1.

Record Nr.

UNISA996659462103316

Autore

Lempert Michael

Titolo

From Small Talk to Microaggression : A History of Scale

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Chicago : , : University of Chicago Press, , 2024

©2024

ISBN

9780226832494

022683249X

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (387 pages)

Disciplina

302.34/6

Soggetti

Conversation analysis

Scaling (Social sciences)

SOCIAL SCIENCE / General

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- 1 Introduction: How Scale Broke the World -- PART I Fine-Grained Analysis -- Introduction -- 2 The Chattering Unconscious and the Tells of Talk -- 3 The First Five Minutes -- 4 The First Five Seconds -- PART II Small Groups -- Introduction -- 5 Rigorously, Manageably Small -- 6 Interaction Recorders -- 7 Interaction as a Liberal Technology -- PART III Micropolitics -- Introduction -- 8 The Interpersonal Gets Political -- 9 Interruption-and Male Supremacy -- 10 Tempest in the Transcript -- 11 Conclusion -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

A provocative and eye-opening history of how we have studied and theorized social interaction. In this ambitious, wide-ranging book, anthropologist Michael Lempert offers a conceptual history that explores how, why, and with what effects we have come to think of interactions as “scaled.” Focusing on the sciences of interaction in midcentury America, Lempert traces how they harnessed diverse tools and media technologies, from dictation machines to 16mm film, to study communication “microscopically.” In looking closely, many hoped to transform interaction: to improve efficiency, grow democracy, curb racism, and much else. Yet their descent into a microworld created troubles, with some critics charging that these scientists couldn’t see



the proverbial forest for the trees. Exploring talk therapy and group dynamics studies, social psychology and management science, conversation analysis, “micropolitics,” and more, Lempert shows how scale became a defining problem across the behavioral sciences. Ultimately, he argues, if we learn how our objects of study have been scaled in advance, we can better understand how we think and interact with them—and with each other—across disciplinary and ideological divides. Even as once-fierce debates over micro and macro have largely subsided, Lempert shows how scale lives on and continues to affect the ethics and politics of language and communication today.