Two or Three Things that I Know about Culture

This lecture is mainly about the enduring significance of culture as an anthropological concept and the significance of its endurance among the peoples anthropologists study. It argues against the easy functionalist dismissal of the peoples' claims of cultural distinction (the so-called invention of tradition) and for the continued relevance of such distinction (the inventiveness of tradition). It also argues that the anthropological codgers such as Boas, Linton, et al., far from being guilty of all the bad things people are now saying about them, had ideas about culture that are still pertinent to the understanding of its contemporary forms and processes. But then, they had one advantage over most of us today: they had no paralysing fear of structure.