Social Performance
Subtitle: Symbolic Action, Cultural Pragmatics, and Ritual (Cambridge Cultural Social Studies)
Contributors: Jeffrey C. Alexander (Editor); Bernhard Giesen (Editor); Jason L. Mast (Editor)
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: June 12, 2006
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 392
ISBN-13: 9780521674621
Subjects: Anthropology; Sociology; Social Science; Sociology - Social Theory; Social Science / Sociology / General; Sociology - General; Action theory; Culture; Performative (Philosophy)
First sentence: From its very beginnings, the social study of culture has been polarized between structuralist theories that treat meaning as a text and investigate the patterning that provides relative autonomy and pragmatist theories that treat meaning as emerging from the contingencies of individual and collective action - so-called practices - and that analyze cultural patterns as reflections of power and material interest.