This paper belongs to of the Gothenburg Meeting Science Symposium
Richard Freeman, University of Edinburgh (School of Social and Political Science)
Abstract
When we do politics, what are we doing? The purpose of this paper is to produce an account of politics based in practice, that is in human action and interaction. It places the meeting at the centre of those actions and interactions.
I begin with Arendt’s idea that politics begins in plurality, that is in the human encounter; from interactionist sociology, I take the sense that the encounter is performed. I outline what recent work in practice theory and an associated array of ethnographic studies of politics might add to this understanding. (…) Read more