The Concept of Action (New Departures in Anthropology)
Cambridge University Press, 10/12/2017
EAN 9780521895286, ISBN10: 0521895286
Hardcover, 250 pages, 23.5 x 15.6 x 1.5 cm
Language: English
When people do things with words, how do we know what they are doing? Many scholars have assumed a category of things called actions: 'requests', 'proposals', 'complaints', 'excuses'. The idea is both convenient and intuitive, but as this book argues, it is a spurious concept of action. In interaction, a person's primary task is to decide how to respond, not to label what someone just did. The labeling of actions is a meta-level process, appropriate only when we wish to draw attention to others' behaviors in order to quiz, sanction, praise, blame, or otherwise hold them to account. This book develops a new account of action grounded in certain fundamental ideas about the nature of human sociality: that social conduct is naturally interpreted as purposeful; that human behavior is shaped under a tyranny of social accountability; and that language is our central resource for social action and reaction.
Preface
Acknowledgements
Part I. Preliminaries to Action
1. Basics of action
2. The study of action
Part II. The Nature of Action
3. The distribution of action
4. The ontology of action
Part III. Action and Human Diversity
5. Collateral effects
6. Natural meaning
Postface
Index.