Graduation Date
1997
Document Type
Thesis
Program
Master of Arts degree with a major in Sociology
Committee Chair Name
Dr. Timothy McMillan
Committee Chair Affiliation
Cal Poly Humboldt Faculty or Staff
Second Committee Member Name
Dr. Elizabeth Watson
Third Committee Member Name
Dr. John P. Turner
Keywords
Sociology
Subject Categories
Sociology
Abstract
Complexity theories provide us with insight into the relationship between social "things". Things can be understood as concatenations of differences in the products of relative processes. As sociologists, we can use complexity theories to animate biocultural concepts to better understand how individual humans doing what they do gives rise to order at higher social levels- culture and structure. Meaning is the most human of human activities, and through an understanding of Meaning we can understand social structure. Meaning, in this discussion, is primarily emotion, for it is through emotion that we understand. Emotion arises in the brain, expresses itself in all that humans do including the instant to instant recreation of culture, society, the world system, and ourselves as social beings. Unfortunately, when we regard how humans make Meaning and realize that we are humans making Meaning about humans making Meaning we realize we create a self portrait. The first process of the things we study is the process of our study. So it is that all humans, in making Meaning about things, make Meaning about themselves first of all. We briefly consider this new "post modernist dilemma" through a discussion of a child blowing a soap bubble, and note some of the epistemological problems with making Meaning.
Recommended Citation
DeVita, Laurenc L., "The Bubble's Skin: A Complex Biocultural Sociological Perspective of Meaning; A Perspective of Sociological Meaning" (1997). Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects. 2380.
https://digitalcommons.humboldt.edu/etd/2380