ENVISIONING CULTURE: A SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

ABSTRACT: Culture is an ambivalent term, coined by a series of narratives that are often hard to separate fromone another. In difference, this article intends to bridge these narratives not by compromising the discussion, butinstead by pointing out a horizon that every contemporary theory of culture should be addressing. Such ahorizon is a future, very different from the ones we are familiar with. Following the thread of SebastiãoSalgado’s photography, I briefly analyze four themes that I believe to be universal in the studying of culture andshow how they can form an alternative narrative. I argue for an expansion of the concept of “cultural hybridism”– the latter implies that we have to embrace the mixing and changing of cultures as something natural andcreative. Instead, I propose “futuristic culture” as a new concept that is based on the idea that hybridization canalso be organized and planned in such a way that culture becomes a project for creating a fertile future –especially since globalization already seems to be an inevitable result.

KEYWORDS: culture, planning, social science, hybridization, value