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Biographical Objects
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.
224 pages, Paperback
First published May 11, 1998
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 5, 2018
Biographical Objects presents six intimate portraits of men and women living on the island of Sumba in the early 1980s. Thus outstanding ethnography moves adroitly from the masculine to the feminine, the personal and the political. The ritual descriptions are as good as anything you’ll find in Myerhoff, Geertz, or Turner, and Hoskins on her motorcycle, ever looking for a book, is every bit as adventurous, intelligent, and introspective as a young Margaret Mead. This is a must read for fellow ethnographers interested in narrative theory, ethnomusicology, and gender ethnology.
August 14, 2007
saya beli ini karena tertarik pada tajuknya: relasi antara benda-benda dengan manusia. lain dari itu juga tertarik pada area penelitian janet -yakni sumba- yang juga mengisi banyak kenangan bagi saya. sebelumnya, saya juga sudah punya buku janet yang lain, juga mengenai sumba [barat, tepatnya: kodi], yakni "the play of time".
ini adalah buku yang dikembangkan dari penelitian [1979 - 19881]untuk disertasi dia di ANU, dan bagian-bagiannya pernah diterbitkan secara terpisah di berbagai jurnal antropologi.
muncul di sana-sini nama appadurai, tambiah, james j.fox, clifford geertz dsb.
nggak sabar lagi nih...:-D
ini adalah buku yang dikembangkan dari penelitian [1979 - 19881]untuk disertasi dia di ANU, dan bagian-bagiannya pernah diterbitkan secara terpisah di berbagai jurnal antropologi.
muncul di sana-sini nama appadurai, tambiah, james j.fox, clifford geertz dsb.
nggak sabar lagi nih...:-D
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
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