Sociology of the unmarked: Redirecting our focus

This article suggests that American sociology has developed a defacto tradi tion in the sociology of the marked that devotes greater epistemological at tention to "politically salient" and "ontologically uncommon" features of s ocial life, Although the "unmarked" comprises the vast majority of social l ife, the "marked" commands a disproportionate share of attention from socio logists. Since the marked already draws more attention within the general c ulture, social scientists contribute to re-marking and the reproduction of common-sense images of social reality This has important analytic consequen ces. This article argues for developing a stronger tradition in a sociology of the unmarked that explicitly foregrounds "politically unnoticed" and ta ken-for-granted elements of social reality. Three strategies are proposed t oward this end: (1) reversing conventional patterns of markedness to foregr ound what typically remains unnamed and implicit, (2) marking everything by filling in all the shades of social continue so that each shares the same degree of epistemological ornamentation, and (3) developing an analytically nomadic perspective that observes social phenomena from multiple vantage p oints.