Editorial

Abstract

It is an old trick and one most of us get our students to do some time or other: Look up the word “culture” in a standard English dictionary. The usual first two entries are always good for a debate. There is the anthropological one, “as customs, values, etc., ‘especially at a particular time’”; and there’s the lit-crit one “as appreciation of art, literature, etc.” Which is right? How do they connect?—and so on. Then there’s the older meaning, “as improvement and development through care . . . cultivation.”