The Plurality of Cognitive Formats and Engagements: Moving between the Familiar and the Public

Cognitive forms vary considerably as a human being detaches herself from what is closest and most personal and moves to communicate – in the broad sense of taking part in a common matter – across increasing relational distances. The article proposes to deal with the variety of cognitive formats which cannot ‘commonize ’ cognition to an equal degree, relating them to a set of regimes of engagement with the world that are identified in terms of the dependency between the human agent and her environment. The good that engagement aims to guarantee orients how reality is grasped and specifies the format of what constitutes relevant information. This analysis offers new insight into the composition of communities as well as persons who have to cope with the plurality of cognitive formats and engagements from the very familiar to the most public. Key words ■ action ■ cognition ■ convention ■ coordination ■ engagement ■ information Emile Durkheim’s and Marcel Mauss’s thinking on categories of thought, a cognitive sociology before the term existed, appears today both a fruitful and limited heritage. Clearly it was an essential resource for the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu and the anthropology of Mary Douglas, which have impacted on broad areas of both continental European and Anglo-American research. In contrast to the tradition derived from economics, which posits a rational individual acquir-ing available information, this sociological tradition makes clear the importance of cognitive categories in the constituting of society.1 Its limitations have to d