Both approaches have their place, and are not as different as they might seem. But the purpose of this column is not to parse this difference, it is, rather, to put out there a definition of culture, say why I like it, see what people think and to start a dialogue on the listserv. He also argues, though more peripherally, against what he terms a dangerous new class of men, advertisers, who likewise see that masses as easily manipulated dupes. Williams is insulted. Enter Henri Lefebvre.
Spatial practice ensures continuity and some degree of cohesion.
We might hear in this the echoes of the first half of Williams' definition. Thinking this arrangement, or triad, of overlapping spaces back through Williams we could say that culture is the particular arrangement of relations between these three concepts in any particular social space. Lefebvre says that representations of space are the dominant space, perhaps because concepts, rather than being detached from context are embedded and embodied in social space and are crucial in shaping our epistemic horizons. What I like about this configuration is that it ties culture to ideas of habit and space, to the living of broader structures of practices, concepts, and symbols, but recognizing that these broader structures only exist in these individual iterations, in the moment of the lived, as repetitions and habits, as a bringing into resonance of disparate events. But all this makes culture more elusive than ever.