Overview

"A Space on the Side of the Road vividly evokes an ""other"" America that survives precariously among the ruins of the West Virginia coal camps and ""hollers."" To Kathleen Stewart, this particular ""other"" exists as an excluded subtext to the American narrative of capitalism, modernization, materialism, and democracy. In towns like Amigo, Red Jacket, Helen, Odd, Viper, Decoy, and Twilight, men and women ""just settin'"" track a dense social imaginary through stories of traumas, apparitions, encounters, and eccentricities. Stewart explores how this rhythmic, dramatic, and complicated storytelling imbues everyday life in the hills and forms a cultural poetics. Alternating her own ruminations on language, culture, and politics with continuous accounts of ""just talk,"" Stewart propels us into the intensity of this nervous, surreal ""space on the side of the road."" It is a space that gives us a glimpse into a breach in American society itself, where graveyards of junked cars and piles of other trashed objects endure along with the memories that haunt those who have been left behind by ""progress.""Like James Agee's portrayal of the poverty-stricken tenant farmers of the Depression South in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, this book uses both language and photographs to help readers encounter a fragmented and betrayed community, one ""occupied"" by schoolteachers, doctors, social workers, and other professionals representing an ""official"" America.Holding at bay any attempts at definitive, social scientific analysis, Stewart has concocted a new sort of ethnographic writing that conveys the immediacy, density, texture, and materiality of the coal camps. A Space on the Side of the Road finally bridges the gap between anthropology and cultural studies and provides us with a brilliant and challenging experiment in thinking and writing about ""America."""

Full Product Details

Author:   Kathleen Stewart
Publisher:   Princeton University Press
Imprint:   Princeton University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 1.70cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.340kg
ISBN:  

9780691011035

ISBN 10:   0691011036
Pages:   264
Publication Date:   07 March 1996
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  College/higher education ,  Professional & Vocational ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.
Language:   English

Table of Contents

"List of PhotographsAcknowledgmentsPrologue31The Space of Culture13A Space of Critique20""Subjects"" and ""Objects"" in the Space of an Immanent Critique21The Space of Story26The Space on the Side of the Road32An Ethnographic Space392Mimetic Excess in an Occupied Place41An ""Other"" America41An Occupied Place42The Hills as a Social Imaginary50Being Caught53The Spectacle of Impacts56A Lost Homeland633Unforgetting: The Anecdotal and the Accidental67Unforgetting71A Near Miss75The Diacritics of Interruptions81An Other Interruption, or an Interruption from the Other Side844Chronotopes90Roaming the Ruins90The Shock of History97Riley's Last Ride112Mr. Henry's Sticks1155Encounters117The Bourgeois Imaginary117Spaces of Encounter119Encountering Alterity125The Sign of the Body128Hollie Smith's Encounter135Afterthought1396The Space of the Sign140The Social Semiotics of Signs141Signs of Sociality147The Space of the Gap157The Space of Performance159A Visit(ation)1627The Accident165A Visit(ation)169A Postcard1778The Place of Ideals179The Space of Mediation179Claims and Counterclaims183Ideals in the Space of Desire189In the Realm of Negations194Placing People2019A Space on the Side of the Road205Notes213Bibliography217Index239"

Reviews

[A] subtle and rich ethnography of southwestern West Virginia. From everyday language ... Stewart conjures a dynamic, conflictual portrait of life in the 'hollers' and coal camps.... A Space on the Side of the Road is without a doubt one of the best examples of the new ethnography. --American Journal of Sociology [A] subtle and rich ethnography of southwestern West Virginia. From everyday language ... Stewart conjures a dynamic, conflictual portrait of life in the 'hollers' and coal camps... A Space on the Side of the Road is without a doubt one of the best examples of the new ethnography. --American Journal of Sociology

[A] subtle and rich ethnography of southwestern West Virginia. From everyday language ... Stewart conjures a dynamic, conflictual portrait of life in the 'hollers' and coal camps.... A Space on the Side of the Road is without a doubt one of the best examples of the new ethnography. --American Journal of Sociology

[A] subtle and rich ethnography of southwestern West Virginia. From everyday language ... Stewart conjures a dynamic, conflictual portrait of life in the 'hollers' and coal camps... A Space on the Side of the Road is without a doubt one of the best examples of the new ethnography. American Journal of Sociology

Author Information

Kathleen Stewart is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Texas, Austin.

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