Publication Information : Book Title : Discourse and the Construction of Society : Comparative Studies of Myth, Ritual, and Classification. Contributors : Bruce Lincoln – author, Bruce Lincoln – author. Publisher : Oxford US. Place of Publication : New York. Publication Year : 1989.
The studies that follow pursue the question of how certain specific modes of discourse-myth, ritual, and classification-can be, and have been, employed as effective instruments not only for the replication of established social forms (this much is well known), but more broadly for the construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction of society itself. Before we can turn to this topic, however, there is another that must be treated : No consideration of discourse is complete that does not also take account of force.Together, discourse and force are the chief means whereby social borders, hierarchies, institutional formations, and habituated patterns of behavior are both maintained and modified.