Description
Book SynopsisIn towns like Amigo, Red Jacket, Helen, Odd, Viper, Decoy, and Twilight, men and women track a dense social imaginary through stories of traumas, apparitions, encounters, and eccentricities. This book explores how this storytelling imbues everyday life in the hills and forms a cultural poetics.
Trade Review"[A] subtle and rich ethnography of southwestern West Virginia. From everyday language ... Stewart conjures a dynamic, conflictual portrait of life in the 'hollers' and coal camps... A Space on the Side of the Road is without a doubt one of the best examples of the new ethnography."--American Journal of Sociology
Table of ContentsList of PhotographsAcknowledgmentsPrologue31The Space of Culture13A Space of Critique20"Subjects" and "Objects" in the Space of an Immanent Critique21The Space of Story26The Space on the Side of the Road32An Ethnographic Space392Mimetic Excess in an Occupied Place41An "Other" America41An Occupied Place42The Hills as a Social Imaginary50Being Caught53The Spectacle of Impacts56A Lost Homeland633Unforgetting: The Anecdotal and the Accidental67Unforgetting71A Near Miss75The Diacritics of Interruptions81An Other Interruption, or an Interruption from the Other Side844Chronotopes90Roaming the Ruins90The Shock of History97Riley's Last Ride112Mr. Henry's Sticks1155Encounters117The Bourgeois Imaginary117Spaces of Encounter119Encountering Alterity125The Sign of the Body128Hollie Smith's Encounter135Afterthought1396The Space of the Sign140The Social Semiotics of Signs141Signs of Sociality147The Space of the Gap157The Space of Performance159A Visit(ation)1627The Accident165A Visit(ation)169A Postcard1778The Place of Ideals179The Space of Mediation179Claims and Counterclaims183Ideals in the Space of Desire189In the Realm of Negations194Placing People2019A Space on the Side of the Road205Notes213Bibliography217Index239
