The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies

Abstract

Secrecy, paradoxically, is a social fact; as such, it must be performed in order to be realized. This article is a programmatic attempt to explore the semiotics of secrecy as revealed through the interaction of architectonics, spatiality, and social interaction. Gestural secretiveness reproduces socially sanctioned patterns of concealment also embodied in the built environment; these social dimensions also inform local interpretations of legal devices designed to guarantee privacy. On the international stage, moreover, they are transformed into devices for the concealment of potential national embarrassments. As the author demonstrates using materials from Greece, Italy, and Thailand, the practical e¤ects of secrecy -a more flexible construct than the dichotomy of public and private -are revealingly inscribed, at various concentric levels of social identification, on the material landscape of inhabited space, and represent a necessary dimension of adapting urban structures to a human scale.

The main goal of this paper is to construct journal peer review as a scientific object of study based on historical research into the shaping of its structural properties. This paper is a second in a two-part series. Journal peer review performed in the natural sciences has been an object of study since at least 1830. Researchers mostly implicitly frame it as a rational system with expectations of rational decision-making. This in spite of research debunking rationality where journal peer review can yield low inter-rater reliability, be purportedly biased and conservative, and cannot readily detect fraud or misconduct.