I am a relative newcomer to the field of information studies where I now find myself. Coming as I have from the field of Applied Anthropology, I am used to people using the word ‘cultural’ to refer to almost any dimension of behavior, attitude, belief, etc. which has to do with people. People have culture.

At SIMS the disciplinary mix is much different, and the ‘cultural’ is not the dominant rhetoric. Instead most people say social. This confused me at first, as I carried with me the particular disciplinary biases the can pit anthropologists and sociologists against each other. So I went to talk to Nancy Van House, who provided a concise and enlightening explanation for the prevalence of the social over the cultural:

1. The interdisciplinary environment in which information studies sits owes a great deal to the work of Sociologists, in particular in fields such as the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK).
2. Talking about the social is less confusing. Many scholars, in particular computer scientists and similarly non-social sciency people, can mistake the word ‘culture’ as referring either to ‘national culture’ (e.g. “The Finnish are a dour people.”) or ‘high culture.’

So I began to adopt the term sociocultural. I don’t want to argue about whether social or cultural is more appropriate because it seems to me that they overlap more than they are distinct. In my view culture does not necessarily exist only at the macro level of ethnicity or nationality. Wherever two people share beliefs and meanings culture exists. But it is most often useful to talk about culture when it involves enough people to be systematic - and then it becomes social. But back to the point…

Sociocultural as a term is unwieldy. Too many syllables. Why not simplify the whole thing? And so I give you:

SOCIURAL
(prounced like So-Shure-Al)

I found it a bit awkward at first, but it fits right in pretty quickly. Some examples of daily usage:

American sociure is bankrupy.
Some guy from the Sociurist Party just called.
That guy is completely sociurally inept.

Try it. I think you’ll find it hits the spot!