The pragmatic concept of culture or... what might happen next?

Despite major criticism leveled against its use in anthropology and the other social sciences, the concept of culture remains an indispensible one in sociology. Three major pitfalls of cultural explanation are discussed in this article: idealism, groupism, and the focus on order. This short essay also considers contemporary approaches adopted by sociologists to the concept of culture which seek to overcome the very real problems associated with its uncritical use in the past. First, those who adopt these new approaches no longer use the concept idealistically to explain and predict human behavior; instead, culture is seen as part of ongoing social practice. Second, under these new approaches culture is no longer identified with or through groups, instead, group making and unmaking are analyzed as part of cultural practice. Third, these new approaches do not see culture as being concerned with ordered consensus, instead, culture expresses concerns, troubles, contradictions, tensions and anxieties. When we take these shifts into account, cultural explanation becomes focused on the ways in which people themselves try to make sense of the world. What comes to matter most are the variety of ways in which people use language and other meaningful forms of expression. The contemporary concept of culture in sociology invites us to look closely at how people live life and how they struggle, often with each other, to live it differently.