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This paper describes an interpretive framework for understanding the cognitive or mental processes of inventors, and applies this framework to narrating how Thomas Edison developed the kinetoscope, or motion picture. A review of recent developments in the history of technology and cognitive science suggests the need for better conceptual categories for understanding and comparing how inventors approach problems. We show how Edison created a mental model of the kinetoscope from his existing phonograph, and how his assistant William K. L. Dickson (who is often credited with inventing the kinetoscope) developed his own alternative mental model. We further discuss how Edison utilized building blocks or mechanical representations from previous inventions, and what strategies or heuristics he employed, in particular, we examine how Edison divided the project between himself and Dickson. The overall result of applying our framework to this case is to provide a clearer picture of the roles played by Edison and Dickson in this invention. The paper closes with a discussion on the potential relationship between cognitive and sociological approaches to technological innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the relations between humans and nonhumans.

Through their work, walking tour guides make the abstract histories and cultural flows of cities present and tangible for their followers – merging physical spaces, mental maps of information, and experiences through a kind of spatial storytelling. This social actor’s position in regard to consumption and production thus lends itself to conceptualization as a pivotal cultural worker. To better understand this condition, this article has two interrelated goals: first, to raise the importance of Bourdieu’s ‘cultural intermediary’ and the practice of spatial narratives as concerns for the study of culture, and, second, to refit Wendy Griswold’s (1987a) 1987 framework for a sociology of culture in order to better suit social actors located within a ‘circuit of culture’. Through the study of walking guides, this article places Bourdieu’s provocative concept in dialogue with a clear epistemological framework. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article will consider the vitalist turn within sociology and social theory in the context of the emergence of the psychological sciences at the turn of the last century. One aspect of the revitalization of social theory characteristic of this 'turn' has been a renewed interest in the problems of affect, sensation and perception. The centrality of affect and perception is often framed through the writings of a number of key 19th- and early 20th-century philosophers, sociologists and psychologists, including Gabriel Tarde, Henri Bergson, William James and George Simmel. This article will consider the complex forgettings and elisions which arguably are characteristic of this revival through an interrogation of the 'problem of personality' that was formulated by William James, the 19th-century pragmatist philosopher and psychologist. This problem was framed through James's interest in matters psychic, spiritual and psychopathological. The concept of 'suggestibility' that formed the backdrop to James's writings on mysticism and the psychological is one that has largely been forgotten, lost or dissolved into something else in recent work that tries to revive something of the traditions that once took 'suggestibility' as a serious object of study. Although the importance of suggestion to contemporary social theory has been argued by a few commentators, its importance for breaking clown the separation between the psychological and the social has not been given adequate attention. The reinvention of psychological matter for social theory is proposed as an important component of vitalism, if it is to effect the transformations in rethinking the social which have been firmly placed on the sociological and cultural agenda [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]