Abstract
This final chapter focuses on how, in using the concept of culture, we necessarily rely upon value-principles. Academic deployment of this concept has frequently involved practical evaluations: of literary, artistic, or media products; and/or of people, institutions, groups, or societies. However, the grounds for the value-judgements involved have frequently remained unclear, nor has much attempt been made to justify them. In Chap. 4, I argued that academic research should not evaluate the phenomena being studied, but, even where this principle of objectivity is observed, practical values are needed to provide a relevance framework for determining what questions are worth investigating, and what would count as answers to them. However, there has been a general tendency to blur the difference between social science and cultural or social criticism.
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Hammersley, M. (2019). Epilogue. In: The Concept of Culture. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22982-5_5
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