Culture isn't "real". (part 2)

Amartya Sen, from his Identity and Violence, page 103.

The world has come to the conclusion - more defiantly than should have been needed - that culture matters. The world is obvioulsy right - culture does matter. However, the real question is: "How does culture matter?" The confining of culture into stark and separated boxes of civilizations or religious identities...takes too narrow a view of cultural attributes. Other cultural generalizations, for example, about national, ethnic, or racial groups, can also present astonishingly limited and bleak understandings of the characteristics of the human beings involved. When a hazy perception of culture is combined with fatalism about the dominating power of culture, we are in effect, asked to be imaginary slaves of an illusory force.