Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

An outline of the theory and the book

1 Looking for culture, looking at things

Social/cultural

Cultural communities

The cultural subject

Summary

2 Meaning and signification

The problem of reference

Two kinds of concepts

The internalisation of meaning

Claims and bids

Summary

3 Culture as textuality

Base-texts and result-texts

The operational memory

Organisation of knowledge

Standards and codes

Summary

4 Culture as a network of practices

The cultural role: functions and goals of a practice

The social position: the carrier and status of a practice

Materials and rules

Cultural institutions

Summary

5 Case Study I: The metaphysics of love and the beginnings of Italian vernacular poetry

Italian political landscape in the 13th century: the bidding space

The poetic context

The carriers of the practice

The science of love as privileged knowledge

Vulgare, the medium

Institutions and textuality

Summary

6 Case Study II: Art and politics in Eastern Europe in the 1990s

The institutions

The carriers

Textuality, codes and languages

Summary

7 Concluding remarks

A few final words

References

Index

About the Author

Rein Raud is Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Helsinki and a Senior Research Fellow in Cultural Theory at Tallinn University

Reviews

"A high wire act of cultural theorizing, ambitious and original. Raud pushes the textual tradition of semiotics further than anybody has ever done, into situated, existential practices and circulating cultural institutions. The case studies are fascinating in themselves and illustrate how Raud's theory might work in practice."
—Jeffrey Alexander, Yale University "Professor Raud's range is amazing and his book combines in an exciting way perspectives which usually are kept separate. His voice, coming from a less well-known tradition, adds a genuinely new element."
—Maurice Bloch, The London School of Economics and Political Science "Meaning in Action would be worth reading for the ambition and importance of its project alone, but Raud's thorough analysis of the fundamentals of culture make this an extremely worthwhile read, and one that I think may spawn a vital discussion about the basic conceptual structure of culture itself."
—Cultural Sociology