From Small Talk to Microaggression - by Michael Lempert

About the Book

"In this ambitious, wide-ranging book, anthropologist Michael Lempert offers a conceptual history that traces how, why, and with what effects interactions became "scaled." Focusing on US-based sciences of interaction from 1930 to 1980, Lempert meticulously traces our efforts to study conversation microscopically and shows how scale-making has defined pioneering work in sociology, anthropology, and linguistics, and how its legacy lives on to this day. From talk therapy to personality studies, social psychology, management science, conversation analysis, "micropolitics," and more, Lempert shows how scale became a defining problem across the behavioral sciences, and how new tools and technologies were developed to get to the heart of social life at its most granular. Ultimately, he argues that, by discovering how our objects of study have been scaled in advance, we can better understand how we think and interact with them, and with each other, across disciplinary and ideological divides"--

Book Synopsis

A provocative and eye-opening history of how we have studied and theorized social interaction.

In this ambitious, wide-ranging book, anthropologist Michael Lempert offers a conceptual history that explores how, why, and with what effects we have come to think of interactions as "scaled." Focusing on the sciences of interaction in midcentury America, Lempert traces how they harnessed diverse tools and media technologies, from dictation machines to 16mm film, to study communication "microscopically." In looking closely, many hoped to transform interaction: to improve efficiency, grow democracy, curb racism, and much else. Yet their descent into a microworld created troubles, with some critics charging that these scientists couldn't see the proverbial forest for the trees. Exploring talk therapy and group dynamics studies, social psychology and management science, conversation analysis, "micropolitics," and more, Lempert shows how scale became a defining problem across the behavioral sciences.

Ultimately, he argues, if we learn how our objects of study have been scaled in advance, we can better understand how we think and interact with them--and with each other--across disciplinary and ideological divides. Even as once-fierce debates over micro and macro have largely subsided, Lempert shows how scale lives on and continues to affect the ethics and politics of language and communication today.

Review Quotes

"In his book, he examines the history of interaction from sociological, anthropological and linguistic perspectives across many subjects and scales -- from small talk to microaggression."-- "Nature's "Books in Brief""

"Lempert has written an ingenious book: a microcosmic, interscalar history of the sciences of interaction, small talk, and conversation, which is full of delightful erudition. A philosophical reflection on the puzzles of scale--querying the small, the personal, and the micro at the largest of scales--across a century, in scientific labs and Freudian offices, behind one-way mirrors, and in consciousness-raising meetings. Small is beautiful once more."-- "Christopher M. Kelty, University of California, Los Angeles"

"Remarkable in its scholarly range, Lempert's book traces a century of disputes about scale in the social sciences of language. The work is meticulous and vividly argued. It will be controversial, revealing recurrent, productive tensions across disciplines: psychiatry, small group research, feminist and anti-racist activism."-- "Susan Gal, University of Chicago"

About the Author

Michael Lempert is professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Discipline and Debate: The Language of Violence in a Tibetan Buddhist Monastery, coauthor of Creatures of Politics: Media, Message, and the American Presidency, and coeditor of Scale: Discourse and Dimensions of Social Life.