Читать книгу Our Social World - Kathleen Odell Korgen - Страница 131

Micro-level analysis focuses on social interactions in small groups. Groups of people, if those people meet with regularity and have some common interests or purpose, will develop insider language, jokes, symbols, and ways of interacting that may differ from other groups in which those same people participate. The social unit at this level of analysis only affects a portion of one’s daily life (a bowling league, a book group, or a poker club) or shapes a limited time period of one’s life (such as a Greek organization, Boy Scout troop, or a soccer team for 8-year-old girls). The social unit at the meso or macro level affects larger groups or societies and has more long-term impacts. So a microculture is a culture that develops at the micro level in groups or organizations and affects only a segment of one’s life or influences a limited period of one’s life. Other classic examples from sociology include a street gang, a college sorority, and a business office.

▲ Hospitals provide one example of a microculture. Hospital employees share terminology, rules of interaction, and values regarding objectifying human body parts so that the patient is not sexualized.

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Hospitals are communities of people who share a microculture. People in different-colored uniforms scurry around carrying out their designated tasks, part of the division of labor in the organization; each uniform has symbolic significance indicating positions at the hospital. Hospital workers interact among themselves to attain goals of patient care. They have a common in-group vocabulary, a shared set of values, a hierarchy of positions with roles and behaviors for each position, and a guiding system of regulations for the organization—all of which shape interactions during the hours when each member works in the hospital. Yet the hospital microculture may have little relevance to the rest of the employees’ everyday lives. Microcultures may survive over time, with individuals coming in and leaving as workers and patients, but in a complex society, no one lives his or her entire life within a microculture. The values, rules, and specialized language used by the hospital staff continue as one shift ends and other medical personnel enter and sustain that microculture. Outside that microculture, a different set of norms takes over.

Every organization, club, and association is a social group and therefore must have a culture (a microculture) with its own set of rules and expectations. Schools develop their own unique cultures and traditions; as students graduate and move out of that microculture, others move into it and perpetuate the microculture. However, some microcultures exist for a limited period of time or for a special purpose. A summer camp microculture may develop but exists only for that summer. The following summer, a different culture may evolve because of new counselors and campers. A girls’ softball team may develop its own cheers, jokes, insider slang, and values regarding competition or what it means to be a good sport, but next year, the girls may be realigned into different teams, and the transitory culture of the previous year will change. In contrast to microcultures, subcultures continue across a person’s life span.