The book examines the interactional processes between individuals using ideas from George Herbert Mead, Kenneth Burke, and Mikhail Bakhtin. It focuses on how people communicate and interact, following a ""grammar of motives"" proposed by Burke. This grammar consists of six elements: act, agent, scene, agency, attitude, and purpose, which are present in all human conduct and relations. Robert Perinbanayagam applies this grammar to various social phenomena, such as talking, identity, religion, ritual, suicide, games, astrological consultations, and inequality.
By:
Robert Perinbanayagam
Imprint: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Weight: 354g
ISBN: 9781666975741
ISBN 10: 1666975745
Pages: 142
Publication Date: 15 February 2025
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Chapter1: Talking Chapter 2: The Grammar of Identity Chapter 3: Religion as Narrative and Drama Chapter 4: The Narrated Self: The Talk of Astrology Chapter 5: The Dramas of Suicide: Detailing Durkheim Chapter 6: The Drama and Rhetoric of Forms in Games Chapter 7: Identity: Relations, Habitats, and Artifacts
Robert Perinbanayagam is professor emeritus of sociology at Hunter College of the City University of New York.
Reviews for Acts, Agencies, and Identity
Robert Perinbanayagam’s work has given us outstanding and complex texts on the self as both social construction and reflexive agent. In this masterful new work of independent essays, he writes about the primacy of talking, drawing from three critical sources: the pragmatist philosopher G. H. Mead, the work of American literary critic Kenneth Burke, and the Russian language philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin. -- E. Doyle McCarthy, professor emerita of sociology and American studies, Fordham University
