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Book Book Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Rethinking the ethnographic 'Other': the significance of Tuareg jokes, insults, and praise-songs in researcher/resident dialogue
Author:Rasmussen, SusanISNI
Year:1991
Language:English
Geographic term:Niger
Subjects:patronage
Tuareg
joking relationships
Abstract:The author critically assesses the usefulness and limitations of metaphors of dialogue in ethnographic realism on the basis of her research among the Tuareg of Agadez and in rural villages in the Air mountains of Niger between 1974 and 1979, and again in 1983. Her aim is to locate where the researcher stands in the rapidly changing, but still highly stratified, seminomadic social order of nobles, blacksmiths, and former slaves. She describes how she was drawn into client-patron relationships within Tuareg society, focusing on the significance of Tuareg jokes, insults, and praise songs in the context of the relationship between researcher and local residents. She shows how this type of dialogue acts, neither to reproduce nor overturn traditional authority structures, nor even to voice heteroglossia; rather it operates as a strategy of containment of the researcher, who is sometimes seen as an invader.
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