Culture, Multiculture, Postculture

by Joel S. Kahn

What is culture? How is it different from multiculture and postculture? In this accessible book, Joel Kahn shows that the idea of difference is of fundamental importance in debates on culture, multiculture and postculture. This innovative book examines a fundamental modern the relation between greater cultural diversity and global capitalism. Arguing for a view of culture which is thoroughly grounded in history, the author looks at the way in which cultural distinctions shape our relation to reality and imagination. He illustrates his arguments with a rich array of sources from fiction to real life and represents the many-sided and ubiquitous nature of culture in social life. Joel Kahn commen

Genres: Anthropology

192 pages, Paperback

First published November 14, 1995

Reviews

[Malcolm · Rating 4 out of 5]

After years of work as an anthropologist and cultural analyst Kahn has ventured into the big question of the meaning of 'culture' – not of a specific cultural formation but the thing we study in general. 'Culture' is one of those useful catch all words that has become so general in its explanatory use as to be close to meaningless. Kahn's approach to making sense of the word and what it signifies is to begin from what seems to be a contradiction – capitalism is becoming increasingly uniform its global activity, while 'culture' seems to be becoming increasingly diverse. He does two things that I like (aside from rejecting the simple banality that imposed uniformity leads to diversity as the product of some innate sense of resistance – or diversity as the result of bloody-mindedness): he argues that 'culture' must be understood has historically grounded and not the product of some innate or essentialised being; and secondly he explores the complex relationship between 'culture' and specific versions and understandings of reality without falling into the mechanical trap of false consciousness or ideology as distortion. Best of all, he avoids the simplistic celebration of diversity, and the all-to-common idealism of large parts of postmodernist-inflected cultural analysis. It's not an easy read, but for those of us who work in and around these areas it is one we should take more notice of.