Culture operates as signifying practice rather than a fixed way of life

Evidence

This is the important distinction between the conception of culture as a “way of life” and the conception of culture as “signifying practice” (Hall 1998). — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 399

Categorization

• DEFINE: A core definitional distinction: the signifying-practice conception of culture is the one that allows the identity work Hall describes throughout this chapter.
• XREF: The way-of-life vs signifying-practice split is the axis on which ‘cultural racism’ debates hinge — culture read as biology vs culture read as discourse. — connects to: Culture as constitutive of practice retains contingency and is never finally determined; Culture is a process of creating and transforming reality, not an environment. — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 323; Culture is defined as lived meanings plus embodied traditions responding to conditions (+18 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 399

Broader Connections

• Culture as constitutive of practice retains contingency and is never finally determined #corroborates (0.88)
• Culture is a process of creating and transforming reality, not an environment. #corroborates (0.85) — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 323
• Culture as objectivated design of human existence is the anthropological definition #contradicts (0.80)
• Cultural meanings are unstable and shift with the social field #expands (0.78)
• Being endemic to a culture does not make such views constant or inevitable #complicates (0.78) — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 200
• Culture is defined as lived meanings plus embodied traditions responding to conditions #corroborates (0.75)
• Cultures represent themselves as fixed but are always changed by history #corroborates (0.75)
• Cultural forms ossify and drift apart from the life that created them #expands (0.72) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 837
• The tension between life and form drives cultural change. #complicates (0.72) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 820