@article{Anderson_2017, place={Washington DC: American Sociological Association.}, title={A Quest for Culture in the Campus Community}, url={https://trails.asanet.org/article/view/a-quest-for-culture-in-the-campus-community}, abstractNote={This paper has been used in a Social Psychology course to help students understand the concept of idioculture, a group culture with shared knowledge, beliefs, sentiments, and behaviors. After a class discussion on symbolism as a necessary component of interaction, students consider a variety of symbols, how they’re interpreted, and what they communicate within the larger society (e.g., American flag, traffic signs, a swastika, etc.). We further discuss how some symbols can be interpreted very differently by people within the same culture (e.g. the Confederate flag) and the use of symbols in establishing and promoting idiocultures. We use the college campus as an example of an idioculture that has physical objects or images that carry specific meanings to those who are members of the idioculture, meanings that might not be readily available to those outside the idioculture. This assignment requires them to engage in a sort of scavenger hunt on campus looking not only for a series of items that contribute to the campus culture, but also requires them to have conversations or conduct research into what these objects/images mean to students and alumni of their own institution. The assignment could be easily adapted for other institutions and used as a paper assignment or for in-class discussion.}, journal={TRAILS: Teaching Resources and Innovations Library for Sociology}, author={Anderson, Erin}, year={2017}, month={Aug.} }