Telling Our Selves : Ethnicity And Discourse In Southwestern Alaska Paperback

Chase Hensel

In this book, Chase Hensel examines how Yup'ik Eskimos and non-natives construct and maintain gender and ethnic identities through strategic talk about hunting, fishing, and processing. Although ethnicity is overtly constructed in terms of either/or categories, the discourse of Bethel residents suggests that their actual concern is less with whether one is native or non-native, than how native one is in a given context. In the interweaving of subsistence practicesand subsistence discourse, ethnicity is constantly recreated.This type of discourse occurs in a conversational setting where ethnicity is both implicitly and explicitly contested. While the book is ethnographic, it is not "about Eskimo's." Rather it is about how Bethel residents use similar forms of discourse to strategically validate disparate identities. In this context, the homeland of Yup'ik Eskimos, subsistence is the focus of people's interactions, regardless of their ascriptive ethnicity. Even people who spend little time in subsistenceactivities spend a great deal of time in subsistence conversation. Unlike traditional ethnographies which focus on traditions, and consequently tend to reify the past, this contemporary ethnography focuses on contemporary preoccupations of identity and meaning. The ethnographic description becomes a devicefor preserving and explicating the opulent polysemy of situated talk.

9780195094770

English

Oxford University Press, USA

28-11-1996

232

informed but not limited by traditional ethnography. * Journal of Sociolinguistics * "Valuable new contributions to the study of discourse analysis and its relation to identity formation...A rich ethnographic treatment of subsistence talk and practice ...'Telling Our Selves' is a valuable study to those interested in a variety of issues, including at the very least, theoretical contributions to the study of Native America...and ethnographic issues of contemporary subsistence economies". * C. Brown, University of Chicago * "A fascinating ethnography of the Yupiit and an interesting analysis of the symbolic values of their subsistence practices...Hansel's book succeeds in showing the complexity of the interrelationship between language and other social practices. * Discourse & Society * "Hensel is a superb linguistic anthropologist....It's definitely a significant contribution to the field."-William J. de Reuse, University of Arizona "A unique, sparkling piece of work that should attract wide attention."-Anthony Woodbury, University of Texas, Austin