This article works out the main characteristics of `practice theory', a type of social theory which has been sketched by such authors as Bourdieu, Giddens, Taylor, late Foucault and others. Practice theory is presented as a conceptual alternative to other forms of social and cultural theory, above all to culturalist mentalism, textualism and intersubjectivism. The article shows how practice theory and the three other cultural-theoretical vocabularies differ in their localization of the social and in their conceptualization of the body, mind, things, knowledge, discourse, structure/process and the agent.

Toward a Theory of Social Practices A Development in Culturalist Theorizing

This article has the following two overarching aims First, it traces the development of multimodal discourse analysis and sets out its main descriptive and analytical parameters; in doing so, the article highlights the specific advantages which the multimodal approach has to offer and exemplifies its application The article also argues that the hierarchical arrangement of different semiotics (in the way common sense construes this) should not be lost from sight Second, and related to this last point, the article will advance a complementary perspective to that of multimodality: resemiotization Resemiotization is meant to provide the analytical means for (1) tracing how semiotics are translated from one into the other as social processes unfold, as well as for (2) asking why these semiotics (rather than others) are mobilized to do certain things at certain times The article draws on a variety of empirical data to exemplify these two perspectives on visual communication and analysis

Multimodality, resemiotization: extending the analysis of discourse as multi-semiotic practice

PART I. FOUNDATIONS OF INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION Chapter 1. Why Study Intercultural Communication? Chapter 2. The History of the Study of Intercultural Communication Chapter 3. Culture, Communication, Context, and Power Chapter 4. History and Intercultural Communication PART II. INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION PROCESSES Chapter 5. Identity and Intercultural Communication Chapter 6. Language and Intercultural Communication Chapter 7. Nonverbal Codes and Cultural Space PART III. INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION APPLICATIONS Chapter 8. Understanding Intercultural Transitions Chapter 9. Popular Culture and Intercultural Communication Chapter 10. Culture, Communication, and Intercultural Relationships Chapter 11. Culture, Communication, and Conflict Chapter 12. Striving for Engaged and Effective Intercultural Communication

Intercultural Communication in Contexts

This essay aims to “materialize” organizational communication in three senses. First, we seek to make the field of study bearing this name more tangible for North American management scholars, such that recognition and engagement become common. To do so, we trace the development of the field’s major contribution thus far: the communication‐as‐constitutive principle, which highlights how communication generates defining realities of organizational life, such as culture, power, networks, and the structure–agency relation. Second, we argue that this promising contribution cannot easily find traction in management studies until it becomes “materialized” in another sense: that is, accountable to the materiality evident in organizational objects, sites, and bodies. By synthesizing current moves in this direction, we establish the basis for sustained exchange between management studies and the communication‐as‐constitutive model. Third, we demonstrate how these conceptual developments can “materialize” ...

1 Constitutional Amendments: “Materializing” Organizational Communication

This paper argues for an epistemological positioning of Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) research beyond the lived experience of consumers. CCT, it is argued, brought sociocultural context to consumer research, not least through the introduction of existential phenomenology as a paradigm for CCT studies. However, it is time to expand the contextualization of lived consumer experiences with another contextualization, this time the one of systemic and structuring influences of market and social systems that is not necessarily felt or experienced by consumers in their daily lives, and therefore not necessarily discursively expressed. There is a need to take into consideration the context of context. We therefore suggest an epistemology for CCT that explicitly connects the structuring of macro-social explanatory frameworks with the phenomenology of lived experiences, thereby inscribing the micro-social context accounted for by the consumer in a larger socio-historical context based on the researcher’s theoretica...

Towards an epistemology of consumer culture theory: Phenomenology and the context of context

Contents User's Manual--xiii Materialities/The Nonhermeneutic/Presence: An Anecdotal Account of Epistemological Shifts--1 Metaphysics: A Brief Prehistory of What Is Now Changing--21 Beyond Meaning: Positions and Concepts in Motion--51 Epiphany/Presentification/Deixis: Futures for the Humanities and Arts--91 To Be Quiet for a Moment: About Redemption--133 Notes--155 Index--173 Library of Congress Subject Headings for this publication: Aesthetics, Experience

Production of Presence: What Meaning Cannot Convey

Materialität der Kommunikation

The essays collected in this volume mark an epistemological borderline, a stage of transition in Western thought. Within the humanities, this transition can be described as a movement away from 'interpretation' (as identification of meaning) toward problems concerning the conditions of the constitutions of meaning. This concentration on the material acknowledges a philosophical warning against an ever increasing degree of abstraction that threatens the loss of contact with the concrete and sensual dimensions of our experience. The contributors include several major participants in the recent reorientation of the humanities.

Materialities of communication

Inscribing Science: Scientific Texts and the Materiality of Communication

By the hundreds of millions we show up, stand in line, turn on, and tune in to watch, mesmerised, as athletes perform. And yet this experience, so widely craved and intensely felt, we commonly dismiss as 'only a game'. A book that looks beyond the usual explanations of why sport fascinates, "In Praise of Athletic Beauty" also strives for a language that can frame - even enhance - the pleasure we take in watching athletic events. The vicarious thrill, anxiety release, competitive spirit: in place of these traditional answers to the mystery of sports' allure, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht proposes a more powerful and provocative alternative. The fascination with watching sports, he argues, is probably the most popular and potent contemporary form of aesthetic experience - in the classic, very literal sense of this concept. In exploring this idea, Gumbrecht develops a lucid reflection on the pleasures of sports spectatorship and the nature of athletic beauty. Where we might readily pronounce certain athletic moves and plays 'beautiful', this book gives us the means to explore, understand, and enjoy even more acutely the aesthetic experience that our words-in-passing barely suggest. With a new perspective on the appreciation of - and, indeed, a new tone of praising - sports, Gumbrecht also offers a new way of narrating the history of athletics and a fresh vocabulary for analysing various sports. Exploring athletic beauty, this book makes us understand the widespread passion sport inspires as an untamed form of aesthetic fascination.

Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht

Papers

Production of Presence: What Meaning Cannot Convey

Materialität der Kommunikation

Materialities of communication

Inscribing Science: Scientific Texts and the Materiality of Communication

In praise of athletic beauty