Performativity has emerged as a critical new idea across the
humanities and social sciences, from literary and cultural studies
to the study of gender and the philosophy of action. In this
volume, Jeffrey Alexander demonstrates how performance can reorient
our study of politics and society.
Alexander develops a cultural pragmatics that shifts cultural
sociology from texts to gestural meanings. Positioning social
performance between ritual and strategy, he lays out the elements
of social performance – from scripts to mise-en-scène, from
critical mediation to audience reception – and systematically
describes their tense interrelation. This is followed by a series
of empirically oriented studies that demonstrate how cultural
pragmatics transforms our approach to power.
Alexander brings his new theory of social performance to bear on
case studies that range from political to cultural power: Barack
Obama’s electoral campaign, American failure in the Iraqi war, the
triumph of the Civil Rights Movement, terrorist violence on
September 11th, public intellectuals, material icons, and social
science itself.
This path-breaking work by one of the world’s leading social
theorists will command a wide interdisciplinary readership.
Innehållsförteckning
Preface and Acknowledgements.
Introduction.
A Cultural Theory of Social Performance.
Chapter 1 The Cultural Pragmatics of Symbolic Action (with Jason
Mast).
Chapter 2 Social Performance between Ritual and Strategy
Political Power and Performance.
Chapter 3 Performance and the Challenge of Power.
Chapter 4 Social, Political, Cultural, and Performative.
Chapter 5 Democratic Power and Political Performance: Obama v.
Mc Cain.
Chapter 6 A Presidential Performance, Panned, or Obama as the
Last Enlightenment Man.
Chapter 7 Performing Counter-Power: The Civil Rights
Movement.
Chapter 8 Performing Terror on September 11th.
Chapter 9 War and Performance: Afghanistan and Iraq.
Cultural Power and Performance.
Chapter 10 Intellectuals and Public Performance.
Chapter 11 Iconic Power and Performativity: The Role of the
Critic.
Notes.
Bibliography.
Om författaren
Jeffrey C. Alexander is Professor of Sociology at Yale University.
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