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Micro-Cultures
GARY ALAN FINE
Abstract
Although understanding the dynamics of culture through the examination of
large-scale social systems is important, culture is embedded in smaller systems
as well. The exploration of micro-cultures—also termed small group cultures or
idiocultures—helps us to recognize that culture is cemented through the interaction
of individuals with long-term, ongoing relationships. Structure alone does not
create social order, but requires a set of stable collective interpretations. But just as
we examine how culture is organized through societies or institutions, we should
see the role of culture in smaller units, including families, clubs, workgroups, and
other gatherings. As a result, culture and meaning-building emerges within group
life and is spread through networks. Seeing culture as resulting from interaction
emphasizes the role of talk and action as guarantors of social order and as building
collective understanding. By focusing on micro-cultures, social scientists emphasize
the importance of the middle level of analysis between the self and structure: what
has been termed the meso-level of analysis. Micro-cultures recognize that groups
produce a self-reflexive basis for the interaction order. Ultimately, social actors act
in concert, producing shared lines of action and creating a tiny public that can then
permit individuals to fit into larger social systems, including creating citizens within
nation-states.
The flowering of sociological studies of culture over the past quarter-century
has demonstrated how large social systems can be understood through cultural models. It is not structure alone that creates social order, but collective interpretations. But just as we examine how culture is organized on the
macro-level, it is also organized through processes of micro-interaction. Culture must also be examined within the context of groups and networks. In this
essay, the ways in which sociologists and social psychologists have treated
culture as a form of meaning-building on the local level is presented.
Treating culture as a form of practice recognizes that shared meaning
emerges through talk and action. Culture is built on collective understanding. The study of micro-cultures emphasizes the middle level of analysis
between the self or individual and the institution or structure: the level
that sociologists refer to as the meso-level of analysis, an approach tied to
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.
1
2
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
ongoing realms of interaction. Continuing groups develop shared meaning
systems that generate a self-reflexive basis for an interaction order. In
this model, people do not merely respond to immediate goals and needs,
but act in concert with others, coordinating lines of action. These shared
understandings that are embedded in tightly organized systems have been
labeled variously as micro-cultures, idiocultures, or small group cultures.
However, whichever term is selected, the concept specifies the locus of
culture as being within enduring, historicized systems of action, recognizing
that it is not simply that individuals participate in social interaction, but that
they are embedded in local worlds.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
The analysis of micro-cultures emerges from the intersection of two lines
of research: the classic group dynamics tradition, as exemplified by the
research, largely experimental, of Kurt Lewin and later that of Muzafer
Sherif and Robert Freed Bales; and the ethnographic examination of gangs
and other urban groups, grounded within the Chicago School of Sociology,
building on the research of Frederic Thrasher, Everett Hughes, and, later,
William Foote Whyte. As a result, the examination of group culture is built
upon two distinct methodological traditions with some commonalities of
perspective, even if integration was infrequently attempted.
Within the experimental tradition, the 1939 research project of Kurt Lewin,
Ralph White, and Ronald Lippett is recognizably classic, perhaps the first
study that explicitly considered group culture. Responding to the political climate of the 1930s, including the rise of authoritarian regimes, Lewin and his
colleagues hoped to discover whether a group’s style of leadership shaped
behaviors of members. They organized play groups of preadolescent boys
and had their adult leaders direct the boys through one of three styles of leadership: a laissez-faire, democratic, or authoritarian style. While the results
are complex, and fewer groups were organized than would be optimal for
drawing conclusions, the researchers found that democratic leadership had
advantages in personal satisfaction and group outcomes. This project led
indirectly to the famous Robbers Cave project of Muzafer Sherif and his colleagues. Sherif was interested in the effects of a superordinate goal on conflict.
He created two groups of preadolescent campers, examined the development
of their status systems and cultural references, and then placed them in that
form of competitive conflict so treasured by young boys in which the two
groups recognized each other as rivals. Finally, Sherif presented the boys with
a challenge that only shared action could solve, and, in time, the groups overcame their hostility. Similar to the Lewin study, the Robbers Cave study had
a recognizable political message during the Cold War.
Micro-Cultures
3
Other scholars, including Edward Rose and Sherif himself, attempted to
take the understanding of micro-cultures into the more controlled setting of
the laboratory, examining the conditions under which micro-cultures continue or change as a result of membership change or environmental challenge, demonstrating that even after the original members had been replaced,
cultures continued. While these cultures, as measured, were not robust or
extensive, they did permit systematic analysis.
Although not speaking directly to this social psychological approach,
ethnographic researchers, operating from traditions of urban sociology,
attempted to understand the real-world implications of group traditions.
This is a line of analysis that has its roots in anthropological accounts of
“tribal” society. Within sociology, an early and influential example was
Frederic Thrasher’s The Gang in which he analyzed the characteristics of
1313 gangs in Chicago. While not fully participant observation, Thrasher’s
work, guided by the close-textured urban sociology of his mentor, former
journalist Robert Park emphasized the importance of group life. Other
field studies from the period included Harvey Zorbaugh’s examination
of Chicago’s Gold Coast and the Slum and Donald Cressey’s Taxi Dance
Hall. But throughout it was the emphasis on the gang as a micro-world that
served as the model. The gang became the sociologist’s tribe.
The deservedly classic and most influential work in this line of research
is William Foote Whyte’s Street Corner Society, an observational analysis of
groups of young men within Boston’s Italian North End. Students of sociology are well familiar with the relations of Doc and his Boys, the style of Doc’s
leadership, and how the status system in the group shaped outcomes such as
bowling scores when the boys were together. However, in the research Whyte
did not limit himself to a single clique, but examined several groups within
the complex social system of the North End. Whyte provided a model for
the examination of the cultures of urban street life, a tradition that inspired
important works by Lewis Yablonsky (The Violent Gang), Elliott Liebow (Talley’s Corner), Elijah Anderson (A Place on the Corner), and Ruth Horowitz
(Honor and the American Dream). This tradition has reemerged in the past 15
years in “urban ethnography” as in Sudhir Venkatesh’s Gang Leader for a Day,
Mitchell Duneier’s Sidewalk, or Loic Wacquant’s Body and Soul. Each of these
projects argues that the gang or male street group is a cultural unit, and that
traditions, customs, and status relations create order that stabilizes interaction and permits interaction with those who stand outside social boundaries.
Attempting to combine the experimental and ethnographic approach is
Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter’s 1957 examination
of a Millenarian group in Chicago, When Prophecy Fails. Under the sway
of their charismatic leader, “Marian Keech,” the Seekers were persuaded
that the world would soon end and a few faithful would be saved, taken
4
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
to Clarion, a distant planet. As they waited for the end of days, the Seekers
created a rich and vibrant culture. Festinger and his colleagues saw this as
an opportunity to examine cognitive dissonance theory, typically examined
in the artificial world of the laboratory, within a naturally occurring situation. What would happen when the world did not end after the predicted
day? The theory claimed increased certainty, not disillusion, among the
most intensely engaged participants, and the theory was upheld. Despite
methodological and theoretical challenges, the work has been a mainstay of
social psychology for over a half century.
CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH
Since these classic studies, attention turned to the task of systematizing
the examination of small-group cultures. Notable in this regard is Gary
Alan Fine who, following the group dynamics tradition of Robert Freed
Bales, argued that every group from its opening moments had the challenge
of producing a shared culture, helping to create a self-reflexive sense of
belonging. Drawing from findings of experimental research, Fine conducted a series of ethnographic projects of small groups, including Little
League baseball teams, fantasy-gaming gatherings, restaurants kitchens,
and meteorological offices, demonstrating how background culture, usable
(normative) culture, functional culture, appropriate (status-based) culture,
and triggering mechanisms create an idioculture. Rather than seeing a
group as a unique constellation of individuals, this approach proposed
general sociological principles, an argument extended by Michael Farrell
in his Collaborative Circles, a detailed account of the temporal stages of
culture-producing groups, such as the Impressionists, the Freudian circle,
and early feminists. The examination of how local neighborhood effects
affect behavior has recently been emphasized within criminology and
examinations of urban poverty. Those forms of sociometric analysis that
treat networks as constituted by clumps of tightly knit groups, a recognition
of Mark Granovetter in examining the intersection of strong and weak ties,
also emphasizes the importance of local relations and micro-cultures.
The early writing of Jürgen Habermas about the importance of salons, coffeehouses, and club meetings reveals how significant “tiny publics” can be
for the creation of a public sphere. While media can have large reverberations,
those places in which people meet and talk matter greatly in cementing affiliation and building commitment. Recently, Kathleen Blee has demonstrated
the power of particular forms of group dynamics in the creation of successful activist groups in her Democracy in the Making. A similar emphasis on the
features of local process is evident in the account of how meetings are structured and how stories are told in Francesca Polletta’s analysis of activism,
Micro-Cultures
5
Freedom is an Endless Meeting, and Kathleen Cramer Walsh’s talking about
politics, and the observational research of Nina Eliasoph and Paul Lichterman, together and apart, demonstrate that both volunteering and communal
participation is always situated within an interaction order, and, as Eliasoph
argues, apathy is itself an achievement that is a response to particular group
styles and customs.
This body of research reveals that group cultures do more than explain
how small communities operate, but also indicate how their micro-culture
fits them into societies. The meso-level of analysis is never separate from the
understanding of individuals and institutions.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
Predicting the future is a dangerous game. How fields develop depend on the
creative inspiration of researchers and writers, responsive to newly developed core concepts and powerful slogans that reverberate through the academic community. However, while the future is hazy, several themes seem
to be developing.
In depicting the foundational research on micro-cultures, I pointed to the
competing approaches of experimental research and ethnographic understanding, culminating in When Prophecy Fails. Indeed, the laboratory can be
conceptualized as an ethnographic site. However, more needs to be done in
systematizing ethnographic findings in light of hypothesis testing. Fine in his
theory of the creation of idiocultures presents several criteria for the development of cultural elements, but these have not been systematically examined.
With the development of meta-analysis as a well-established methodology in
psychological social psychology, cultural systems can be analyzed in a similar manner. A model of this potential approach is evident in the systematic
analysis of Randy Hodson and his colleagues who categorize ethnographic
studies of work places to test theories about the conditions that lead to occupational satisfaction and organizational effectiveness. A comparable project
could test whether extended cultures (jokes, rituals, nicknames, insults, ceremonies, animosity, romances) create or diminish small group satisfaction or
membership turnover or communal stability. We now have enough studies
of interacting groups to test these claims.
Understanding how morality fits into people’s lives has become of
increased attention with the recognition that ideas of the good and its expression in ethics toward others in one’s personal circle is central to how people
feel that lives should be lived and how relationships are built over time. Volunteering, demonstrations of faith, charity, advocacy, and apology are linked
to local circumstances. As Penny Edgell Becker emphasizes in her analysis
6
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
of congregations, each church develops their own culture, linked to forms of
worship, means of handling problems, and forms of community outreach.
A third emerging direction is to specify the relationship between the group
and the network. Over the past half-century, the centrality of the group
within social science research has diminished as the salience of the network
has grown. But the connection between these two crucial concepts depends
on how we conceptualize communal boundaries. How much steady interaction and how much identification is necessary for a routinely activated
network to become a solidified group? Unless there is clear membership
criterion (a fraternity or a gang with ritual interaction or a family with ties
defined by the state or by blood), membership can be foggy. There is a
penumbra of belonging, as scholars note when discussing near-groups or
quasi-groups. People wish to be “where the action is” in Erving Goffman’s
terms, and so decide to identify with a group in moments of activity.
Too often network scholars have downplayed the cultural features of group
life in their analyses, but the importance of collective memory should not be
neglected as an organizing principle in the interaction order. Cultures permit
individuals to see themselves as belonging to micro-interactional communities. In addition to “mere” routine co-presence, rituals, customs, humor, and
stories provide for a self-reflective community, revealed through known narratives and shared references.
A final direction for research is the linkage between the group and citizenship. As noted, Jürgen Habermas, not typically conceived of as a social
psychologist, emphasized the importance of gathering points in the creation
of a public sphere. Public spheres are, in practice, small zones of performance
and affiliation. The existence of commitment mechanisms between persons
builds a civil society. But how?
Research has started that examines interactive domains such as town meetings and neighborhood assemblies in which the work of local politics is done.
Furthermore, some scholars in political science and political sociology are
examining electoral campaigns as ethnographic sites. Face-to-face interaction sets the agenda for decision making. But even within large conclaves,
crowds, and mass meetings, gatherings are comprised of smaller groups of
friends, colleagues, and associates. A crowd might seem comprised of isolated monads, but in reality, as Clark McPhail, has argued, a crowd gains
its power because within the mass are strong social ties, committing participants to shared action. This provides the groundwork for research that
addresses the more macro-concerns of citizenship and civic responsibility
through the existence of micro-cultures. When combined through rituals,
commemorations, and national performances, these nodes provide a platform of what Benedict Anderson speaks of as an “imagined community.”
Civic culture is often found around the hearth. If we understand the process
Micro-Cultures
7
of how these imagined worlds become solidified, we have a better sense of
how people fit into states and how citizenship is not simply enforced, but
supported. Of course, a full interpretation of group culture must recognize
that groups are not inevitably stable, and that conflict may be part of group
life, splitting them apart. Sometimes, these struggles within a culture or social
order reflect long-standing divisions, such as race, age, gender, and class that
extend beyond the group framework. While much research assumes group
harmony, research must explore contentious groups.
Listing these directions reveals challenges, both the methodological ones
of combining descriptive analysis and systematic tests, and also calling for
the intersection of scholars of institutions and those of personal relations.
Scholars must recognize that groups are not walled from each other, and
neither do societies move on their own without actors who make decisions
together. Fortunately ethnographers who were once limited to addressing
isolated scenes are more willing—and better trained—to see scenes as being
integrated within a larger network. The possibility of comparing multiple
ethnographic sites also permits micro-cultures to be treated as something
other than idiosyncratic. By being a linkage between self and society and
between ideas and material reality, the examination of group culture has
extensive possibilities.
CONCLUSION
Despite their importance, micro-cultures do not explain all cultural formations. It may be true that for culture to be formed a small group is
essential, but once formed, cultures can be spread through media or through
institutional power. Still, for culture to stick, that process originates within
and depends upon local orders. Social science has properly recognized the
centrality of the control of the individual and the institution to understand
how social order is made possible. However, along with these core concepts
is a third, the interaction order, made possible through the commitment of
groups to their micro-cultures. The meso-level of analysis, focusing on local
action, communal reflection, and collective memory, is as consequential as
the micro- and macro-level of analysis.
Groups have cultures, and societies have groups. These realities emphasize
that meanings do not only belong to selves and societies, but to those who
huddle together creating a network of support in what otherwise would be
an anonymous world.
FURTHER READING
Becker, P. E. (1999). Congregations in conflict. New York, NY: Cambridge University
Press.
8
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
Blee, K. M. (2012). Democracy in the making. New York, NY: Oxford.
Eliasoph, N., & Lichterman, P. (2003). Culture in interaction. American Journal of Sociology, 108, 735–795.
Farrell, M. (2001). Collaborative circles. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Festinger, L., Schachter, S., & Riecken, H. (1957). When prophecy fails. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Fine, G. A. (2012). Tiny publics: A theory of group culture and action. New York, NY:
Russell Sage Foundation.
Granovetter, M. (1973). The strength of weak ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78,
1360–1380.
Habermas, J. (1989). The structural transformation of the public sphere. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press.
Hodson, R. (2001). Dignity at work. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Lewin, K., Lippitt, R., & White, R. (1939). Patterns of aggressive behavior in experimentally created social climates. Journal of Social Psychology, 10, 271–301.
McPhail, C. (1991). The myth of the madding crowd. New York, NY: Aldine.
Polletta, F. (2002). Freedom is an endless meeting. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press.
Rose, E., & Felton, W. (1955). Experimental histories of culture. American Sociological
Review, 20, 382–392.
Sherif, M., Harvey, O. J., White, B. J., Hood, W. R., & Sherif, C. W. (1987). Intergroup
conflict and cooperation: The Robbers Cave experiment. Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Venkatesh, S. A. (2008). Gang leader for a day. New York, NY: Penguin.
Wacquant, L. (2003). Body and soul. Oxford: New York, NY.
Walsh, K. C. (2003). Talking about politics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Whyte, W. F. (1943). Street corner society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
GARY ALAN FINE SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Gary Alan Fine Fine is John Evans Professor of Sociology at Northwestern
University. He received his PhD in social psychology from Harvard University, and is the author of Tiny Publics: A Theory of Group Culture and Action
(Russell Sage Foundation, 2012). He has conducted ethnographic research
on micro-cultures throughout his career, including studies of Little League
baseball teams, fantasy-gaming groups, chef training programs, restaurants,
political volunteers, social movement gatherings, mushroom collectors, high
school debate teams, folk art collectors and galleries, meteorological offices,
chess clubs, and MFA fiction and visual arts programs. He has been a fellow at the Center for the Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the
Rockefeller Foundation, and the Russell Sage Foundation.
Micro-Cultures
9
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-
Micro-Cultures
GARY ALAN FINE
Abstract
Although understanding the dynamics of culture through the examination of
large-scale social systems is important, culture is embedded in smaller systems
as well. The exploration of micro-cultures—also termed small group cultures or
idiocultures—helps us to recognize that culture is cemented through the interaction
of individuals with long-term, ongoing relationships. Structure alone does not
create social order, but requires a set of stable collective interpretations. But just as
we examine how culture is organized through societies or institutions, we should
see the role of culture in smaller units, including families, clubs, workgroups, and
other gatherings. As a result, culture and meaning-building emerges within group
life and is spread through networks. Seeing culture as resulting from interaction
emphasizes the role of talk and action as guarantors of social order and as building
collective understanding. By focusing on micro-cultures, social scientists emphasize
the importance of the middle level of analysis between the self and structure: what
has been termed the meso-level of analysis. Micro-cultures recognize that groups
produce a self-reflexive basis for the interaction order. Ultimately, social actors act
in concert, producing shared lines of action and creating a tiny public that can then
permit individuals to fit into larger social systems, including creating citizens within
nation-states.
The flowering of sociological studies of culture over the past quarter-century
has demonstrated how large social systems can be understood through cultural models. It is not structure alone that creates social order, but collective interpretations. But just as we examine how culture is organized on the
macro-level, it is also organized through processes of micro-interaction. Culture must also be examined within the context of groups and networks. In this
essay, the ways in which sociologists and social psychologists have treated
culture as a form of meaning-building on the local level is presented.
Treating culture as a form of practice recognizes that shared meaning
emerges through talk and action. Culture is built on collective understanding. The study of micro-cultures emphasizes the middle level of analysis
between the self or individual and the institution or structure: the level
that sociologists refer to as the meso-level of analysis, an approach tied to
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.
1
2
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
ongoing realms of interaction. Continuing groups develop shared meaning
systems that generate a self-reflexive basis for an interaction order. In
this model, people do not merely respond to immediate goals and needs,
but act in concert with others, coordinating lines of action. These shared
understandings that are embedded in tightly organized systems have been
labeled variously as micro-cultures, idiocultures, or small group cultures.
However, whichever term is selected, the concept specifies the locus of
culture as being within enduring, historicized systems of action, recognizing
that it is not simply that individuals participate in social interaction, but that
they are embedded in local worlds.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
The analysis of micro-cultures emerges from the intersection of two lines
of research: the classic group dynamics tradition, as exemplified by the
research, largely experimental, of Kurt Lewin and later that of Muzafer
Sherif and Robert Freed Bales; and the ethnographic examination of gangs
and other urban groups, grounded within the Chicago School of Sociology,
building on the research of Frederic Thrasher, Everett Hughes, and, later,
William Foote Whyte. As a result, the examination of group culture is built
upon two distinct methodological traditions with some commonalities of
perspective, even if integration was infrequently attempted.
Within the experimental tradition, the 1939 research project of Kurt Lewin,
Ralph White, and Ronald Lippett is recognizably classic, perhaps the first
study that explicitly considered group culture. Responding to the political climate of the 1930s, including the rise of authoritarian regimes, Lewin and his
colleagues hoped to discover whether a group’s style of leadership shaped
behaviors of members. They organized play groups of preadolescent boys
and had their adult leaders direct the boys through one of three styles of leadership: a laissez-faire, democratic, or authoritarian style. While the results
are complex, and fewer groups were organized than would be optimal for
drawing conclusions, the researchers found that democratic leadership had
advantages in personal satisfaction and group outcomes. This project led
indirectly to the famous Robbers Cave project of Muzafer Sherif and his colleagues. Sherif was interested in the effects of a superordinate goal on conflict.
He created two groups of preadolescent campers, examined the development
of their status systems and cultural references, and then placed them in that
form of competitive conflict so treasured by young boys in which the two
groups recognized each other as rivals. Finally, Sherif presented the boys with
a challenge that only shared action could solve, and, in time, the groups overcame their hostility. Similar to the Lewin study, the Robbers Cave study had
a recognizable political message during the Cold War.
Micro-Cultures
3
Other scholars, including Edward Rose and Sherif himself, attempted to
take the understanding of micro-cultures into the more controlled setting of
the laboratory, examining the conditions under which micro-cultures continue or change as a result of membership change or environmental challenge, demonstrating that even after the original members had been replaced,
cultures continued. While these cultures, as measured, were not robust or
extensive, they did permit systematic analysis.
Although not speaking directly to this social psychological approach,
ethnographic researchers, operating from traditions of urban sociology,
attempted to understand the real-world implications of group traditions.
This is a line of analysis that has its roots in anthropological accounts of
“tribal” society. Within sociology, an early and influential example was
Frederic Thrasher’s The Gang in which he analyzed the characteristics of
1313 gangs in Chicago. While not fully participant observation, Thrasher’s
work, guided by the close-textured urban sociology of his mentor, former
journalist Robert Park emphasized the importance of group life. Other
field studies from the period included Harvey Zorbaugh’s examination
of Chicago’s Gold Coast and the Slum and Donald Cressey’s Taxi Dance
Hall. But throughout it was the emphasis on the gang as a micro-world that
served as the model. The gang became the sociologist’s tribe.
The deservedly classic and most influential work in this line of research
is William Foote Whyte’s Street Corner Society, an observational analysis of
groups of young men within Boston’s Italian North End. Students of sociology are well familiar with the relations of Doc and his Boys, the style of Doc’s
leadership, and how the status system in the group shaped outcomes such as
bowling scores when the boys were together. However, in the research Whyte
did not limit himself to a single clique, but examined several groups within
the complex social system of the North End. Whyte provided a model for
the examination of the cultures of urban street life, a tradition that inspired
important works by Lewis Yablonsky (The Violent Gang), Elliott Liebow (Talley’s Corner), Elijah Anderson (A Place on the Corner), and Ruth Horowitz
(Honor and the American Dream). This tradition has reemerged in the past 15
years in “urban ethnography” as in Sudhir Venkatesh’s Gang Leader for a Day,
Mitchell Duneier’s Sidewalk, or Loic Wacquant’s Body and Soul. Each of these
projects argues that the gang or male street group is a cultural unit, and that
traditions, customs, and status relations create order that stabilizes interaction and permits interaction with those who stand outside social boundaries.
Attempting to combine the experimental and ethnographic approach is
Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter’s 1957 examination
of a Millenarian group in Chicago, When Prophecy Fails. Under the sway
of their charismatic leader, “Marian Keech,” the Seekers were persuaded
that the world would soon end and a few faithful would be saved, taken
4
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
to Clarion, a distant planet. As they waited for the end of days, the Seekers
created a rich and vibrant culture. Festinger and his colleagues saw this as
an opportunity to examine cognitive dissonance theory, typically examined
in the artificial world of the laboratory, within a naturally occurring situation. What would happen when the world did not end after the predicted
day? The theory claimed increased certainty, not disillusion, among the
most intensely engaged participants, and the theory was upheld. Despite
methodological and theoretical challenges, the work has been a mainstay of
social psychology for over a half century.
CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH
Since these classic studies, attention turned to the task of systematizing
the examination of small-group cultures. Notable in this regard is Gary
Alan Fine who, following the group dynamics tradition of Robert Freed
Bales, argued that every group from its opening moments had the challenge
of producing a shared culture, helping to create a self-reflexive sense of
belonging. Drawing from findings of experimental research, Fine conducted a series of ethnographic projects of small groups, including Little
League baseball teams, fantasy-gaming gatherings, restaurants kitchens,
and meteorological offices, demonstrating how background culture, usable
(normative) culture, functional culture, appropriate (status-based) culture,
and triggering mechanisms create an idioculture. Rather than seeing a
group as a unique constellation of individuals, this approach proposed
general sociological principles, an argument extended by Michael Farrell
in his Collaborative Circles, a detailed account of the temporal stages of
culture-producing groups, such as the Impressionists, the Freudian circle,
and early feminists. The examination of how local neighborhood effects
affect behavior has recently been emphasized within criminology and
examinations of urban poverty. Those forms of sociometric analysis that
treat networks as constituted by clumps of tightly knit groups, a recognition
of Mark Granovetter in examining the intersection of strong and weak ties,
also emphasizes the importance of local relations and micro-cultures.
The early writing of Jürgen Habermas about the importance of salons, coffeehouses, and club meetings reveals how significant “tiny publics” can be
for the creation of a public sphere. While media can have large reverberations,
those places in which people meet and talk matter greatly in cementing affiliation and building commitment. Recently, Kathleen Blee has demonstrated
the power of particular forms of group dynamics in the creation of successful activist groups in her Democracy in the Making. A similar emphasis on the
features of local process is evident in the account of how meetings are structured and how stories are told in Francesca Polletta’s analysis of activism,
Micro-Cultures
5
Freedom is an Endless Meeting, and Kathleen Cramer Walsh’s talking about
politics, and the observational research of Nina Eliasoph and Paul Lichterman, together and apart, demonstrate that both volunteering and communal
participation is always situated within an interaction order, and, as Eliasoph
argues, apathy is itself an achievement that is a response to particular group
styles and customs.
This body of research reveals that group cultures do more than explain
how small communities operate, but also indicate how their micro-culture
fits them into societies. The meso-level of analysis is never separate from the
understanding of individuals and institutions.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
Predicting the future is a dangerous game. How fields develop depend on the
creative inspiration of researchers and writers, responsive to newly developed core concepts and powerful slogans that reverberate through the academic community. However, while the future is hazy, several themes seem
to be developing.
In depicting the foundational research on micro-cultures, I pointed to the
competing approaches of experimental research and ethnographic understanding, culminating in When Prophecy Fails. Indeed, the laboratory can be
conceptualized as an ethnographic site. However, more needs to be done in
systematizing ethnographic findings in light of hypothesis testing. Fine in his
theory of the creation of idiocultures presents several criteria for the development of cultural elements, but these have not been systematically examined.
With the development of meta-analysis as a well-established methodology in
psychological social psychology, cultural systems can be analyzed in a similar manner. A model of this potential approach is evident in the systematic
analysis of Randy Hodson and his colleagues who categorize ethnographic
studies of work places to test theories about the conditions that lead to occupational satisfaction and organizational effectiveness. A comparable project
could test whether extended cultures (jokes, rituals, nicknames, insults, ceremonies, animosity, romances) create or diminish small group satisfaction or
membership turnover or communal stability. We now have enough studies
of interacting groups to test these claims.
Understanding how morality fits into people’s lives has become of
increased attention with the recognition that ideas of the good and its expression in ethics toward others in one’s personal circle is central to how people
feel that lives should be lived and how relationships are built over time. Volunteering, demonstrations of faith, charity, advocacy, and apology are linked
to local circumstances. As Penny Edgell Becker emphasizes in her analysis
6
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
of congregations, each church develops their own culture, linked to forms of
worship, means of handling problems, and forms of community outreach.
A third emerging direction is to specify the relationship between the group
and the network. Over the past half-century, the centrality of the group
within social science research has diminished as the salience of the network
has grown. But the connection between these two crucial concepts depends
on how we conceptualize communal boundaries. How much steady interaction and how much identification is necessary for a routinely activated
network to become a solidified group? Unless there is clear membership
criterion (a fraternity or a gang with ritual interaction or a family with ties
defined by the state or by blood), membership can be foggy. There is a
penumbra of belonging, as scholars note when discussing near-groups or
quasi-groups. People wish to be “where the action is” in Erving Goffman’s
terms, and so decide to identify with a group in moments of activity.
Too often network scholars have downplayed the cultural features of group
life in their analyses, but the importance of collective memory should not be
neglected as an organizing principle in the interaction order. Cultures permit
individuals to see themselves as belonging to micro-interactional communities. In addition to “mere” routine co-presence, rituals, customs, humor, and
stories provide for a self-reflective community, revealed through known narratives and shared references.
A final direction for research is the linkage between the group and citizenship. As noted, Jürgen Habermas, not typically conceived of as a social
psychologist, emphasized the importance of gathering points in the creation
of a public sphere. Public spheres are, in practice, small zones of performance
and affiliation. The existence of commitment mechanisms between persons
builds a civil society. But how?
Research has started that examines interactive domains such as town meetings and neighborhood assemblies in which the work of local politics is done.
Furthermore, some scholars in political science and political sociology are
examining electoral campaigns as ethnographic sites. Face-to-face interaction sets the agenda for decision making. But even within large conclaves,
crowds, and mass meetings, gatherings are comprised of smaller groups of
friends, colleagues, and associates. A crowd might seem comprised of isolated monads, but in reality, as Clark McPhail, has argued, a crowd gains
its power because within the mass are strong social ties, committing participants to shared action. This provides the groundwork for research that
addresses the more macro-concerns of citizenship and civic responsibility
through the existence of micro-cultures. When combined through rituals,
commemorations, and national performances, these nodes provide a platform of what Benedict Anderson speaks of as an “imagined community.”
Civic culture is often found around the hearth. If we understand the process
Micro-Cultures
7
of how these imagined worlds become solidified, we have a better sense of
how people fit into states and how citizenship is not simply enforced, but
supported. Of course, a full interpretation of group culture must recognize
that groups are not inevitably stable, and that conflict may be part of group
life, splitting them apart. Sometimes, these struggles within a culture or social
order reflect long-standing divisions, such as race, age, gender, and class that
extend beyond the group framework. While much research assumes group
harmony, research must explore contentious groups.
Listing these directions reveals challenges, both the methodological ones
of combining descriptive analysis and systematic tests, and also calling for
the intersection of scholars of institutions and those of personal relations.
Scholars must recognize that groups are not walled from each other, and
neither do societies move on their own without actors who make decisions
together. Fortunately ethnographers who were once limited to addressing
isolated scenes are more willing—and better trained—to see scenes as being
integrated within a larger network. The possibility of comparing multiple
ethnographic sites also permits micro-cultures to be treated as something
other than idiosyncratic. By being a linkage between self and society and
between ideas and material reality, the examination of group culture has
extensive possibilities.
CONCLUSION
Despite their importance, micro-cultures do not explain all cultural formations. It may be true that for culture to be formed a small group is
essential, but once formed, cultures can be spread through media or through
institutional power. Still, for culture to stick, that process originates within
and depends upon local orders. Social science has properly recognized the
centrality of the control of the individual and the institution to understand
how social order is made possible. However, along with these core concepts
is a third, the interaction order, made possible through the commitment of
groups to their micro-cultures. The meso-level of analysis, focusing on local
action, communal reflection, and collective memory, is as consequential as
the micro- and macro-level of analysis.
Groups have cultures, and societies have groups. These realities emphasize
that meanings do not only belong to selves and societies, but to those who
huddle together creating a network of support in what otherwise would be
an anonymous world.
FURTHER READING
Becker, P. E. (1999). Congregations in conflict. New York, NY: Cambridge University
Press.
8
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
Blee, K. M. (2012). Democracy in the making. New York, NY: Oxford.
Eliasoph, N., & Lichterman, P. (2003). Culture in interaction. American Journal of Sociology, 108, 735–795.
Farrell, M. (2001). Collaborative circles. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Festinger, L., Schachter, S., & Riecken, H. (1957). When prophecy fails. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Fine, G. A. (2012). Tiny publics: A theory of group culture and action. New York, NY:
Russell Sage Foundation.
Granovetter, M. (1973). The strength of weak ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78,
1360–1380.
Habermas, J. (1989). The structural transformation of the public sphere. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press.
Hodson, R. (2001). Dignity at work. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Lewin, K., Lippitt, R., & White, R. (1939). Patterns of aggressive behavior in experimentally created social climates. Journal of Social Psychology, 10, 271–301.
McPhail, C. (1991). The myth of the madding crowd. New York, NY: Aldine.
Polletta, F. (2002). Freedom is an endless meeting. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press.
Rose, E., & Felton, W. (1955). Experimental histories of culture. American Sociological
Review, 20, 382–392.
Sherif, M., Harvey, O. J., White, B. J., Hood, W. R., & Sherif, C. W. (1987). Intergroup
conflict and cooperation: The Robbers Cave experiment. Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Venkatesh, S. A. (2008). Gang leader for a day. New York, NY: Penguin.
Wacquant, L. (2003). Body and soul. Oxford: New York, NY.
Walsh, K. C. (2003). Talking about politics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Whyte, W. F. (1943). Street corner society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
GARY ALAN FINE SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Gary Alan Fine Fine is John Evans Professor of Sociology at Northwestern
University. He received his PhD in social psychology from Harvard University, and is the author of Tiny Publics: A Theory of Group Culture and Action
(Russell Sage Foundation, 2012). He has conducted ethnographic research
on micro-cultures throughout his career, including studies of Little League
baseball teams, fantasy-gaming groups, chef training programs, restaurants,
political volunteers, social movement gatherings, mushroom collectors, high
school debate teams, folk art collectors and galleries, meteorological offices,
chess clubs, and MFA fiction and visual arts programs. He has been a fellow at the Center for the Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the
Rockefeller Foundation, and the Russell Sage Foundation.
Micro-Cultures
9
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