Microculture

Microculture refers to the specialised subgroups, marked with their own languages, ethos and rule expectations, that permeate differentiated industrial societies.

A microculture depends on the smallest units of organization – dyads, groups, or local communities – as opposed to the broader subcultures of race or class, and the wider national/global culture, compared to which they tend also to be more short-lived, as well as voluntarily chosen. The study of kinesics – the nonverbal behavior of the small gathering – can be used to illuminate the dynamics of a given microculture.

Georg Simmel drew a distinction between the universalist claims of ethics, and the more particularist concept of honour, which he considered linked to the specific social subworld – business or profession – in which it was rooted. His study of secrecy also looked at the micro-secret as an aspect of meaning-control within the individual microculture.

A microculture – whether formed by a racetrack, a university, a holiday camp or a pub – can be seen as having its own social micro-climate, with values and norms of behaviour of its own, to an extent differing from those of the general culture. Such micro-climates are situational, specific to their own circumstances.

Kate Fox considered that "the social micro-climate of the racecourse is characterized by a unique combination of disinhibition and exceptional good manners".

Arguably the wider range of choices offered by the new mass media are increasingly allowing individuals to cohere within their own microcultures, rather than exposing themselves to the cultural mainstream.

The fragmentation of postmodern consumer microstructures, with their volitional and ephemeral nature, also presents a pattern of mainstream erosion in the face of an increasing number of competing microcultures.

Social psychology field researchers are alerted to the fact that different field settings – such as hospitals, airport or cafeterias – may have their own particular micro-climates, influencing people's actions and motivation in micro-specific ways, so that findings from any given setting should not be generalised without external checking.

In the 1998 fantasy novel Night Watch, the hero's mentor, urging him not to abandon his supernatural colleagues, points out that every profession has its own microculture outside of which a certain isolation is inevitable.

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