Cornell University, Southeast Asia Program Brown Bag Lecture Series

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Southeast Asia Program Brown Bag Lecture Series

Wednesday, September 23 – “Personal Narratives and Historical Experience in Southeast Asia”, Roxana Waterson (Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore), 12:00PM-1:30PM, Kahin Center, 640 Stewart Ave, Ithaca.
(http://www.einaudi.cornell.edu/southeastasia/calendar/index.asp?id=11501)

Interest in personal narratives and life histories has been growing in recent years, but attention to this form of research material in anthropology has always been patchy. As an anthropologist with long experience of fieldwork in Indonesia (specifically with the Sa’dan Toraja people of South Sulawesi), Roxana Waterson realized that some of my older acquaintances who were born near the beginning of the twentieth century had lived extraordinary lives. They had experienced all the dramatic social transformations that accompanied successive political developments as Indonesia moved from colonialism, through wartime occupation by the Japanese and the struggle for Independence, to the emergence of a new nation-state. The possibility of
identifying as “Indonesian” developed along the way as well. She became interested in the potentials of life narratives – not just of the famous, but of ordinary people - to provide insights into the interface between personal experience and great historical events. Her recently published book, Southeast Asian Lives: Personal Narratives and Historical Experience (Singapore University Press/Ohio University Press, 2007), draws together several such life narratives, as recounted and reflected upon by anthropologists working in different regions of Southeast Asia, with a view to exploring more fully the potentials of this kind of research for social scientists. In this talk, Professor Waterson shall discuss some of these life narratives, and their contributions to ananthropology that seeks to do justice to personal experience.