Introduction: Interpretive Sociology and the Semiotic Imagination

This introductory chapter begins by reflecting on the historically troubled encounters between semiotics and sociology, their multiple beginnings, abrupt separations, and fights over boundaries. On one hand, when going social, semiotics seems more interested in analyses of social artifacts or texts than social life processes in their sociality and not just textuality. On the other, when going semiotic, sociology tends to appropriate formal understandings of structure, only to realize that structuralist efforts are impractical for complex explanations of social life. To overcome these challenges, the chapter proposes integrating two main traditions of meaning-making from the outset: Saussure’s and Peirce’s semiotics. Thus, to lay solid foundation to sociocultural explanation we need a sophisticated theory of signification in social life. A theory where signs—vehicles of meaning—signify via self-referential differentials but also via reflexive indexicalities that anchor them at multiple social levels. Expanding on these themes, the chapter turns to three open problems at the crossroads of semiotics and sociology, namely indexicality and context-making, habituation and power, and culture and cognition. Finally, the contributions are outlined. From different perspectives, each contribution attempts to provide elements to answer: Is there a space for semiotics in an agenda that pushes interpretive sociology forward?