CULTURE AS INHABITABLE BUBBLES: INSIDE THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE MACRO-IMAGINARY

CULTURE AS INHABITABLE BUBBLES: INSIDE THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE MACRO-IMAGINARY
written for a seminar on the sociology of culture led by Hernan Vera

This paper outlines an approach to macro-imagery and macro-consciousness as embodied in the visceral experiences of individuals at the micro-level. The construction of the macro is viewed in terms of practices of consumption in intellectual life and the resulting implications for empowerment and addiction are considered.


INTRODUCTION
In the popular Dutch comedy movie, Flodder, a lower-class (white) family is transplanted into an upper-class (white) neighborhood as part of a social program. The comedy of the film is the result of the various transgressions and juxtapositions that take place as members of the family come in contact with other residents of their new neighborhood. In one of the various sexual transgressions portrayed in the narrative, Sjonnie Flodder has sex with one of the neighborhood wives in her husband's hobby-room where he, a high-ranking military officer, models military battles using toy soldiers. When Sjonnie asks her if they should move to another room, the woman expresses that rebellion against this aspect of her husband's personality is an important part of her sexual pleasure and the scene continues by showing the vigor of the ensuing sex act in terms of the shaking table as the man's toy soldiers and models are disheveled and thrown in all directions.

This scene can be read as an assault on macro-consciousness. While macro-consciousness is often
depicted in films in terms of military strategists poised pensively around a large table-model, it is usually as a necessary and legitimate part of a war effort or similar collective endeavor. In this scene, macro-theorizing is presented as modeling in its childish sense; as something that men do for their own selfish pleasure. Macrostructural reality is not presumed to exist outside of its material embodiment within microsocial interactions. Instead it is literally reduced to a set of painstakingly arranged toys no more representative of a macro-reality out there than the sexual exchange taking place on the table is representative of a deeper relationship. In this scene macro reality is relativized as just another social activity accomplished in the realm of everyday life.

SOCIAL SCIENCE AND THE CONSUMPTION OF MACRO-IMAGES

The notion that macro-historical, macro-structural, and other macro- realities are not realities at all, but
instead are products of human imagination, is not palatable to many sociologists. Many of us have a sense that there are things happening in social life that go beyond the context in which they are happening. At the same time we rarely consider how our theorizing of the macro we imagine is radically situated within the materiality of our bodies and the environments directly accessible to them. Instead we appropriate the label 'imaginary' to describe some representations as false in order to allow other 'true' representations to pass as real. In this way, 'good' sociological accounts of society are rarely seen as products of sociological imaginations but rather as simply accounts of what is going on in the [macro] world out there, which is assumed to exist prior to its re-presentation/re-construction by scientists.

Although various critics have pushed us to conceptualize the radical situatedness of social activities, the
position afforded to the macro is contested by at least two different perspectives. The first, which I will term group-positioning, conceives of micro-social life occurring as a result of or vis-a-vis historically determined group-relations rooted in histories and structures of domination such as racism, nationalism, classism, sexism, and so forth. The second, which I will term ethnomethodological, conceives of all reality and social structure as accomplishments of social interaction within the [micro] sphere(s) of everyday life. Although both perspectives posit a radical situatedness of social activities and meaning-making, the group-positioning view imagines situatedness in reference to historical (and structural) conditions outside of the immediacy of micro-social realities. The ethnmethodological view, other the other hand, imagines the situatedness of social action in direct relation to the material context of its achievement. Thus, while group-positioning allows us to make reference to a macro-reality out there, ethnomethodology pushes us to locate the source of everything influencing micro-interactions,
including any macro-phenomenon, in interaction-events.

In this paper I am taking the ethnomethodological perspective in order to privilege the situatedness of the macro within the micro. By doing so, I am not making any claims about the inefficacy of the macro-realities of group-positioning approaches or otherwise, except to maintain the critical stance that reifying the macro too easily impedes the project of conceptualizing the situatedness of its production and consumption. However, it is important to highlight my use of 'situatedness' to refer to processes in which macro-reality is produced, exchanged/negotiated, consumed, imagined, and ultimately experienced; not to refer to an organized set of social positions that influence actions and experiences through and during their construction processes. Only by situating the macro as a certain type of image, i.e. a product of (and for) imagination, can we move from theorizing the macro as reality at a certain scale or level toward theorizing it as a way of seeing and orienting toward others within everyday social life, and as various images and imaginary forms of a realm inaccessible by means of direct empirical observation.

Although it is worth mentioning that macro-thinkers often move between the macro-level images they
cultivate and empirical observations as well as the accounts of others, it is also important to recognize that macro-images are rarely produced in isolation from macro-dialogue with others and/or access to the language of macro-representation. As such, macro-images and their narration are, at least in part, produced and consumed within an economy of the macro for the macro; much in the same way currency markets develop, negotiate, and exchange currencies without reference to goods and services. It is not enough to consider a particular macro-image or (narrative) set of images either in relation to the empirical realities it claims to represent, or to the discourses of macro-images among macro-thinkers. Instead I propose we should consider both aspects in terms of a situated micro-economy of the exchange and negotiation of knowledge. In other words, how do thinkers of the macro interact with other such thinkers (and their texts) as well as with other people and aspects of their social environments in the negotiation, production, consumption, application, etc. of the macro?

In this paper I am specifically oriented toward the economic issues of production and consumption, with special attention for consumption, in order to engage Ritzer's (2005) ideas about revolutionizing the means of consumption and the enchantment of a disenchanted world. I propose that like any other commodified good or service, the practices and images of macro-thinking can and should be studied in terms of their consumption and re-production. Additionally macro-images also serve as lenses through which all sorts of people, things, and events are viewed and appropriated; and as such we may also speak of them as means of consumption for these other things to which they are applied. Although academic sociology is hardly the only field in which the macro is re-produced and consumed, it is a useful field to examine for its proximity.