The concept of action
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The concept of action
（New departures in anthropology）
Cambridge University Press, 2017
- : pbk
- : hardback
Available at / 14 libraries
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Kobe University General Library / Library for Intercultural Studies
: hardback361-4-E061202200189
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 202-217) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
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.
Table of Contents
- 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.
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