Peeking in the Black Box: Studying, Theorizing, and Representing the Micro-Foundations of Day-to-Day Interactions

The discovery of mirror neurons opens new doors for ethnography. By attending to these advancements in cognitive science, ethnographers are provided firmer ground for investigating perceptual and emotional dynamics that are outside the realm of conscious deliberative processes. In this article, we explore these extra-deliberative processes in order to posit a new way to collect, analyze, and present findings. By examining how extra-deliberative dynamics shape action in systematic ways, we endeavor to bring together two aspects of sociological practice that have been assumed to be incompatible: (1) analytic efforts to build general theory and (2) a focus on emotions and other extra-deliberative dynamics. We conclude by suggesting that insights garnered through the analysis of extra-deliberative processes are optimally communicated using emotionally evocative writing.