Peeking in the Black Box

Mirror Neurons

Cognitive science research on mirror neurons reveals our fundamentally social nature. These neurons fire whether we perform an act ourselves or see the same act done by someone else—hence the “mirror” in mirror neuron (Gallese and Sinigaglia 2011). Mirror neuron research suggests that we are designed to perceive social information directly, much like we respond to heat by removing our hand without the guidance of conscious thought. Rizzolatti Sinigaglia explain, “At a neural level the mirror neuron mechanism embodies that modality of understanding which, prior to any form of conceptual and linguistic mediation, give substance to our experience of others” (2007, 192). Because these parts of our brains do not completely distinguish between what we observe and what we do ourselves (Christakis and Fowler 2009, 39; Cozolino 2006, 59; Hatfield, Rapson, and Le 2009, 24–25), each act is immediately understood without the need of any deliberate discursive processing (Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia 2007, 131, 189). ⁵ Iacoboni explains, “Without resorting to any magic trick, our brains are capable of accessing other minds using neural mechanisms of mirroring and simulation” (2008, 264).

In particular, the neurons that perform emotional appraisals of others connect directly with the neurons involved in emotional responses, making us particularly susceptible to emotional contagion independent of deliberative awareness. Facial expressions play a central role in emotional contagion that takes place below the level of conscious awareness. ⁶ Iacoboni explains,

By firing as if we are actually making those facial expressions we are simply observing, these neurons provide the mechanism for simulated facial feedback. This simulation process is not an effortful, deliberate pretense of being in somebody else’s shoes. It is an effortless, automatic, and unconscious inner mirroring. (2008, 120)

Iacoboni goes on to say that “we mirror the emotions of other people by activating first mirror neurons for facial expressions (thus, motor neurons), which in turn activate our emotional brain centers” (Iacoboni 2008, 122). Once these systems make an appraisal, the response is automatic (Ledoux 1998, 69). Thus, mirror neurons provide the mechanism that makes navigation of social interactions possible because of real-time reactions to facial expressions and emotional connections between actors (Christakis and Fowler 2009, 39; Hatfield, Rapson, and Le 2009, 24–25).

Earlier theories of emotional perception and contagion anticipated the mirror neuron system. For example, Gibson explains,

Senses can obtain information about the objects in the world without the intervention of intellectual processes . . . this does not mean that perception can occur without stimulation of receptors; it only means that organs of perception are sometimes stimulated in such a ways that they are not specified in consciousness. (1966, 2)

Similarly, Merleau-Ponty states,

The communication or comprehension of gestures comes about through the reciprocity of my intentions and the gestures of others, of my gestures and the intentions discernible in the conduct of other people. It is as if the other person’s intentions inhabited my body and mine his. The gestures which I witness outlines an intentional object. This object is genuinely present and fully comprehended when the powers of my body adjust themselves to it and overlap it. (1945, 215)

Finally, Wittgenstein highlighted that in day-to-day life we all continually rely on a capacity to communicate emotions and other visceral emotions nonverbally. As Wittgenstein says, “We see emotion . . . we describe a face immediately as sad, radiant, bored, even when we are unable to give any other description of the features” ([1967] 1981, 225, emphasis added).

The roots of micro-sociology, both pragmatism and those following from the Durkheimian branches, also anticipated mirror neurons. ⁷ Pragmatism pointed toward the importance of taking the role of the other, something that mirror neurons enable us to do without conscious effort. Durkheim focused on solidarity, collective effervescence, the categories of meanings, and the meanings of symbols as emergent products of collective experiences. Goffman further specified how sacred symbols emerge from and are supported by face-to-face interactions (Goffman 1981, 28); developments in mirror neuron research affirm the key role of face-to-face interaction. They argue that face-to-face interaction is “the sort of context in which mirror neurons can work their magic to a maximum effect” (Iacoboni 2008, 100). Similarly, Garfinkel illustrated how meanings are emergent processes that grow directly out of interaction itself—arguing that they cannot be reduced to individual level dynamics (Garfinkel 1991, 58, 65). All of these insights anticipated the discovery of mirror neurological processes which are situated between, rather than solely within, actors.

Recent research has added an additional and important insight to our understanding of mirror neuron–based processes: imagining interaction can have the same effect on mirror neurons as actually engaging in face-to-face interaction (Iacoboni 2008, 198). Later in this article, we will demonstarte how this finding about imagination is crucial for understanding the potential to activate mirror neruons through evocative writing.

The Implications for Ethnography

Both the pragmatist and hermeneutic interpretive traditions divide experiences into two types: (1) primary (Dewey 1929; Mead 1932) / essentially actual (Schutz 1967) experiences and (2) secondary (Dewey 1929) / reflexive (Schutz 1967). Primary / essentially actual experiences require minimal reflexivity and allow actors to tacitly negotiate social environments outside of deliberative reflexivity. ⁸ Secondary/reflexive experiences require deliberate reflexivity and allow actors to move from tacit negotiation to conscious problem solving (Dewey 1929, 4), which takes the form of internal dialogue (Mead 1934). We refer to primary / essentially actual experiences as “extra-deliberative,” and secondary/reflexive experiences as “deliberative.” ⁹ The goal of distinguishing between the deliberative and extra-deliberative is to call attention to, and provide techniques for, ethnographers to move beyond focusing on deliberative dynamics to pursue recording, analyzing, and representing extra-deliberative dynamics.

Ethnography has often based analysis and writing on quotes from the field. This means the focus can be heavily discursive and more likely to emphasize deliberative rather than extra-deliberative aspects of social organization. Leaving extra-deliberative dynamics implicit, or ignoring them altogether, is problematic. People’s verbal accounts of actions, beliefs, values, and emotions only skim the surface of the social dynamics shaping people’s experiences and actions (Jerolmack and Khan 2014). Indeed, in spite of Mead’s prominent metaphor of thinking as internal conversation, deliberative internal dialogue encompasses only a fraction of the processing that supports social action and organization (Cozolino 2006, 3, 5, 128; Dewey 1922; Haidt 2012; Hatfield, Cacioppo, and Rapson 1994, 12; Turner 2000). As verbal accounts rely on similarly reflexive and deliberative dynamics, they too only represent a portion of our experiences. The discovery of mirror neurons gives us opportunity to provide a fuller picture of human experience through the analysis of extra-deliberative perception, emotion, and action.

Opening the Realm of the Extra-deliberative

We argue that although language offers undeniable access to important aspects of human experience, emerging cognitive brain science demonstrates the importance of extra-deliberative processes. Historically, social scientists have assumed that extra-deliberative experiences are essentially private and inaccessible, and thus unavailable for sociological analysis. For example, Schutz suggests that neither researchers, nor everyday actors, have access to other people’s extra-deliberative, physically based, “essentially actual” experiences, which “[e]xist merely in the actuality of being experienced and cannot be grasped by a reflective attitude” (Schutz 1945, 536–37, cf. Schutz 1967, 52). Social scientists have also assumed that extra-deliberative experiences are at least somewhat resistant to socialization; ¹⁰ an assumption that obscures how social dynamics shape the extra-deliberative processes and vice versa. Thus, assumptions about inaccessibility and lack of socialization obscure the role of the extra-deliberative in shaping patterns of perception, action, and social structure.

If we want to understand extra-deliberative processes, we must attend to emotions. Although popular culture depicts emotions as episodic and subjective, emerging research suggests that emotions are far from idiosyncratic (Brothers 1997; Collins 2004; Damasio 1994, 2003; Ledoux 1998; Turner and Maryanski 2013; Turner 2007). As Durkheim (1915) and the pragmatists (Dewey [1922] 1988), as well as recent work in the sociology of emotions (Collins 2004; Turner and Stets 2005) and neuroscience (Christakis and Fowler 2009; Cozolino 2006; Damasio 1994; Hatfield, Rapson, and Le 2009; Siegel 2007; Thompson 2007) all suggest, emotional experiences, rather than solely reflecting personal events in the hearts and minds of actors, precipitate out of social involvement that activates mirror neurons.

In line with structural approaches to emotions, ¹¹ we define emotions as patterned responses to specific positions within social conditions (Kemper and Collins 1990, 55; Turner and Stets 2005); that is to say that emotions reflect the structure of interaction circumstances (Collins 2004; Damasio 2003, 54; Kemper and Collins 1990; Kemper 1981; Scheve and von Luede 2005; Turner 2010). Indeed, we argue that emotions constitute a form of social proprioception (Summers-Effler 2010, 60), enabling actors to focus their attention and orient themselves in relation to other actors.

In short, emotional information enables actors to assess variations in their surroundings and to orient themselves within a changing social landscape (Brothers 1997, 123; Cooley 1902; Goffman 1967, 44–45; Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia 2007, 175); thus, emotional information serves as a relational map of our environment (Christakis and Fowler 2009, 35; Cozolino 2006, 153–68; Ekman 2009, 136–37). Although we can develop heightened awareness of our emotional state through conscious reflection, just like our other senses, emotions are based in nonconscious processes that rely on environmental information to ready us for action (Ledoux 1998, 125). Touch requires physical stimulus. Hearing requires auditory stimulus. We argue that emotion requires social stimulus. As noted above, this social information is conveyed through the capacity to read emotions from bodies, gestures, and faces in interaction (Christakis and Fowler 2009, 35; Cozolino 2006, 153–68; Ekman 2009, 136–37).

Theories of our motivations for action point to the central importance of actual or imagined interaction. For example, according to Collins (2004), we are motivated to gain emotional energy, which feels like enthusiasm and confidence, and to avoid the loss of emotional energy, which feels like depression and shame (cf. Cozolino 2006, 75; cf. Scheff 1990). Similarly, Siegel argues that emotional connections create a sense of belonging, resonance, and growth, which may be built into our brains as part of our genetic history (1999, 149; cf. Iacoboni 2008, 265). ¹² This is to say that the motivation organizing emergent emotions is not located in private minds; it is played out in the space between actors—in the interactions themselves (Rawls 1987).

Interactions leave emotional residue in the form of meaningful shared symbols generated in those interactions. These symbols become shortcuts that trigger mirror neurons directly (cf. Damasio 1994 on “as if” loops). Established discourse can trigger extra-deliberative experiences, just as the meaning of visual, olfactory, or tactile experiences can trigger pre-established meanings without deliberative mediation. This extra-deliberatively processed discourse is substantially different from experiences of deliberative awareness that rely on thinking in the form of discourse to process problematic situations (cf. Mead 1934). Ethnographers interested in extra-deliberative dynamics should pay attention not only to what people say, but how what people say is meaningful in relation to the evolution of emotional conditions.

Mirror neurons not only convey social information directly, they are also socially influenced. In order for mirror neurons to be activated, an actor must attend to some information rather than other information. Aside from reflexive responses, like turning toward a sudden loud noise, how one focuses one’s attention is primarily a product of socialization. This is to say that mirror neurons become activated upon receiving social information, and what information we attend to is socially informed.

This argument is in line with pragmatists and other micro theorists who suggest that our capacity for focusing our attention, which is a product of prior experience, is our foundation for perception and action (Collins 2004, 34, 79; Gibson 1966; Mead 1934, 25, 94). William James explains,

Millions of items of the outward order are present to my senses which never properly enter into my experience. Why? Because they have no interest for me. My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind—without selective interest, experience is an utter chaos. (James [1890] 2007, 402, emphasis in original)

Thus, every environment requires actors to selectively focus their attention in order to glean relevant information. ¹³ Extra-deliberative experiences that remains extra-deliberative affect future perceptions by creating what Gibson calls “affordances”—predispositions to certain perceptions and styles of perceptions (1966). For example, J. J. Gibson (1966) describes perception as actors sending out sensory tentacles to assess and manage the world. Awareness is what happens when the environment has been filtered enough by the act of attention to create meaningful information (cf. MacKay 1969). Over time ethnographers can observe how patterns of attention shape the emotional dynamics. They can see such dynamics emotionally charging up symbolic triggers, cooling them off, or rupturing emotional resonance associated with a symbol.

Extra-deliberative dynamics can undoubtedly be found in most ethnographers’ field notes, and good ethnographers have been communicating extra-deliberative dynamics since the inception of the method. Although there are many examples of such ethnographies, Ain’t No Makin’ It by MacLeod (1987) illustrates how extra-deliberative threads can run implicitly throughout an ethnography. The appendix for Ain’t No Makin’ It is particularly emotionally compelling; later in this article we use this appendix to illustrate how to capture extra-deliberative dynamics in writing.

We are arguing for the merit of focusing explicitly on extra-deliberative social dynamics. To analyze the extra-deliberative in this way does not require a radical break in ethnographic practice or analysis, but rather a shift in an ethnographer’s attention. Thus, we are not so much advocating a rejection of past work that focuses on discourse and deliberative processes, as much as we are advocating for a new way of looking (Zerubavel 1980). Indeed, what we describe could potentially illuminate existing field notes by giving researchers a fresh eye for understanding emotional dynamics and interaction.

How to Collect and Analyze Data

Goffman explains that the purpose of “serious ethnography” is to “identify the countless patterns and natural sequences of behavior occurring whenever persons come into one another’s immediate presence” (1967, 2). Understanding how mirror neurons work supports us in doing this type of “serious ethnography.”

As Goffman points out, when researchers are deeply engaged, they rely on the same skills they use to negotiate the social world in day-to-day life (1983; cf. Rawls 1987). Cultivating insights by letting the social organization of a setting work on one is hardly a new approach to ethnography. Kleinman and Copp (1993) build on the symbolic interaction tradition to outline the importance of emotions for conducting fieldwork. Eliasoph advocates a multi-sensory approach to ethnography (2005).

In a number of cases, efforts to deeply engage have developed into a distinctive style of exploring the formation of bodily dispositions, habits, emotions, and aesthetic sensibility (Bourdieu 1990, 1998, 2000; Desmond 2007; Lande 2007; McRoberts 2004; Wacquant 2004). Among these contemporary works, Loic Wacquant’s “observant participation” as an apprentice boxer is perhaps the best known (2004). Following Bourdieu’s (2003) groundwork and Wacquant’s approach, subsequent ethnographies have also emphasized how actors come to adopt and negotiate the embodied and dispositional requirements of specific careers (cf. Desmond 2007; Lande 2007).

Researchers can gain insight into extra-deliberative processes by purposefully positioning themselves in relational fields so that their awareness is aligned closely with subjects’ awareness. We argue that if researchers cannot directly align their position with the observed, they can still attend to the importance of positions and the sequence of shifting positions. We can increase our confidence that the patterns of perception and action we observe reflect particular social positions by watching more than one actor adopt any particular relational position. For example, over time, we learn to anticipate when people might feel “backed into a corner” not only because we see their gestures and hear their words, but because we have seen others in the same situation or have even had our own backs against the same wall. Acknowledging one’s ever-changing position within the field of action is thus a resource for analysis—it enables the researcher to trace their own emotions across sequences of interactions in which they have taken up different positions.

To be clear, we do not suggest that ethnographers simply focus on emotion because they are enmeshed with a scene. Rather, ethnographers should enmesh themselves and focus on emotional dynamics in order to glean information about extra-deliberative dynamics in a systematic way. Going deeply into a scene allows ethnographers to draw on their own mirror neuron–based reactions. As Adler and Adler point out,

Active membership brings researchers, even if only temporarily, into the members’ first-order perspective. This leads them to penetrate beyond a rational to an irrational, emotional, and deep understanding of the people and setting they are studying. (1987, 60)

One can collect data about extra-deliberative processes through becoming enmeshed and resonating directly with subjects.

Resonance behaviors triggered by mirror systems are automatic responses that are reflexive, implicit, and obligatory. They communicate potentially important information, advance social cohesion, and enhance group identification and safety. Resonance behaviors also serve learning by providing an automatic core for imitative learning. (Cozolino 2006, 200)

It is important to note that data collection through emotional resonance is far more exacting than asking people about extra-deliberative processes. This is not to suggest that researchers should not use all channels available to them, including direct questioning, but rather that resonance approaches should be used when extra-deliberative dynamics are the focus of investigation.

However, even as we get close to the embodied action, we can only occupy some of the multiple positions within an ever-changing field (White [1992] 2008). Evolving sequences of activity tend to shut down access to information from other paths (cf. Summers-Effler 2010, 69–126). For example, in many settings, a researcher can ask naïve questions and make mistakes as they begin their fieldwork, but repeating the same actions later might seem obtuse (cf. Harrington 2003, 616). Likewise, within some scenes, it may be impossible to take multiple positions. In others, taking up multiple positions may become extremely difficult and taxing. Some positions preclude others; as a result, researchers must sacrifice direct knowledge of some positions in order to investigate others.

Acknowledging these constraints on ethnographers’ experiences does not undermine our argument that ethnographers should attend to how their sensory processes align with those they are studying. Rather, the crucial point is that researchers recognize the difference between times when intersubjectivity with particular positions has been achieved and when it has not. As we said, we take to heart the point that there is no objective position from which to communicate findings and analysis. However, unlike postmodern interpretations of this fact that emphasize the endlessly subjective nature of all knowledge, including emotion, we advocate using the knowledge that social position influences emotion and perception to make more accurate realist claims.

Historically, those who have advocated realist approaches to ethnography have advocated staying at the margins of a social scene to collect data (Lofland 1995). For example, Fine describes his “peopled ethnography” approach: “A peopled ethnography distances researcher from researched . . . I strive to maintain an analytic distance from those whose actions I recount. . . . As I compose, I strive to be marginal, to maintain an ironic detachment from informants” (2003, 54). Alternately, we suggest that one can only study extra-deliberative data in a realist fashion if one is deeply involved in a scene. Only close participation reveals the “underlying procedures and concepts [used] tacitly, automatically” (Brothers 1997, 107; cf. Garfinkel 2002, 40–43). Thus, ethnographic researchers looking to investigate extra-deliberative processes must cultivate relationships that are close enough to be truly interactive.

Strategies for Aligning Awareness

We suggest four strategies for researchers working to gain shared awareness with subjects:

Strategies for Testing Working Hypotheses about Extra-deliberative Dynamics

We suggest four ways researchers can actively investigate whether or not they have experienced successful alignment.

Capturing Extra-deliberative Dynamics

Writing field notes targeting extra-deliberative dynamics requires attempting to work up and express emotional tones and states associated with interactions. Even if we are successful in recalling the tone and emotions associated with a scene, translating direct embodied experience into field notes necessarily moves the researcher from an extra-deliberative state toward the realm of deliberative processes. As recording what we experience requires reflexive awareness, without conscious effort to capture the extra-deliberative processes, extra-deliberative dynamics are rarely the main features of our field notes. Thus, if relying on standard deliberatively focused field notes, we must analyze data by looking for the trail of emotional breadcrumbs we leave in our notes over time. The data are likely there if we look: our perspective shifts with the social context, so our field notes can be read for markers to identify the influence of mirror neuron–driven extra-deliberative influences on perception, emotion, and action.

While the deliberatively focused ethnography records the flow of discourse organizing a scene and accounts of such processes, the extra-deliberatively focused ethnography consciously follows flows of embodied communication and emotion that link one interaction to the next. Revisiting previous field notes is particularly useful for pulling a researcher back into the tone and emotional dynamics of a specific moment. Researchers can also use field notes to reach across interactions to make longer-term sense of variations in feelings, thoughts, and selves (cf. Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw 1995, 144). By focusing on time and space, as opposed to symbolic content, ethnographers can stay close to extra-deliberative processes. For example, comparing across varying lengths of involvement and proximities to the scene—socially as well as physically—researchers foster an extra-deliberative perspective on a scene (cf. McRoberts 2004, 202). We argue that when we look at extra-deliberative dynamics over time, as compared to what people have said, we see dynamics that are closer to the bedrock of social interaction and ultimately social structure.

An Extra-deliberative Approach to Building General Theory

Attention to mirror neuron dynamics and emotion makes a strong foundation for conducting what Lofland refers to as analytic ethnography:

Analytic Ethnography: (a) attempts to provide generic propositional answers to questions about social life and organization; (b) strives to pursue such an attempt in a spirit of unfettered or naturalistic inquiry; (c) utilizes data based on deep familiarity with a social setting or situation that is gained by personal participation or an approximation of it; (d) develops the generic propositional analysis over the course of doing the research; (e) strives to present data and analyses that are true; (f) seeks to provide data and or analyses that are new; (g) presents an analysis that is developed in the senses of being conceptually elaborated, descriptively detailed, and concept-data interpreted. (Lofland 1995, 30)

An analytic approach to ethnography supports building insights that are relevant for understanding scenes beyond those directly observed. We refer to this building of abstract knowledge as developing “general theory.”

General theory can be thought of as “generic social propositions” (Prus 1987, 251) that are “transcontextual” and “transhistorical” in nature (Prus 1996). We also draw from Snow, Morrill, and Anderson by suggesting that “theory provides a common language through which discourse across subfields, problems, and levels of abstraction can occur” (2003, 185). The approach we advocate engages this tradition of developing general theory from ethnographic practice (Recent examples include: Collins 2009; Eliasoph and Lichterman 2003; Hallett 2010; Stolte et al. 2001).

In spite of a substantial history of building theory from ethnographic practice, ¹⁵ some ethnographers focused primarily on subjective experience, including emotional reactions. Rather than concerning themselves with developing general theory, they focus on context-situated meanings and use their own situated experiences and emotions as the basis of sociological analysis (Behar 1996; Ellis 2003). Drawing upon insights from postmodernism, Ellis (1991) and Denzin (1984, 1992), among other ethnographers, have reflected on their own experiences as an alternative to a more traditional social scientific approach focused on building general theory. These authors have distanced their sociological work from traditional concerns regarding validity and reliability. They critique even moderate claims about other cultures, and even other positions within a familiar social scene. This work has inspired increasingly reflexive and subjective approaches to ethnographic inquiry (cf. Clifford and Marcus 1986).

To be clear, the introspective approach we outline, where one uses one’s emotions to gain insight into a scene, has specious similarities to these efforts by other ethnographers to communicate personal experiences through introspective practices. We argue that attending to personal extra-deliberative experiences provides an opportunity to systematically study the social processes that both stem from and generate broader patterns of social organization. We emphasize that general social theory can be informed by identifying the emotional implications of researchers’, and other actors’, shifting emotions in relation to shifting positions over time and across social fields. Emotion, which was once thought to be hopelessly subjective, is crucial for understanding the general microstructural dynamics that shape situations. This is to say, the approach we outline is not a rejection of the general goals of science; indeed, our goal is to glean general insights. A focus on emotions is central to developing more universal and generic claims. Emotions and perception implicate each other, and this relationship is ultimately the foundation for the patterns of action that comprise social structure.

By supporting the potential for building general theory from ethnographic investigation of extra-deliberative dynamics, we extend, revise, and challenge existing techniques and suggestions for building theory from ethnography. Particularly, we provide a method for getting past the “troublesome consequences” that stem from “the tendency to privilege voice and discourse over nonverbal and observation” (Snow 2002, 501). Drawing on mirror neuron research, we suggest that if one truly seeks to “respect the world of human lived experience” (Blumer 1969; Prus 1996, 1997, 1999), one must pay attention to personal extra-deliberative dynamics. As emotions provide social proprioception, understanding them sheds light on the extra-deliberative dynamics at work in a scene. By suggesting that extra-deliberative data support building general insight, we counter Prus’s claim that “emotional experiences are problematic, situational, and temporal in essence” (1996, 174). We argue that when researchers fail to treat emotions systematically, a great deal of valuable information is lost; thus, we seek to remedy this loss by articulating how to uncover, record, and present extra-deliberative data.

How to Communicate Findings

Even as we become increasingly confident in our ability to unearth extra-deliberative data, we are yet challenged to find effective ways to communicate empirical findings and theoretical propositions. The problem is, as Siegel points out, “complex neural/bodily aspects of emotional processes are not easily translated into words” (Siegel 1999, 150). How, then, can ethnographers communicate their experiences so as to best represent the extra-deliberative dynamics of a scene?

In this section, we argue that, rather than traditional abstract analytical writing, an emotionally evocative approach to representation actually provides firmer conceptual and methodological footing for conveying findings about extra-deliberative dynamics. In essence, we are problematizing the assumed neutral relationship between the presentation of findings and the findings themselves. We argue that the style of presentation is as important as the content of what is being presented. Some styles are better at communicating abstract meaning, and others are better at communicating experience.

Much information about emotional dynamics is lost in traditional analytical writing. Abstract explanations leave us with no sense of how it must have felt to have things unfold in such a way, or how actors experienced and thus contributed to “what happened.” As Eliasoph reminds us,

Any genre of speech or writing makes it hard to say some things, easy to say others, and impossible to say others (2005, 164). Abstract prose can tell us what happened and why, but it smoothes out the embodied texture of lived reality in ways that renders some theoretically crucial social dynamics hopelessly inert. (2005, 162)

We support Glaser and Strauss’s (1967) suggestion that our data and theory should be presented in a form “sufficiently caught up in the description so that [they] feel vicariously that [they were] also in the field” (230). We argue that when focused on capturing extra-deliberative experience, researchers can combine a creative non-fiction emotionally evocative writing style with the analytic approach used to develop general theory from ethnography. This combination conveys emotional dynamics without sacrificing the potential for crafting general theory.

As noted, although such literary approaches to sociological writing have been closely associated with reining back the conventional goals of science, we argue that emotionally evocative writing is well-suited to communicate theories of extra-deliberative processes that are both situated and realist (cf. Kleinman and Copp 1993). Communicating findings through evocative writing allows researchers to activate sensory processes in the readers in much the same way that the emotional processes are activated in the field (Summers-Effler 2010, 203–11). Indeed, cognitive science research suggests that evocative stories help readers mimic the basic sensory processes of the actors depicted in them (Berns et al. 2013; Iacoboni 2008). In addition, recent research suggests that being pulled into a gripping story can trigger measurable changes in the brain that linger for days after reading (Berns et al. 2013). A story may cause heightened connectivity in the brain and neurological changes that persist in a way that is similar to muscle memory. Berns explains, “We already knew that good stories can put you in someone else’s shoes in a figurative sense. Now we’re seeing that something may also be happening biologically” (2011). Thus, researchers should craft evocative stories in order to evoke pertinent emotions in readers; however, this work should be done with an eye toward maintaining the quality and generalizability of insights from field work.

In her discussion of embodied sociology, Eliasoph suggests the importance of a fuller understanding of social action than abstract discourse can provide, arguing “maybe we sociological ethnographers should get together and invent a writing genre that does not separate the smells, textures and aches from the kinds of writing that we name ‘theory’” (2005, 167). Similarly, Jonathan Turner writes, “there is . . . a major difference between emotions and spoken language: emotional displays represent more robust configurations and patterns of information than language production” (2000, 126). We suggest that creative writing tools provide insight and techniques for effectively representing and evoking the robust visceral dynamics that Eliasoph and Turner describe.

Emotionally evocative writing has this power because mirror neurons can be activated not only when observing an action, but also when hearing a sentence that depicts a concrete action (Tettamanti et al. 2005). Further, researchers have also been able to document how neurons that fire in response to certain types of visual stimuli—for example, to a face—also fire when a person simply imagines a face (Iacoboni 2008, 198). This ability to viscerally react from only imagining means that one does not have to see another in order to evoke an emotion; for instance, mere knowledge that one is in pain is enough to activate affective mirror neurons (Iacoboni 2008, 124–24). As Iacoboni explains, “We have empathy for the fictional characters—we know how they’re feeling—because we literally experience the same feelings ourselves” (2008, 4). Similarly Hatfield, Rapson, and Le explain that “imagining, observing, or in any way preparing to perform an action excites the same motor programs used to execute that same action” (2009, 25, emphasis added). Siegel suggests a more evocative literary approach as a way around the apparent limits of discourse to capture emotional and sensory richness, saying that “the imagery evoked by poetry seems to more directly activate the primary visuospatial processes of our brains” (2007, 161–62).

McRoberts describes how such ethnographic writing focused on capturing visceral experience is different from other sorts of ethnographic reporting.

I can then use ethnographic writing to try to transmit not only the interpretive worldview but also my own grasp of . . . beauty to the reader. The process would be understood more as the translation of a poem than as the exegesis or interpretation of prose. (2004, 200)

Evoking such an embodied experience from the reader in some sense makes the experience depicted the reader’s own.

Integrating emotionally rich insights into analytic text helps to communicate a fuller understanding of the dynamics shaping a scene. However, ethnographers frequently put their emotional insights in appendices at the back of their books. Jay MacLeod’s Ain’t No Makin’ It is an excellent example of an emotionally rich appendix and a powerful, yet emotionally underdeveloped, body of the text.

To demonstrate, MacLeod represents the tensions around race in the main text of the book by addressing the experiences of Chris, a biracial teen who spends his time with the White “Hallway Hangers.”

Chris will go so far as to shout racial epithets at fellow blacks and to show enthusiasm for fighting with the Hallway Hangers against other black youths. Much of this attitude, however, is expedient posturing that enables Chris to maintain his sometimes tenuous status in the group. His real feelings are quite different.

CHRIS: I’ve lived here for fourteen years. I’ve always hung with these guys. I dunno, maybe it’s cuz I never knew many black people back then. These guys are all right though. They fuck with me some, but not like with some kids. I mean, after fourteen fucking years you get used to them calling you nigger every ten minutes. It doesn’t do no good to get upset. I just let it slide. Fuck it. I’ve gotten used to it. I’m glad you’re not prejudiced though. The only time they get real bad is when they’ve been drinking; then I gotta watch myself. I know how these guys think. That’s something, too—understanding how they think. I’ve been here fourteen fucking years, and I know how these motherfuckers think. Like, I can tell when they’re gonna fuck with me. When they’re trashed, they’ll be looking at me a certain way and shit. Then another one will do it. I get the fuck out of there because I know they’re gonna fuck with me. Yeah, when they’re drunk, they’ll get like that. Fucking assholes. But when they haven’t been pounding the beers, they’re the most dynamite people around. Really. (MacLeod 1987, 38–39)

When we rely primarily on Chris’s words, we have the same problem as when we rely primarily on a recording device—we assume that we are getting all of the meaningful information when we are actually missing extra-deliberative information. For example, although emotional and physical vigilance run throughout Chris’s depiction of his place in relation to the White Hallway Hangers, this vigilance is not directly addressed and thus is not thoroughly explored and theorized.

This focus on vigilance is captured more directly and analyzed more deeply in MacLeod’s appendix (1987, 168–69), where he details his own experiences of racial tension.

Only a week later, however, the status I had managed to achieve in both groups was threatened. The Brothers challenged the Hallway Hangers and their older friends to a game of basketball. . . . Both teams expected me to play for their side, and I had no idea what to do. To choose one team meant to alienate the other. My own inclination was to go with the Brothers. I remembered the contempt with which Juan had spoken of a white friend’s neutrality when a fight had broken out at school between the Brothers and a gang of white kids. I had developed close friendships with Juan, Craig, Super, and Derek, and I didn’t want to let them down. On the other hand, in terms of the dynamics of the fieldwork, I needed to move closer to the Hallway Hangers. Tying up my shoe laces, I frantically tried to think of a way out of the situation but came up short.

I walked out to the center of the court where a social service worker was waiting to referee the game. He seemed concerned about the possibility of the contest turning into a violent melee and looked none too happy about his own role. Trying to assume a noncommittal air, I sauntered over to the Brothers’ side and took a few shots, then walked to the other end and did the same with the Hallway Hangers. The Hallway Hangers had Hank’s older brother Robbie playing, a six-foot-four-inch hardened veteran of the army’s Special Forces. I suggested that the Brothers could use me more, that with Robbie playing for the Hallway Hangers the game might be a blowout anyway. The curt response was something to the effect that if I wanted to play with “the niggers,” that was my prerogative. Before I could reply, the referee shouted for me to play with the Brothers to even up the sides, and, hoping this intervention would mitigate the damage done, I trotted over to play with the Brothers.

At game’s end, I made a point of walking back to the Heights with the Hallway Hangers, despite the questions it must have raised in the Brothers’ minds as to where my loyalties really lay. As far as both groups were concerned, there was no middle ground between them. Each wondered which side I was on; my attempt to sit on the fence, I began to realize, was going to be a difficult balancing job. There would be other instances, like the basketball game, where a choice would have to be made. It was an uncomfortable position, one that plagued me throughout the research, but I derived some comfort from the fact that at least it indicated I was getting on with the fieldwork.

As this comparison illustrates, the way that MacLeod chose to write about his field site in the main text limited his capacity to speak directly to extra-deliberative dynamics. In his appendix, MacLeod captures an in-depth sense of the vigilance required when negotiating racial tensions. In comparison with the main text, this appendix tells us much about the nature of the emotional strain and emotion work experienced when negotiating relationships with the Black and White groups in this particular setting. MacLeod’s personal depiction allows him to fill out emotional dynamics that the previous quotes from Chris, the biracial youth, only hint at.

Conclusion

The detection of mirror neurons has revolutionized cognitive science. With the recognition that we are “wired” to be social, the old distinctions between biology and socialization collapse—we now know that humans have evolved to rely on information gathered directly through interaction. Mirror neurons reveal the centrality of emotion in the organization of these extra-deliberative social processes.

Although Sociology is beginning to catch on to the importance of cognitive brain science in general (cf. Franks and Turner 2013), and mirror neurons specifically (Liew and Aziz-Zadech 2013; Niemeyer 2013; Turner and Maryanski 2013), ethnography remains untouched by these findings. This disconnect is unfortunate because new findings reinforce the need for and importance of ethnographic work. Brothers, a neuroscientist, points out, “As we move away from biology and adapt the language of sociology . . . emotions begin to be conceived as essentially interpersonal communicative acts” (1997, 19). We are advocating new strategies for thinking systematically about using emotion to collect ethnographic data and communicate findings. Emotions are signal functions that communicate social proprioception—thus one’s position in relation to others within a field of action. Mirror neurons are the foundation for intersubjectivity and emotional contagion outside of conscious deliberative processing.

While focusing on deliberative and extra-deliberative dynamics are both valid ways of investigating the social world, they proceed in different ways and reveal different sorts of insights. Ethnography that is based on quotes from the field focuses heavily on discourse and thus is more likely to emphasize the deliberative, rather than extra-deliberative, aspects of social organization. In contrast to both the enduring focus on the discursive and the assumption that sensory experiences and emotions are private and comparatively inaccessible (Dewey 1929; Schutz 1967), we assert the central importance of extra-deliberative processes, including emotional dynamics, for understanding the relationship between interaction, perception, and social structure.

Our argument is not that ethnographers have to date failed to attend to extra-deliberative cues and dynamics; rather, we argue that explicitly addressing how emotion can be used in data collection, analysis, and communication of findings allows us to be more open and systematic throughout the process of crafting extra-deliberatively focused ethnography. As we noted, we are not advocating a rejection of past work and methods that focus on discourse and deliberative processes. Instead, we are advocating a shift in attention so as to focus on social dynamics that have generally been under explored (Zerubavel 1980).

We argue that work focused on extra-deliberative dynamics has a stronger foundation than ever before because of recent developments in neuroscience. We also suggest that researchers can provide readers with rich in-depth understanding of contexts, as well as general theoretical insights, by using an emotionally evocative presentation style when writing up research. By pressing simultaneously toward the study of extra-deliberative dynamics and toward evocative ways of conveying social theory about emotional dynamics, we seek to demonstrate that ethnographers can understand and capture in-the-moment extra-deliberative experiences. Ethnographers can observe the ways in which these extra-deliberative emotional dynamics contribute to both the formation and erosion of stable habits. Making such dynamics explicit opens extra-deliberative processes up for examination and critique, both of which will strengthen ethnographers’ claims. It will also allow ethnographers to develop work that would likely be more compelling for those outside the subdiscipline. This is to say that cognitive brain science points the way for making long implicit practices explicit. Combining investigation of extra-deliberative processes with emotionally evocative writing will enable researchers to develop and communicate fuller understandings of the social world.