Dramatism

Abstract: This book marks Kenneth Burke's breakthrough in criticism from the literary and aesthetic into social theory and the philosophy of history. In this volume we find Burke's first entry into what he calls his theory of Dramatism; and, here also is an important section on the nature of ritual.

Abstract: Acknowledgments 1. Qualitative Research as Craft: Postpositivist Traditions and Research Styles I. The Interpretive Traditions 2. Symbolic Interactionism: Searching for Self and Meaning 3. Hermeneutics: The Interpretations of Texts 4. Dramaturgy and Dramatism: Social Life as Theater and Stage 5. Ethnomethodology: The Accomplishment of Ordinary Lives 6. Ethnography: Cultural Understandings of Natives II. Traditions of Deep Structure 7. Semiotics and Structuralism: The Grammar of Social Reality III. The Critical Traditions 8. Historical Materialism: Class, Conflict, and Domination 9. Critical Theory: Hegemony, Knowledge, Production, and Communicative Action 10. Feminism: Gender as the Core Social Principle 11. Structuration and Praxeology: Transcending Dualisms Within Frameworks of Power IV. Traditions of the "Post" 12. Postmodernism: Playing with Images and the "Truth" 13. Poststructuralism: Discourse, Discipline, and Deconstruction 14. Postcolonialism: Unpacking and Resisting Imperialism 15. Conclusion: Tradition, Improvisation, and Quality Control References Index About the Author.

Abstract: "But the point of Burke's work, and the significance of his achievement, is not that he points out that religion and language affect each other, for this has been said before, but that he proceeds to demonstrate how this is so by reference to a specific symbolic context. After a discussion 'On Words and The Word,' he analysess verbal action in St. Augustine's Confessions. He then discusses the first three chapters of Genesis, and ends with a brilliant and profound 'Prologue in Heaven,' an imaginary dialogue between the Lord and Satan in which he proposes that we begin our study of human motives with complex theories of transcendence,' rather than with terminologies developed in the use of simplified laboratory equipment...Burke now feels, after some forty years of search, that he has created a model of the symbolic act which breaks through the rigidities of the 'sacred-secular' dichotomy, and at the same time shows us how we get from secular and sacred realms of action over the bridge of language...Religious systems are systems of action based on communication in society. They are great social dramas which are played out on earth before an ultimate audience, God. But where theology confronts the developed cosmological drama in the 'grand style,' that is, as a fully developed cosmological drama for its religious content, the 'logologer' can be further studied not directly as knowledge but as anecdotes that help reveal for us the quandaries of human governance." (Hugh Dalziel Duncan from Critical Responses to Kenneth Burke, 1924 - 1966, edited by William H. Rueckert (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1969)).

Abstract: This article develops a vocabulary to describe the management of performance and the nature of consumer judgments of staged performance quality. It distinguishes three kinds of performance—contractual, enacted, and dramatistic. While all marketing actions are by nature dramatistic, this article explores how marketing can obscure the traces of dramatism by reframing the performance as contractual or enacted. Alternatively, marketing may seek to emphasize a performance's dramatistic character, selecting among skill, show, thrill, or festive frames. I apply this framework to examine the issue of the quality of performances.