1st Edition
Against the Background of Social Reality Defaults, Commonplaces, and the Sociology of the Unmarked
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.
As comprehensive analysis of unremarked features 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.
List of Figures and Tables
List of Contributors
Chapter 1: What is Done When Nothing Special is Being Done. Social Theory and the Power of the Unmarked
Lorenzo Sabetta and Carmelo Lombardo
Theoretical Outlines
Chapter 2: Taken for Granted: Semiotic Asymmetry and the Sociocognitive Production of Normality
Eviatar Zerubavel
Chapter 3: Routines, Rituals and Reflexes: The Powerful Undercurrents in Everyday Life
Orvar Löfgren
Core Arguments and Epistemological Implications
Chapter 4: Sociocultural Defaults at Rest and in Motion: Cognitive Sociologies of the Unmarked
Wayne H. Brekhus
Chapter 5: Nothing Important: Exploring the Personal and Social Meanings of Negative Experience
Susie Scott
Chapter 6: From Background to Default: The Epistemic Role of the Unmarked
Massimiliano Badino and Gerardo Ienna
Variations on the Theme
Chapter 7: Early Detection’s Blind Spots: Attentional Conflict in the Mammography Wars
Asia Friedman
Chapter 8: Normalization of the Wrong Normal: Unmarked Futures in the 2015-2016 Refugee Crisis in Poland
Adriana Mica, Mikolaj Pawlak, Pawel Kubicki, and Anna Horolets
Conclusive Remarks
Chapter 9: "Noise or Music? Clutter or Shoe? On Attachment and Foreground Producing Strategies
Claudio E. Benzecry
Chapter 10: The Unmarked and the Methodology of Social Research
Antonio Fasanella
Chapter 11: Remarks About What Is Considered Important and Unimportant in Sociology
Krzysztof T. Konecki
Index
Biography
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.
"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
