Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Maps, family trees, figures, and tables
- Acknowledgments
- Note on transcriptions
- Epigraph
- Prologue
- 1 On being long in company
- 2 A boy finds his mama(s)
- 3 The closeness of strangers
- 4 Embracing talk
- 5 Lines of vision
- 6 The hand of play
- 7 Ways with time and words
- 8 Shaping the mainstream
- Epilogue
- Appendix A Ethnography as biography and autobiography
- Appendix B On methods of social history and ethnography
- Notes to text
- References
- Index
Epilogue
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Maps, family trees, figures, and tables
- Acknowledgments
- Note on transcriptions
- Epigraph
- Prologue
- 1 On being long in company
- 2 A boy finds his mama(s)
- 3 The closeness of strangers
- 4 Embracing talk
- 5 Lines of vision
- 6 The hand of play
- 7 Ways with time and words
- 8 Shaping the mainstream
- Epilogue
- Appendix A Ethnography as biography and autobiography
- Appendix B On methods of social history and ethnography
- Notes to text
- References
- Index
Summary
For the fragment of a life, however typical, is not the sample of an even web: promises may not be kept, and an ardent outset may be followed by declension; latent powers may find their long-waited opportunity: a past error may urge a grand retrieval.
(Eliot 1871–1872/1963, p. 810)Anthropologists have been accused of representing an essential linearity about generations across time. That is not the case for the individuals whose stories are told here. They follow few lines or paths that might have been predicted for them. Instead they have worked and played in spots of time and place; theirs are dotted rather than straight lines. All indications are that these dotted lines will continue to go in many directions and will have beginnings and endings along the way, spinning out into webs of differing proportion, strength, and connection.
Where are the children of Trackton and Roadville and their children today and where do they see themselves headed?
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Words at Work and PlayThree Decades in Family and Community Life, pp. 166 - 173Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2012