MEANING
The shared practices, values, and identity of a group that differs from the wider society around it.
Use it for
analyzing a group’s distinctive norms within a society; describing cultural belonging below the level of a whole society; distinguishing a shared identity from isolated individual preferencesIdentifies a group’s distinctive practices within a wider society without presenting it as a wholly separate culture. Academic functions: Theory / Conceptual Language.
Words that belong together
- a youth subculture
- a professional subculture
- subcultural identity and practices
On the page
The ethnography examines a workplace subculture organized around informal mentoring.
A subculture may differ from the wider society without actively opposing all of its values.
Nearby words
Word forms
- Base
- subculture
Usage notes
Countable in the social sense: subculture, subcultures. Register: neutral. Commonness: moderately common (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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