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This volume advocates a shift from the social constructivism found in the work of Thomas Luckmann and Peter Berger, to a communicative constructivism that acknowledges communication as an embodied form of action in its own right, according to which social actors, in engaging in communicative action, construct a material social reality that guides, delimits, and enables actions. A study of the importance of understanding the role of communication in an age in which digitization and mediatization have extended the reach of communication to a global level and brought about the emergence of the communication society, The Communicative Construction of Reality shows how communication society does not merely replace modern society and its hierarchical institutions, but complements it in a manner that continually results in conflicts leading to the refiguration of society. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology with interests in the sociology of knowledge, communication, and social theory.
List of contents
I Introduction 1. Science and Theory 2. Scientific Language and Discourse 3. Theory II From Social to Communicative Construction 1. Social Action, Intersubjectivity and Communicative Lifeworld* Excursus on Phenomenology 2. From Language to Empirical Communication Research 3. "The Social Construction of Reality" and Its Critiques III. Social Theory: Communicative Action 1. Communicative Action 2. Reciprocity, Relationality and Positionality 3. Body, Sensuality and Affectivity 4. Working, Performance and Performativity 5. Objectivations, Objectifications and Signs 6. Signs and Communication 7. Social Reality, Communicative Lifeworld and Subjectivation IV. Theory of Society (A) Time and Sequentiality 1. Sequences of Communictative Action 2. Genres, Institutions and Communicative Forms 3. Social Structures 4. Discourse 5. Legitimations 6. The Other, Censorship and Social Power (B) Space and Media 1. Space 2. Presence, Situation und Mediation V. Diagnosis: Communication Society 1. From Discursivation to the Communication Society 2. Communicatization 3. Infrastructuring 4. Translocalization 5. Storage, De-Structuration and New Boundaries of Knowledge 6. Double Subjectivation VI. Conclusion: The Refiguration of Modernity 1. Beyond Modernity and Postmodernity 2. Figuration and Refiguration 3. Refigured Modernity
About the author
Hubert Knoblauch is Professor of Sociology at Technische Universität Berlin, Germany. He is the author of Powerpoint, Communication, and the Knowledge Society; the co-author of Videography: Introduction to Interpretive Videoanalysis of Social Situations; and the co-editor of Culture, Communication, and Creativity: Reframing the Relations of Media, Knowledge, and Innovation in Society, and Social Constructivism as Paradigm: The Legacy of The Social Construction of Reality.
Summary
This volume advocates a shift from the social constructivism of Luckmann and Berger to a communicative constructivism that acknowledges communication as a form of action in its own right, which constructs a social reality that guides, delimits and enables actions.
