I have already written a lot about the concept “milieu” … and yet I feel I need to point out that the way the word is commonly used seems rather misleading (at least to me).
The common understanding of milieu is rather static, I think. It seems like people map into particular milieus in a 1-to-1 fashion. I think it is rather uncommon to think of milieus as transient spaces which we can either move into or out of, switching from one milieu to another milieu much like we might change our clothing from time to time.
Even more rare, I guess, is to consider milieus to overlap with one another, such that at one and the same time, we might find ourselves in more than one single milieu.
I think there is nothing in a “definition” of the word “milieu” that might prove or disprove such a view of milieus. Indeed, milieu seems to be a foreign concept to almost everyone who uses the term — unless there are still some people who are “native speakers” of Latin. 😐
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