Culture, cognition, events, and infrastructures

A pervasive dichotomy structures our perception of social reality: a small number of highlighted and remarkable phenomena (what we heed, the socio-cognitive spotlight) stand out against an unarticulated background (what we disregard, the socio-cognitive default). This attentional asymmetry is further consolidated by both common sense and academic thinking, since the culturally salient elements typically get more attention, while unnoticed “negative spaces” get even less. This chapter extends the scope of cultural-cognitive sociology to analyze the conceptual couple “event/infrastructure”, central in the subfield of critical event studies (CES). The seemingly inconspicuous character of infrastructures makes them what they are, in opposition to the notable perception of events - the very same dialectic central to the distinction between what is socio-culturally marked and what is socio-culturally unmarked. Moving from this theoretical stance, the chapter elaborates a typology that accounts for the intersections between events, infrastructures, and their level of markedness and semiotic weight; furthermore, it discusses empirical case studies showing how the social phenomenology of events and infrastructure, here presented, can be implemented as an analytical instrument in the toolkit of CES.