Against the Background of Social Reality: Defaults, Commonplaces, and the Sociology of the Unmarked

ISBN-13: 9780367433574 / Angielski

Carmelo Lombardo; Lorenzo Sabetta

Opis

The first wide-ranging, organic analysis of the sociology of unmarkedness and taken-for-grantedness, this volume investigates the asymmetry between how we attend to the culturally emphasized features of social reality and ignore the culturally unmarked ones.

Concerned with the structures of cultural invisibility, unconscious rules of irrelevance, automatic frames of meaning, and collective attention patterns, it brings together scholarship spanning sociology, anthropology, and social psychology, to cover various aspects of humdrum, unglamorous, nondescript, nothing-to-write-at-home-about social phenomena, developing the key assumptions, underpinnings, and implications of this field of study.

A comprehensive analysis of an unremarked feature of our social existence, this book will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in social theory and the sociology of everyday life.

Recenzje

"Sociology suffers from an attention deficit disorder of sorts, focusing on .001% of human action that takes place against a background of the taken for granted which occupies the rest of our experience. Here, in this adventurous volume, Lombardo and Sabetta gather essays that collectively redirect our gaze to the vast unmarked world, bringing opportunity for fresh insight."
Peter Bearman, Columbia University

Spis treści

List of Contributors  List of Tables and Figures  1. What is Done When Nothing Special is Being Done. Social Theory and the Power of the Unmarked  Theoretical Outlines  2. Taken for Granted: Semiotic Asymmetry and the Sociocognitive Production of Normality  3. Routines, Rituals and Reflexes: The Powerful Undercurrents in Everyday Life  Core Arguments and Epistemological Implications  4. Sociocultural Defaults at Rest and in Motion: Cognitive Sociologies of the Unmarked  5. Nothing Important: Exploring the Personal and Social Meanings of Negative Experience  6. From Background to Default: The Epistemic Role of the Unmarked  Variations on the Theme  7. Early Detection’s Blind Spots: Attentional Conflict in the Mammography Wars  8. Normalization of the Wrong Normal: Unmarked Futures in the 2015-2016 Refugee Crisis in Poland  Conclusive Remarks  9. "Noise or Music? Clutter or Shoe? On Attachment and Foreground Producing Strategies  10. The Unmarked and the Methodology of Social Research  11. Remarks About What Is Considered Important and Unimportant in Sociology  Index

O autorze

Carmelo Lombardo is Full Professor of Sociology at Sapienza-University of Rome, Italy.

Lorenzo Sabetta is Tenure-Track Assistant Professor of Sociology at Sapienza-University of Rome, Italy.