SOC 201 Chapter Notes - Chapter 7: Gary Alan Fine, Participant Observation
Document Summary
Noted sociologist gary alan fine reminded us that every group has to some extent a culture of its own. Idioculture consists of a system of knowledge, beliefs, behaviors, and customs shared by members of an interacting group to which members can refer and employ as the basis of further interaction. Members recognize that they share experiences in common and these experiences can be referred to with the expectation that they will be understood by other members, and further can be employed to construct a social reality. Over time, as people interact on a regular basis, they develop shared knowledge, beliefs, and customs, and these become important to their future interactions. To illustrate the concept, fine shared the results of his own research three years of participant observation of five little league baseball teams. He found that each team developed its own norms (e. g. , gum chewing allowed or not) and customs (e. g. , appropriate joking topics and nicknames).
