Summary
Small ‘c’ culture is culture in the anthropological sense: the shared habits, norms and ways of talking that make up everyday life, as distinct from big ‘C’ Culture, meaning the arts. The wording here comes from the activist toolbox Beautiful Trouble, in its entry on Antonio Gramsci’s idea of cultural hegemony, which describes small-c culture as “the norms and mores and discourses that make up our everyday lives”.
The distinction matters politically. Everyday culture guides what people take to be right, beautiful, just and possible, so it can quietly hold power in place or loosen it. Beautiful Trouble calls it “a politics that doesn’t look like politics”.
Rationale
This is the sense of ‘culture’ we mean throughout. It’s why Part 2 counts “teachers, town planners, technologists, architects, parents” among the people shaping culture, alongside the artists and storytellers usually given that job.