Don''t Take It Personally - Personalness and Impersonality in Social Life

In Don't Take It Personally, Eviatar Zerubavel comprehensively addresses the fundamental distinction between the specific and generic visions of personhood. While the former focuses on specifically "who" individuals are, as embodied by their driver's license and signature, the latter vision concerns itself with "what" they are, as interchangeable members of particular social roles or groups. Over the course of the book, Zerubavel articulates the fundamental features and underlying logic of impersonality and considers what is gained and what is lost by impersonalizing so much of modern social life.

List of contents

• Preface


• 1. "Who" Versus "What"


• 2. "Who" Versus "How Many"


• 3. The Anatomy of Impersonality


• 4. Impersonalization


• 5. Modernity and Impersonality


• 6. Impersonality and Its Discontents


• Notes


• Bibliography


• Index

About the author

Eviatar Zerubavel is Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of Sociology Emeritus at Rutgers University. He is a widely recognized authority on cognitive sociology, the sociology of time, and the sociology of memory. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction's George Herbert Mead Award for Lifetime Achievement in Symbolic Interaction. He also served as Chair of the Culture Section of the American Sociological Association. He is the author of thirteen books, and his work has been featured by numerous public media, including interviews on the BBC, The New York Times, Newsday, and NPR.

Product details

• Authors: Eviatar Zerubavel, Eviatar (Board of Governors Distinguish Zerubavel, Zerubavel Eviatar
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 05.03.2024
• EAN: 9780197691342
• ISBN: 978-0-19-769134-2
• No. of pages: 112
• Subjects: Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Miscellaneous; SOCIAL SCIENCE / General, PHILOSOPHY / Social, PHILOSOPHY / Political, PSYCHOLOGY / Social Psychology, Social & political philosophy, social and political philosophy, Social issues & processes, Social, group or collective psychology, Social and ethical issues