Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Objects Of Desire: Photographs And Retrospective Narratives Of Fieldwork In Indonesia, Jennifer W. Nourse

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

This discussion of my fieldwork, memory, and experience begins with a nod to Handler and Gable’s essay (this volume) in which they ask what anthropology can contribute to the study of social memory. I take Gable and Handler’s insights about the false dichotomy between memory and history (since, they argue, all history and memory are perspectival) and consider ways in which fieldwork photographs demonstrate the same point. I suggest that my photographs became the repositories for individual interpretations of a host of broader issues related to the nation-state and its agenda. This agenda was reflected in ways the photographs were …