Sociological Theory 22 (4):527-573 (2004)
Abstract |
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. In this article, I present a theory of cultural pragmatics that transcends this division, bringing meaning structures, contingency, power, and materiality together in a new way. My argument is that the materiality of practices should be replaced by the more multidimensional concept of performances. Drawing on the new field of performance studies, cultural pragmatics demonstrates how social performances, whether individual or collective, can be analogized systematically to theatrical ones. After defining the elements of social performance, I suggest that these elements have become "de-fused" as societies have become more complex. Performances are successful only insofar as they can "re-fuse" these increasingly disentangled elements. In a fused performance, audiences identify with actors, and cultural scripts achieve verisimilitude through effective mise-en-scène. Performances fail when this relinking process is incomplete: the elements of performance remain apart, and social action seems inauthentic and artificial, failing to persuade. Refusion, by contrast, allows actors to communicate the meanings of their actions successfully and thus to pursue their interests effectively
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DOI | 10.1111/j.0735-2751.2004.00233.x |
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References found in this work BETA
Thick Description: Towards an Interpretive Theory of Culture.Clifford Geertz - 1973 - In The Interpretation of Cultures. Basic Books.
Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity.Charles Taylor - 1989 - Harvard University Press.
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Citations of this work BETA
Towards a Revised Theory of Collective Learning Processes: Argumentation, Narrative and the Making of the Social Bond.Klaus Eder, Marcos Engelken Jorge & Bernhard Forchtner - 2020 - European Journal of Social Theory 23 (2):200-218.
Ritual Deliberation.Ana Tanasoca & Jensen Sass - 2019 - Journal of Political Philosophy 27 (2):139-165.
Signing in the Flesh: Notes on Pragmatist Hermeneutics.Dmitri N. Shalin - 2007 - Sociological Theory 25 (3):193 - 224.
View all 39 citations / Add more citations
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