Chapter 1: Reinventing Social Relations and Processes: John Dewey and Trans-actions
Chapter 2: Causation is not everything: on constitution an dtrans-actional view of social science methodology
Chapter 3: There is More to Groups of People than Just Groups and People: On Trans-Actional Analysis and Nationalism Studies
Chapter 4: Trans-action, a processual and relational approach to organizations
Chapter 5: Trans-actions in Music
Chapter 6: The Emergence of Artistic Practice: From Self-Action to Trans-action
Chapter 7: Updating Dewey's Transactional Theory of Action in Connection with Evolutionary Theory
Chapter 8: From Inter-action to Trans-action: Ecologizing the Social Sciences
Chapter 9: Human language as trans-actional autopoiesis.
Christian Morgner’s (University of Leicester, UK) research interests include social justice, communication, social theory and development. He previously held a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at Hitotsubashi University, Japan, and was as a Research Affiliate at the University of Cambridge, UK. He has also held visiting fellowships at Yale University, USA; University of Lucerne, Switzerland; University of Leuven, Belgium, and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, France.
Engaging with three interconnected approaches in the social sciences (pragmatism, processual thinking, and relational thinking), this book leverages John Dewey and Arthur Bentley’s often misunderstood work Knowing and the Known and the concept of trans-action developed therein to revisit and redefine our perceptions of social relations and social life. As it moves us beyond essentialist notions of ‘self-action’ and ‘inter-action,’ trans-action allows us to perceive anew our understandings of ourselves, others, and the social fields, networks, organizations, and processes through which we make our way in the world. The contributors gathered here use these notions in a more specific sense, showing why and how social scientists and philosophers might use them to better understand our social life and social problems. As the first collective sociological attempt to apply the concept of trans-action to contemporary social issues, this volume is a key reference for the growing audience of relational and processual thinkers in the social sciences and beyond.