Acting Human

Abstract

This book began by noting similarities and parallels between, on the one hand, the way that individuals reflect on their private lives and social environment, both locally and globally, and, on the other, the disciplines we call the social sciences. Each of its chapters has focused on key issues in the everyday lives of society’s individual members — for example, on health and illness, sexuality, self-identity, and work. These are areas that engage us constantly, both in thought and in practice. At times they are a focus for conscious thought or for explicit conversations with friends and family where we try to make sense of ourselves and our world. At other times they are an implicit concern, reflected, for example, in the way we may search for specific items when we shop, or ponder on the effects of our appearance, conversation or actions upon other people. Sense-making, or mapping, is therefore an almost constant focus within people’s lives, whether they engage with it as a conscious practice (what Giddens (1984) calls discursive consciousness), or whether it is something that underlies activities apparently oriented towards other ends (Giddens’ practical consciousness — see Chapter 1).