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What is "culture"? And how did a metaphor from gardening invade social-science discourse in 19th-century Germany and America and then take the world by storm? We consider the myriad, often contradictory, ways that "culture" is deployed in current rhetoric, usually to sneak in hidden value judgments; then we trace how an ancient Latin term for gardening came to refer to the "cultivation" of good character, then to the shaping of society by high art and refined customs, and then ultimately, under the influence of German and American imperial politics, to a purportedly unified, organic whole encompassing the sum total of all learned behaviors in a given society.However you define it, I make the case that it is the defining myth of our time, and that we should get rid of it.

You can also play this episode on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/myth-of-month-22-82746773

Image: "Old New York" diorama, Museum of Natural History, New York

music: "Fandango," by Scarlatti or Soler, early 18th cent.; Midi version by El Gran Mago Paco Quito

Suggested further reading:--Michael A. Elliott, "The Culture Concept: Writing and Difference in the Age of Realism"--Hammersley, "The Concept of Culture: A History and Reappraisal."