and popular art and entertainment. It thus records a real social history and a very difficult and confused phase of social and cultural development. It is interesting that the steadily extending social and anthropological use of culture and cultural and such formations as sub-culture (the culture of a distinguishable smaller group) has, except in certain areas (notably popular entertainment), either bypassed or effectively diminished the hostility and its associated unease and embarrassment. The recent use of culturalism, to indicate a methodological contrast with structuralism in social analysis, retains many of the earlier difficulties, and does not always bypass the hostility.
Popular was originally a legal and political term, from popularis, L-belonging to the people. An action popular, from C15, was a legal suit which it was open to anyone to begin. Popular estate and popular government, from C16, referred to a political system constituted or carried on by the whole people, but there was also the sense (cf. COMMON) of 'low or 'base. The transition to the predominant modern meaning of 'widely favored or 'well-liked is interesting in that it contains a strong element of setting out to gain favor, with a sense of calculation that has not quite disappeared but that is evident in a reinforced phrase like deliberately popular. Most of the men who have left records of the use of the word saw the matter from this point of view, downwards. There were neutral uses, such as Norths 'more popular, and desirous of the common peoples good will and favor (1580) (where popular was still a term of policy rather than of condition), and evidently derogatory uses, such as Bacons 'a Noble-man of an ancient Family, but unquiet and popular (1622). Popularity was defined in 1697, by Collier, as 'a courting the favor of the people by undue practices. This use was probably reinforced by unfavorable applications: a neutral reference to 'popular'. . . theams (1573) is less characteristic than 'popular error (1616) and 'popular sickenesse (1603) or 'popular disease (C17--C19), in which an unwelcome thing was merely widespread. A primary sense of 'widely favored was clear by lC18; the sense of 'well-liked is probably C19. A lC19 American magazine observed: 'they have come ... to take popular quite gravely and sincerely as a synonym for good. The shift in perspective is then evident. Popular was being seen from the point of view of the people rather than from those seeking favor or power from them. Yet the earlier sense has not died. Popular culture was not identified by the people but by others, and it still carries two older senses: inferior kinds of work (cf. popular literature, popular press as distinguished from quality press); and work deliberately setting out to win favor (popular journalism as distinguished from democratic journalism, or popular entertainment); as well as the more modern sense of well-liked by many people, with which of course, in many cases, the earlier senses overlap. The sense of popular culture as the culture actually made by people for themselves is different from all these. It relates, evidently, to Herders sense of Kultur des Volkes, lC18, but what came through in English as folk-culture (cf. FOLK) is distinguishable from recent senses of popular culture as contemporary as well as historical. The range of senses can be seen again in popularize, which until C19 was a political term, in the old sense, and then took on its special meaning of presenting knowledge in generally accessible ways. Its C19 uses were mainly favorable, and in C20 the favorable sense is still available, but there is also a strong sense of 'simplification, which in some circles is predominant.
Populism, in political discussion, embodies all these variations. In the USA the Populists (Peoples Party), from 1892, were in a radical alliance with labor organizations, though the relations between populism and socialism were complex. The sense of representing popular interests and values has survived, but is often overridden by either (a) right-wing criticism of this, as in demagogy, which has moved from 'leading the people to 'crude and simplifying agitation, or (b) left-wing criticism of rightist and fascist movements which exploit 'popular prejudices, or of leftist movements which subordinate socialist ideas to popular (populist) assumptions and habits.
In mC2O popular song and popular art were characteristically shortened to pop, and the familiar range of senses, from unfavorable to favorable, gathered again around this. The shortening gave the word a lively informality but opened it, more easily, to a sense of the trivial. It is hard to say whether older senses of pop have become fused with this use: the common sense of a sudden lively movement, in many familiar and generally pleasing contexts, is certainly appropriate.
1. Rev. Ed. (NewYork: Oxford UP, 1983), pp. 87-93 and 236-8.
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