Life histories and the perspective of the present

2004 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaretha Järvinen

The purpose of the article is to suggest a development of the narrative life history tradition along the lines represented by George Herbert Mead and Paul Ricoeur. This theoretical approach is presented as an alternative to both subjectivist approaches, that continue the search for the solitary, true self behind the life histories, and to structuralist approaches, in which the self and its past experience disappears. In the article a theoretical framework is sketched that a) focuses on “the perspective of the present” but does not lose sight of the past, and b) emphasizes the interactionist dimensions of life histories but also pays attention to the self and its ongoing projects. The reasonings of Mead and Ricoeur are applied to a series of empirical examples, drawn from different areas of life history research. (Time, Narrative, Emplotment, Life Histories, Self, Mead, Ricoeur)

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alia Afiyati ◽  
Divya Widyastuti ◽  
Yoga Pratama

In a literary work, two characters can be narrated as the attention center that contains the cultural identity from certain generation. Meanwhile, a symbol actually can cause an interaction within characters. This research discusses about cultural identity and symbolic interactionism reflected in a novel. There is a novel entitled “Recipe for a Perfect Wife” by Karma Brown that tells about two female characters that are represented as a housewife from different generation. This research uses descriptive qualitative as the research methodology and content  analysis as the method in analyzing the object of the research, a novel entitled “Recipe for a Perfect Wife”. This research also uses the intrinsic approach to analyze the characterization, plot, and setting. This research reveals two kinds of a housewife. They are a housewife and working woman, and a full-housewife. This research finds five cultural identities in the past and present time that is related with a housewife reflected by two female characters in the novel by using cultural identity theory by Stuart Hall. This research also reveals the symbol and memory even three concepts of symbolic interactionism that is mind, self, and society based on symbolic interactionism theory by George Herbert Mead.


Inner Asia ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuki Konagaya

AbstractIn this article I introduce our collection of oral histories composed of life histories recorded between 2001 and 2006. First, I discuss some devices implemented in the process of collecting life histories, which was to make oral histories 'polyphonic'. I then suggest that oral history always has a 'dual' tense, in that people talk about 'the past' from the view point of 'the present'. This is illustrated by six cases of statesmen narrating their views about socialist modernisation. Finally, using one of the cases, I demonstrate the co-existence of non-official or private opinions along with official opinions about the socialist period in life-history narratives in the post-socialist period. I call this 'ex-post value'.


Author(s):  
Hans Joas

Together with Charles Peirce, William James and John Dewey, George Herbert Mead is considered one of the classic representatives of American pragmatism. He is most famous for his ideas about the specificities of human communication and sociality and about the genesis of the ‘self’ in infantile development. By developing these ideas, Mead became one of the founders of social psychology and – mostly via his influence on the school of symbolic interactionism – one of the most influential figures in contemporary sociology. Compared to that enormous influence, other parts of his philosophical work are relatively neglected.


2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-46
Author(s):  
Magnus Granberg

This analysis of the work of George Herbert Mead and Alfred Sohn-Rethel compares their respective accounts of the formation of the self. The analysis proceeds from two important similarities: the effort to understand self-consciousness not as primordial but as the product of social processes, and the view that these processes form a circuit: the self arises from consciousness’ return to itself, concluding a movement whereby consciousness is first externalized onto objects and then internalized, taking on the insular shape of self-consciousness. What sets the two accounts apart is the site from whence the self returns: objects. In Mead, the self returns from meaningful objects, and this same (intersubjective) meaning is entangled with the process of self-formation. In contrast, for Sohn-Rethel, the self returns from objects whose meaning is not established intersubjectively but objectively: the self is the unintended consequence of commodity exchange. In Mead, interaction among people affords meaning to objects and thus evokes the self; in Sohn-Rethel, interaction among commodities evokes an objective meaning that renders people as selves. Interpretative sociology should attend to the objectively and unconsciously meaningful forms analyzed by Sohn-Rethel. To illustrate this conclusion, reference is made to a certain experience of the social under neoliberalism.


1957 ◽  
Vol 89 (11) ◽  
pp. 502-506 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. W. Wood ◽  
W. T. A. Neilson

As part of a comprehensive investigation on insects affecting the low-bush blueberry carried on in New Brunswick during the past eight years, the writers accumulated considerable information on several species of climbing cutworms that previously received little attention. Life-history notes on four species are presented in this paper: Graphiphora smithi (Snell.), Graphiphora collaris (G. & R.), Eucirrhoedia pampina (Gn.), and Heptagrotis phyllophora (Grt.). Each species by itself is not considered as a serious pest of blueberry, but these and other species may cause an appreciable reduction in the blueberry crop.


2006 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 689-704 ◽  
Author(s):  
PAUL HOGGETT ◽  
PHOEBE BEEDELL ◽  
LUIS JIMENEZ ◽  
MARJ MAYO ◽  
CHRIS MILLER

Using detailed extracts from two life histories, this article examines the nature of the personal identifications that often underpin the commitment of welfare workers to their jobs. We explore the paradox that it is those identifications such as class and gender, mediated through individual biography, that fix the ‘self as object’ and that also provide us with the resources for self-transformation. In this respect, the article not only throws light upon the psychical and emotional roots of commitment to the other, but also upon some of the impasses ‘identity theory’ currently finds itself in.


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