Society and Culture

Walker, Gavin. 2001. Society and Culture in sociological and anthropological tradition, History of the Human Sciences, 14(3): 30-55.

Gavin Walker in his 2001 paper views the concepts of society and culture in various sociological and anthropological traditions. The author emphasizes that sociology needs to understand the division of anthropological traditions between- social anthropology and cultural anthropology. He first tries to distinguish the sociological and cultural sciences. To former, society is leading concepts and culture is subordinates. Whereas for later, culture subsumes society. He argues that this is due to their origination in different traditions from the terms ‘societe’ and ‘kultur’ in the classical French and German traditions respectively.  Later on they have uptake in Anglo-american sociology and anthropology. And society becoming the leading concept for sociology and social anthropology whereas culture the leading concepts for cultural anthropology. In the same way their implication is different. Like sociology of culture is different with cultural anthropological consideration of society.