scholarly journals Life/History: Personal Narratives of Development Amongst NGO Workers and Activists in Ghana

Africa ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 78 (3) ◽  
pp. 334-358 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Yarrow
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Personal Narratives ◽  
The Self ◽  
Personal Lives ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
Relative Neglect ◽  
Development Workers ◽  
Personal Ethics

Widespread assumptions about the extractive and self-serving nature of African elites have resulted in the relative neglect of questions concerning their personal ethics and morality. Using life-history interviews undertaken with a range of Ghanaian development workers, this article explores some of the different personal aspirations, ideologies and beliefs that such narratives express. The self-identification of many of those interviewed as ‘activists’ is examined in terms of the related concepts of ‘ideology’, ‘commitment’ and ‘sacrifice’. Much recent work within history and anthropology uses the ‘life-history’ as a way of introducing ‘agency’ that is purported to be missing in accounts focusing on larger social abstractions. Yet it is the very opposition between abstractions such as ‘history’ and ‘society’ and their own more ‘personal’ lives that such narratives themselves enact. The article thus interrogates the various ways in which development workers variously imagine their lives in relation to broader social and historical processes.

The Crisis of Becoming-Nature in Howard Barker’s Recent Dramas

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-114
Author(s):  
Karoline Gritzner
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Elderly Women ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
The Self ◽  
Love Relationships ◽  
Late Style ◽  
Life Force ◽  
The Individual

AbstractThis article discusses how in Howard Barker’s recent work the idea of the subject’s crisis hinges on the introduction of an impersonal or transpersonal life force that persists beyond human agency. The article considers Barker’s metaphorical treatment of the images of land and stone and their interrelationship with the human body, where the notion of subjective crisis results from an awareness of objective forces that transcend the self. In “Immense Kiss” (2018) and “Critique of Pure Feeling” (2018), the idea of crisis, whilst still dominant, seems to lose its intermittent character of singular rupture and reveals itself as a permanent force of dissolution and reification. In these plays, the evocation of nonhuman nature in the love relationships between young men and elderly women affirms the existence of something that goes beyond the individual, which Barker approaches with a late-style poetic sensibility.

scholarly journals On the supposed first stage larva of Leptohylemyia coarctata, Fall.

1917 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Keilin
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Stage Larva ◽  
History Of ◽  
Almost All

It has been well known since the studies of Taschenberg (1864–1872) that the larvae of Leptohylemyia coarctata, Fall., attack wheat and rye. The damage due to this fly has been observed many times in almost all European countries, and many papers have been devoted to its life-history. Of these papers the most important are those of E. Ormerod (1882–1895), S. Rostrup (1905–1911), T. Hedlund (1906- 1907), P. Marchal (1909) and finally the recent work of Kurdjumov (1914).

Narrative constructions and the life history issue in brain–emotions relations

2012 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 168-169
Author(s):  
Zsolt Unoka ◽  
Eszter Berán ◽  
Csaba Pléh
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Emotional Reactions ◽  
The Self ◽  
Emotion Development ◽  
Constructivist View ◽  
Pathological Conditions ◽  
Narrative Constructions ◽  
Contextual Dependency

AbstractEmotional reactions are rather flexible, due to the schema-like organization of complex socio-emotional situations. Some data on emotion development, and on certain pathological conditions such as alexithymia, give further support for the psychological constructivist view put forward by Lindquist et al. Narrative organization is a key component of this schematic organization. The self-related nature of narrative organization provides scaffolding to the contextual dependency of emotions.

You Don’t Look Like a Baptist Minister: An Autoethnographic Retrieval of ‘Women’s Experience’ as an Analytic Category for Feminist Theology

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 182-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie Wigg-Stevenson
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theology ◽  
Personal Narratives ◽  
The Self ◽  
Women's Experience ◽  
Crisis Of Representation ◽  
Theological Understanding ◽  
Theological Thought

This article constructs and deploys a set of autoethnographic narratives from the author’s experience as a Baptist minister to critically retrieve the category of ‘women’s experience’ for feminist theological construction. Autoethnography, as a response to the crisis of representation in the Humanities, uses personal narratives of the self to reveal, critique and transform wider cultural trends. It therefore provides helpful tools for analysing, critiquing and transforming theological thought and practice. Following the article’s methodological sections, the constructive sections use the crafted autoethnographies to re-frame Rowan Williams’s vision for how church and world co-constitute each other towards God’s just ends. Whereas Williams argues that this co-constitution occurs through processes of interactive transformative judgment, the feminist theological understanding argued for here founds the process instead on interactive, transformative grace.

Addicted to Hate: Identity Residual among Former White Supremacists

2017 ◽  
Vol 82 (6) ◽  
pp. 1167-1187 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pete Simi ◽  
Kathleen Blee ◽  
Matthew DeMichele ◽  
Steven Windisch
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Environmental Factors ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Physiological Responses ◽  
The Self ◽  
Cognitive Sociology ◽  
Recent Advances ◽  
White Supremacists ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Desire To Change

The process of leaving deeply meaningful and embodied identities can be experienced as a struggle against addiction, with continuing cognitive, emotional, and physiological responses that are involuntary, unwanted, and triggered by environmental factors. Using data derived from a unique set of in-depth life history interviews with 89 former U.S. white supremacists, as well as theories derived from recent advances in cognitive sociology, we examine how a rejected identity can persist despite a desire to change. Disengagement from white supremacy is characterized by substantial lingering effects that subjects describe as addiction. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of identity residual for understanding how people leave and for theories of the self.

scholarly journals Creolization and the Production and Negotiation of Boundaries in Breyten Breytenbach's Recent Work

Nordlit ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 109
Author(s):  
Hein Viljoen
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
South African ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
The Self ◽  
The South

Much of the South African poet Breyten Breytenbach's work has been concerned with borders. In this article I examine borders and creolization in three important poems from Nine landscapes of our time bequeathed to a beloved (Nege landskappe bemaak aan 'n beminde, 1993), Paper flower (Papierblom, 2002) and The wind-catcher (Die windvanger, 2007). The link between creolization and boundaries is the poet's conception of identity and freedom. As is often the case the boundaries of the self are questioned as the poet permutates the central concepts. Crossing boundaries entails entering into dialogue not only with the self but also with the mother tongue itself and with a variety of other artists and writers. In other words, in Breytenbach's work an abrogation and appropriation of the own tradition ("erfgoed") as well as of material from others, other places and other traditions occur. In these three case studies in particular it is clear how the poet stretches and deforms boundaries as part of his poetic project to concretize a dynamic freedom.

MODERNITY AND THE SELF IN THE HISTORY OF SEXUALITY

2006 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 1211-1227 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. G. COCKS
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Identity ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Contextual Factors ◽  
The Self ◽  
History Of Sexuality ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Specific Effects ◽  
History Of ◽  
Gender Patterns ◽  
Field Of Inquiry

Recent work in the modern history of sexuality, now an established field of inquiry, is characterized by particular approaches to the interpretation of modernity and selfhood. In general, and in contrast to previous approaches, the books under review treat modernity as a localized process with specific effects. Sexual identity is understood in a similar way, as a phenomenon bounded by locality, class, age, nationality, gender, patterns of sociability, and other contextual factors. As such, speaking of sexual identity as a unitary entity, or as something that has historically been structured by an opposition of homosexual/heterosexual, no longer makes sense. In fact, the homo/hetero binary is of much more recent vintage than has been hitherto thought. These histories of sexuality challenge historians of all kinds to rethink the nature of categories like selfhood, identity, and modernity.

Autobiographical Memory and the Self-Concept

2020 ◽  
pp. 189-212
Author(s):  
Matthew D. Grilli ◽  
Lee Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Autobiographical Memory ◽  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Concept ◽  
Autobiographical Memories ◽  
Core Self ◽  
Insight Into

Autobiographical memory plays a central role in one’s conceptualization of the self. It does so not only by storing the content of one’s life history, but also by providing the memories that are used to construct who we are and what we hope to become. Based on theories and evidence from cognitive neuroscience, the authors of this chapter discuss the contents and organization of autobiographical memory and the neural mechanisms that support the retrieval of autobiographical memories. They also cover core self-related functions served by this type of memory. The chapter closes by considering how the cognitive neuroscience of autobiographical memory and its self-related functions can provide insight into mechanisms of enduring change.

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