Culture war is a loan translation (calque) from the German Kulturkampf. The German term, Kulturkampf, was coined to describe the clash between cultural and religious groups in the campaign from 1871 to 1878 under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck of the German Empire against the influence of the Roman Catholic Church. The term cultural war has been in English use almost as long as the original Kulturkampf and generalizes the idea of these kinds of struggle. It is related then to the theory of cultural hegemony.
Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci presented in the 1920s a theory of cultural hegemony to explain the slower advance, compared to many Marxists' expectations, of proletarian revolution in Europe. He stated that a culturally diverse society can be dominated by one class who has a monopoly over the mass media and popular culture, and Gramsci argued for a culture war in which anti-capitalist elements seek to gain a dominant voice in the mass media, education, and other mass institutions.
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Famous quotes containing the words culture and/or war:
“Anthropologists have found that around the world whatever is considered “men’s work” is almost universally given higher status than “women’s work.” If in one culture it is men who build houses and women who make baskets, then that culture will see house-building as more important. In another culture, perhaps right next door, the reverse may be true, and basket- weaving will have higher social status than house-building.”
—Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen. Excerpted from, Gender Grace: Love, Work, and Parenting in a Changing World (1990)
“You went to meet the shell’s embrace of fire
On Vimy Ridge; and when you fell that day
The war seemed over more for you than me,
But now for me than you the other way.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)