Abstract
Since a decade, a revival of the traditional anthropological concept of culture can be observed in the social sciences as well as in the larger public. In anthropological discourse, however, the holistic theory of culture has long been abandoned, because of the problems of intra-cultural variation, of power, of cultural change and individual action. The main part of the article develops an understanding of culture as an unstable, open process of negotiating meaning, which leads, if a consensus can be established, to a stabilization of symbolic systems and corresponding processes of social closure [Weber]. The concluding part discusses the implications that such a conflict-compromise oriented concept of culture has for the role of anthropology in the public sphere and in the field of scientific disciplines.
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