Drawing on a ritual approach to microsociology, I explain how and why aesthetic and moral practices inform each other and evolve as they do. I continue to develop a theory of aesthetic engagement, specifying how it generates the emotional sensibilities that inform moral practices. Examining aesthetic engagement and emotional sensibilities focuses our theoretical attention on our capacity to find our moral bearings, even in unfamiliar or challenging conditions. To develop this perspective, I draw on Bargheer’s Moral Entanglements and a volume (...) on bird watching’s therapeutic value, Bird Therapy. These two works provide insight into the micro-emotional dynamics through which nature-based practices generate aesthetic power. I conclude by discussing the implications of aesthetic and moral practices for theorizing cognition and culture. In particular, I argue that an aesthetic practice approach to perceiving and knowing about the world does not fit neatly into the dual processing frameworks currently popular in Cultural Sociology. (shrink)

How does social organization persist? How does social organization transform? This article proposes that social scientists can begin to answer these questions by considering social organization as the intermittent construction and decay of patterned action, and social actors as centers of organization with the capacity to exert force within some social scene. From this perspective, contexts that shape the dynamics of both actors and scenes could be imagined as turbulent flows that push and pull action into temporary patterns. By viewing (...) social organization as temporary vortexes of involvement within turbulent flows of action, social scientists can focus their attention on the processes at play in the creation, stabilization, and collapse of social organization. Such a perspective corrects some of the limitations in network and field approaches for investigating the fluidity of social organization. Key Words: social organization • timing • stability • cycles • social patterns. (shrink)