Performance and Power

Performativity has emerged as a critical new idea across thehumanities and social sciences, from literary and cultural studiesto the study of gender and the philosophy of action. In thisvolume, Jeffrey Alexander demonstrates how performance can reorientour study of politics and society.

Alexander develops a cultural pragmatics that shifts culturalsociology from texts to gestural meanings. Positioning socialperformance between ritual and strategy, he lays out the elementsof social performance - from scripts to mise-en-sc ne, fromcritical mediation to audience reception - and systematicallydescribes their tense interrelation. This is followed by a seriesof empirically oriented studies that demonstrate how culturalpragmatics transforms our approach to power.

Alexander brings his new theory of social performance to bear oncase studies that range from political to cultural power: BarackObama's electoral campaign, American failure in the Iraqi war, thetriumph of the Civil Rights Movement, terrorist violence onSeptember 11th, public intellectuals, material icons, and socialscience itself.

This path-breaking work by one of the world's leading socialtheorists will command a wide interdisciplinary readership.