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Description:
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The book explores the historical dimension of Indian indenture from within the
lived experience of laborers, who emigrated to Fiji from colonial India a century
ago. As these laborers are no longer alive, one could argue that the experience
of indenture is no longer accessible, if there had not been recordings of the
laborers’ life narratives. It is seven of these audio recordings, made for public
broadcast, which form the data for a fine-grained language-analysis to unearth
the life-world of indenture. Through the merging of Labov’s high-point analysis
with Bamberg’s positioning analysis, the book focuses on the situated
discursive performativity of identities, and draws attention to the complex and at
times conflicting positions within the life narratives. Sorting through those
positions resulted in the ultimate challenge to the essentially homogenizing
current master narrative discourse on who can be classified as an indentured
laborer, and what signifies as an indenture experience.
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