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Art Education And The Social Use Of Metaphor, Nancy R. Johnson

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Human beings are greatly dependent upon social knowledge as a basis for directing their actions in the world and interpreting the actions of others. The dominant quality of social knowledge, or culture, is that it is symbolic. Consider the concept of culture offered by anthropologist Clifford Geertz: "(Cultura) denotes a historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life".