Instructor: Paul DiMaggio
Meeting Time: Tuesdays, 9am-12noon
Meeting Place: 2-N-3 Green Hall
Note: This syllabus is preliminary. Some specific readings may change.
This course is a mini-seminar -- a half-semester course aimed at exposing students to a broad array of perspectives in a manner that equips them for subsequent independent or group work. Graduate students in departments without the mini-seminar option are welcome to participate, either as auditors or, by arrangement with the instructor for further work, for full-semester credit. Advanced undergraduates with research interests in the field may participate on the same basis with the instructor's permission.
The purpose of this seminar is to explore the potential of recent work in the cognitive sciences (especially psychology and anthropology) to inform research and theory in the sociology of culture. The emphasis here is on culture as shared mental structures, rather than as symbol systems external to individuals (although language, practices, and institutionalized culture will naturally come into play). As such, this seminar is part of the Department's graduate "culture track" curriculum, one of a sequence of seminars that address different aspects of the sociology of culture.
The seminar is experimental in two senses. First, it is new to
Princeton and to me, as instructor. Second, there are not a lot of
prototypes at other institutions. Students will participate in a
shared adventure, in which we will explore the potential for
cross-fertilization of exciting new work in several disciplines (with
an emphasis, of course, on the kinds of questions that sociologists
ask about culture). As we review several literatures in these
disciplines, the question we will keep to the fore is: How can these
ideas and methods help us understand and study culture?
How can we integrate these into our own research projects?
(Students will be encouraged to keep a particular research topic in
mind throughout the semester as a concrete reference point.)
By semester's end, we may conclude that as interesting as recent
work in psychology and cognitive anthropology is, it has little to
offer sociologists. Or we may conclude that, although the focal
questions differ among the disciplines, cognitive psychology and
cognitive anthropology contain many treasures for sociologists who
study culture.
My hunch going into this is that we will find many areas of overlap and relevance. In particular, I believe that sociologists can draw on insights from cognitive studies in other disciplines to assess the plausibility of our theoretical presuppositions, to more clearly define the constructs that "culture" comprises, and to measure and observe culture in action.
There are two "texts" for the course. The first is Social Mindscapes: An Invitation to Cognitive Sociology (Harvard Univ. Press, forthcoming) by Eviatar Zerubavel. I am very much indebted to Professor Zerubavel for his permission to use his manuscript before its publication. The other is The Development of Cognitive Anthropology (N.Y.: Cambridge, 1995) by Roy D'Andrade (available at the Princeton University Store). The two books are complementary in that Zerubavel's approach is strongly sociological, whereas D'Andrade draws much more on cognitive psychology.
The plan of attack is as follows. We start with classification and
taxonomy, move to perception and retrieval, go from there to
relatively static schemata, then to narrative schemata, and, finally,
to the sociological idea of "logics of action," with the
hope of unpacking this fundamental but undertheorized concept in a way
that makes it a more useful research tool. Each week's readings range
from fairly technical accounts of cognitive research to more
conventionally sociological work with which psychological and
anthropological concepts or methods resonate.
Readings for most weeks will also expose us to relevant methods of
data-gathering and data-analysis as well.
In the course of this six-week mini-seminar, we will explore a dizzying array of topics -- classification, identities, boundaries, categorization, scripts and schemata, mental models, social representations, distributed cognition, collective memory, discourse, networks, metaphors, analogy, habitus, production systems, logics of action and others. This approach requires a division of labor, such that beyond a core of readings, different people read different things and report back to the group. (The specifics will depend on how many students enroll.) Presentations will be assigned at the end of each seminar meeting and presenters will meet with me towards the end of the week to discuss their plans.
CLICK HERE FOR AN EXPANDED COURSE DESCRIPTION.
Eviatar Zerubavel, Social Mindscapes: An Invitation to Cognitive Sociology. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, forthcoming. (Ch. 1, "The Sociology of the Mind," pp. 1-19).
Roy D'Andrade, ch. 3, "The Classic Features Model"(pp. 31-57) and ch. 10, "Summing Up" (pp. 244-52) in The Development of Cognitive Anthropology, N.Y.: Cambridge, 1995.
Robert Wuthnow, Meaning and Moral Order: Explorations in Cultural Analysis. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1987. Pp. 6-10 ("Conceptual and Theoretical Problems")
Ron Jepperson and Ann Swidler, "What Properties of Culture Should we Measure?" Meaning and Measurement in the Sociology of Culture, ed. Paul DiMaggio, special issue of Poetics 22 (1994): 359-71.
Ann Swidler, "Finding Culture," ch. 1 of Talk of Love: How Americans Use Their Culture (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, forthcoming) (pending author's permission). OR (Alternatively)
Richard A. Shweder with Edmund J. Bourne, "Does the Concept of the Person Vary Cross-Culturally," pp. 113-56 in Richard Shweder, Thinking Through Cultures: Explorations in Cultural Psychology (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1991); and 158-99 in Richard Shweder and R.A. Levine, eds., Culture Theory: Essays on Mind, Self and Emotion. N.Y.: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Daniel T. Gilbert, "How Mental Systems Believe," American Psychologist 46 (1991): 107-19.
Zerubavel, op. cit., ch. 4 ("The Social Division of the World"), pp. 64-88.
D'Andrade, op. cit., ch. 4 ("Extension of the Features Model"), pp. 58-77, 83-88, 90-91; ch. 5 ("Folk Taxonomies"), pp. 92-97, 100-101, 120-21.
Ann Swidler and Jorge Arditi, "Identity, Boundaries, and Difference," Pp. 317-21 in "The New Sociology of Knowledge," Annual Review of Sociology 20 (1994): 305-29.
Eleanor Rosch and B. Lloyd. Cognition and Categorization. Hillsdale: Erlbaum, 1978. (esp. "Principles of Categorization") (Alternatively Eleanor Rosch and F.B. Mervis, "Family Resemblances: Studies in the Internal Structue of Categories," Cognitive Psychology 7 (1975): 573-605.)
John W. Mohr, John W., "Soldiers, Mothers, Tramps and Others: Discourse Roles in the 1907 Charity Directory. Meaning and Measurement" in the Sociology of Culture, ed. Paul DiMaggio, special issue of Poetics 22 (1994): 327-58.
James S. Boster and Jeffrey G. Johnson, "Form or Function: A Comparison of Expert and Novice Judgments of Similarity Among Fish," American Anthropologist 91 (1989): 866-89.
Paul Starr, "Social Categories and Claims in the Liberal State," Social Research 59 (1992): 263-95.
Arthur Stinchcombe, "The Deep Structure of Moral Categories: Eighteenth-Century French Stratification and the Revolution". In Eno Rossi, ed. Structural Sociology NY: Columb. Univ. Press, 1982.
Gieryn, Thomas F. "Boundary-Work and the Demarcation of Science from Non-Science: Strains and Interests in Professional Ideologies of Scientists." American Sociological Review 48 (1983): 781-95.
Michèle Lamont, "National Identity and National Boundary Patterns in France and the United States," French Historical Studies 19 (1995): 349-65.
Viviana Zelizer, "The Creation of Domestic Currencies," American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 84 (1994).
Zerubavel, chs. 2, "Social Optics" (20-41), 3, "The Social Gates of Consciousness" (42-63), and 6, "Social Memories" (110-36).
D'Andrade, ch. 6 ("The Growth of Schema Theory"), pp. 122-50.
Susan T. Fiske and Patricia W. Linville, "What Does the Schema Concept Buy Us?" Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 6 (1980): 543-57.
Shweder, Richard. 1982. Pp. 65-80, 88-92 in "Fact and Artifact in Trait Perception: The Systematic Distortion Hypothesis." Progress in Experimental Personality Research 2 (1982): 65-100..
S. Hamilton and B. Fagot. 1988. "Chronic Stress and Coping Skills: A Comparison of Male and Female Undergraduates." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 55 (1988): 819-23.
Marcia K. Johnson, S. Hastroudi, and D.S. Lindsay, "Source Monitoring," Psychological Bulletin 114 (1993): 3-28.
Freeman, Linton C., A. Kimball Romney and Sue C. Freeman. "Cognitive Structure and Informant Accuracy." American Anthropologist 89 (1987): 310-25.
Donna Haraway, "The Past is the Contested Zone," Pp. 21-42 in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991).
Fleck, Ludwik, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1979 [1935]).
JoEllen Shively, "Cowboys and Indians: Percpetions of Western Films Among American Indians and Anglos," American Sociological Review 57 (1992): 725-34.
Schudson, Michael, Watergate in American Memory (N.Y.: Basic, 1992).
Halbwachs, Maurice.Maurice Halbwachs on Collective Memory, ed. Lewis Coser. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1992.
Howard Schuman and C. Rieger. "Historical Analogies, Generational Effects, and Attitudes toward War." American Sociological Review 57 (1992): 315-26.
D'Andrade, ch. 8, pp. 207-217.
Hutchins, Edwin, "The Social Organization of Distributed Cognition." In Perspective on Socially Shared Cognition, ed. Resnick, L.B., J.M. Levine and S.D. Teasley (Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 1991). .
Kathleen M. Carley. "A Theory of Group Stability," American Sociological Review 56 (1991): 331-54.
Shepard, Roger N. "Perceptual and Analogical Bases of Cognition," in J. Mehler, E.C.T. Walker and M. Garrett eds., Perspectives on Mental Representation: Experimental and Theoretical Studies of Cognitive Processes and Capacities. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1982.
Zerubavel, ch. 5 ("Social Meanings"), pp. 89-101.
Hazel Rose Markus and Shinobu Kitayama, "Culture and the Self: Implications for Cognition, Emotion and Motivation," Psychological Review 98 (1991): 224-53.
William A. Gamson, "Collective Action Frames," pp.6-8 of Talking Politics. (N.Y.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992).
Serge Moscovici, "The Phenomenon of Social Representations," In R.M. Farr and Serge Moscovici, eds., Social Reperesentations (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1984).
Gustav Jahoda, "Critical Notes and Reflections on `Social Representations,'" European Journal of Social Psychology 18 (1988): 195-209.
Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckman , "Social Interaction in Everyday Life" (28-46), "The Origins of Institutionalization" (53-60), and "Roles" (72-79") in The Social Construction of Reality. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor, 1967.
Sewell, William H. Jr. "A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and Transformation," American Journal of Sociology 98 (1992): 1-29. (just pages dealing with schema?)
David Krackhardt, "Assessing the Political Landscape: Structure, Cognition and Power in Organizations," Administrative Science Quarterly 35 (1990): 342-69.
Goffman, Erving. Frame Analysis. N.Y.: Harper Colophon, 1974.
David A. Snow and Robert D. Benford, "Master Frames and Cycles of Protest," Pp. 133-55 in Aldon D. Morris and Carol McClurg Mueller, eds., Frontiers in Social Movement Theory (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1992).
Schuman, Howard. 1986. "Ordinary Questions, Survey Questions, and Policy Questions." Public Opinion Quarterly 50: 432-42.
Ronald Jepperson, "Institutions, Institutional Effects, and Institutionalism," Pp. 143-63 in Walter W. Powell and Paul DiMaggio, eds., The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1991).
Thomas Fararo and John Skvoretz. "Institutions as Production Systems." Journal of Mathematical Sociology 10 (1984): 117-82.
Martha Augoustinos and John Michael Innes,
"Towards an Integration of Social Representations and Social Schema
Theory,"
D'Andrade, ch. 7, pp. 179-81 ("An
Ontology of Cultural Forms").
Robert P. Abelson,
"Psychological Status of the Script Concept," American
Psychologist 36 (1981): 715-29. Ann Swidler, "Culture in
Action:
Symbols and Strategies." American Sociological
Review,"
American Sociological Review 51 (1986): 273-86.
Pierre
Bourdieu,
"Structures, Habitus, Practices," Pp. 52-65 (ch. 3) in The
Logic
of Practice (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univ. Press, 1990 [1980]).
Harold Garfinkel, "Studies of the Routine Grounds of Everyday
Activities," ch. 2 (pp. 35-75) of Studies in
Ethnomethodology
(Oxford: Polity Press, 1987 [1967]).
Charles Tilly, "How to
Detect, Describe, and Explain Repertoires of Contention." Working
Paper No. 150, Center for Studies of Social Change, New School for
Social
Research.
Ann Swidler, "Repertoires," ch. 2 of Talk of Love
(Chicago:
Univ. of Chicago Press, forthcoming) (pending author's permission).
Charles Tilly, "Contentious Repertoires in Great Britain,
1758-1834," Working Paper No. 141, Center for Studies of
Social
Change, New School for Social Research (June 1992)
Sherry Turkle and
Seymour Papert, "Epistemologicl Pluralism: Styles and Voices Within
the Computer Culture," Signs 16 (1990): 128-57
Dorothy
Holland, "How Cultural Systems Become Desire," in D'Andrade and
Strauss, Human Motivation and Cultural Models (Cambridge:
Cambridge Univ. Press 1992)
Naomi Quinn, "The Motivational Force of
Self-Understanding." In Human Motives and Cultural Models,
ed. R.
D'Andrade and C. Strauss (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992).
Stigler, J.W., L. Chalip and K. Miller. 1986. "Consequences of Skill:
The Case of Abacus Traning in Taiwan." American Journal of
Education
94: 477-79.
David R. Heise, "Affect Control Theory: Concepts and
Models," Journal of Mathematical Sociology 13 (1987):
1-33.
Donna Eder and J.L. Enke, "The Structure of Gossip," American
Sociological Review 46 (1991): 494-508.
Joseph Berger, Susan J.
Rosenholtz and Morris Zelditch, Jr. "Status Organizing
Processes," Annual Review of Sociology 6 (1980): 479-508.
Kathleen Carley and Michael
Palmquist, "Extracting, Representing and Analyzing Mental Models,
Social Forces, 70 (1992): 601-636.
Abell, Peter, "Some Aspects of Narrative Method," Journal of
Mathematical Sociology 18 (1993): 93-134.
Franzosi, Roberto, "From Words to Numbers: A Set Theory Framework
for the Collection, Organization, and Analysis of Narrative Data,"
Sociological Methodology, ed. Peter V. Marsden 24 (1994):
105-37.
Roger Friedland and Robert Alford, "Bringing Society Back
In: Symbols, Practices, and Institutional Contradictions,"
Pp. 232-63 in Walter Powell and Paul DiMaggio, eds., The New
Institutionalism
in Organizational Analysis. (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1991).
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, "The Metaphorical Structure
of the Human Conceptual System," Cognitive Science 4
(1980): 195-208.
David Stark, "Work, Worth and Justice in a Socialist Mixed
Economy," Program on Central and East Europe Working Paper
#5 (1990), Harvard University Center for European Studies.
Basil Bernstein, "Social Class, Language and Socialization,".pp.
170-189 in Class, Codes and Control: Theoretical Studies Towards
a Sociology of Language, 2nd ed. (New York: Schocken Books, 1975).
John J. Gumperz, "Social Network and Language Shift"
(ch.3) and "Conversational Code Switching," (ch. 4),
pp. 38-99 in Discourse Strategies (N.Y.: Cambridge University
Press, 1982)
John Mohr, "Measuring Meaning Structures," Paper prepared
for the Meaning and Measurement Mini-Conference of the ASA Culture
Section (George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia), August,
1995.
William A. Gamson, "Cultural Resonances," pp. 135-62
(ch. 8) in Talking Politics (N.Y.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992).
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, chs. 1-4 (3-21), 8 (35-40), 11
(52-55), 15-17 (77-105), and 23 (156-58) in Metaphors We Live
By (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1980).
Gentner, Dedre. "The Mechanisms of Analogical Learning."
In Similarity and Analogical Reasoning, ed. S. Vosniadou and A.
Ortony. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot, De la Justification:
Les Economies de la grandeur (Paris: Gallimard, 1991).
Basil Bernstein, "On the Classification and Framing of Educational
Knowledge," pp.202-30 in Class, Codes and Control: Theoretical
Studies Towards a Sociology of Language, 2nd ed. (New York: Schocken
Books, 1975).
Harrison C. White. "Where Do Languages Come From? Switching
Talk." Preprint #201, Center for the Social Sciences, Columbia
University.
Calvin Morrill, "The Customs of Conflict Management Among
Corporate Executives," American Anthropologist 93 (1991):
171-93.
Bakhtin, M.M. "Speech Genres." In Speech Genres and
Other Late Essays. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986.
WEEK 5 (for Tuesday, March 5): Narrative I: Scripts, Event
Schemata, Repertoires, and Grammars
SPECIAL TOPICS: Empirical Applications from
Sociology
SPECIAL TOPICS:
Empirical Applications from Anthropology and Psychology
SPECIAL TOPICS: Semantic and Expectations-State
Models
SPECIAL TOPICS: Narrative Sequence Analysis
WEEK 6 (for Tuesday, March 12): Narrative II - Logics of
Action
SPECIAL TOPICS: Analogy and Metaphor
SPECIAL TOPICS: Boltanski and Thévenot
SPECIAL TOPICS: Bernstein adds Context
SPECIAL TOPICS: Logics Embedded in Networks
SPECIAL TOPICS: Bakhtin and Speech Genres