Social Performance: Symbolic Action, Cultural Pragmatics, and Ritual

Cambridge Cultural Social Studies

by Jeffrey C. Alexander (Editor), Bernhard Giesen (Editor), Jason L. Mast (Editor)

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.

392 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2006

About the author

Jeffrey Charles Alexander is an American sociologist, and one of the world's leading social theorists. He is the founding figure in the school of cultural sociology he refers to as the "strong program"