This article presents a process-oriented perspective that relates to the broad question of how self-related experience comes to be endowed with meaning. The approach highlights the implications of `living by' particular culturally based understandings in specific contexts and centers on how jointly cultural, social, and cognitive processes offer potentialities for orienting the experiential self without determining self-related experiences. This process-oriented perspective revolves around the interplay between the range of historically contingent cultural resources available for endowing experience with meaning and the socially and structurally grounded processes through which individuals learn about, orient towards and traffic in interpretive plausibilities - a socially situated experientially based process. This perspective is informed by, and provides an entree for exploring, variability within a cultural setting. The narrative accounts examined are from individuals who grew up speaking either Ojibwa or Cree (both Algonkian languages) in First Nations communities in Manitoba, Canada.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Bartlett, F. C. (1932). Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
2.
Black, M. B. (1977a). Ojibwa power belief system. In R. D. Fogelson & R. N. Adams (Eds.), The anthropology of power: Ethnographic studies from Asia, Oceania, and the New World (pp. 141-151). New York: Academic Press .
3.
Black, M. B. (1977b). Ojibwa taxonomy and percept ambiguity . Ethos, 5, 90-118 .
4.
Boster, J. S. (1985). `Requiem for the omniscient informant:' There's life in the old girl yet. In J. Dougherty (Ed.), Directions in cognitive anthropology (pp. 177-197). Urbana: University of Illinois Press .
5.
Boster, J. S. (1986). Exchange of varieties and information between Aguaruna manioc cultivators . American Anthropologist, 88, 429-436 .
6.
Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
7.
Brown, J. (1992). Afterword: An ethnography of experience. In A. I. Hallowell (J. S. H. Brown, Ed.), The Ojibwa of Berens River, Manitoba: Ethnography into History (pp. 100-115). Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace .
8.
Bruner, J. (1986). Actual minds, possible worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press .
9.
Bruner, J. (1987). Life as narrative . Social Research, 54, 11-32 .
10.
Bruner, J. (1996). The culture of education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press .
11.
Bruner, J., & Feldman, C. F. (1996). Group narrative as a cultural context of autobiography. In D. C. Rubin (Ed.), Remembering our past: Studies in autobiographical memory (pp. 291-317). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
12.
International Journal of Circumpolar Health, 57(Suppl. 1), 67-71 .
13.
Carrithers, M. (1992). Why humans have cultures: Explaining anthropology and social diversity. Oxford: Oxford University Press .
14.
Csordas, T. (1994). The sacred self: A cultural phenomenology of charismatic healing. Berkeley: University of California Press .
15.
D'Andrade, R. G. (1981). The cultural part of cognition . Cognitive Science, 5, 179-195 .
16.
de Munck, V. (1992). The fallacy of the misplaced self: Gender relations and the construction of multiple selves among Sri Lankan Muslims . Ethos, 20, 167-189 .
17.
de Munck, V. (2000). Culture, self and meaning. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press .
18.
Dennett, D. (1991). Consciousness explained. Boston: Little Brown .
19.
Early, E. A. (1982). The logic of well being: Therapeutic narratives in Cairo, Egypt . Social Science & Medicine, 16, 1491-1497 .
20.
Ewing, K. (1990). The illusion of wholeness: `Culture,' `self,' and the experience of inconsistency . Ethos, 18, 251-278 .
21.
Fogelson, R. D. (1982). Person, self, and identity: Some anthropological retrospects, circumspects, and prospects. In B. Lee (Ed.), Psychosocial theories of the self (pp. 67-109). New York: Plenum Press .
22.
Garro, L. C. (1986). Intracultural variation in folk medical knowledge: A comparison between curers and non-curers . American Anthropologist, 88, 351-370 .
23.
Garro, L. C. (1990). Continuity and change: The interpretation of illness in an Anishinaabe (Ojibway) community . Culture, Medicine & Psychiatry, 14, 417-454 .
24.
Garro, L. C. (1998). On the rationality of decision making studies: Part 2: Divergent rationalities . Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 12, 341-355 .
25.
Garro, L. C. (2000a). Remembering what one knows and the construction of the past: A comparison of cultural consensus theory and cultural schema theory . Ethos, 28, 275-319 .
26.
Garro, L. C. (2000b). Cultural meaning, explanations of illness, and the development of comparative frameworks . Ethnology, 39, 305-334 .
27.
Garro, L. C. (2000c). Cultural knowledge as resource in illness narratives: Remembering through accounts of illness. In C. Mattingly & L. C. Garro (Eds.), Narrative and the cultural construction of illness and healing (pp. 70-87). Berkeley: University of California Press .
28.
Garro, L. C. (2001). The remembered past in a culturally meaningful life: Remembering as cultural, social and cognitive process. In H. Mathews & C. Moore (Eds.), The psychology of cultural experience (pp. 105-147). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
29.
Garro, L. C. (2002). Hallowell's challenge: Explanations of illness and cross-cultural research . Anthropological Theory, 2, 77-97 .
30.
Geertz, C. (1984). `From the Native's point of view': On the nature of anthropological understanding. In R. A. Shweder & R. A. LeVine (Eds.), Culture theory (pp. 123-136). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
31.
Good, B. (1994). Medicine, rationality, and experience: An anthropological perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
32.
Good, B., & Del Vecchio Good, M. (1994). In the subjunctive mode: Epilepsy narratives in Turkey . Social Science & Medicine, 38, 835-842 .
33.
[Reprinted from Hymes, D. (Ed.). (1964). Language in culture and society (pp. 36-39). New York: Harper and Row .]
34.
Goulet, J. A. (1998). Ways of knowing: Experience, knowledge, and power among the Dene Tha. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press .
35.
Hallowell, A. I. (1951). Cultural factors in the structuralization of perception. In J. H. Rohrer & M. Sherif (Eds.), Social psychology at the crossroads (pp. 164-195). New York: Harper .
36.
Hallowell, A. I. (1955). Culture and experience. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press .
37.
Hallowell, A. I. (1958). Ojibwa metaphysics of being and the perception of persons. In R. Tagiuri & L. Petrullo (Eds.), Person perception and interpersonal behavior (pp. 63-85). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press .
38.
[Reprinted in Hallowell, A. I. (1976). Contributions to anthropology: Selected papers of A. Irving Hallowell. (pp. 357-390). Chicago: University of Chicago Press .]
39.
[Reprinted in Hallowell, A. I. (1976). Contributions to anthropology: Selected papers of A. Irving Hallowell. (pp. 391-448). Chicago: University of Chicago Press .]
40.
[Reprinted in Hallowell, A. I. (1976). Contributions to anthropology: Selected papers of A. Irving Hallowell. (pp. 449-471). Chicago: University of Chicago Press .]
41.
Hallowell, A. I. (1976). Contributions to anthropology: Selected papers of A. Irving Hallowell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press .
42.
Hallowell, A. I. (1992). The Ojibwa of Berens River, Manitoba: Ethnography into history (J. S. H. Brown, Ed. and author of Preface and Afterword). Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace .
43.
Harris, G. G. (1989). Concepts of individual, self, and person in description and analysis . American Anthropologist, 91, 599-612 .
44.
Hollan, D. (1992). Cross-cultural differences in the self . Journal of Anthropological Research, 48, 283-300 .
45.
Holland, D. (1997). Selves as cultured: As told by an anthropologist who lacks a soul. In R. D. Ashmore & L. Jussim (Eds.), Self and identity: fundamental issues (Rutgers Series on self and social identity, Vol. 1) (pp. 160-190). New York: Oxford University Press .
46.
Kleinman, A., Eisenberg, L., & Good, B. (1978). Culture, illness and care: Clinical lessons from anthropological and cross-cultural research . Annals of Internal Medicine, 88, 251-258 .
47.
Kundera, M. (1995). Testaments betrayed. New York: Harper Collins .
48.
Landes, R. (1937). Ojibwa sociology. New York: Columbia University Press .
49.
Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation . Psychological Review, 98, 224-253 .
50.
Mattingly, C. (1998). Healing dramas and clinical plots: The narrative structure of experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
51.
Mattingly, C., & Garro, L. C. (1994). Introduction: Narrative representations of illness and healing . Social Science & Medicine, 38, 771-774 .
52.
Ochs, E., & Capps, L. (2001). Living narrative: Creating lives in everyday storytelling. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press .
53.
O'Neil, J. (1988). Referrals to traditional healers: The role of medical interpreters. In D. Young (Ed.), Health care issues in the Canadian North (pp. 29-38). Edmonton: Boreal Institute for Northern Studies, University of Alberta .
54.
Price, L. (1987). Ecuadorian illness stories: Cultural knowledge in natural discourse. In D. Holland & N. Quinn (Eds.), Cultural models in language and thought (pp. 313-342). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
55.
Ridington, R. (1988). Trail to heaven: Knowledge and narrative in a Northern Native community. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press .
56.
Romney, A. K. (1994). Cultural knowledge and cognitive structure. In M. Suárez-Orozco, G. Spindler, & L. Spindler (Eds.), The making of psychological anthropology, II (pp. 254-283). Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace .
57.
Romney, A. K., Weller, S. C., & Batchelder, W. H. (1986). Culture as consensus: A theory of culture and informant accuracy . American Anthropologist, 88: 313-338 .
58.
Sapir, E. (1985a). Cultural anthropology and psychiatry. In D. G. Mandelbaum (Ed.), Edward Sapir: Selected writings (pp. 509-521). Berkeley: University of California Press .
59.
Sapir, E. (1985b). Why cultural anthropology needs the psychiatrist. In D. G. Mandelbaum (Ed.), Edward Sapir: Selected writings (pp. 569-577). Berkeley: University of California Press .
60.
Sapir, E. (2002). The psychology of culture: A course of lectures (reconstructed and edited by J. T. Irvine). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter .
61.
Shore, B. (1996). Culture in mind: Cognition, culture, and the problem of meaning. New York: Oxford University Press .
62.
Shweder, R. A., & Bourne, E. J. (1984). Does the concept of the person vary cross-culturally? In R. A. Shweder & R. A. LeVine (Eds.), Culture theory (pp. 158-199). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
63.
Spiro, M. E. (1993). Is the Western conception of the self `peculiar' within the context of the world cultures . Ethos, 21, 107-153 .
64.
Straus, A. S. (1982). The structure of the self in Northern Cheyenne culture. In B. Lee (Ed.), Psychosocial theories of the self (pp. 111-128). New York: Plenum Press .
65.
Strauss, C., & Quinn, N. (1997). A cognitive theory of cultural meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
66.
Waldram, J. B. (1993). Aboriginal spirituality: Symbolic healing in Canadian prisons . Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 17, 345-362 .
67.
Waldram, J. B. (1997). The way of the pipe: Aboriginal spirituality and symbolic healing in Canadian prisons. Peterborough, Canada: Broadview Press .
68.
Wikan, U. (1989). Managing the heart to brighten face and soul: Emotions in Balinese morality and health care . American Ethnologist, 16, 294-312 .
