Material Objects in Social Worlds  

Oleh:

Harre, Rom

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Theory, Culture & Society vol. 19 no. 5-6 (Okt. 2002), page 23–33.
Topik: affordance; material stuff; narratives; social reality
Fulltext: 23TCAS195-6.pdf (49.55KB)

Isi artikel

This article strongly argues the priority of symbolic, especially discursive, action over the material order in the genesis of social things. What turns a piece of stuff into a social object is its embedment in a narrative construction. The attribution of an active or a passive role to things in relation to persons is thus essentially story-relative: nothing happens or exists in the social world unless it is framed by human performative activity. Drawing on Gibson's notion of 'affordance', Harré affirms that material things may be disposed towards many different usages, and may acquire multiple identities according to different narrative constructions, even though the range of their possible 'existences' is constrained by certain material features. Objects acquire their full significance only if one takes account of their double role in both the 'practical' order, which includes social arrangements for maintaining life, and the 'expressive' order, which creates hierarchies of honour and status, and which enjoys priority over the former. Reasoning from a microsociological constructionist perspective, Harré restates his view that there is nothing else to social life but symbolic exchanges and joint management of meaning, including the meaning of things; the illusion that some thing is real is merely an effect of certain interpretational grammars which remain stable across the generations or even the centuries.

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