Culture in Mind

Toward a Sociology of Culture and Cognition

Karen A. Cerulo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135956424
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

What is thought and how does one come to study and understand it? How does the mind work? Does cognitive science explain all the mysteries of the brain? This collection of fourteen original essays from some of the top sociologists in the country, including Eviatar Zerubavel, Diane Vaughan, Paul Dimaggio and Gary Alan Fine, among others, opens a dialogue between cognitive science and cultural sociology, encouraging a new network of scientific collaboration and stimulating new lines of social scientific research.
Rather than considering thought as just an individual act, Culture in Mind considers it in a social and cultural context. Provocatively, this suggests that our thoughts do not function in a vacuum: our minds are not alone. Covering such diverse topics as the nature of evil, the process of storytelling, defining mental illness, and the conceptualizing of the premature baby, these essays offer fresh insights into the functioning of the mind. Leaving the MRI behind, Culture in Mind will uncover the mysteries of how we think.

CHAPTER 1

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Establishing a Sociology
of Culture and Cognition

Karen A. Cerulo

What is thought…and how does one come to study and understand it?

Plato was among the first to grapple with the issue. “Thinking,” he argued,“is the talking of the soul with itself.”¹ With such ideas the philosopher established what, for centuries, proved the reigning image of thought—one that stressed the private, the contemplative, the solitary nature of human cognition. In thinking, it was argued, human beings sustain their secrets and bring their fantasies to life. Planning, analysis, self-reflection, and reasoning all begin in the seclusion of the mind. In Plato's imagery—indeed, in the images forwarded by so many artists and humanists that followed him—thinking embodied one of the most personal activities in which human beings engage.²

The “personalized model” of human cognition dominated public discourse for centuries. Medieval and Renaissance theologians, Romantic visionaries, psychoanalysts, and modern behaviorists all placed the intersection of personal experience and private reflection at the heart of human thought. The late twentieth century, however, brought the first sustained challenge to such visions of the mind. In the 1950s, cognitive science³ burst onto the intellectual scene. The field grew rapidly, and as it did, the discipline triggered a revolution in definitions of thinking.⁴

With the advent of cognitive science, concerns with “the mind” gave way to the study of “the brain.” Activities such as “thought” and “reflection” were reconceptualized as “information processing.” “Individualistic” elements of thinking became secondary to “universal” cognitive mechanisms. With the dawn of cognitive science, the human mind ceased to be viewed as an amorphous component of the self. Rather, the mind emerged as a mechanical device—one unique to a species. It became structurally divisible, with the process of cognition mapped and coded according to a series of natural stages and operations: sensation, attention, discrimination, classification, representation, integration, storage, retrieval, and so forth.

Cognitive science has made many impressive discoveries regarding the act of thinking. The field has taught us, for example, about the electrochemical and cerebral processes that accompany the apprehension and initial processing of information. Studies have also identified several of the mental mechanisms involved in organizing, representing, and storing sensory stimuli. In addition, research has uncovered many of the precepts, the semantic and syntactic rules, that enable symbolic communication among humans. And the literature illustrates ways in which thinking and remembering can be adversely affected by sensory and cognitive overload. In light of these and many other important findings, it would be difficult to challenge the value of the field. Yet for all of the virtues and strengths of cognitive science, the discipline's commitment to studying universal elements of human thought, its emphasis on mind as an information processor, leaves us with many unanswered questions. Can cognitive science tell us all we need to know about thinking?

For example, cognitive scientists carefully analyze attention systems of the brain, exploring both the conscious and unconscious elements of the process. Researchers chart the specific areas of the brain involved in attention; they document the brain's ability to attend simultaneously to multiple stimuli, to shift attention, or habituate to stimuli. Such studies are undeniably important. Yet they tell us little about broader, socioculturally based patterns of attending. For despite growing knowledge of the brain's natural capacity, we still cannot explain the role of factors such as social background, institutionalized scripts of action, or situational context in establishing the parameters of conscious awareness. Similarly, cognitive scientists scrutinize the ways in which human beings discriminate and classify stimuli. Researchers explore processes such as concrete comparison, analogical thinking, and metaphoric thinking tracing these skills to infancy. In exploring the neural mechanics of such sorting processes, however, current studies fail to explain the variable salience of mental categories and classes. The literature neglects the ways in which criteria of sameness and difference can vary across cultural communities. Now consider cognitive scientists' work on the integration of sensory input. Studies document the tools that enable the positioning and interpretation of information—tools such as concepts, frames, formats, and schemata.⁵ And yet, beyond the basic operations of these organizational tools, the field tells us little about the variable ways in which such tools are applied. We have still to discover the factors that drive human groups to invoke specific concepts and frames, or to withhold certain formats and schemata at different historical moments or within divergent social situations. Finally, consider cognitive scientists' work on storage and retrieval. The literature distinguishes long-term and short-term memory structures and identifies the neurocognitive processes involved at each juncture. Yet for all of its strengths, this research cannot address the sociocultural dimensions of memory construction. Such studies fail to explain, for example, how or why certain events take precedence over others in the building of a particular individual's or group's historical narrative.

Clearly, there are important gaps in our current knowledge of thought. It is these gaps that beckoned Culture in Mind. I conceived the book not as a challenge to the cognitive science literature. Rather, it is designed as a much-needed complement to that body of work. In assembling this collection, my goal is to move beyond issues of cognitive universals and toward a deeper engagement of cognitive difference and distinction. I hope to move beyond the neurological details of mental processing, opting instead to locate and analyze cognition in its sociocultural context. To accomplish these tasks, I have assembled a distinguished array of scholars—authors who direct their readers to an analytic “middle ground.”⁶ Each contributor treats cognitive patterns as neither general to the species nor specific to the individual. Rather, each author considers cognition as an act of social beings—an act both enabled and constrained by one's position in the complex web of social and cultural experience. Using this perspective, contributors temporarily background concerns for the routine neuromechanics of thinking. They focus instead on the very different places that these routine processes can lead.

Logic of the Volume

In analyzing thought, cognitive scientists typically invoke a series of sequential stages. These stages include the human brain's sensation and attention to sensory stimuli, its ability to discriminate and classify such input, the ways in which the brain represents and integrates information, and finally, its ability to store and retrieve data. From the cognitive scientist's perspective, understanding these stages, including the specific operations that occur at each stage, holds the key to comprehending fully the process of human thought.

These four sequential stages provide a useful organizational frame for Culture in Mind. Using them, we can embark on an intellectual journey that takes us from the very sparks of a thought to its long-term development. Yet as authors direct us to the various phases of cognition, they will raise a set of issues that cognitive scientists have heretofore ignored. Authors will not dissect the moment-by-moment of cognition; they will not link thinking to specific brain structures. Rather, each chapter of Culture in Mind will consider the ways in which sociocultural conditions temper and amend the cognitive experience. The road to this goal is straightforward. Each contributor will lead readers to a different social setting: the negotiation of intimate relationships, medical decision making, economic rivalry in the market, the construction of political villains, and so on. Using setting as a vehicle, authors will document the ways in which cognition varies across different cultural contexts. They will illustrate as well the ways in which cognitive processes become institutionalized dimensions of these settings. And the articles to follow will also explore the ways in which institutionalized cognitive processes can direct social action.

The first section of this volume examines sensation and attention, the initial stage of thought Contributors explore the specific processes that characterize this phase of mental activity. Chapter 2, for example, considers “focusing,” and “denial.” For cognitive scientists, focusing involves the selection and centering of specific environmental stimuli. The process allows the brain to “lock in” certain stimuli, thus rendering them the sole point of concentration. Denial, in contrast, occurs when something blocks or inhibits the connection between specific stimuli and brain receptors. The phenomenon is typically explained as the product of either a physiological abnormality or a psychological trauma. Author Eviatar Zerubavel locates focusing and denial at the heart of his work. But in contrast to cognitive scientists, Zerubavel directs his efforts to the sociocultural foundations of these processes. The author argues that the stimuli to which we attend, as well as those that we ignore, are influenced by existing social agendas—agendas that define relevance on the basis of cultural criteria. In support of his argument, Zerubavel takes readers to a variety of social settings. At each site, he accents the explicit and implicit cultural norms that can block information from entering our awareness.

Chapter 3 continues the emphasis on sensation and attention, exploring a process known as “signal detection.” Among cognitive scientists, signals constitute special environmental stimuli that target and excite key receptors within the human brain. Those studying signals typically search for factors that can increase the detection of these stimuli. In this regard, researchers gauge the impact of factors such as signal strength or observer expectancy. In Chapter 3, however, Diane Vaughan suggests a broader approach to the issue of signal detection. Vaughan's research takes us to three different sites: couples in deteriorating intimate relationships, managers and engineers at NASA making assessments of technical components of the space shuttle, and air traffic controllers reading information on radar screens. In each case, the author focuses her readers on the ways in which individuals interpret and respond to signals of potential danger. By studying danger signals in context, Vaughan provides a fresh insight on signal detection, one that highlights the sociocultural aspects of the process. Specifically, Vaughan demonstrates that the social location of individuals, as well as the organization of the social contexts in which individuals interact, proves crucial to discovering both those signals that are sufficiently strong to stimulate attention, and those that fail to enter our awareness.

The next section of the volume is devoted to discrimination and classification. Here, contributors dissect the mental mechanisms by which human beings establish similarity, difference, and relativity. Chapter 4, for example, examines the process of “concrete comparison.” Among cognitive scientists, concrete comparison constitutes an evaluative strategy. When engaged in the process, human beings search the environment, looking for cues and criteria by which to make relative assessments. As such, objects, actions, and events are defined vis-à-vis a network of relevant entities. In considering concrete comparison, Wendy Espeland alerts readers to a sociocultural variant of the process. Her article explores “commensuration,” an institutionalized method that guides societal level comparisons. According to Espeland, commensuration allows societies to transform different qualities into a common metric. It is a process that guides the establishment of things such as pricing, cost-benefit ratios, utility functions, and the quantitative ranking of goods and services. In Chapter 4, Espeland documents commensurative practices across a wide variety of contexts. She also highlights the ways in which the process can change that to which societies attend, that which they value, and the rules of value-based interaction. Such work holds broad implications for those engaged in social science analysis. The study of commensuration provides vital insight on the organization and sustenance of social hierarchies, social networks, and social settings.

Chapter 5 directs readers to “metaphoric thinking,” another critical tool of discrimination and classification. Cognitive scientists define metaphoric thinking as a process of creative substitution. When engaged in this process, human beings speak of or treat an entity as if it were something else. Typically, cognitive scientists study metaphorical thinking as it occurs among very young children (between the ages one to six). They argue that a child's ability, for instance, to turn a finger into a gun or a cardboard box into a castle is critical to cognitive development, for such metaphoric thinking ultimately advances intellectual skills, creativity, and imagination. In Chapter 5, Nicole Isaacson stresses the importance of metaphoric thinking as well. However, her work takes us beyond the minds of children or the realm of the individual. Isaacson situates metaphoric thinking within a growing American controversy—distinguishing the premature baby from the human fetus. Using medical writings produced over the last two decades, she documents a growing trend toward treating the ever-younger fetus as premature. Isaacson discusses the social tensions that accompany this classification shift, and she notes the ways in which the application of metaphors often reduces these tensions. Her work provides numerous examples of situations in which metaphors are systematically invoked in order to foreground the fetus's babylike characteristics. In so doing, Isaacson demonstrates that metaphoric thinking at the macro level can redefine both the nature of the fetus and the point at which life begins.

Chapter 6 provides an innovative synthesis of the concepts presented heretofore. In a quintessential sociological analysis, Harrison White brings signaling, denial, and concrete comparison to the economic marketplace. White contends that such cognitive processes form “the drive-train of any social vehicle” (see White, p. 101), and he highlights signaling, denial, and comparison as institutionalized dimensions of production markets. In support of these claims, White charts the evolution of production markets as signaling mechanisms. He analyzes market action in terms of social comparisons and the rivalry profiles that such comparisons generate. Finally, he considers economic theorists' denial of markets in favor of optimal cost schedules, and he notes the ways in which this denial has impeded the scholarly understanding of economic structures.

Discriminatory practices operate in conjunction with other cognitive skills. As human beings sort information, they must symbolize it and reconcile it with an existing stock of knowledge and core expectations. The third section of this volume takes up these issues, addressing the representation and integration of information. The section begins by focusing readers on mental “concepts.”

According to cognitive scientists, concepts are abstractions that represent some part of the world; they describe the properties common to a class of objects or ideas. Invoking concepts allows human beings to symbolize and interpret new stimuli and information; these abstractions help human beings locate new material within a broader mental scheme. In studying concepts, cognitive scientists have been particularly interested in concept formation. Some argue that concepts are acquired via a continual process of association; others contend that concepts are formed through an elaborate process of hypothesis testing. Cognitive scientists have also been concerned with the structure of concepts. Here, four competing models drive the dialogue. The “classical view” posits that concepts are structured around defining features—features that are singly necessary and jointly sufficient to define the concept. The “prototype view” is more flexible, suggesting that concepts represent a “best example”; they summarize the most common features among a concept's instances. The “exemplar view” provides a highly concr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 ESTABLISHING A SOCIOLOGY OF CULTURE AND COGNITION
• Section I: Sensation and Attention
• Section II: Discrimination and Classification
• Section III: Representation and Integration
• Section IV: Storage and Retrieval
• Section V: Building Bridges
• Appendix: Mapping the Field
• Contributors
• Index