Summary of “Culture” by Raymond Williams

The main idea of “Culture” is to provide a history of and the evolution of the word culture and other derivatives of that word. The history of the word culture is meant to give the reader a greater understanding of the present day definitions of culture by illuminating the changes to the original definition of the word that have occurred slowly over time. It is impossible to try to assign a single date to any one change of a word. The meaning of words evolves slowly over time as different people use the word differently and that different meaning slowly spreads through various social circles. Williams uses various historical sources to show how the usage of the word culture has changed. At its origin, the word culture referred to the physical act of encouraging something to grow (such as crops) or caring for the well being of live stock. As time passed, culture came to take on a more metaphorical meaning in relation to the mental development of an individual human or to the development of humans as a group (civilization). Through a long period of time, culture had its meaning changed from the idea of physical husbandry of any living thing to the much more specific development of an individual man. This change occurred through the use of the word by various English people and their writings. These changes of the meaning of culture throughout history lead to the three present day definitions of the word culture as given by Williams in his text. His definitions are paraphrased as follows; the noun discussing the process of various types of development (physical and spiritual for example), the noun that describes the way of life of different groups of people, and finally the noun that discusses the development of art such as music and literature. Different ethnic groups tend to use one definition of culture more heavily than some of the other definitions. In conclusion, the definition of culture has slowly evolved from a simple physical definition to a much more complex and specific developmental definition of human behavior.