Specialization is Differentiation

The proliferation of subcults is most evident in the world of work. Many subcults spring up around occupational specialties. Thus, as the society moves toward greater specialization, it generates more and more subcultural variety.

The scientific community, for example, is splitting into finer and finer fragments. It is criss-crossed with formal organizations and associations whose specialized journals, conferences and meetings are rapidly multiplying in number. But these "open" distinctions according to subject matter are matched by "hidden" distinctions as well. It is not simply that cancer researchers and astronomers do different things; they talk different languages, tend to have different personality types; they think, dress and live differently. (So marked are these distinctions that they often interfere with interpersonal relationships. Says a woman scientist: "My husband is a microbiologist and I am a theoretical physicist, and sometimes I wonder if we mutually exist.")

Scientists within a specialty tend to hang together with their own kind, forming themselves into tight little subcultural cells, to which they turn for approval and prestige, as well as for guidance about such things as dress, political opinions, and life style.

As science expands and the scientific population grows, new specialties spring up, fostering more and still more diversity at this "hidden" or informal level. In short, specialization breeds subcults.

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As specialization continues, as research extends into new fields and probes more deeply into old ones, as the economy continues to create new technologies and services, subcults will continue to multiply. Those social critics who inveigh against "mass society" in one breath and denounce "over-specialization" in the next are simply flapping their tongues. Specialization means a movement away from sameness.

Toffler explores the phenomenon of specialization in the sciences, producing subcults and subsubcults.