Revelation as Revolution: Cognitive Accessibility and the Stability (and Instability) of Social Orders

• In Event: 392 - Section on Sociology of Culture Paper Session. Normalcy

Abstract

This paper defines a connection between the cognitive mechanisms which govern the transition between unconscious and conscious processing in individuals and the stability and instability of social orders. By building on prior modeling work that systematically demonstrated how shared social realities can emerge from individual mental representation processes, this present work is able to identify the key role of representational confirmation/disconfirmation in the establishment and disruption of the taken-for-grantedness of social life. Having identified this critical mechanism, it is then used to specify scenarios which are likely to engender an enhanced capacity for dramatic social change. It concludes by exploring the concept of “revelatory practices” as collective endeavors which intentionally pursue the disconfirmation of prevailing social representations, and as such, instigate destabilizations of established taken-for-granteds.

Author

• Lynette Shaw, University of Washington