The Autobiographical Self in Time and Culture - Tapa dura

"What a fascinating book! Filled with wonderful stories and historical examples as well as highly accessible reports of the latest research, The Autobiographical Self in Time and Culture reveals and explains the through-going cultural nature of our memories and ourselves. A useful and engaging read for psychologists in all areas, but also for teachers, managers and parents who are raising their children in a multicultural world. Wang's analysis is so successful that readers will be forever unable to describe an event or recount a memory without considering why and how their story takes the form it does." -- Hazel Rose Markus, co-author of Clash! Eight Cultural Conflicts that Make Us Who We Are "In The Autobiographical Self in Time and Culture, Qi Wang educates readers about how cognitive-developmental psychologists and neuroscience scholars are now shining their bright lights onto memory's stories. The author's weaving of a prose text with the threads of a laboratory science paradigm and so many cross-cultural stories makes for a thought-provoking and thoroughly enjoyable liberal arts tale." --Thomas V. McGovern, PsycCRITIQUES "Wang's psychological focus in understanding concepts of self should not be considered a limitation of this fne book. The volume is equally valuable as a history of the autobiographical art form and as a cultural comparison of differing versions of the self based on social practice. For those who are curious about childhood recollections and, more important, why one recalls certain events, this book is a must read. This book will serve those interested in the humanities, including American and Chinese culture, comparative culture, and autobiography. Highly recommended." --S. Batcos, CHOICE "This is the book I ached to read as soon as I closed Chameleon Readers - but I had to wait 17 years. It was well worth the wait: Wang shines a light into the very heart of East-West narrative difference, rooting it in autobiography. My copy may be more marked up than any other book I've ever owned." -- Gish Jen, The Week

In this volume, Qi Wang traces the developmental, social, cultural, and historical origins of the autobiographical self - the self that is made of memories of the personal past and of the family and the community. Wang combines rigorous research, sensitive survey of real memories and memory conversations, and fascinating personal anecdotes into a state-of-the-art book. As a "marginal woman" who grew up in the East and works and lives in the West, Wang's analysis is unique, insightful, and approachable. Her accounts of her own family stories, extraordinarily careful and thorough documentation of research findings, and compelling theoretical insights together convey an unequivocal message: The autobiographical self is conditioned by one's time and culture.

Beginning with a perceptive examination of the form, content, and function of parent-child conversations of personal and family stories, Wang undertakes to show how the autobiographical self is formed in and shaped by the process of family storytelling situated in specific cultural contexts. By contrasting the development of autobiographical writings in Western and Chinese literatures, Wang seeks to demonstrate the cultural stance of the autobiographical self in historical time. She examines the autobiographical self in personal time, thoughtfully analyzing the form, structure, and content of everyday memories to reveal the role of culture in modulating information processing and determining how the autobiographical self is remembered. Focusing on memories of early childhood, Wang seeks to answer the question of when the autobiographical self begins from a cross-cultural perspective. She sets out further to explore some of the most controversial issues in current psychological research of autobiographical memory, focusing particularly on issues of memory representations versus memory narratives and silence versus voice in the construction of the autobiographical self appropriate to one's cultural assumptions. She concludes with historical analyses of the influences of the larger social, political, and economic forces on the autobiographical self, and takes a forward look at the autobiographical self as a product of modern technology.