Cover not available
Article published In:
Journal of Narrative and Life History
Vol. 6:2 (1996) ► pp.123–143

Life Stories, Status, and Symbolic Typing: Exploring Beggars As an Interpretive Community

| Yesrwel College, Ganei-Tikva, Israel
| Tel-Aviv University, and The Institute for the Study of Travel, Tokyo

Abstract Based on fieldwork in a central bus station in Israel, this article focuses on the theme of life stories as an analytical venue into the social world of beggars. Beggars were found to have three statuses, or symbolic types: the handicapped, the prostitute, and the mad. The ethnography describes the interplay between the status and life stories of beggars, and analyzes how life stories are changed vis-a-vis a beggar's change of status. (Sociology, Anthropology)

Published online: 4 August 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jnlh.6.2.02lif
References (45)
Bakhtin, M. M.
(1981) The dialogic imagination: Four essays by M. M. Bakhtin. (M. Holquist Ed.; C. Emerson & M. Holquist Trans. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Bamisaiye, A.
(1974) Begging in Ibadan, Southern Nigeria. Human Organization, 331, 197–202. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Becker, H.
(1982) Art worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P.
(1986) L'illusion biographique [The biographic illusion] Acts de la Recherche en Science Sociales, 62/631, 69–72. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Caplan, P.
(1988) Engendering knowledge: The politics of ethnography. Anthropology Today. 4(6, 14–17). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chandra, S.
(1967) Sociology of deviation in India. Bombay, India: Allied.Google Scholar
Clifford, J., & Marcus, G.
(1986) Writing culture: The poetics and politics of ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Denzin, N. K.
(1977) Notes on the cuminogenic hypothesis: A case study of the American liquor industry. American Sociological Revue, 421, 905–920. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1978) Crime and American liquor industry. In N. K. Denzin (Ed.) Studies in symbolic interaction (Vol. 11, pp. 87–118).Greenwich, CT: JAI.Google Scholar
(1987a) The alcoholic self. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
(1987b) The recovering alcoholic. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
(1987b) Interpretive biography. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Fabrega, H.
(1971) Begging in a southeastern Mexican city. Human Organization, 301, 277–286. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Genette, G.
(1980) Narrative discourse: An essay in method. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Gergen, K., & Gergen, M.
(1988) Narrative and the self as relationship. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 211, 17–55. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Giddens, A.
(1991) Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the late modern age. Cambridge, England: Polity.Google Scholar
Gmelch, G., & Gmelch, S.
(1974) Begging in Dublin-The strategies of a marginal urban occupation. Urban Life, 61, 353–439.Google Scholar
Grathoff, R. H.
(1970) The structure of social inconsistencies: A contribution to a unified theory of play, game and social action. The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Handelman, D.
(1986) Charisma, liminality and symbolic types. In E. Cohen, M. Lissac, & U. Almagor (Eds.) Comparative social dynamics: Essays in honour of S. N. Eisenstadt (pp. 346–360). Boulder, CO: Westview.Google Scholar
(1992) Symbolic types, the body, and circus. Semiotica, 851, 205–227.Google Scholar
Kirschner, S.
(1987) "Then what have I to do with thee?": On identity, fieldwork, and ethnographic knowledge. Cultural Anthropology, 21, 211–234. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kling, R., & Gerson, E. M.
(1978) Patterns of segmentation and interaction in the computing world. Symbolic Interaction, 11, 24–43. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Langness, L. L., & Frank, G.
(1981) Lives: An anthropological approach to biography. Novato, CA: Chandler & Sharp.Google Scholar
Maines, D.
(1993) Narrative's moment and sociology's phenomena: Toward a narrative sociology. Sociological Quarterly, 341, 17–38. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Maines, D., Sugrue, N., & Katovich, M.
(1983) The sociological import of Mead's theory of the past. American Sociological Review, 481, 161–173. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Marcus, G. E., & Fischer, M.
(1986) Anthropology as cultural critique. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Mayhew, H.
(1968) London labour and the London poor. New York: Dover.Google Scholar
Mead, G. H.
(1932) The philosophy of the present. LaSalle, IL: Open Court.Google Scholar
Meir-Dviri, M., & Raz, A. E.
(1995) Rituals of exchange in the social world of Israeli beggars: An exploratory study. Symbolic Interaction, 181, 99–119. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, W. J. T.
(1981) On narrative. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Plath, D.
(1987) Making experience come out right: Culture as biography. Central Issues in Anthropology, 71, 1–8. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Raz, A. E.
(1993) The reinherited self. Studies in Symbolic Interaction, 141, 43–62.Google Scholar
(1995) The discourse of aging and other age-related languages. Studies in Symbolic Interaction, 181, 23–57.Google Scholar
Ricoeur, P.
(1988) Time and narrative (Vol. 21). Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Roos, J. P.
(1987) From farm to office: Family, self-confidence and the new middle class. Life Stories/Recits de Vie, 31, 7–20.Google Scholar
Rosenblum, B.
(1978) Photographers at work. New York: Holmes & Meier.Google Scholar
Shibutani, T.
(1955) Reference groups as perspectives. American Journal of Sociology, 601, 562–568. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shichor, D., & Ellis, R.
(1981) Begging in Israel: An exploratory study. Deviant Behavior, 21, 109–125. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Strauss, A.
(1959) Mirrors and masks. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.Google Scholar
(1978) A social world perspective. In N. K. Denzin (Ed.) Studies in symbolic interaction (Vol. 11, pp. 119–128. Greenwich, CT: JAI.Google Scholar
(1982) Social worlds and legitimation processes. In N. K. Denzin (Ed.) Studies in symbolic interaction (Vol. 41, pp. 171–190. Greenwich, CT: JAI.Google Scholar
Thornton, R.
(1988) The rhetoric of ethnographic holism. Cultural Anthropology, 31, 285–303. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Todorov, T. (Ed.)
(1965) Theorie de la literature: Textes de formalists russes [Theory of literature: Texts of Russian formalists]. paris: Seuil.Google Scholar
Todorov, T.
(1977) Poetics of prose. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Tyler, S. A.
(1987) The unspeakable: Discourse, dialogue, and rhetoric in the postmodern world. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by 1 other publications

Andrle, Vladimir
2001. The Buoyant Class: Bourgeois Family Lineage in the Life Stories of Czech Business Elite Persons. Sociology 35:4 ► pp. 815 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.