Performing Action
Subtitle: Artistry in Human Behavior and Social Research
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2017
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 350
ISBN-13: 9781315126203
Subjects: Action research; Sociology; Methodology; Human behavior; Behavior; Comportement humain
Description: "In recent years the social sciences and the humanities have drawn closer to each other in thought and method. This rapprochement has led to new perceptions of human behavior by sociologists, as well as new methodological orientations. Sociologist Joseph R. Gusfield draws upon drama and fiction to show how human action is shaped by the formal dimensions of performance. Gusfield first defines the concept of behavior as artistic performance. He then analyzes routine and classic social research reports as literary performances in qualitative and quantitative terms. Next he moves to social movements and public actions, demonstrating how objects and events are products of the interpretation and reflection of individuals. He draws upon literary and artistic conventions to deal with issues of representation and meaning. In the first and last chapters, Gusfield provides a conceptual summary examining the relation between sociology as science and art, arguing that sociological methods are neither science nor art, but partake of both. Following the philosopher Paul Ricouer, Gusfield shows how human behavior can be read as a text, always telling the participant or observer "something about something." Performing Action will be of interest to sociologists, psychologists, and students of aesthetics and critical theory."--Provided by publisher
Table of contents: title: Chapter 1 Introduction: Human Behavior as Performance; title: part Part 1: Rhetoric; title: chapter 2 The?Double Plot? in Institutions; title: chapter 3 The Literary Rhetoric of Science: Comedy and Pathos in Drinking-Driver Research; title: chapter 4 Two Genres of Sociology: A Literary Analysis of The American Occupational Structure and Tally's Comer; title: chapter 5 Sport as Story: Form and Content in Agonistic Games; title: part Part 2: Reflexivity; title: chapter 6 The Modernity of Social Movements: Public Roles and Private Parts; title: chapter 7 Social Movements and Social Change: Perspectives of Linearity and Fluidity; title: chapter 8 The Reflexivity of Social Movements: Collective Behavior and Mass Society Theory Revisited; title: chapter 9 The Social Construction of Tradition: An Interactionist View of Social Change; title: part Part 3: Symbolism; title: chapter 10 Secular Symbolism: Studies of Ritual, Ceremony, and the Symbolic Order in Modem Life; title: chapter 11 Nature's Body and the Metaphors of Food and Health; title: chapter 12 The Social Symbolism of Smoking and Health; title: chapter 13 The Social Meanings of Meals: Hierarchy and Equality in the American?Potluck?; title: chapter 14 Conclusion:?Buddy, Can You Paradigm??: The Crisis of Theory in the Welfare State.