Macro, meso, micro: that's what the terms mean
The terms macro, meso and micro are often encountered in everyday life. In this article we clarify what they mean and in what context they are used.
The meaning of macro, meso and micro
Macro, meso and micro are word stems in foreign German words. They originally come from Greek.
- Macro means "large" and "wide", meso can be translated as "middle" and "medium" and micro means "small". We have summarized the dangers of microplastics in the body for you elsewhere.
- In science, one often speaks of a "macro-meso-micro-link". This term tries to understand phenomena by looking at sub-processes at different levels.
- The terms are also used in photography or film. A macro lens, for example, captures large sections of the picture and disregards details.
Use in different contexts
The three terms are often used in the social sciences. Depending on the point of view, micro, meso and macro mean something different here:
- The micro level deals with the actions of individual actors. In political science, what constitutes the individual for the sociologist is the citizen or the voter. By contrast, economic subjects are households and companies.
- The meso level stands for the investigation of intermediate structures such as institutions, parties and organizations. It is often an association of individual actors for a specific purpose.
- At the macro level, superordinate phenomena such as culture, society, state or nation are examined. Macroeconomics is about unemployment or inflation in an economy.
The easiest way to remember the terms micro, meso and macro is to use the different positions of a lens to the object being viewed. In the next article we will explain the term cringe to you.