Politics as Symbolic Action

Politics as Symbolic Action PDF Author: Murray Edelman
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 1483269906
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
Politics as Symbolic Action: Mass Arousal and Quiescence deals with the dynamics of development of political threats related to political behavior. The book discusses the conditions under which the dynamics related to political behavior are the prior causes of political arousal, violence, and quiescence. The text examines the influence of governmental activity on people's beliefs and perceptions—how non-empirical cognitions become the resistant basis of change. The text also examines how the individual phenomenon and the group phenomenon become linked through symbol formation and myths. The book discusses emotion as a catalyst of political ritual and political violence as inferred from Theodore Sarbin's role theory. The use of metaphors, language forms, and mass tensions can all be social-psychological and political processes that can lead to political arousal or quiescence. The book also explains major violent disturbances as having patterns reflective of organization, disorganization, or by leadership example; the book notes the popular notion that the organization or the leader's direction starts or worsens the violence as very simplistic. The book then proposes that political perceptions and beliefs are changeable and that phenomenological perceptions of specific groups of people can identify which political behavior are systematic. The text is suitable for political analysts, political scientists, sociologists, and educators involved in group psychology and analyses.

Politics as Symbolic Action

Politics as Symbolic Action PDF Author: Murray Jacob Edelman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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The Symbolic Uses of Politics

The Symbolic Uses of Politics PDF Author: Murray Jacob Edelman
Publisher: Urbana : University of Illinois Press
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Language As Symbolic Action

Language As Symbolic Action PDF Author: Kenneth Burke
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520340663
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 531

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Book Description
From the Preface: The title for this collection was the title of a course in literary criticism that I gave for many years at Bennington College. And much of the material presented here was used in that course. The title should serve well to convey the gist of these various pieces. For all of them are explicitly concerned with the attempt to define and track down the implications of the term "symbolic action," and to show how the marvels of literature and language look when considered form that point of view. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1968. From the Preface: The title for this collection was the title of a course in literary criticism that I gave for many years at Bennington College. And much of the material presented here was used in that course. The title should serve well to convey the gi

Modern Hatreds

Modern Hatreds PDF Author: Stuart J. Kaufman
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501701991
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Ethnic conflict has been the driving force of wars all over the world, yet it remains an enigma. What is it about ethnicity that breaks countries apart and drives people to acts of savage violence against their lifelong neighbors? Stuart Kaufman rejects the notion of permanent "ancient hatreds" as the answer. Dissatisfied as well with a purely rationalist explanation, he finds the roots of ethnic violence in myths and symbols, the stories ethnic groups tell about who they are. Ethnic wars, Kaufman argues, result from the politics of these myths and symbols—appeals to flags and faded glories that aim to stir emotions rather than to address interests. Popular hostility based on these myths impels groups to follow extremist leaders invoking such emotion-laden ethnic symbols. If ethnic domination becomes their goal, ethnic war is the likely result. Kaufman examines contemporary ethnic wars in the Caucasus and southeastern Europe. Drawing on information from a variety of sources, including visits to the regions and dozens of personal interviews, he demonstrates that diplomacy and economic incentives are not enough to prevent or end ethnic wars. The key to real conflict resolution is peacebuilding—the often-overlooked effort by nongovernmental organizations to change hostile attitudes at both the elite and the grassroots levels.

Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors

Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors PDF Author: Victor Turner
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501732854
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
In this book, Victor Turner is concerned with various kinds of social actions and how they relate to, and come to acquire meaning through, metaphors and paradigms in their actors' minds; how in certain circumstances new forms, new metaphors, new paradigms are generated. To describe and clarify these processes, he ranges widely in history and geography: from ancient society through the medieval period to modern revolutions, and over India, Africa, Europe, China, and Meso-America. Two chapters, which illustrate religious paradigms and political action, explore in detail the confrontation between Henry II and Thomas Becket and between Hidalgo, the Mexican liberator, and his former friends. Other essays deal with long-term religious processes, such as the Christian pilgrimage in Europe and the emergence of anti-caste movements in India. Finally, he directs his attention to other social phenomena such as transitional and marginal groups, hippies, and dissident religious sects, showing that in the very process of dying they give rise to new forms of social structure or revitalized versions of the old order.

Symbolic Crusade

Symbolic Crusade PDF Author: Joseph R. Gusfield
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252013126
Category : Prohibition
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
The important role of the Temperance movement throughout American history is analyzed as clashes and conflicts between rival social systems, cultures, and status groups. Sometimes the "dry" is winning the classic battle for prestige and political power. Sometimes, as in today's society, he is losing. This significant contribution to the theory of status conflict also discloses the importance of political acts as symbolic acts and offers a dramatistic theory of status politics, Gusfield provides a useful addition to the economic and psychological modes of analysis current in the study of political and social movements.

The Political Unconscious

The Political Unconscious PDF Author: Fredric Jameson
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801471575
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
Fredric Jameson, in The Political Unconscious, opposes the view that literary creation can take place in isolation from its political context. He asserts the priority of the political interpretation of literary texts, claiming it to be at the center of all reading and understanding, not just a supplement or auxiliary to other methods current today. Jameson supports his thesis by looking closely at the nature of interpretation. Our understanding, he says, is colored by the concepts and categories that we inherit from our culture's interpretive tradition and that we use to comprehend what we read. How then can the literature of other ages be understood by readers from a present that is culturally so different from the past? Marxism lies at the foundation of Jameson's answer, because it conceives of history as a single collective narrative that links past and present; Marxist literary criticism reveals the unity of that uninterrupted narrative. Jameson applies his interpretive theory to nineteenth- and twentieth-century texts, including the works of Balzac, Gissing, and Conrad. Throughout, he considers other interpretive approaches to the works he discusses, assessing the importance and limitations of methods as different as Lacanian psychoanalysis, semiotics, dialectical analysis, and allegorical readings. The book as a whole raises directly issues that have been only implicit in Jameson's earlier work, namely the relationship between dialectics and structuralism, and the tension between the German and the French aesthetic traditions. The Political Unconscious is a masterly introduction to both the method and the practice of Marxist criticism. Defining a mode of criticism and applying it successfully to individual works, it bridges the gap between theoretical speculation and textual analysis.

Adventures of the Symbolic

Adventures of the Symbolic PDF Author: Warren Breckman
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 023114394X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
Warren Breckman critically revisits thrilling experiments in the aftermath of Marxism.

Revelation and Divination in Ndembu Ritual

Revelation and Divination in Ndembu Ritual PDF Author: Victor Turner
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501717197
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
Drawing on two and a half years of field work, Victor Turner offers two thorough ethnographic studies of Ndembu revelatory ritual and divinatory techniques, with running commentaries on symbolism by a variety of Ndembu informants. Although previously published, these essays have not been readily available since their appearance more than a dozen years ago. Striking a personal note in a new introductory chapter, Professor Turner acknowledges his indebtedness to Ndembu ritualists for alerting him to the theoretical relevance of symbolic action in understanding human societies. He believes that ritual symbols, like botanists' stains, enable us to detect and trace the movement of social processes and relationships that often lie below the level of direct observation.