A Cognitive Ethnography of Meaning-Making and Social Interaction

In this dissertation, I integrate microsociology, cultural cognition, and material culture to theorize and analyze meaning-making and social interaction. Empirically, I draw on in-depth ethnographic research collected with activists and primarily focus on explaining the processes and mechanisms generating unintended and surprising interpretive and interactional outcomes.

This dissertation is a collection of three essays. In chapter one, I introduce the field of cognitive social science to sociologists interested in collective behavior, and I argue that a cognitive framework enables sociologists to reclaim classical collective behavior theories, bolster contemporary frameworks, and provide new directions for analyses. In chapter two, I integrate the dual process framework and microsociological theories of interaction to develop a heuristic of signal transmission in interaction. In chapter three, I draw on material culture and the dual process framework to explain the microsociological foundations of shock.