Srubar I (2018)
Publication Type: Book chapter / Article in edited volumes
Publication year: 2018
Publisher: De Gruyter Saur
Edited Volumes: Relevance and Irrelevance
Series: Age of Access? Grundfragen der Informationsgesellschaft
Book Volume: 9
Pages Range: 209-221
DOI: 10.1515/9783110472509-010
The formation of cultural worlds happens through selective mechanisms inherent to social action and communication. In social theory such selectivity is often thematized as the problem of relevance, i.e. as the problem of preferences orienting action and transforming open possibilities into the reality of specific life forms. The article thematizes the selective "machineries" of pragmatic relevance working in habitus, language, institutions, discourses and narratives. It argues that approaching the formation of cultural life forms from this point of view confronts us with the fact that the selective processes do not annihilate the excluded possibilities, which instead remain on the horizon of the respective universe of meaning while still forming its order. The mutual relation of relevance and the irrelevant within the construction of social reality is discussed in the final part of the paper.
APA:
Srubar, I. (2018). The Relevance of the Irrelevant. In Jan v. Strassheim, Hisashi Nasu (Eds.), Relevance and Irrelevance. (pp. 209-221). De Gruyter Saur.
MLA:
Srubar, Ilja. "The Relevance of the Irrelevant." Relevance and Irrelevance. Ed. Jan v. Strassheim, Hisashi Nasu, De Gruyter Saur, 2018. 209-221.
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