Life History and Understanding Personal Meanings

Abstract

<p>This thesis is an attempt to examine why it. is important to study an individual in his culture. A hermeneutical perspective then is offered as an example of one way in which an ethnographer may collect life history materials from a native person. Next, this hermeneutical perspective is developed as an interpretive scheme, the criteria of its uses are explored and then applied in a reinterpretation of Radin's presentation of Crashing Thunder, a Winnebago Indian. Consideration is given to how he used the life history form.</p>