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. Along with the concepts of social role, social group, social network, social class, and social structure, the notion of impersonality is one of the pillars of the sociological imagination: the ability to think beyond individuals and see them as members of particular social categories. Although almost every sociologist is at least implicitly cognizant of the fundamental contrast between personalness and impersonality, it has yet to be explicitly conceptualized. Don''t Take It Personally comprehensively addresses the fundamental distinction between the specific and generic visions of personhood. Over the course of the book, Eviatar Zerubavel articulates the fundamental features of impersonality; the process of producing impersonality; the impersonal logic underlying the notion of individuals as countable quantities; the relationship between modernity and impersonality; and considers what is gained and what is lost by impersonalizing so much of social life. Drawing on fascinating examples from diverse social contexts, Don''t Take It Personally introduces a general framework to better understand the deeper connection between seemingly disparate phenomena, from racial profiling and hate crimes to "secret Santa" gifting.

• | Author: Eviatar Zerubavel
• | Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc
• | Publication Date: Mar 05, 2024
• | Number of Pages:
• | Language:
• | Binding: Paperback / softback
• | ISBN-13: 9780197691342
• | ISBN-10: 019769134X