Culture and Cognition

Mission Statement

Culture and cognition is now a well-established program within the sociology department.  Those working in this area use a cultural lens to explore the ideas and schematizations, the symbols, artifacts and meanings, the norms and practices, and the institutions and patterns of interactions by which society is constructed, sustained, and transformed.    

Certain aspects of our program make us unique among cultural sociology programs across the nation. Here, many of our faculty and students focus their theoretical and empirical attentions on the relationship between the social, the cultural, the historical, and the mental. Our program provides students interested in cognition with the opportunity to study the social and cultural aspects of thinking.  We stress dimensions of thought that are almost totally missing from current philosophical, psychological, neuroscientific and linguistic theories of the mind.    

Our program emphasizes several substantive areas within culture and cognition:

• The social foundations of mental processes, including attending, disattending and denying; classifying; framing, formatting, mapping and sequencing; perceiving; symbolizing; remembering and forgetting; projecting to the future; time reckoning
• The relation between cognitive structures and social structures; the intersection of cognitive sociology and cognitive science
• Micro-level cultural practices and macro-level social transformation
• Symbol systems and symbolic interaction
• Discourse, communication, strategic interaction and politics
• Knowledge construction
• Information complexity and decision making
• Institutions, power relations, and cultural change
• Social identity and social networks
• Identity construction: individual and collective; class, gender, race, and religion; object, place, and event.
• Narrative analysis
• The phenomenology of everyday life
• Belief systems: ideology, religion, science; interaction between believing and belonging
• Spiritual experiences and practices and their effects on public and private life and on physical and mental health
• The Body
• Mass media, technology, and communication
• Visual Sociology
• Sociology of art
• Space, place, and community

Affiliated Faculty
József Böröcz
Ethel Brooks
Karen A. Cerulo
Lee Clarke
Ira Cohen
Phaedra Daipha
Judith Friedman
Allan Horwitz
Ellen Idler
Joanna Kempner
Catherine Lee
Paul McLean
Ann Mische
Arlene Stein
Richard Williams
Ben Zablocki
Eviatar Zerubavel

Sample of Graduate Courses Taught in the Core Area

Cognitive Sociology: (Click here for syllabus) Drawing upon a number of major sociological and anthropological traditions (sociology of knowledge, symbolic interactionism, symbolic anthropology, phenomenology, semiotics, cognitive anthropology), this course examines relations between the social and the mental within the specific contexts of perceiving, attending, remembering, reasoning, classifying, framing, time reckoning and assigning meaning. It is designed to prepare students to do theoretically informed empirical studies of the social dimensions of our thinking.

Culture, Cognition, and the Media: (Click here for syllabus)  What role do the media play in the development of culture … and vice-versa?  Do media impact contemporary and historical perceptions of reality?  Can media create fields of collective cognition? Do media reflect reality, construct it … or both?  This course explores both classical and contemporary excursions on these very complex issues.  In examining the relationship of media, culture, and cognition, we will anchor our inquiry within the elements of the traditional mass communication model: “Who” (professional sources of message making and their techniques) “Says What” (message content, message structure, framing, schematization, and narrative) “How” (medium as message; technology and perception) “To Whom” (audiences – active or passive) “With What Effect” (emotional, behavioral, and socialization effects).

Culture, Symbols, and Social Interaction: (Click here for syllabus)  Social interaction is made possible, in large measure, by the existence of cultural symbols. During the semester, we will examine a variety of symbol systems, exploring the social foundations of these systems, the character of the symbols themselves, and the various ways in which social actors project and manipulate symbols. We also will explore the differing effects that certain symbols and social interaction styles can have on the structure of social life. At the same time, we will probe the ways in which social structure and technological innovation influence the face of social interaction.  Part one of the course will highlight symbolic communication within micro-level interaction. Lectures and readings will focus our attentions on four specific symbol systems: gestures, smell, touch, and talk. Class discussions will unfold the role these systems play in the establishment of meaning within interpersonal encounters. Part two of the course will focus on institutionalized symbol systems: language, visual arts, music, national symbols, and media narratives. We will examine the different levels of meaning contained in each of these systems. We also will explore the role social structure plays in the production of these systems. We will probe the impact of various symbolic forms with reference to communication effectiveness. And we will examine the ways in which audience responses to these symbols can alter the social setting. In its final phase, the course directs attentions to technologically mediated interaction. Lectures and readings focus on the ways in which technology alters the interaction process, and the ways in which it can blur previously conceived social distinctions: e.g. macro versus micro level interaction, life versus death.

Political Sociology: (click here for syllabus) In this course, we will examine the relationship between political conflict, cultural processes, and institutional change. In much of the literature on political sociology, culture is seen as something distinct from political institutions and processes; when acknowledged, culture tends to play a peripheral or “epiphenomenal” role, subordinate to the dominant effects of political and/or economic forces such as states, governments, political parties, policy-makers, class actors, interest groups, and social movements. Many cultural analysts, on the other hand, give causal primacy to such elements as discourse, symbols, and ideologies, often with the effect of reducing politics to nothing more than arrays of symbolic battles. In contrast to both of these approaches, our premise will be that culture, institutions, and political change are necessarily intertwined, but that this interrelationship takes varied forms, depending on social and historical contexts.

Sociology of Art.

Sociology of the Body: (click here for syllabus) In this course, we consider the ways in which the body is at once material and symbolic, an object of regulation and control and a site of contentious political struggle.  It exists at the intersection of multiple discourses (e.g., occupational, reproductive, technoscientific, feminist, leisure, sport, aesthetic, and sexual).  Drawing on an interdisciplinary literature and using a range of theoretical traditions, we will consider how the body is constituted by these discourses.  For example, what is “natural” about the body?  How are distinctions made between the normal and pathological?  Are bodies subordinate to the mind?  How are bodies commodified?  How are bodies categorized and constituted by discourses of race, class, gender, and sexuality?

Sociology of Culture: (click here for syllabus) The course considers selected themes in the sociology of culture -- how symbols, language, conceptual structures, and forms of knowledge construct meanings and constitute forms of power. Four key substantive areas will be the focus: 1) political culture and the moral order; 2) symbolic boundaries and inequality, 3) mass culture and subcultural resistance, and 4) bodies and knowledge. We’ll spend three weeks on each of these themes, asking the following: How do each of these streams of work define the field of cultural sociology? What are their principal objectives and contributions? What methodologies do they use? How does each make sense of the relationship between "culture" and "society"?

Sociology of Identity: (Click here for syllabus)  This course is orientated around four concepts. IDENTITY, NARRATIVE, DISCOURSE COMMUNITY and, COMMUNITY OF SOCIAL ACTORS. IDENTITY is clearly the central concept, for the semester, but as it will become quickly apparent, that concept is usefully seen as a site of contention rather than as an ontological reality which can be easily seen or defined. Despite the competition around identity, however, it is possible to locate those characteristics which are common to those competiting for control. A fair amount of the class lectures will be spent attempting to isolate those common characteristics. NARRATIVE is an important concept for this class because it conveys the sense that identity is a social construct rather than an objective reality. From the narrative perspective, identity is subjectively, conceptually, carved out of a mass of interacting entities. As such, an identity is one out of a wide range of unfulfilled possibilities. DISCOURSE COMMUNITY is an important concept for us in three respects. Like narrative, discourse community calls our attention to the conceptual aspect of identity. It is also the case that discourse community broadens the insights we will gain from the concept narrative by concentrating upon the significance of symbols in facilitating stable interactions among social actors. The assertion from this perspective therefore is that to understand IDENTITY, however defined, requires an understanding of the central concepts with which social actors consistenty structure their relations. Lastly, discourse community is important to us because it orientates us towards thinking about our relationship to the discourse community which I call Identity scholars. The focus here, therefore is on the concepts connected to the identity community which we are about to embrace. Much of your efforts during the semester will be spent locating a concept across the literature.

Sociology of Religion: (Click here for syllabus)  In this seminar, we will explore religion as it is seen and studied by sociologists. Sociology of religion is a term that includes three distinct but interrelated areas of investigation: (1) the way specific societies and cultures shape and influence specific religions and religious behaviors; (2) the way religion (and specific religions) influence all aspects of secular society; and (3) the complex relationships between the spiritual lives of human beings and the institutionalized forms of representing the sacred that are found in all known religions.

Sociology of Symbolic Boundaries: (Click here for syllabus)  This course is designed to explore theories of boundaries and to bring awareness of boundaries into our work.  We will examine in depth the making and unmaking of boundaries, as well as the operation of boundaries.

Space, Place and Community.

Temporality in Social Analysis: (click here for syllabus) In this course we will examine the orientations to temporality that undergird different analytical approaches in sociology. We will start by looking at general conceptions of temporality as expressed by major theorists such as Durkheim, Mead, Schutz, Whitehead, Luhmann, and Elias, as well as at how these theorists are contributing to (or being invoked in) the recently bubbling critique that most standard techniques in sociology are static and atemporal. We will then examine the array of recent theoretical and methodological approaches that attempt, in very different ways, to “bring time back in.” These will include approaches focusing on the personal and social experience of temporality – including time perspective, narrative, and interactionist approaches – as well as those focusing on the use of temporality in social and historical explanation. Among these we will look at historical/comparative approaches; statistical techniques such as time series and event history analysis, sequence analysis and formal approaches to narrative analysis. We will discuss both the theoretical underpinnings of these approaches as well as their practical implications (possibilities and limitations) for the conduct of sociological research.

Time, History and Memory: (Click here for syllabus) This course offers a sociological perspective on the intricate relations between present and past with a particular emphasis on the ways in which our present social, cultural, and political environments affect how we collectively remember our common past. The course begins by examining such themes as the presence of the past in the present, the relations between memory and identity, and the social organization of memory. We then address the social structure of the past, specifically examining both the form and content of history as a narrative and the social construction of both historical continuity and discontinuity.

Recent Dissertations in Culture and Cognition

Ph.D. Degrees Awarded

2009

Karen Danna-Lynch:  “Role Switching: A Social/Cognitive Approach to Multiple Role Enactment.” (Karen Cerulo, Allan Horwitz, Sarah Rosenfield, Eviatar Zerubavel)

Thomas DeGloma:  “Awakenings: Autobiography, Memory, and the Social Geometry of Personal Discovery.” (Eviatar Zerubavel, Allan Horwitz, Ann Mische, Arlene Stein)

Chantelle Marlor:  “The Cultural Construction of Ecological Knowledge: How does the Construction Process Affect the Conclusions?”  (John L. Martin, Eviatar Zerubavel, Thomas Rudel)

2008

Stephen Joseph Fichter:  “Shepherding in "Greener" Pastures:  Causes and Consequences of the Dual Transition of Celibate Catholic Priests into Married Protestant Ministry.”  (Ellen Idler, Benjamin Zablocki, Eviatar Zerubavel)

Jenna Howard:  “Recovery from Recovery: The Temporal Organization of Identity.” (Eviatar Zerubavel, Allan Horwitz, Sarah Rosenfield)
Karen Jaffe: “Forming Fat Identities.”  (Deborah Carr, Allan Horwitz, Eviatar Zerubavel)

2007

John Lang:  “Acceptable Trust? The Public Perception of Organizations Involved in Genetically Modified Food.” (Lee Clarke, Paul Mclean, Patricia Roos)

Vanina Leschziner:  “Cultural Creation: The Creation of Culture and the Culture of Creation. A Sociological Analysis in the Culinary Sphere.” (Karen Cerulo, John L. Martin, Paul McLean, Ann Mische)

King-to Yeung: “Suppressing Rebels, Managing Bureaucrats: State Building During the Taiping Rebellion, 1850-1864.”  (John L. Martin, Lee Clarke, Paul McLean, Ann Mische)

2006

Kevin Keogan:  “The Contemporary Politics of Immigration Within the United States: An Historical-Comparative Analysis of Southern California and the New York Metro Area.” (Karen A. Cerulo, Thomas Rudel, Ann Mische, Rubén G. Rumbaut)

Ruth E. Simpson:  “Changing Conceptions of Air and Social Space: Miasmatic Theories, Microscopic Worlds, and Myopic Vision.” (Eviatar Zerubavel, Ira Cohen, Allan Horwitz, József Böröcz, Richard Williams)

2005

Anna Looney:  “New Perspectives on Past Commitments:  Midlife Reflections on Cult Experience in Young Adulthood.” (Benjamin Zablocki, Sarah Rosenfield, Deborah Carr, John L. Martin)

Jamie McLennan:  “Solitude and Sociability: The Social World of Long Distance Hikers on the Appalacian Trail.” (Thomas Rudel, D. Randall Smith, Deborah Carr)

Takiko Mori-Saunders:  “Media Discourse For Japanese Middle-Aged Women: Between Docile Body and Silent Resistance.” (Ellen Idler, Judith Friedman, Ethel Brooks)

Keumjae Park:  “Immigrant Identities: The Case of Korean-Americans.” (Karen A. Cerulo, Richard Williams, Vilna Bashi, Kyeyoung Park)
Ian Watson:  “Cognitive Design.” (Eviatar Zerubavel, Paul McLean, Allan Horwitz)

2004

Julie McLaughlin:  “It's In the Timing: The Relationship Between the Temporal Composition of Family Transitions and Psychological Well-Being.” (Allan Horwitz, Sarah Rosenfield, Ellen Idler, Deborah Carr)

2003

Eric K. Shaw:  “What Goes Around Comes Around: A Social Psychological Examinatio of Helping Behavior Among Haitian Immigrants, Christian Fundamentalists, and Gang Members.” (Richard Williams, Benjamin Zablocki, Vilna Bashi, Philip Kasinitz)

Jamie Mullaney:  “Everyone's Not Doing It: An Exploration of Abstinence as Chosen Pursuit.” (Eviatar Zerubavel, Richard Williams, Benjamin Zablocki)

Marla Perez-Lugo:  “Vulnerability to Natural Disasters and the Mass Media.” (Tom Rudel, Karen O'Neill, Karen Cerulo)

2002

Brian Hall: “Chinese Americans at the Border of Christian Faith.” (Benjamin Zablocki, Cathy Greenblat, Chaim Waxman)

Sherril Schuster:  “Princess for a Day: Perpetuating the "White Wedding" as a Traditional Ritual.” (Ann Parelius, Judith Gerson, Chaim Waxman)

2001

Shawna Hudson:  “Watching Sex on TV: Reinterpreting Content Using A Sociological Gaze.” (Cathy Greenblat, Karen A. Cerulo, Richard Williams, John Gagnon)

Nicole Isaacson:  “’The Unfinished Infant"\’: An Analysis Of The Cultural Representations And Practices To Finish The Premature Baby.” (Eviatar Zerubavel, Judith Gerson, Karen A. Cerulo, Cathy Greenblat, John Gagnon)

Marla Perez-Lugo:  “Vulnerability to Natural Disasters and the Mass Media.” (Thomas Rudel, Karen Cerulo, Karen O’Neill)

Kristen Purcell:  “Leveling the Playing Field: Constructing Parity In The Modern World.”  (Eviatar Zerubavel, Jozsef Borocz, Allan Horwitz, Viviana Zelizer)

Rick Phillips:  “Saints in ‘Zion’; Saints in "Babylon": Mormonism, Pluralism and the Transformation of Religious Vitality in the United States.” (Benjamin Zablocki, Chaim Waxman, John Martin, Daniel V.A. Olsen)

William Smith:  “Christian Psychotherapists: Being in the World, But Not of It.” (Benjamin Zablocki, John Martin, Chaim Waxman)

2000

Johanna Foster:  “Feminist Theory and the Politics of Ambiguity: A Comparative Analysis of the Multiracial Movement, the Intersex Movement and the Disability Rights Movement as Contemporary Struggles Over Social Classification in the United States.” (Judith Gerson, Richard Williams, Eviatar Zerubavel)

Mary L. Gatta:  “Juggling Food and Feelings: Emotional Balance in the Workplace.” (Ira Cohen, Patricia Roos, Benjamin Zablocki)

1999

Wayne Brekhus:  “Lifestylers, Commuters, and Integrators: The Grammar and Micro-Ecology of Social Identity.” (Cathy Greenblat, Eviatar Zerubavel, Judith Gerson, John Gagnon)

Mary Chayko:  “Technology and Togetherness: How We Create and Live in a World of Mental Connections.” (Eviatar Zerubavel, Karen A. Cerulo, Ira Cohen)

Kimberly Wittenstrom:  “From Stay-At-Home Mothers to Professional Family Day Care Providers: Explaining Women's Transformations Using a Multi-Analytic Approach.” (Karen A. Cerulo, Judith Gerson, Eviatar Zerubavel, Hartmut B. Mokros)

1998

Katharine Jones:  “Accent on Privilege: Negotiating English Identities in an American Context.” (Judith Gerson, Richard Williams, Roberto Franzosi)

Dissertations in Progress

Asia Friedman:  “Sex Seen:  The Social Enactment of Sex and the Sex Gender Continuum.” (Eviatar Zerubavel, Karen Cerulo, Arlene Stein, Judith Gerson)

Rachelle Germana:  “Hyphenators and Hypen-Haters:  Social Identities and the Practice of Hypenating,”  (Eviatar Zerubavel, Ira Cohen, Karen Cerulo, Richard Williams)

Jennifer Hemler:  “Conceptualizing Cancer.” (Karen Cerulo, Deborah Carr, Allan Horwitz)

Maria Islas-Lopez:  “The Future in the Present:  Projectivity in a Transnational Migrant Community.” (Ann Mische, Karen Cerulo, Robyn Rodriguez)

Janet Lorenzen:  “Restricting Consumption:  Creating and Maintaining Contrary Lifestyle Practices in the American Consumer Economy.” (Paul McLean, Thomas Rudel, Karen Cerulo)

Frederic O. Rasumssen:  “Cultural Definitions of Emotional Problems:  Impact on Care Seeking & Satisfaction with Care among Hispanic/Latino Populations Living in the United States.” (Allan Horwitz, Stephen Hansell, Karen Cerulo)

Dena T. Smith:  “On the Boundaries Between Meaning-making and Medicalization in Contemporary American Psychiatry.”  (Deborah Carr, Allan Horwitz, Patrick Carr)

Karen Stein:  “Vacations:  The Social Organization of Temporary Identity.”
(Eviatar Zerubavel, Deborah Carr, Karen Cerulo, Richard Williams)

Elizabeth Williamson:  “The Mobilization of Emotions, Power Dynamics, Frames and Framing Processes and Their Effect on Commitment to a Social Movement.” (Benjamin Zablocki, Ann Mische, Karen Cerulo)

Tracie Witte:  “Creating Morality:  Competing for Medical Marijuana Legislation.” (Karen Cerulo, Julie Phillips, Allan Horwitz)

Culture and Cognition Students' National and Regional Awards

Audrey Devine Eller: Winner of a NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant, 2009.

Neha Gondal: Winner of the ASA Mathematical Sociology Section’s Best Student Paper Award, 2009.  

Eric Kushins: Winner of a NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, 2009.

Daina Harvey: Winner of thePresidential Fellow from the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 2008-2009.

Elizabeth Williamson:Winner of a NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant, 2008-09.

Thomas DeGloma:  Second Prize in the SSSP Conflict, Social Action, and Change Division’s Graduate Student Paper Award Competition, 2008.

Thomas DeGloma:  Second Prize in the SSSP Theory Division’s Student Paper Award Competition, 2008.

Shruti Devgan: Winner of theCenter for South Asia Studies at UC Berkeley's Amrit Kaur Ahluwalia Memorial Oustanding Paper Prize, 2008.

Jenna Howard: Winner of the ASA Social Psychology Section’s Best Student Paper Award, 2008.

Thomas DeGloma: Winner of the Presidential Fellow, Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 2007-2008.

Thomas DeGloma:  Co-winner, of the ASA Peace, War, and Social Conflict Section’s Elise M. Boulding Award for the Student Paper of the Year, 2007

Thomas DeGloma:  First Prize in the SSSP Theory Division Paper Award Competition, 2007.

Thomas DeGloma: Winner in the SSSP Mental Health Divion’s Student Paper Award Competition, 2007.

Asia Friedman: Winner of the ESS's Candace Rogers Student Paper Competition, 2007.

Karen Danna-Lynch:  Winner of the ASA Culture Section’s Suzanne Langer Award for the Best Student Paper, 2003.

Karen Danna-Lynch:  Honorable Mention for the ASA Theory Section’s Shils-Coleman Memorial Award for the Best Student Paper, 2002.

Jamie Mullaney:  Co-Winner of the ASA Culture Section’s Suzanne Langer Award for the Best Student Paper, 2001.

C. Lynn Carr:  Winner of the ASA Social Psychology Section’s Best Student Paper Award, 1999.

Wayne Brekhus – Winner of the ASA Theory Section’s Shils-Coleman Memorial Award for the Best Student Paper, 1998.

Kristen Purcell - Winner of the ASA Culture Section’s Suzanne Langer Award for the Best Student Paper, 1998.

Wayne Brekhus - Winner of the ASA Culture Section’s Suzanne Langer Award for the Best Student Paper, 1997.

Geoffrey Curran - Honorable Mention for the ASA Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section’s Thompson Prize for the Best Student Paper, 1995.

Culture and Cognition Links
Culture and Cognition Network
Culture Section of the ASA
Rutgers information and communication school (SCILS)
Rutgers Center for the Critical Analysis (CCA)
Visual Sociology