Sobre a cultura, a propósito de uma visita ao Palácio de Sintra

 

Palácio Nacional de Sintra (2012).

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«The counterdrive to this potential onrush of commoditization is culture. In the sense that commoditization homogenizes value, while the essence of culture is discrimination, excessive commoditization is anti-cultural (…). (…) societies need to set apart a certain portion of their environment, marking it as “sacred” (…). Culture ensures that some things remain unambiguously singular, it resists the commoditization of others; and it sometimes resingularizes what has been commoditized». 

«Such singularization is sometimes extended to things that are normally commodities – in effect are singulrized by being pulled out of their usual commodity sphere (…)».

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Igor Kopytoff, «The cultural biography of things: commodization as process», pp. 73-74.