Meaning & Measurement Mini-Conference

Mark Jacobs — George Mason University mjacobs@gmu.edu I came to the sociology of culture about fifteen ago, when I discovered that literary theories about narrative form proved useful in explaining social actors' evasions of responsibility and accountability. I was then studying juvenile justice, and discovered that Aristotle, Kenneth Burke, and Northrop Frye (among others) better explained the motivations and outcomes of juvenile justice than the sociological theories then prevalent about social psychology, social organization, and criminology. I continue to think that the contentious evasion of responsibility and accountability is a defining characteristic of modern society; one focus of my current substantive interest is public scandal. Other of my current activities--as editor of *Culture*, and co-editor of several volumes and special journal issues about the sociology of culture--have led me to consider the sociology of culture as itself a cultural object. Here too, I find it useful to explore the properties of narrative form. I would claim that sociologists of culture (including myself, in my study of scandals) work in an *ironic* mode, which almost by definition poses a whole range of tensions between "measurement" and "meaning."