User:Mseadle

Microculture
Michael Seadle defined the term "micro-culture" in his article "Project Ethnography: An Anthropological Approach to Assessing Digital Library Services"[] Library Trends v. 49, no. 2, Fall 2000.

Culture represents a nexus of shared meaning. It can be used in a broad sense to refer to “western” or “Asian” culture, or more narrowly to refer to “German” or “American” culture, or still more narrowly to refer to “midwestern” or “Afro-American” culture. The number of possible distinctions have no obvious limit. The culture of a nuclear family can, in fact, differ from its neighbor: different holiday traditions, different vacation preferences, even private words loaded with special meaning (sometimes understood by the spouses alone). In this article, the word micro-culture refers to units of shared meaning as small as professions, departments, interest groups. The reason for this specialized word, instead of more standard descriptions, is that it evokes the range of anthropological discourse which, for all its flaws and imprecision, offers a theoretical framework for analyzing the social processes involved in service evaluation.