Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds

@book{citeulike:691663, abstract = {{<p> This landmark book addresses the central problem in anthropological theory today: the paradox that humans are products of social discipline yet producers of remarkable improvisation. </p><P> Synthesizing theoretical contributions by Vygotsky, Bakhtin and Bourdieu, Holland and her co-authors examine the processes by which people are constituted as agents as well as subjects of culturally constructed, socially imposed worlds. They develop a theory of self-formation in which identities become the pivot between discipline and agency: turning from experiencing one's scripted social positions to making one's way into cultural worlds as a knowledgeable and committed participant. They emphasize throughout that "identities" are not static and coherent, but variable, multivocal and interactive. </p><P> Ethnographic illumination of this complex theoretical construction comes from vividly described fieldwork in vastly different microcultures: American college women "caught" in romance; persons in U.S. institutions of mental health care; members of Alcoholics Anonymous groups; and girls and women in the patriarchal order of Hindu villages in central Nepal. </p><P> Ultimately, <I>Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds </I>offers a liberating yet tempered understanding of agency, for it shows how people, across the limits of cultural traditions and social forces of power and domination, improvise and find spaces to re-describe themselves, creating their cultural worlds anew. </p>}}, author = {Holland, Dorothy and William, Jr and Skinner, Debra and Cain, Carole }, citeulike-article-id = {691663}, howpublished = {Paperback}, isbn = {0674005627}, keywords = {identity, learning, social}, month = {March}, posted-at = {2007-04-25 01:38:38}, priority = {4}, publisher = {{Harvard University Press}}, title = {Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds}, url = {http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=citeulike09-20\&amp;path=ASIN/0674005627}, year = {2001} }

TY - BOOK ID - citeulike:691663 L3 - citeulike-article-id:691663 TI - Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds PB - {Harvard University Press} SN - 0674005627 N2 - {<p> This landmark book addresses the central problem in anthropological theory today: the paradox that humans are products of social discipline yet producers of remarkable improvisation. </p><P> Synthesizing theoretical contributions by Vygotsky, Bakhtin and Bourdieu, Holland and her co-authors examine the processes by which people are constituted as agents as well as subjects of culturally constructed, socially imposed worlds. They develop a theory of self-formation in which identities become the pivot between discipline and agency: turning from experiencing one's scripted social positions to making one's way into cultural worlds as a knowledgeable and committed participant. They emphasize throughout that "identities" are not static and coherent, but variable, multivocal and interactive. </p><P> Ethnographic illumination of this complex theoretical construction comes from vividly described fieldwork in vastly different microcultures: American college women "caught" in romance; persons in U.S. institutions of mental health care; members of Alcoholics Anonymous groups; and girls and women in the patriarchal order of Hindu villages in central Nepal. </p><P> Ultimately, <I>Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds </I>offers a liberating yet tempered understanding of agency, for it shows how people, across the limits of cultural traditions and social forces of power and domination, improvise and find spaces to re-describe themselves, creating their cultural worlds anew. </p>} KW - identity KW - learning KW - social AU - Holland, Dorothy AU - William, Jr AU - Skinner, Debra AU - Cain, Carole PY - 2001/03/16/ UR - http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=citeulike09-20&amp;path=ASIN/0674005627 ER -