Culture 11

Kultūr (lat.), actually care and improvement of an object capable of improvement in any direction, e.g. of the soil, the woods, individual animals, but especially the development and ennoblement of human life and striving.

Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon (1907): Lexikoneintrag zu "Kultūr", Band 11. Leipzig, p. 788

Meyer's Großes Konversationslexikon was first published in 1840 by the Bibliographic Institute under Joseph Meyer. The series was discontinued in 1986 after the institute merged with Brockhaus Verlag.

Here it becomes evident how clearly linked the understandings of culture and development were thought to be. While the role of dictionaries is to codify social knowledge, at the same time, they exercise the power of definition.

*Stuart Hall (1992): The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power. In: Stuart Hall & Bram Gieben: Formations of Modernity. Understanding Modern Societies: An Introduction. Trowbridge: Redwood Books, S. 275–320.

1907