Oral Narratives (oral + narrative)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Poetics of Conduct: Oral Narrative and Moral Being in a South Indian Town by Leela Prasad

AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Issue 4 2009
NICOLA TANNENBAUM
No abstract is available for this article. [source]


Mythico-History, Social Memory, and Praxis: Anthropological Approaches and Directions

HISTORY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 3 2009
Susan Rasmussen
This article explores the interface and tension between myth, history, and memory, in relation to ideology and praxis of identity. There is a critical overview of anthropological and other approaches in the humanities and social sciences to ,mythico-history' and social memory, their mutual influences, and current debates and directions in this literature. In particular, emphasis is upon the uses of oral narratives in historiography and social context in the constructions of personal and collective identities of difference, for example, ethnicity and gender in ,narratives of nation' and ,myths of matriliny' and their connections to social practice, drawing on secondary cross-cultural data and primary data from this anthropologist's research in Tuareg (Kel Tamajaq) communities of northern Niger and Mali. [source]


Stories of Rural Accumulation in Africa: Trajectories and Transitions among Rural Capitalists in Senegal

JOURNAL OF AGRARIAN CHANGE, Issue 4 2007
CARLOS OYA
This paper analyzes primary qualitative evidence from life histories of rural capitalists in contemporary Senegal. Various common themes in the declining literature on rural capitalism in Africa are discussed with reference to the specific individual trajectories of rural farm capitalists in Senegal. The themes include the emergence of rural capitalism in the context of protracted, uneven and gradual rural social differentiation and the various processes that have accompanied it; the condition of ,entrepreneurship' in such changing historical contexts; the symbiotic relationship between different spaces (loci) of accumulation, especially trade, transport and farming and the historical context in which they take place; the crucial but sometimes contradictory role of the state in spurring or constraining rural capitalist accumulation; and the variety of ,idioms of accumulation', which reflect transitions and synthesis between non-capitalist and capitalist forms of labour surplus appropriation at the level of individual capitalists, despite some uniformity in the general logic of capital and the spread of capitalist relations of production and exchange. The paper also discusses the methodological power and limitations of oral narratives as a method to gather evidence on long-term processes of agrarian change and accumulation in rural Africa. Finally, the life histories shed some light on the origins of rural capitalists and show that there is a combination of instances of ,capitalism from above' and ,from below' but that no dominant pattern can be clearly discerned at least in the space of one or two generations. [source]


Beyond the Test: L2 Dynamic Assessment and the Transcendence of Mediated Learning

MODERN LANGUAGE JOURNAL, Issue 3 2007
MATTHEW E. POEHNER
A major preoccupation in assessment is connecting examinees' performance in assessment and nonassessment contexts. This preoccupation has traditionally been framed in terms of generalizability. This article reconceptualizes this problem from a qualitatively different perspective on human abilities and their development, namely, the Sociocultural Theory of Mind outlined in the work of Vygotsky (1986, 1998). From this perspective, assessment occurs not in isolation from instruction but as an inseparable feature of it. Assessment and instruction are dialectically integrated as a single activity that seeks to understand development by actively promoting it. This pedagogical approach, known as Dynamic Assessment (DA), challenges the widespread acceptance of independent performance as the privileged indicator of individuals' abilities and calls for assessors to abandon their role as observers of learner behavior in favor of a commitment to joint problem solving aimed at supporting learner development. In DA, the traditional goal of producing generalizations from a snapshot of performance is replaced by ongoing intervention in development. Following Vygtosky's argument that true development goes beyond improvement on a given assessment task, DA practitioners have devised a method known as transcendence (TR), in which they collaborate with learners on increasingly complex tasks. In this article, transcendence in the second language (L2) domain is illustrated with examples of advanced learners of French composing oral narratives with support from a mediator. The article concludes with recommendations for future research on TR in L2 development. [source]


Younger brother and fishing hook on Timor: reassessing Mauss on hierarchy and divinity

THE JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE, Issue 1 2007
David Hicks
Marcel Mauss, in two of his most influential papers, proposed conflicting perspectives on the status relationship between gods and human beings. In an earlier study (1888), written in collaboration with Henri Hubert, he contended that the gifts given in ritual sacrifice by human beings to divinity are important, even necessary, for the existence of their gods. Hence the status relationship between the divine and human contains some degree of parity. In his later paper, ,Essai sur le don', however, Mauss emphasized the superiority of divinity, so much so that human beings were now decisively relegated to a condition of subordination. This article argues in support of Mauss's (and Hubert's) original thesis by adducing as evidence a set of five oral narratives from Timor that suggest human beings may in certain circumstances gain a measure of superiority over the divine, and demonstrates that in each narrative the agents by which this superiority is accomplished are the younger brother and a fishing hook or equivalent artefact which intrude from the quotidian world into the realm of spirit. Its findings suggest that recent propositions arguing for the interactive influence of material artefacts on human values are tenable and that the role of narrative as a medium of communication be reaffirmed as a prime forum for religious reflexivity. [source]