Acts, Agencies, and Identity - by Robert Perinbanayagam (Hardcover)

About the Book

This book uses ideas from Mead, Burke, and Bakhtin to analyze how individuals interact through communication and applies Burke's "grammar of motives" to various social phenomena.

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

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.

About the Author

Robert Perinbanayagam is professor emeritus of sociology at Hunter College of the City University of New York.