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Qual Sociol (2015) 38:3338
DOI 10.1007/s11133-014-9296-6
Karen A. Cerulo
Published online: 24 January 2015# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015
Abstract This essay responds to Wacquants call for a Carnal Sociologyan approach best realized through a method Wacquant calls enactive ethnography. In this essay, I explore the ways in which certain aspects of Wacquants carnal sociologyspecifically the sentient, the sedimented and the situatedcan enhance our understanding of cognition and meaning-making. I reference an ongoing research project on the deciphering of olfactory messages to make my case.
Keywords Cognition . Culture . Mind and brain . The senses . Embodiment . Action
Loic Wacquants For a Sociology of Flesh and Blood is a thoughtful contribution that forces us to rethink the ways in which we study social behavior. This piece, as well as many of Wacquants recent works, advocates a new method of inquirya carnal sociology best realized through a method Wacquant calls enactive ethnography. Using carnal sociology, sociologists would a) divorce themselves from dualistic approaches to agency and treat social action as both embodied and embedded; b) reconceive of structure, treating it as dynamic webs of forces inscribed upon and infolded deep within the body rather than an external web of possibilities and constraints; and c) prioritize practical knowledge acquired through action. This agenda, and the enactive ethnography Wacquant prescribes for capturing the social world involves deploying ones body as an intelligent instrument of practical knowledge production (Wacquant 2015).
There is much to like in Wacquants agendaparticularly for those who, like me, study culture and cognition. For far too long, cognitive sociologists have ignored the role of brain and body, choosing instead to focus solely on the study of mind. Like Wacquant, I believe our focus must change. In recent writings on cognitive processes such as attention and habituation, automatic versus deliberate cognition, serial position effects and sequencing, etc., I have urged sociologists to merge their attention to mind with cognitive scientists emphasis on the workings of the brain (see e.g. Cerulo 2010, 2014). But Wacquants work, as well as work by other sociologists (see e.g. Ignatow 2007, 2009, 2014; Lizardo 2012, 2014) has convinced me that mind-brain mergers may not represent a sufficiently dramatic change in our approach. To fully understand the sociocultural basis...