The modern definition of ‘culture’ is the ‘art, literature, music and other intellectual expressions of a particular society or time’ (“Culture,” Oxford’s Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English). There are two principal concepts in the study of communication and culture – the materialist and the idealist view of culture. The materialist approach concerns itself with the literary criticisms of Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels, and the Frankfurt School where culture is constituted by class relations and social structure, whereas, the idealist approach concerns itself with literary criticisms of Matthew Arnold (Arnoldian), F.R. Leavis and Q.D. Leavis (Leavisite) where it discriminates between high culture and low culture. This essay seeks to examine how the concept of high culture is used and its alternative counterparts.
Idealism, by Oxford’s definition, is ‘the practice of forming, pursuing or believing in ideals’ (“Idealism,” Oxford’s Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English). The idealist approach in the anthropological study of culture lays its prominence on the...