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Sometime Kin

Layers of Memory, Boundaries of Ethnography

Sandra Wallman author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Berghahn Books

Published:3rd Oct '19

Should be back in stock very soon

Sometime Kin cover

In Sometime Kin, Sandra Wallman paints the portrait of an Alpine settlement – its history, economy and culture, and its unusual resistance to outsiders and modernization. Against this, her journal shows the villagers embracing her four small children and acting as participant observers in the two-way process of research. This project happened more than forty years ago and involved a uniquely large fieldwork family, but its insights have wider significance. The book argues that the intrusion of observation inevitably distorts the ordinary life observed, that the challenges of multi-vocality and “truth” are always with us, and that memory is the bedrock of every ethnographic enterprise.

“…offers an insightful reflection on the intricacies of fieldwork with the written text that represents it…Being a well-written book that borders on memoir, it will also appeal to a general readership.”• Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (JRAI)

“This is an arresting autobiography by an influential British woman anthropologist. Sandra Wallman addresses practical, emotional [and] academic issues around the experience of bringing her family - husband and four young children - to the field in Bellino, a small isolated commune in the Italian alps, in the early 1970s.”• Helena Wulff, Stockholm University

ISBN: 9781789203394

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

186 pages