Academic Source 4: The Idea of Culture by Terry Eagleton

Eagleton, Terry. The Idea of Culture. 1st ed. 1. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers Inc., 2000. 1-131. Print. In his book, Terry Eagleton relates the context of culture in postmodern, capitalist society. First, Eagleton discusses the evolution of the term and its roots in the agricultural revolution. Eagleton then proposes that culture conflicts are “intensely relevant” in a world of authoritarian capitalism. However, Eagleton finds internal conflict, or a duality between conception and reception (“tension between making and being made…, culture and nature…, [and] that the word culture is both too broad and too narrow to be useful”) both an acknowledgement of the “new political importance” of culture and a threat to such (Eagleton 5-131)