Social Performance
Taking a "cultural pragmatic" approach to meaning, the contributors suggest a new way of looking at the continuum that stretches between ritual and strategic action. They do so by developing, for the first time, a model of "social performance". This volume offers the first systematic and analytical framework that transforms the metaphor into a social theory and applies it to a series of facinating large-scale social and cultural processes--from September 11 and the Clinton/Lewinsky Affair, to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Willy Brandt's famous "kneefall" before the Warsaw momument.
- Professor Alexander is one of the leading cultural sociologists in the US
- The first attempt to bring performative studies into the center of sociology. This volume offers the first, systematic performance based analytical framework
- Makes a path-breaking contribution to social theory and cultural sociology - the first attempt to synthesize sociological and performance studies theories with conceptual frameworks
Reviews & endorsements
"Truely a groundbreaking work, and is absolutely essential reading for anyone interested in the understanding of modern social and political action."
Marvin Carlson, TDR:The Drama Review
Product details
May 2006Hardback
9780521857956
392 pages
235 × 158 × 22 mm
0.748kg
10 b/w illus. 2 tables
Available
Table of Contents
- Introduction: symbolic action in theory and practice: the cultural pragmatics of symbolic action Jeffrey C. Alexander and Jason L. Mast
- 1. Cultural pragmatics: social performance between ritual and strategy Jeffrey C. Alexander
- 2. From the depths of despair: performance, counterperformance, and 'September 11' Jeffrey C. Alexander
- 3. The cultural pragmatics of event-ness: the Clinton/Lewinsky affair Jason L. Mast
- 4. Social dramas, shipwrecks and cockfights: conflict and complicity in social performance Isaac Reed
- 5. Performing a 'new' nation: the role of the TRC in South Africa Tanya Goodman
- 6. Performing opposition or, how social movements move Ron Eyerman
- 7. Politics as theater: an alternative view of the rationalities of power David E. Apter
- 8. Symbols in action: Willy Brandt's kneefall at the Warsaw monument Valentin Rauer
- 9. The promise of performance and the problem of order Kay Junge
- 10. Performance art Bernhard Giesen
- 11. Performing the sacred: a Durkheimian perspective on the performance turn in the social sciences Bernhard Giesen.