Native Americans in the Carolina Borderlands: A Critical Ethnography [Paperback]

Michael Spivey (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1891026100 | ISBN-13: 978-1891026102 | Publication Date: December 1, 2000

Pee Dee Indians of South Carolina are a distinct component of the population of the state, yet are little understood. Spivey has conducted detailed research into the tribe and has produced a book that describes the trials and tribulations of the group as they strive for acceptance and recognition as Indians. This is a valuable contribution to the literature of non-recognized American Indians in the Southeast. It is one of those books that will be appreciated by scholars and the general public.

Editorial Reviews

From the Author

My book is the result of theoretical study of critical theory and cultural studies at York University, Canada (Revised Dissertation)and my life-long membership in the community area under study. Informed by my musings over a strategy of synthesis among the theoretical works of Foucault, Laclau and Mouffe, Said, Clifford, Marcus, Reynolds, Davies, Kondo, Willis, Denzin, Richardson, Hall, as well as others hanging around the "Post", I headed back to my home in South Carolina to "Write Culture" among the Native Americans who are still there in what was once known as the unclaimed borderland between North and South Carolina. The "Borderland" is also a metaphor for the life-narratives of a people who have lived within and against multiple histories, cultures, and identities. By way of an alternative ethnography, my informants and I try to come to terms with writing culture from the fragments of histories, and unfinished travels. The end product is a cultural critique that emerges somewhere between identity-as-essence and identity-as-conjuncture. The unfinished quality of the social, as registered in struggles over meanings, is reified as a popular, critical deconstruction of modernist notions of ahistorical and essentialized ethnic cultural and personal identities. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Back Cover

"This book is an insightful and politically important piece of work that uses soundly based fieldwork to interrogate theoretical discussions of identity politics and to contribute to the development of an assumed, but silent/silenced culture. I found this book to be a fascinating piece of work and one which has many implications for aboriginal and nonaboriginal people in various contexts who are struggling to decolonize their lives and to reshape the distorted images that eurocentric thought has created of their histories, relationships and ultimately persistence as peoples. I refer academics and students who are investigating identity and identity politics to this book." Celia Haig-Brown, Ph.D., Director, Graduate Programme in Education, Faculty of Education, York University, Toronto, Canada

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Product Details

• Paperback: 204 pages
• Publisher: Karo Hollow Pr (December 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1891026100
• ISBN-13: 978-1891026102
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,117,049 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good ethnography!, August 3, 2001

By 

S. M Marson (Lumberton, NC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Native Americans in the Carolina Borderlands: A Critical Ethnography (Paperback)

Dr. Spivey's work entitled NATIVE AMERICANS IN THE CAROLINA BORDERLANDS: A CRITICAL ETHNOGRAPHY will interest a specific group of readers. These include: professors and students of qualitative research methods (particularly ethnography), theory construction, Native American Studies, and those who reside on the eastern borderline between North and South Carolina.

I read a number of ethnographical research - mostly as a Ph.D. student. I may be alone of this, but my general impression is... few were worthwhile to read. My lack of appreciation for ethnography and other forms of qualitative analysis may be attributed to my background in quantitative methods. Perhaps I just don't get it. Unlike my past experience in reading such work, I DID appreciate the craftsmanship found within Spivey's book. His writing is remarkably good for this type of work. He has clear and specific goals that can be generalized and employed as examples for instruction of graduates and undergraduates students.

Native American students who are seeking degrees in the social sciences will find this book particularly useful. In addition to the substance Spivey provides, his book offers a good research model that will enable others to effectively apply ethnography to the study of other Native American traditions.

All in all, Spivey does a fine job. I strongly recommend this book for social science students and professors.