Abstract

Identities arise as they mitigate uncertainty through control efforts aimed at other identities; meanings - verbal or not - surface in intermittent switchings of identities among socio-cultural phases known as netdoms (network-domains). Stories are accretions of meanings and form the texture of culture as interpretive context. Further compounds of stories - or forms of discourse - can be mobilized for action (narratives) or frame social time (story-lines and plots). All these forms of discourse support a view of culture as practice and as a basis for social science. While the sociological conundrum of structure and culture is usually solved by proclaiming that these two dimensions of social life are dual and co-constitutive - interdependent yet autonomous - this paper suggests another approach that takes the dynamic of identity and control as a starting point and helps resolve the so-called micro-macro gap.