Culture War: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis?

Now ubiquitous in public debate, the term ‘culture war’ has become increasingly unmoored from models that were developed when the concept first shot to popularity in the specific context of the United States in the 1990s. This article retraces the conceptual history of culture war over the long term, questions some of the assumptions about the normal course of history and politics that are often implicit in its usage, and reflects on the place of the American paradigm in discussions of the subject. It argues that historians could adopt a more explicitly Gramscian perspective to develop a robust historical concept of culture war.