ABSTRACT
Classical Readings in Culture and Civilization brings together a collection of diverse writers from the second half of the eighteenth century to the first third of the twentieth around the topic of civilization and culture. In common usage, the words 'civilization' and 'culture' refer to particular levels of material and intellectual development and artistic expression. Moreover, the notion of civilization can also be understood historically. A historically sensitive notion of civilization can become a framework for a critique based in notions of power and legitimation. Like 'civilization', the notion of 'culture' is more complex than it appears to be at first glance. The German sociological and French anthropological notions of civilization and culture from this period of the late 1880s to the 1930s travelled, like so many real emigrants, to the United States. The concept of culture has also been paradigmatically reformulated, the result of which is a recasting of its conceptual and substantive horizons.
