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Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds

Dorothy Holland | William S. Lachicotte | Jr. | Debra Skinner | Carole Cain
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A01=Carole Cain
A01=Debra Skinner
A01=Dorothy Holland
A01=William S. Lachicotte
Author_Carole Cain
Author_Debra Skinner
Author_Dorothy Holland
Author_William S. Lachicotte
Category=JBCC
Category=JHM
Category=JM
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Product details

  • ISBN 9780674005624
  • Weight: 617g
  • Dimensions: 156 x 235mm
  • Publication Date: 16 Mar 2001
  • Publisher: Harvard University Press
  • Publication City/Country: US
  • Product Form: Paperback
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Description

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.

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.

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.

Ultimately, Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds 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.
About Carole Cain | Debra Skinner | Dorothy Holland | William S. Lachicotte
Dorothy Holland is Boshamer Professor of Anthropology, Emeritus, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. William S. Lachicotte, Jr., was Adjunct Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Debra Skinner is Senior Scientist at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Carole Cain is Staff Specialist in the Department of Psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center.

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