Social Performance: Symbolic Action, Cultural Pragmatics, and Ritual

by Edited by Jeffrey C. Alexander , Bernhard Giesen , Jason L. Mast

• ISBN13: 9780521674621
• ISBN10: 052167462X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-05-29
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Jeffrey C. Alexander brings together new and leading contributors to make a powerful and coherently argued case for a new direction in cultural sociology, one that focuses on the intersection between performance, ritual and social action. Performance has always been used by sociologists to understand the social world but this volume offers the first systematic analytical framework based on the performance metaphor to explain large-scale social and cultural processes. From September 11, to the Clinton/Lewinsky affair, to the role of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Social Performance draws on recent work in performative theory in the humanities and in cultural studies to offer a novel approach to the sociology of culture. Inspired by the theories of Austin, Derrida, Durkheim, Goffman, and Turner, this is a path-breaking volume that makes a major contribution to the field. It will appeal to scholars and students alike.

Table of Contents

List of figures	xi
List of tables	xii
List of contributors	xiii
Introduction: symbolic action in theory and practice: the cultural pragmatics of symbolic action	1	(314)
Jeffrey C. Alexander and Jason L. Mast
1 Cultural pragmatics: social performance between ritual and strategy	29	(62)
Jeffrey C. Alexander
2 From the depths of despair: performance, counterperformance, and "September 11"	91	(24)
Jeffrey C. Alexander
3 The cultural pragmatics of event-ness: the Clinton/Lewinsky affair	115	(31)
Jason L. Mast
4 Social dramas, shipwrecks, and cockfights: conflict and complicity in social performance	146	(23)
Isaac Reed
5 Performing a "new" nation: the role of the TRC in South Africa	169	(24)
Tanya Goodman
6 Performing opposition or, how social movements move	193	(25)
Ron Eyerman
7 Politics as theatre: an alternative view of the rationalities of power	218	(39)
David E. Apter
8 Symbols in action: Willy Brandt's kneefall at the Warsaw Memorial	257	(26)
Valentin Rauer
9 The promise of performance and the problem of order	283	(32)
Kay Junge
10 Performance art	315	(10)
Bernhard Giesen
11 Performing the sacred: a Durkheimian perspective on the performative turn in the social sciences	325	(43)
Bernhard Giesen
Index	368