Ebook: Social Mindscapes: An Invitation to Cognitive Sociology
Author: Eviatar Zerubavel
- Tags: Cognitive Psychology, Behavioral Sciences, Science & Math, Cognitive, Psychology, Methodology, Social Sciences, Politics & Social Sciences, Sociology, Abuse, Class, Death, Marriage & Family, Medicine, Race Relations, Rural, Social Theory, Urban, Politics & Social Sciences, Cognitive Psychology, Psychology, Social Sciences, New Used & Rental Textbooks, Specialty Boutique, Sociology, Social Sciences, New Used & Rental Textbooks, Specialty Boutique
- Year: 1999
- Publisher: Harvard University Press
- Language: English
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In this wide-ranging and provocative book, Eviatar Zerubavel argues that cognitive science cannot answer these questions, since it addresses cognition on only two levels: the individual and the universal. To fill the gap between the Romantic vision of the solitary thinker whose thoughts are the product of unique experience, and the cognitive-psychological view, which revolves around the search for the universal foundations of human cognition, Zerubavel charts an expansive social realm of mind--a domain that focuses on the conventional, normative aspects of the way we think.
With witty anecdote and revealing analogy, Zerubavel illuminates the social foundation of mental actions such as perceiving, attending, classifying, remembering, assigning meaning, and reckoning the time. What takes place inside our heads, he reminds us, is deeply affected by our social environments, which are typically groups that are larger than the individual yet considerably smaller than the human race. Thus, we develop a nonuniversal software for thinking as Americans or Chinese, lawyers or teachers, Catholics or Jews, Baby Boomers or Gen-Xers. Zerubavel explores the fascinating ways in which thought communities carve up and classify reality, assign meanings, and perceive things, "defamiliarizing" in the process many taken-for-granted assumptions.