Auto/ethnography: Rewriting the Self and the Social

by Deborah Reed-Danahay (Editor)

Overview

In departing from the traditional stance taken by anthropologists, who study 'others' ethnographically, this timely book explores forms of self-inscription on the part of both the ethnographer and those 'others' who are studied. Informed by developments in postmodernism, postcolonialism, and feminism, this is an original contribution to the growing dialogue across disciplinary boundaries. The chapters build upon recent reconsiderations of the uses and meaning of personal narrative to examine the ways in which selves and social forms are culturally constituted through biographical genres. Ethnic autobiography, self-reflexivity in ethnography, and native ethnography raise provocative questions about a range of issues for the contemporary scholar: authenticity of voice; ethnographic authority; and the degree to which autoethnography constitutes resistance to hegemonic bodies of discourse. Examined here in a variety of cultural and political contexts, writing about the self offers challenging insights into the construction and transformation of identities and cultural meanings.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781859739754
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	08/01/1997
Series:	Explorations in Anthropology , #37
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	292
Product dimensions:	5.44(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Deborah Reed-Danahay is Professor of Anthropology at the University at Buffalo (SUNY), USA.

Table of Contents

Contents: Deborah Reed-Danahay, Introduction — Kay Warren, Narrating Cultural Resurgence: The Politics of Genre and Self-Representation for Mayan Activists — David Kideckel, Autoethnography as Political Resistance: A Case from Socialist Romania — Birgitta Svensson, The Power of Biography: Criminal Policy, Prison Life, and the Formation of Criminal Identities in the Swedish Welfare State — Michael Herzfeld, The Taming of Revolution: Intense Paradoxes of the Self — Henk Driessen, Lives Writ Large: Kabyle Self-Portraits and the Question of Identity — Deborah Reed-Danahay, Educational Narratives and the Ethnography of Autoethnography in Rural France — Alexandra Jaffe, Narrating the ‘I' versus narrating the ‘Isle': Life Histories and the Problem of Representation in Corsica — Pnina Motzafi-Haller, Writing ‘Birthright': On Native Anthropologists and the Politics of Representation — Caroline Brettell, Blurred Genres and Blended Voices: Life History, Biography, Autobiography and the Autoethnography of Women's Lives

Editorial Reviews

The different writings analysed in the book address major anthropological concerns because they make possible a better understanding of the self and the social in literary societies.” —Anthropological Quarterly

From the Publisher

The different writings analysed in the book address major anthropological concerns because they make possible a better understanding of the self and the social in literary societies.

Anthropological Quarterly