The Episodic and the Semantic: Future Scenario Building in a Migratory Context

• In Event: 545 - Section on Sociology of Culture Roundtable Session.
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 16. Migration and Identity

Abstract

In the past two decades the neurosciences have abandoned a strong reliance on the disembodied, atemporal intellectualist vision of the mind in favor of a notion of cognition as situated, embodied, and possessed of temporal and spatial specificity. In turn, sociologists are beginning to point out the need to address the constant reciprocal flow between the brain and the surrounding world in explanations of social experiences, practices and processes. Elaborating on these developments, this article addresses people’s consideration of the future. Drawing on ethnographic data from a study on future-oriented cognition among Mexican migrant families, I examine the processes through which people’s future scenarios are articulated, the ways in which people make use of resources—both material and cultural—for thinking about the future.

Drawing from the cognitive neurosciences, I build on the distinction between episodic and semantic future thinking, two ways the extant neuroscientific literature assumes that people articulate mental representations of the future. I treat this distinction as a heuristic tool to represent distinct mechanisms for future-scenario building that have distinct implications for action and for how people relate to, adjust to, or transform existing structures. My broader argument here is that distinct forms of reflexivity, as related to the distinction between semantic-like and episodic-like future thinking, lead to different forms of social experience and contextual intervention. I seek to demonstrate how future oriented thoughts are enabled by particular forms of reflexivity and, in turn, how this future scenario building connects to people’s situational and relational context.

Author

• Maria Islas Lopez, University of Denver