Relational Being
Beyond Self and Community
1st Edition
Published on 29. September 2011
Book
Paperback/Softback
448 pages
978-0-19-984626-9 (ISBN)
Description
Relational Being first builds on the broad discontent with the individualist tradition in which the rational agent, or autonomous self, is considered the fundamental atom of social life. Speaking to scholars and social practitioners, the work sets out to develop and illustrate a far more radical and potentially exciting landscape of relational thought and practice. It carves out a space of understanding in which relational process stands prior to the very concept of the individual. More broadly, the book attempts to develop a thoroughgoing relational account of human activity.
As Gergen proposes, all meaning grows from coordinated action, or coaction, and thus, all that we hold to be real, rational, and valuable depends on the well-being of our relationships. Gergen reconstitutes "the mind" as a manifestation of relationships and bears out these ideas in everyday life and professional practices, including psychotherapy, collaborative classrooms, and organizational development. He questions the idea of mental illness, and focuses on therapy as a means of fostering relational recovery. Gergen also explores the ways in which what we call "knowledge" issues from communities, rather than from individual minds. The volume concludes with an innovative exploration of moral action and spirituality.
As Gergen proposes, all meaning grows from coordinated action, or coaction, and thus, all that we hold to be real, rational, and valuable depends on the well-being of our relationships. Gergen reconstitutes "the mind" as a manifestation of relationships and bears out these ideas in everyday life and professional practices, including psychotherapy, collaborative classrooms, and organizational development. He questions the idea of mental illness, and focuses on therapy as a means of fostering relational recovery. Gergen also explores the ways in which what we call "knowledge" issues from communities, rather than from individual minds. The volume concludes with an innovative exploration of moral action and spirituality.
Reviews / Votes
Winner of the Media Ecology Association's 2010 Erving Goffman Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Social Interaction!Winner of the 2009 PROSE award in Psychology!
More than 40 PROSE Awards, including the top prize, the R.R. Hawkins Award, were presented on February 4, 2010, at a special Awards Luncheon during the PSP Annual Conference at the Renaissance Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. A complete list of all winners can be found on the PROSE Awards website at:
http://www.proseawards.com/docs/2009-PROSE-Winners-Press-Release.doc.
Presented since 1976, the 2009 PROSE Awards received a record-breaking 441 entries--more than ever before in its 34-year history-- from more than 60 professional and scholarly publishers across the country.
"A marvelously likeable book, Relational Being faces us with an urgent and profound challenge. Jettisoning individualism entirely, Gergen demonstrates the sense and virtue of understanding all aspects of human reality through the lens of relationship. This argument for a new Enlightenment is a brave and passionate tour de force from one of our finest social scientists."--Benjamin Bradley, Chair, Psychology and Director, CSU Degree Initiative, Charles
Sturt University
"Relational Being is a milestone on the road toward the Next Enlightenment-- an enlightenment that re-constructs "the bounded self" with an understanding of the primacy of relational being. There is not a "sounding" in this towering manifesto that leaves things as they are. Once we acknowledge that we are interwoven threads in the intricate tapestry of relational process-- in which our destiny is among us as opposed to within-- everything changes. If
human connection can become as real to us as the traditional sense of individual separation, then our globally intimate future has a chance-- there is that much at stake in this forward-looking, pragmatic and
inspirational Kenneth Gergen classic!"--David Cooperrider, Fairmount Minerals Professor of Social Entrepreneurship, Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University
"This is a powerful, richly nuanced, evocative work; a stunning and brilliantly innovative pedagogical intervention. It provides ground zero-- the starting place for the next generation of theorists. Relational Being is a stunning accomplishment by one of America's major social theorists, and a visionary work." --Norman K. Denzin, Professor of Sociology, Cinema Studies, and Interpretive Theory, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
"A must-read for scholars, practitioners and the general public, this book gives promise and hope to our planet and our future well-being." --Harlene Anderson, Houston Galveston Institute
"Ken Gergen, the most original and insightful social psychologist of my generation, offers a hopeful and fresh framework for scholars and practitioners seeking a meaningful, useful, and creative approach to the cultural, political, personal, and professional struggles of our time. Professor Gergen writes with grace, compassion, and clarity and the story he tells is extraordinarily important and profound." --Arthur P. Bochner, Distinguinshed University Professor
of Communication, University of South Florida
"...Relational Being promises to be a significant and useful contribution to psychological literature."--PsycCRITIQUES
"Simply put, Gergen asks: If this is the sense of self that is afforded, then what does this mean for the lives we live, and the lives we might aspire to live? Relational Being responds to this (impossible) question. The book presents a contemporary and inspiring response to questions about being, spirituality, and the practices and relations of everyday life. Gergen's approach avoids moralistic undertones and dense theorizing to provide a simple
philosophy for everyday, postmodern life." -- International Journal of Communication
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Scholars in psychology, communication, sociology, education, organizational management, and theology, as well as those who practice psychotherapy, family therapy, and counseling
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 27 mm
Weight
761 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-984626-9 (9780199846269)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
12/2009
Oxford University Press Inc
€93.70
Shipment within 15-20 days
E-Book
07/2009
1st Edition
OUP eBook
€40.99
Available for download
E-Book
07/2009
1st Edition
OUP eBook
€40.99
Available for download
Person
Kenneth J. Gergen graduated from Yale University and received his PhD from Duke University. After teaching at Harvard University, he joined the Swarthmore College faculty as the Chair of the Psychology Department. He remains there as a Senior Research Professor. He is also the President of the Taos Institute. His work has received numerous awards throughout the world.
Content
Prologue: Toward a New Enlightenment ; Part I: From Bounded to Relational Being ; Chapter 1 - Bounded Being ; Self as Abuse ; Fundamental Isolation ; Unrelenting Evaluation ; The Search for Self-Esteem ; Self and Other ; Distrust and Derogation ; Relationships as Artifi ce ; The Culture of Bounded Being ; The Costs of Calculation ; Public Morality as Nuisance ; Transforming Tradition ; Chapter 2 - In the Beginning Is the Relationship ; Co-Action and Creation ; The Co-Creation of Everything ; Co-Action and Constraint ; Multiplicity and Malleability ; Relational Flow: Failing and Flourishing ; From Causality to Confl uence ; Chapter 3 - The Relational Self ; Being Unbound ; The Very Idea of Self-Knowledge ; Call in the Experts ; From Mind to Relationship ; Mind as Action in Relationship ; Reason as Relationship ; Agency: Intention as Action ; Experience and Memory: Not Mine but Ours ; Creativity as Relational Achievement ; Chapter 4 - The Body as Relationship: Emotion, Pleasure, and Pain ; The Emotions in History and Culture ; The Dance of the Emotions ; Relational Scenarios ; Disrupting Dangerous Dances ; Aren't the Emotions Biological? ; Bodily Pleasure: The Gift of Co-Action ; Pain: The Final Challenge ; Part II: Relational Being in Everyday Life ; Chapter 5 - Multi-Being and the Adventures of Everyday Life ; Multi-Being ; Early Precursors: Depth Psychology ; Contemporary Precursors: Living with Others ; Critique and Coherence ; Picturing Multi-Being ; Coordination: The Challenge of Flight ; Meeting and Mutuality ; Sustenance and Suppression ; Everyday Perils: Relations Among Relations ; Counter-Logics and Relational Deterioration ; The Arts of Coordination ; Understanding: Synchrony in Action ; Affirmation: The Birth and Restoration of Collaboration ; Appreciative Exploration ; Chapter 6 - Bonds, Barricades, and Beyond ; The Thrust Toward Bonding ; Cementing Bonds ; Negotiating the Real and the Good ; Narrative: From Self to Relationship ; The Enchanting of "We" ; Bonding and Boundaries ; Relational Severing ; Erosion of the Interior: United We Fall ; The Tyranny of Truth ; From Erosion to Annihilation ; Beyond the Barricades ; Hot Confl ict and Transformative Dialogue ; The Public Conversations Project ; Narrative Mediation ; Restorative Justice ; Part III Relational Being in Professional Practice ; Chapter 7 - Knowledge as Co-Creation ; Knowledge as Communal Construction ; Disturbing Disciplines ; Pervasive Antagonism ; Discipline and Debilitation ; The Elegant Suffi ciency of Ignorance ; Knowledge: For Whose Benefit? ; Toward Transcending Disciplines ; Interweaving Disciplines ; The Emerging Hybrids ; The Return of the Public Intellectual ; Writing as Relationship ; Writing in the Service of Relationship ; Writing as a Full Self ; Scholarship as Performance ; Research as Relationship ; Relational Alternatives in Human Research ; Narrative Inquiry: Entry into Otherness ; Action Research: Knowing With ; Chapter 8 - Education in a Relational Key ; Aims of Education Revisited ; Circles of Participation ; Relational Pedagogy in Action ; Circle 1: Teacher and Student ; Circle 2: Relations Among Students ; Collaborative Classrooms ; Collaborative Writing ; Circle 3: Classroom and Community ; Community Collaboration ; Cooperative Education ; Service Learning ; Circle 4: The Classroom and the World ; Circles Unceasing ; Chapter 9 - Therapy as Relational Recovery ; Therapy in Relational Context ; The Social Genesis of <"the Problem>" ; The Origins of Therapeutic Solutions ; Relational Consequences of Therapy ; A Contemporary Case: Mind and Meds ; Therapy: The Power of Coordinated Action ; Rejection and Affi rmation ; Suspending Realities ; Realities Replaced ; Expanding the Therapeutic Repertoire ; From Fixed Reality to Relational Flow ; Beyond Language: The Challenge of Effective Action ; Chapter 10 - Organizing: The Precarious Balance ; Organizing: Life Through Affi rmation ; Beware the Organization ; Suppression of Voices ; The Organization Against Itself ; Separation from Cultural Context ; Decision-Making as Relational Coordination ; Polyphonic Process: Lifting Every Voice ; Decision-Making Through Appreciative Inquiry ; From Leadership to Relational Leading ; From Evaluation to Valuation ; The Organization-in-the-World ; Part IV From the Moral to the Sacred ; Chapter 11- Morality: From Relativism to Relational Responsibility ; The Challenge of Moral Conduct ; Immorality Is Not the Problem ; Moralities Are the Problem ; Toward Second-Order Morality ; Relational Responsibility in Action ; From Co-Existence to Community ; Beyond the Beginning ; Chapter 12 - Approaching the Sacred ; Metaphors of the Relational ; The Procreative Act ; Systems Theory ; Actor Networks ; Distributed Cognition ; Biological Interdependence ; Process Philosophy ; The Buddha Dharma: Inter-Being ; The Sacred Potential of Relational Being ; Toward Sacred Practice ; Epilogue: The Coming of Relational Consciousness