Body Language And Social Order: Communication As Behavioral Control
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Fair
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
What if the most powerful messages we send have nothing to do with words? Body Language and Social Order: Communication as Behavioral Control presents a groundbreaking scientific examination of nonverbal communication, arguing that human posture, gesture, and spatial positioning are not mere accessories to speech but are, in fact, the primary architecture of social control. Drawing on decades of psychiatric and behavioural research, Albert E. Scheflen, with co-author Alice Scheflen, systematically details how individuals unconsciously regulate one another's behaviour through a complex grammar of bodily signals, from courtship displays and territorial positioning to the subtle postural shifts that govern group dynamics and power hierarchies. Rooted in the disciplines of kinesics and systems theory, this work stands as a landmark contribution to the fields of psychology, anthropology, and communication studies. Scheflen's methodology is rigorously observational, drawing on filmed interactions to decode the structured, rule-governed nature of nonverbal behaviour — a approach that gives the text an almost cinematic precision. The central argument, that social order is not merely spoken into existence but is continuously negotiated through the body, carries unsettling implications for how we understand authority, conformity, and human connection — leaving the reader to wonder just how much of their own behaviour is truly their own.
Author: Albert E. Scheflen
Format: Paperback
Published: 1972, Prentice-Hall
Genre: Psychology
Condition remarks:
Book: Fair
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
What if the most powerful messages we send have nothing to do with words? Body Language and Social Order: Communication as Behavioral Control presents a groundbreaking scientific examination of nonverbal communication, arguing that human posture, gesture, and spatial positioning are not mere accessories to speech but are, in fact, the primary architecture of social control. Drawing on decades of psychiatric and behavioural research, Albert E. Scheflen, with co-author Alice Scheflen, systematically details how individuals unconsciously regulate one another's behaviour through a complex grammar of bodily signals, from courtship displays and territorial positioning to the subtle postural shifts that govern group dynamics and power hierarchies. Rooted in the disciplines of kinesics and systems theory, this work stands as a landmark contribution to the fields of psychology, anthropology, and communication studies. Scheflen's methodology is rigorously observational, drawing on filmed interactions to decode the structured, rule-governed nature of nonverbal behaviour — a approach that gives the text an almost cinematic precision. The central argument, that social order is not merely spoken into existence but is continuously negotiated through the body, carries unsettling implications for how we understand authority, conformity, and human connection — leaving the reader to wonder just how much of their own behaviour is truly their own.