Social Performance : Symbolic Action, Cultural Pragmatics, and Ritual

Introduction: symbolic action in theory and practice: the cultural pragmatics of symbolic action Jeffrey C. Alexander and Jason L. Mast 1. Cultural pragmatics: social performance between ritual and strategy Jeffrey C. Alexander 2. From the depths of despair: performance, counterperformance, and 'September 11' Jeffrey C. Alexander 3. The cultural pragmatics of event-ness: the Clinton/Lewinsky affair Jason L. Mast 4. Social dramas, shipwrecks and cockfights: conflict and complicity in social performance Isaac Reed 5. Performing a 'new' nation: the role of the TRC in South Africa Tanya Goodman 6. Performing opposition or, how social movements move Ron Eyerman 7. Politics as theater: an alternative view of the rationalities of power David E. Apter 8. Symbols in action: Willy Brandt's kneefall at the Warsaw monument Valentin Rauer 9. The promise of performance and the problem of order Kay Junge 10. Performance art Bernhard Giesen 11. Performing the sacred: a Durkheimian perspective on the performance turn in the social sciences Bernhard Giesen.