A Thrice-Told Tale

A Thrice-Told Tale
Author :
Publisher : Stanford University Press
Total Pages : 172
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0804719802
ISBN-13 : 9780804719803
Rating : 4/5 (02 Downloads)

Book Synopsis A Thrice-Told Tale by : Margery Wolf

Download or read book A Thrice-Told Tale written by Margery Wolf and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1992-04 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Thrice-Told Tale is one ethnographer's imaginative and powerful response to the methodological issues raised by feminist and postmodernist critics of traditional ethnography. The author, a feminist anthropologist, uses three texts developed out of her research in Taiwan--a piece of fiction, anthropological fieldnotes, and a social science article--to explore some of these criticisms. Each text takes a different perspective, is written in a different style, and has different "outcomes," yet all three involve the same fascinating set of events. A young mother began to behave in a decidedly abherrant, perhaps suicidal manner, and opinion in her village was sharply divided over the reason. Was she becoming a shaman, posessed by a god? Was she deranged, in need of physical restraint, drugs, and hospitalization? Or was she being cynically manipulated by her ne'er-do-well husband to elicit sympathy and money from her neighbors? In the end, the woman was taken away from the area to her mother's house. For some villagers, this settled the matter; for others the debate over her behavior was probably never truly resolved. The first text is a short story written shortly after the incident, which occurred almost thrity years ago; the second text is a copy of the fieldnotes collected about the events covered in the short story; the third text is an article published in 1990 in American Ethnologist that analyzes the incident from the author's current perspective. Following each text is a Commentary in which the author discusses such topics as experimental ethnography, polyvocality, authorial presence and control, reflexivity, and some of the differences between fiction and ethnography. The three texts are framed by two chapters in which the author discusses the genereal problems posed by feminist and postmodernist critics of ethnography and presents her personal exploration of these issues in an argument that is strongly self-reflexive and theoretically rigorous. She considers some feminist concerns over colonial research methods and takes issues with the insistence of some feminists tha the topics of ethnographic research be set by those who are studied. The book concludes with a plea for ethnographic responsibility based on a less academic and more practical perspective.


A Thrice-Told Tale Related Books

A Thrice-Told Tale
Language: en
Pages: 172
Authors: Margery Wolf
Categories: Social Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 1992-04 - Publisher: Stanford University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A Thrice-Told Tale is one ethnographer's imaginative and powerful response to the methodological issues raised by feminist and postmodernist critics of traditio
Thrice Told Tales
Language: en
Pages: 148
Authors: Catherine Lewis
Categories: Juvenile Nonfiction
Type: BOOK - Published: 2013-08-27 - Publisher: Simon and Schuster

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Three Blind Mice. Three Blind Mice. See how they run? No. See how they can make all sorts of useful literary elements colorful and easy to understand! Can one n
Thrice Told Tales
Language: en
Pages: 282
Authors: Diane Holmberg
Categories: Psychology
Type: BOOK - Published: 2003-10-03 - Publisher: Routledge

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Researchers have studied marriage for decades, but how is the transition to married life actually experienced by the couples involved? From an insider's perspec
History of Science, History of Text
Language: en
Pages: 283
Authors: Karine Chemla
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2005-08-01 - Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

two main (interacting) ways. They constitute that with which exploration into problems or questions is carried out. But they also constitute that which is excha
Kissing the Witch
Language: en
Pages: 243
Authors: Emma Donoghue
Categories: Juvenile Fiction
Type: BOOK - Published: 1999-02-27 - Publisher: Harper Collins

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Thirteen tales are unspun from the deeply familiar, and woven anew into a collection of fairy tales that wind back through time. Acclaimed Irish author Emma Don