education. At least from the 19th century onwards, under the influence of anthropologists and sociologists, the word culture has come to be used generally both in the singular and the plural (cultures) to refer to a whole way of life of people, including their customs, laws, conventions, and values.

Distinctions have consequently been drawn between primitive and advanced culture and cultures, between elite and popular culture, between popular and mass culture, and most recently between national and global cultures. Distinctions have been drawn too between culture and civilization; the latter is a word derived not, like culture or agriculture, from the soil, but from the city. The two words are sometimes treated as synonymous. Yet this is misleading. While civilization and barbarism are pitted against each other in what seems to be a perpetual behavioral pattern, the use of the word culture has been strongly influenced by 6 conceptions of evolution in the 19th century and of development in the 20th century. Cultures evolve or develop. They are not static. They have twists and turns. Styles change. So do fashions. There are cultural processes. What, for example, the word cultured means has changed substantially since the study of classical (that is, Greek and Roman) literature, philosophy, and history ceased in the 20th century to be central to school and university education. No single alternative focus emerged, although with computers has come electronic culture, affecting kinds of study, and most recently digital culture. As cultures express themselves in new forms not everything gets better or more civilized.

The multiplicity of meanings attached to the word made and will make it difficult to define. There is no single, unproblematic definition, although many attempts have been made to establish one. The only non- problematic definitions go back to agricultural meaning (for example, cereal culture or strawberry culture) and medical meaning (for example, bacterial culture or penicillin culture). Since in anthropology and sociology we also acknowledge culture clashes, culture shock, and counter-culture, the range of reference is extremely wide.