The anthropological concept of culture as life form

pp. 25-33

in: Johan Forns, Johan Fornäs, Defending culture, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Abstract

Around 1800, an "anthropological" concept of culture as collective life forms took form, particularly with the work of Johann Gottfried von Herder. Its developments, uses, advantages and limitations are carefully scrutinised, not least in relation to identity politics and communitarianism. The pluralisation of culture into distinct cultures has critical potentials, but it can also reify collective groupings into fixed essences, or develop into a radical relativism undermining any critical or ethical analysis, or instead be combined with an ethnocentric hierarchy of high civilisations and low primitives.