Against the Background of Social Reality. Defaults, Commonplaces, and the Sociology of the Unmarked

The strong assumption underlying this volume is that the empty moments and irrelevant categories of social life are not so empty and irrelevant as they first appear, representing instead a privileged research site for social scientists. Accordingly, the goal here is to show the empirical strength of the sociology of the unmarked, its broadly applicable potential, as well as the numerous theoreti- cal hypotheses it allows to put forward. Before presenting the structure of the volume and outlining the content of each chapter, it may be useful to synthesize five interrelated dimensions of the unmarked, unsystematically sketched so far: frequency (i.e., ontological prevalence), practical value (i.e., instrumental util- ity), eticness (i.e., analytical genesis), critical potential (i.e., inherent deconstruc- tiveness), and cultural-cognitive underpinnings (i.e., default modes of collective perception).