This paper explores some of the ongoing debates about culture and the concept of culture as it is used and deployed in the Norwegian public sphere, what we would call ‘norsk offentlighet’. More specifically, I am interested in the part played by anthropology and anthropologists in influencing the meanings and usages of such a key indigenous concept as culture. My interest was particularily spurred by the general debates on culture and immigrants which dominated the media in the mid-nineties, and in which anthropologists were actively engaged.