Biographical Objects
How Things Tell the Stories of Peoples' Lives
1st Edition
Published on 13. September 2013
224 pages
978-1-136-67864-6 (ISBN)
Description
In this innovative study, six women and men from Eastern Indonesia narrate their own lives by talking about their possessions--domestic objects used to construct a coherent identity through a process of identification and self-historicizing. Janet Hoskins explores how things are given biographical significance and entangled in sexual politics, expressed in dualistic metaphors where the familiar distinctions between person and object and female and male are drawn in unfamiliar ways. Biographical Objects is an ethnography of persons which takes the form of a study of things, showing how the object is not only a metaphor for the self but a pivot for reflexivity and introspection, a tool for autobiographic elaboration, a way of knowing oneself through things.
Reviews / Votes
"[T]he book's heart really lies in the vicissitudes of personal experience, and the ethnographer's relationships with certain individuals. In this respect, the book properly takes its place among other recent works that center on the particularities of experience. Here the author's long fieldwork in Kodi serves her well." -- Indonesia"The stories are beautifully told, and Hoskins makes it easy to enjoy them. ...she is a very welcome guide, helping the reader follow the chains of metaphors that turn experience into poetry. Any student who has suffered through Saussure and Levi-Strauss deserves the pleasure of reading this book." -- The Journal of Asian Studies
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
Reflowable
File size
4,28 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-136-67864-6 (9781136678646)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
06/1998
Routledge
€112.85
Article exhausted; check different version
Book
05/1998
1st Edition
Routledge
€74.30
Shipment within 15-20 days
Person
Janet Hoskins is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Southern California. She is the author of The Play of Time: Kodi Perspectives on Calendars,History and Exchange (1993), winner of the 1996 Benda prize in Southeast Asian studies.
Content
Chapter 1 Introduction; Chapter 2 The Betel Bag; Chapter 3 Domesticating Animals and Wives; Chapter 4 The Royal Snake Shroud; Chapter 5 Spindles and Spinsters; Chapter 6 The Drum and Masculinity; Chapter 7 Green Bottles and Green Death; Chapter 8 Conclusions;
