1.3 A narrow and an expanded concept of culture

One major conceptual distinction can be made between the expanded concept and the narrow concept of culture.

The narrow concept or ‘high culture’ distinguishes between culture and civilization and refers to the classics, art, architecture and literature, or ‘the beautiful, the true and the good’. Such a narrow concept of culture was advocated by Immanuel Kant and later by Oswald Spengler and was popular until the middle of the twentieth century.

The expanded concept considers culture to be akin to the living environment or lifeworld and thus represents social practice. The sociological concept lifeworld considers environmental factors such as education, technology, religion, law etc., which enable human beings to interpret, communicate and become socially engaged. Culture as the living environment or lifeworld is part of an individual’s unquestionable and self-evident reality as well as clearly the result of actions by human beings.

The figure below illustrates these two conceptual views of culture.

Source: Bolten, Jürgen (2015, p. 46), adapted and translated