Author: Margery Wolf File Type: epub A Thrice-Told Tale is one ethnographers imaginative and powerful response to the methodological issues raised by feminist and postmodernist critics of traditional ethnography. The author, a feminist anthropologist, uses three texts developed out of her research in Taiwana piece of fiction, anthropological fieldnotes, and a social science articleto explore some of these criticisms. Each text takes a different perspective, is written in a different style, and has different outcomes, yet all three involve the same fascinating set of events. A young mother began to behave in a decidedly abherrant, perhaps suicidal manner, and opinion in her village was sharply divided over the reason. Was she becoming a shaman, posessed by a god? Was she deranged, in need of physical restraint, drugs, and hospitalization? Or was she being cynically manipulated by her neer-do-well husband to elicit sympathy and money from her neighbors? In the end, the woman was taken away from the area to her mothers house. For some villagers, this settled the matter for others the debate over her behavior was probably never truly resolved. The first text is a short story written shortly after the incident, which occurred almost thrity years ago the second text is a copy of the fieldnotes collected about the events covered in the short story the third text is an article published in 1990 in American Ethnologist that analyzes the incident from the authors current perspective. Following each text is a Commentary in which the author discusses such topics as experimental ethnography, polyvocality, authorial presence and control, reflexivity, and some of the differences between fiction and ethnography. The three texts are framed by two chapters in which the author discusses the genereal problems posed by feminist and postmodernist critics of ethnography and presents her personal exploration of these issues in an argument that is strongly self-reflexive and theoretically rigorous. She considers some feminist concerns over colonial research methods and takes issues with the insistence of some feminists tha the topics of ethnographic research be set by those who are studied. The book concludes with a plea for ethnographic responsibility based on a less academic and more practical perspective. **

Author: Stephen J. Patterson File Type: pdf Long before the followers of Jesus declared him to be the Son of God, Jesus taught his followers that they too were the children of God. This ancient creed, now all but forgotten, is recorded still within the folds of a letter of Paul the Apostle. Paul did not create this creed, nor did he fully embrace it, but he quoted it and thus preserved it for a time when it might become important once again. This ancient creed said nothing about God or Christ or salvation. Its claims were about the whole human race there is no race, there is no class, there is no gender. This is the story of that first, forgotten creed, and the world of its begetting, a world in which foreigners were feared, slaves were human chattel, and men questioned whether women were really human after all. Into this world the followers of Jesus proclaimed You are all children of God. There is no Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no male and female, for you are all one. Where did this remarkable statement of human solidarity come from, and what, finally, happened to it? How did Christianity become a Gentile religion that despised Jews, condoned slavery as the will of God, and championed patriarchy? Christian theologians would one day argue about the nature of Christ, the being of God, and the mechanics of salvation. But before this, in the days when Jesus was still fresh in the memory of those who knew him, the argument was a different one how can human beings overcome the ways by which we divide ourselves one from another? Is solidarity possible beyond race, class, and gender? ** Review With a style as serenely clear as its content is powerfully persuasive, this book is an elegy for Christianitys earliest baptismal creed which promised that Roman distinctions would not become Christian discriminations and that the basic differences of race, class, and gender would not become hierarchies of oppression. When that inaugural creed is forgotten, Christians are born again, not into a transformed world, but simply into the same one as before. Read this book not just as past Christian history but as present American challenge. --John Dominic Crossan, author of How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian The Forgotten Creed carries a vital message for our time at the heart of Christianity is a call for solidarity that has been lost. In his careful examination of one of the earliest Christian creeds and rituals, Stephen Patterson reveals our long history of fearing others and exposes the categories used by the powerful to divide, conquer, and oppress. What does Christianity have to say about race, class, and gender? Patterson asks. Everything. At the core of The Forgotten Creed is a vision for communities in which difference is honored, diversity is celebrated, and equality is divine. An urgent, necessary book that should be required reading in every church.--Sarah Sentilles, author of Draw Your Weapons A cogent and an inspiring case for the earliest Christian baptismal creed being a proclamation of human dignity for all. It is not only a well-documented argument about an early Christian liturgical fragment, it is a clarion call for an ethical vision urgently needed now.--Pamela Eisenbaum, author of Paul Was Not a Christian A positive and nuanced approach to addressing issues of power and diversity.--Library Journal Patterson has put his finger on what may have been the transforming content of that first encounter with Jesus. Something about him cut to the heart of the human conditions most troubling aspect--the way, out of fear and for the sake of power, we humans turn accidents of identity into weapons... Patterson is right to lift the old creed up, especially now, and say, Why not?--James Carroll, American Prospect About the Author Stephen J. Patterson is the George H. Atkinson Professor of Religious and Ethical Studies at Willamette University. A historian of religion, Patterson specializes in the origins of Christianity, especially the hidden histories found in books that were not included in the Bible. He has authored and co-authored nine books and more than a hundred essays, articles, and reviews, including most recently The Gospel of Thomas and Christian Origins (2013) and The Lost Way How Two Forgotten Gospels are Rewriting the Story of Christian Origins (2014).