Binding Significance to Form: Cultural Objects, Cognition, and Cultural Change

• In Event: 4376 - Meaning-Making through the Lens of Cultural Cognition

Abstract

In sociology, a cultural object is the “binding” of significance to a material form. But, how is it possible for otherwise discrete elements to be “bound” as a single element? Outside of sociology, this question forms a class of perennial concerns in cognitive neuroscience and the philosophy of mind known as the “binding problem.” Drawing on this research, we take seriously the binding process as a subject of sociological analysis. We argue that binding, as it relates to the study of cultural objects, is the process by which a material “token” is assimilated into (or expands the boundaries of) a cognitive “type,” or resists such typification thereby leading to the formation of a new cognitive “type.” Cultural objects may refer to both types and tokens, and it is the constant interplay between these two poles which results in a fundamental cultural instability. We demonstrate that “binding” is an attempt to stabilize meaning in two ways: the first, innovating, is implicated in the emergence of a cultural object, and the second, indexicalizing, in its maintenance and extension. However, even the process of indexicalizing a well-established type—i.e., the proliferation of tokens—provides the material fodder from which to innovate new types.

Authors

• Marshall Allen Taylor, University of Notre Dame

• Dustin S. Stoltz, University of Notre Dame

• Terence Emmett McDonnell, University of Notre Dame