‘Central conflation’ is not the property of a clearly identifiable school and is still in the process of crystallization. The two theorists who will be taken as its major proponents are certainly far from being identical, except for marked formal similarities in their conceptualization of culture. Indeed, at a later date it may transpire that they spear-headed different subspecies of ‘central’ conflationism. Nevertheless it appears useful to discuss Bauman and Giddens together since our prime interest is with a general theoretical stance, not the comparison of individual thinkers. From a similar viewpoint both Bauman and Giddens look back on the epiphenomenal versions of cultural conflation with precisely the same ambivalence – outrightly rejecting them as they stand, yet seeking to retrieve something from both of them.

On the one hand they have nothing but censure for the central tenet of each version: for downwards conflation where the internal logical consistency of Cultural Systems generates uniformities in mentality and behaviour, thus reducing the actor to a Systemically programmed robot, and for upwards conflation where those dominant at the Socio-Cultural level produce a manipulated consensus, thus rendering most (if not all) actors the prisoners of hegemonic ideas. When culture is held to work surreptitiously ‘behind the back’ of every actor (downwards version), what is essentially lacking is the necessary role of human agency in actively constituting and reconstituting culture; when culture is seen as nothing but the imposition of one group's wo rid-view on others (upwards version), what is systematically evaded is the necessity of culture as the stuff of any action at all, a fact that would have to be faced especially if domination and manipulation were ever overcome.