But these days culture means cultures, plural. It also means Things as well as Ideas, and the Everyday as well as the Exceptional. When people talk about contemporary culture they are therefore just as likely to be talking about biros, fast cars and Mars Bars, trainers or high heels as they are to be talking about about Shostakovich, Shakespeare or Nabokov. Goods have become as significant a measure and marker of culture as the Great and the Good. The meaning of culture has been extended to cover just about any thing.
Culture is no longer merely the beautiful and sublime, the refined.
Culture is life in the raw, the whole whack, head to toe, up to and including the Pokemon phenomenon, kettles and the kitchen sink. This turn to things is really quite recent. It wasn't until the late 20th century that a scholarly interest in items began to displace the traditional interest in -isms, with historians, literary critics and philosophers all suddenly becoming fascinated by the meaning of objects, large and small. It may be that this interest in material culture represents a return to an interest in the nature of matter, traditionally one of the great subjects of philosophy. It may represent a renewed search for the Aristotelian materia prima - the primary matter, an attempt at divining the very stuff of life.