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Telic Reflections: Interactional Processes, as Such
Author(s) -
Perinbanayagam R. S.
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
symbolic interaction
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.874
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1533-8665
pISSN - 0195-6086
DOI - 10.1525/si.2003.26.1.67
Subject(s) - telos , silence , variety (cybernetics) , sociology , process (computing) , psychology , aesthetics , epistemology , social psychology , computer science , philosophy , artificial intelligence , operating system
Interactional processes, conducted through symbols of various kinds, are the primal events in human life and, therefore, the primary site also for all social scientific inquiries. The implications of such a claim for a variety of sociological issues are then examined: the “individual” should be conceptualized as an interactive agent; the symbolic processes that she or he undertakes are both pragmatic and artistic exercises; selves emerge out of such exercises and face various “contingencies” as the individuals who bear them advance through various trajectories of their lives, each such moment having its own telos, just as the trajectory will have its particular telic process. only in silence the word only in dark the light, only in dying life bright the hawk's flight on the empty sky — Ursula Le Guin