Please stop using “monoculture”
I ask anyone, academia, students; please stop using the word “monoculture.” There are a few big issues I see with the word as used in vernacular:
- Regardless of its meaning being inconsistent among those who use the word, it does not match the forms within the word e.g. the etymology.
- The Greek prefix *mono* meaning “single” or “sole” and the Latin root *cultura* meaning “culture.”
- Etymologically the term simply means “single culture” which is a very vague way to describe—sometimes just a subculture like the “echo chamber,” and other times which is the meaning I agree with, a unified, focused, and temporary collective consciousness or maybe even a simply shared experience, I don’t know.
- From what I understand it describes a collective consciousness that forms within a group of people who consume the same media content.
- In *social sciences,culture describes a group of people with shared beliefs, opinions, norms, values that can be broken down into subgroups or subcultures, counter-, etc.
>*: sole use of empirical data to aid critical thinking does constitute a science, which uses the scientific method to validate or invalidate a hypothesis
- I’ve seen “monoculture” used to describe folks who tune into the same live TV broadcast among others. There are no explicitly or implicitly shared beliefs, values, norms, customs etc. in this case. It seems to just describe a shared experience.
- I’ve found common definitions lack components of the phenomenon, i.e. in the case of a group sharing the same media broadcast or group of podcasts, there’s usually shared “reference points” described. I understand this to mean shared jokes, internal slang, etc which moves toward describing a subculture.
Great word in agricultural context. Makes the psychosocial discussion more difficult. I welcome discussion or explanation of what I’m missing