The Social Life of Stories: Narrative and Knowledge in the Yukon Territory
Anthropology Prof. Julie Cruikshank has written an illuminating and theoretically
sophisticated study of indigenous oral narratives. It is based on more than
a decade of personal experience living and working in the Yukon Territory.
The theme is that one of the enduring values of informal storytelling is its
power to subvert official orthodoxies — to challenge conventional ways of thinking.
Cruickshank tries to convey the range of ways several older women taught her
that stories have social lives and that their meanings shift as tellers address
different audiences and situations.
“They always insisted that ancient stories continue to be used to address
contemporary issues,” says Cruikshank. “In other words, these stories are grounded
in material circumstances — in the lives of real people.”
