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Introduction: symbolic action in theory and practice: the cultural pragmatics of symbolic action

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2009

By
Jeffrey C. Alexander  and
Jason L. Mast
Edited by
Jeffrey C. Alexander ,
Bernhard Giesen  and
Jason L. Mast
Jeffrey C. Alexander
Affiliation:
Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology and also Chair of the Sociology Department, Yale University
Jason L. Mast
Affiliation:
Doctoral Candidate in Sociology and a Visiting Fellow, University of California, Los Angeles and Yale University
Jeffrey C. Alexander
Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut
Bernhard Giesen
Affiliation:
Universität Konstanz, Germany
Jason L. Mast
Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut
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Summary

The question of theory and practice permeates not only politics but culture, where the analogue for theory is the social-symbolic text, the bundle of everyday codes, narratives, and rhetorical configurings that are the objects of hermeneutic reconstruction. Emphasizing action over its theory, praxis theorists have blinded themselves to the deeply embedded textuality of every social action (Bourdieu 1984; Swidler 1986; Turner 2002). But a no less distorting myopia has affected the vision from the other side. The pure hermeneut (e.g., Dilthey 1976; Ricoeur 1976) tends to ignore the material problem of instantiating ideals in the real world. The truth, as Marx (1972: 145) wrote in his tenth thesis on Feuerbach, is that, while theory and practice are different, they are always necessarily intertwined.

Theory and practice are interwoven in everyday life, not only in social theory and social science. In the following chapters, we will see that powerful social actors understand the conceptual issues presented in this introduction in an intuitive, ethnographic, and practical way. In the intense and fateful efforts to impeach and to defend President Clinton (Mast, ch. 3), for instance, individuals, organizations, and parties moved “instinctively” to hook their actions into the background culture in a lively and compelling manner, working to create an impression of sincerity and authenticity rather than one of calculation and artificiality, to achieve verisimilitude. Social movements' public demonstrations (Eyerman, ch. 6) display a similar performative logic.

Type
Chapter
Information
Social Performance
Symbolic Action, Cultural Pragmatics, and Ritual
 , pp. 1 - 28
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

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