Culture, Cognition, and the Normativity of Meaning

This article develops an approach to theorizing culture that uses epistemic normativity to bridge culture and cognition, thereby connecting the micro and macro levels of social life and intervening in current debates pitting cognitive and macro-cultural approaches in cultural sociology. Epistemic normativity is the foundational role in social life of the belief in meaning. I argue that belief in meaning and particular meaning-beliefs mediate the relationships between culture and action. Applying insights from epistemic normativity to the conception of public and personal culture in the dual-process framework advances sociological theories of culture in two key ways. First, epistemic normativity posits a normativity of meaning consisting of collective and practical normative considerations that make personal culture possible. Second, epistemic normativity advances theorizing on public culture by linking cognitive concepts of declarative and nondeclarative culture to systems notions of culture as the commitment to the idea of shared meaning and associated collective expectations.