The Playing Self: Person and Meaning in the Planetary Society

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Cambridge University Press, Jul 13, 1996 - Philosophy - 177 pages
The Playing Self is a groundbreaking new work from influential cultural sociologist and clinical psychologist Alberto Melucci, best known for his work on social movements and collective identities. In this book, he delves deeper into questions about the self as both a psychological and socio-cultural entity, particularly in the context of a global society for which information has become a basic resource. His phenomenological approach accounts for the self both as a site of highly subjective and intimate experiences, such as crying, laughing and loving, and in relation to social structural dynamics, through more impersonal experiences, such as the experience of time, and links of the self to politics. Melucci explores the critical search for meaning at the boundary of visible collective processes and individual day-to-day experience.
 

Contents

Introduction page
1
The challenge of the everyday
7
Needs identity normality
24
Metamorphosis of the multiple self
42
The inner planet
57
Body as limit body as message
71
On taking care
83
The abyss of difference
99
Amorous senses
117
Inhabiting the earth
126
A eulogy to wonder
133
Epilogue
144
Bibliographical note
155
References
162
Index
175
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