Public Ideas and their Thumbprints: Applicative Flexibility and the Materiality of Cultural Objects

• In Event: 20420 - Section on Sociology of Culture Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 4: Investigating Cultural Ideas

Abstract

How are social science ideas actually, empirically, put to use in the public, and what does this process tell us about public ideas as cultural objects? What does the examination of public ideas as cultural objects tell us about how they are engaged in use, and the “materiality” (or substance) of cultural objects in a relational context? To answer these questions, this article builds from previous work by Hallett, Stapleton, and Sauder (2019) to take a deeper dive into how seven prominent social science ideas are used by mediators (journalists) in twelve high circulation, regionally diverse newspapers (each idea over a 10-year period). Specifically, we examine how, when used as interpretants (used to make sense of the news), these ideas exhibit “applicative flexibility:” although their meaning does not change, they are stretched to make sense of a variety of different objects, events, and phenomena. We find that, although all the ideas exhibit applicative flexibility in use, their usage in the news articles indicates the ridges of distinct idea “thumbprints.” It is in the interaction between mediators (journalists) and the ideas that we can empirically see the idea thumbprints, and we argue that these thumbprints reveal the materiality (or substance) of the different ideas. As with human thumbprints, when pressed into use, each idea has an applicative flexibility thumbprint, yet each one is unique. Identifying and examining these idea thumbprints contributes to research on cultural objects, materiality, and the sociology of ideas. It also builds a cultural sociology of public social science, one that can bridge the gap between the academy and the public.

Authors

• Orla Stapleton, University of Notre Dame

• Jennifer Jiwon Lee, Indiana University - Bloomington

• Emily Meanwell, Indiana University-Bloomington

• Timothy Hallett, Indiana University-Bloomington