| Title:
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THE CONCEPT OF ACTION
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| By: |
N. J. Enfield, Jack Sidnell |
| Format: |
Hardback |
| List price:
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£99.00 |
| Our price: |
£86.63 |
| Discount: |
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£12.37 |
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| ISBN 10: |
0521895286 |
| ISBN 13: |
9780521895286 |
| Availability: |
Usually dispatched within 1-3 weeks.
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| Stock: |
Currently 0 available |
| Publisher: |
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS |
| Pub. date: |
30 September, 2017 |
| Series: |
New Departures in Anthropology |
| Pages: |
250 |
| Description: |
A new theory of human behaviour, with three core ingredients: language, interaction, and social accountability. |
| Synopsis: |
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. |
| Illustrations: |
14 b/w illus. 1 table |
| Publication: |
UK |
| Imprint: |
Cambridge University Press |
| Returns: |
Returnable |