Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-07T23:03:02.038Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Local discourse and global research: The role of local knowledge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2005

MICHAEL AGAR
MICHAEL AGAR
Affiliation:
Ethknoworks and Friends Social Research Center, PO Box 5804, Takoma Park MD 20913, [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Detailed analysis of transcripts is a time-honored practice among linguistic ethnographers. In contemporary research, however, interactions among global forces distant from ethnographic sites are critical for analysis and explanation, as is the fact that multiple sites must be covered. Ethnographers' interests, pragmatic relevance, and personal deixis militate against the ability of site-specific talk to serve as raw material for construction of the representations of those distant global forces. In this article, local discourse, as manifested in ethnographic oral-history interviews, is viewed first as a test of the impact of those global forces. Second, the talk is a construction that can be explained in terms of those forces' linkage with global representations. Finally, the concept “fractal” is suggested as a possible way to show such links.NOTE: Support by NIH/NIDA grant no. DA-10736 is gratefully acknowledged.

Keywords

Global/local researchethnographydiscourse analysissubstance use
Type
Research Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , January 2005 , pp. 1 - 22
Copyright
© 2005 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Agar, Michael H. (2003). The story of crack: Towards a theory of illicit drug trends. Addiction Research and Theory 11:3–30.Google Scholar
Agar, Michael H. (1986). Independents declared: The dilemmas of independent trucking. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Agar, Michael H., & Reisinger, Heather Schacht (2001). Trend theory: Explaining heroin use trends. Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 33:203–12.Google Scholar
Appadurai, Arjun (1996). Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Gupta, Akhil, & Ferguson, James (eds.). (1997) Anthropological locations: Boundaries and grounds of a field science. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Holland, Dorothy, & Quinn, Naomi (eds.). (1987) Cultural models in language and thought. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Kearney, Michael (1995). The local and the global: The anthropology of globalization and transnationalism. Annual Review of Anthropology 24:547–65.Google Scholar
Linde, Charlotte (1993). Life stories: The creation of coherence. New York: Oxford University Press.
Mintz, Sidney W. (1985). Sweetness and power: The place of sugar in modern history. New York: Penguin Books.
Ochs, Elinor, & Capp, Lisa (2001). Living narrative: Creating lives in everyday storytelling. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Rogers, Everett M. (1995). Diffusion of innovations. New York: Free Press.
Sperber, Dan, & Wilson, Deirdre (1995). Relevance: Communication and cognition. Oxford: Blackwell.