ALEXIS MADRIGAL

"There is also the problem that ‘culture’ names a rather amorphous entity. Human beings produce culture in the same sense that they produce carbon dioxide: they can’t help it, bu the stuff has absolutely no value in itself. It’s just there. It is one thing to attribute a group’s characteristics to its culture, as Boas did; it is another thing to elevate that culture into a discrete set of traditions and practices in which the members of the group can take pride simply because they are, willy-nilly, theirs. Culture is only a response to the conditions of life; when those conditions—and in modern societies they change continuously—cultures change as well. “Frenchness” is as variable as “finchness,” and no more worthy of respect as a thing in itself. It’s all a question of what people make of it."

Louis Menand in The Metaphysical Club, page 407