Personal Narrative (Social and Cultural Anthropology)

Vered Tohar, "Soul of Saul: The life, narrative, and proverbs of a Transylvanian-Israeli grandfather [Ilana Rosen], Journal of Indian Folkloristics 12 no. 1/2 (2010), 109-112.

by Vered Tohar

Sailors as Scribes: Travel Discourse and the (Con)textualization of the Khoikhoi at the Cape of Good Hope, 1649-90

by Henry Trotter

Journal of African Travel-Writing, 8 & 9 (2001): 30-44

Travel narratives have been one of the primary means by which Europeans learned about the rest of the world. This... more Travel narratives have been one of the primary means by which Europeans learned about the rest of the world. This paper examines how travel narratives concerning the Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) from 1649 to 1690 utilized specific images of the Khoikhoi to serve either Dutch imperial intentions or a larger European cultural project. In both cases, writing was utilized as a technology of representation: texts served as tools in the construction of a Euro-managed Khoikhoi identity.

The paper is based on sailors' accounts. Between 1649 and 1690 at least eighty-eight reports of the Cape of Good Hope were written by sailors, many of them quoted by later academics and imperial strategists. This paper focuses on the most popular and representative of these writings. It first looks at how Khoikhoi were represented as "strategic shepherds", as herders who were seen as important assets in the Dutch colonial establishment at the Cape. It then investigates how travellers tapped into and enhanced the trope of the godless savage, extending this rather popular stereotype to Khoikhoi as part of European understanding of the "other". Finally it examines how local Cape peoples were valued as ethnographic specimens.

Uma relação difícil: A trama da religião em tempos de política

by L. Nicolás Guigou

ANÁLISE DE DISCURSO E ANTROPOLOGIA

by L. Nicolás Guigou

Guigou, L. Nicolás. 2009. "Ciberespacio, memoria y tradición. Las artes de construir el tiempo en la alta modernidad". Civitas - Revista de Ciências Sociais, num. Mayo-Agosto, pp. 177-184.

by L. Nicolás Guigou

Guigou, L. Nicolás. 2009. "Ciberespacio, memoria y tradición. Las artes de construir el tiempo en la alta modernidad". Civitas - Revista de Ciências Sociais, num. Mayo-Agosto, pp. 177-184.

We intend to point out some of the characteristics of the cyberspace dimensions within contemporaneity. These... more We intend to point out some of the characteristics of the cyberspace dimensions within contemporaneity. These dimensions cannot obliterate their necessary relation with the imaginary, memories and traditions that deepen other temporalities, combining themselves with the finitude of the time marked by the technification and virtualization of the world.

Memoria, trayectos, recorridos (parte I ).

by L. Nicolás Guigou

Dosmil 30. Montevideo: 2009.

A MODO DE (RE) PRESENTACIÓN
Estas escrituras intentan ser parte de un conjunto
de entramados etnográficos... more A MODO DE (RE) PRESENTACIÓN
Estas escrituras intentan ser parte de un conjunto
de entramados etnográficos que comienzan antes
y evidentemente, terminan después del que
escribe (e inscribe) este texto. Dar punto final a
una investigación parece resultar una de las
tantas ficciones etnográficas.

'Historical Relations': Modes of Discourse in Michael Ondaatje's Running in the Family

by John Thieme

Hard copy only -- published in India and UK:

Journal of Indian Writing in English, 16, 2 (1988): 136-46;

repr. in Narrative Strategies in Canadian Literature: Feminism and Postcolonialism, ed. Coral A. Howells and Lynette Hunter, Milton Keynes and Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1991: 40-48.

Please contact author if you have difficulty obtaining a copy.

Writing After Long Silence

by J. David Velleman

Prepared for a workshop on "Life-Writing" at the Huntington Library. Unpublished: do not cite or quote.

About the life stories in Helen Fremont's After Long Silence, a memoir about discovering that her Polish Catholic... more About the life stories in Helen Fremont's After Long Silence, a memoir about discovering that her Polish Catholic parents were Jewish refugees from the Holocaust.

2008 Observaciones de la Comunidad Aymara de Quillagua al proyecto "Pampa Hermosa" presentado por Sociedad Química Minera de Chile SQM S.A.

by Alonso Barros

(in Spanish) Co-authored with the Aymara community of Quillagua in opposition to a groundwater extraction project in community territory

2004 Crónica de una etnia anunciada: Nuevas perspectivas de investigación a 10 años de vigencia de la Ley Indígena en San Pedro de Atacama

by Alonso Barros

(in Spanish) This paper considers the Chilean government's lack of willingness to implement the 1993 Ley Indígena, the underpinning racializing practices and the effects of this artificial implementation gap on indigenous rights and autonomy.

Review on When I was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago

by Niki Incorvia

Cultural politics in personal narratives of Caribbean heritage in Britain

by Brian Alleyne

Alleyne, B., 2006. Cultural Politics and Caribbean Narratives. In J. Besson & K. F. Olwig, eds. Caribbean Narratives of Belonging: Fields of Relations, Sites of Identity. Macmillan Caribbean.

In this essay I use a case study of a cultural activist project in order to explore the value of autobiographical... more In this essay I use a case study of a cultural activist project in order to explore the value of autobiographical narrative for sociological understanding of the cultural politics of postwar Caribbean settlement in Britain. In presenting the following account, I am seeking an interpretative understanding of a group of persons and their milieu. My account, typically for the human sciences, is bound in a double hermeneutic: my own descriptions and interpretations are interwoven with the descriptions and interpretations of my informants. Three ideas shape my approach in what follows: imagination, the life seen as a project, and praxis.

Şiddetin Eleştirisi: Diyarbakır Askeri Cezaevi (1980-1984)

by Onur Gunay

Writing Their Own Lives: Working Class Women and the Personal Narrative in Composition

by Lindsey Bartlett

"Cleavage is Public Property:" A Reflection on Self-Exoticization and Mitigation in Female Bodily Praxis

by Tara McGovern

This is just a draft of a personal-ethnography paper written for a Gender Studies class.  At some point I will crank out a better draft and try to get it published in Ms. or something, per my professor's recommendation.  Any feedback is welcome!

For my "Women's Lives" class this past spring, one assignment was was to not look in a mirror for 24 hours... more For my "Women's Lives" class this past spring, one assignment was was to not look in a mirror for 24 hours and then analyze the experience.  It prompted me to intensely scrutinize my conscious and unconscious rationalizations for my own bodily praxis.  I explore the history, social meanings, and power relations indexed by my cleavage as the center of my selective performance of gender. I conclude that I engage in what I call "self-exoticization" in order to mitigate the hyperfeminimity of my body and remove myself from the established gendered order of my university's culture. 

Against narrativity (final 2008 version)

by Galen Strawson

I argue against two popular claims. The first is a descriptive, empirical thesis about the nature of ordinary human... more I argue against two popular claims. The first is a descriptive, empirical thesis about the nature of ordinary human experience which I call the psychological Narrativity thesis: 'each of us constructs and lives a “narrative” … this narrative is us, our identities' (Oliver Sacks). The second is a normative, ethical claim which I call the ethical Narrativity thesis: we ought to live our lives narratively, or as a story; a 'basic condition of making sense of ourselves is that we grasp our lives in a narrative' and have an understanding of our lives 'as an unfolding story' (Charles Taylor); a person 'creates his identity (only) by forming an autobiographical narrative—a story of his life', and must be in possession of a full and 'explicit narrative (of his life) to develop fully as a person' (Marya Schechtman).

keywords: narrative, Narrativity, Diachronic personality, Episodic personality, non-narrative, anti-narrative, person, memory, story-telling, I*

Becoming Sissy - A response to David McInnes

by Cristyn Davies

Includes D. McInnes chapter first.  Judith Butler in Conversation: Analysing the texts and talk of everyday life, B. Davies (ed.),  New York: Routledge, 2008, pp.117-133.

Having, and Being Had By, “Experience” Or, “Experience” in the Social Sciences After the Discursive/ Poststructuralist Turn

by Cristyn Davies

Co-authored with Bronwyn Davies. Qualitative Inquiry, vol. 13, no.8, 2007, pp.1139-1159.

Une Désillusion Narrative? De Bourdieu à Ricoeur en Sociologie

by Gérôme Truc

Paru dans la revue "Tracés", n°8, 2005, p. 47-67.

Depuis 1990, date de parution de Soi-même comme un autre, de nombreux sociologues font référence à Paul Ricœur.... more Depuis 1990, date de parution de Soi-même comme un autre, de nombreux sociologues font référence à Paul Ricœur. Certains voient dans la notion d’« identité narrative» un moyen d’analyser autrement qu’en termes d’illusions des dimensions de l’identité personnelle laissées dans l’ombre par la notion bourdieusienne d’habitus. Pierre Bourdieu a néanmoins discrédité par avance toute velléité de recourir au récit en ce domaine, dénonçant dès 1986 «l’illusion biographique». Cet article propose une relecture attentive de ces deux textes de référence, en vue de déterminer si d’une part l’usage sociologique de la philosophie de Paul Ricœur permet de sortir définitivement du paradigme de l’illusion, et si d’autre part cet usage tient effectivement compte de toutes les conséquences de ce transfert conceptuel. En soulignant les points communs et ceux de divergences (donc les lieux possibles d’une complémentarité), il propose une explicitation des conceptions de l’homme sous-jacentes à ces cadres d’analyses distincts et de leurs implications éthiques.