Cognitive sociology

Barry Saferstein
Table of contents

Cognitive sociology applies ethnographically informed analysis of everyday social interaction, including problem solving in organizational contexts, in order to examine the role of social interpretive processes in the production and reproduction of authority structures. It develops longstanding sociological concerns about the relation between social organization, collective activity, and mind: e.g. individuals’ understandings of their relationships to collectivities (Durkheim 1933); the relation between class consciousness and domination (Marx & Engels 1970); sociocultural influences on concepts of social order (Weber 1958); the relation of action to societal norms (Parsons 1937). In this regard, a principal finding of cognitive sociological research is that cognition is inherently social and cultural – not merely in terms of people sharing the topics and results of their interactions, but in terms of the interpretive practices through which people constitute the topics and results of their interactions. The study of this interrelationship of interaction, social organization, and cognition explicates the nature of order and power in particular social settings.

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