A Tool to Analyze the Cultural Milieu: View of Context (VOC)

The View of Context (VOC) questionnaire is a tool for the analysis of the cultural milieu. It focuses on affect-laden meanings—according to the terminology adopted—symbolic universes and lines of semiotic force—that are at the basis of the dynamics of sensemaking substantiating the cultural milieu of a given social group. VOC has three major distinctive characteristics: (1) it is aimed at detecting both the content and the structure of the cultural milieu; (2) it adopts a free-scale approach, which makes the instrument applicable whatever the dimension of the social group (e.g., from a whole national population to members of a given community or organization); (3) it follows an endogenous, context-specific logic—that is, it maps the symbolic universes in the particular form that they have locally, in the cultural milieu under investigation, rather than classifying them according to a priori dimensions. The paper presents the characteristics of VOC. After outlining the conceptual and methodological rationale at its basis, the questionnaire is described. Afterwards, studies that have applied the VOC are reviewed. Finally, the concluding section presents some further considerations about the instrument.