Village voices

Village Voices is a book about talking, gossip, stories, written by the Danish anthropologist Perle Møhl. Based on 18 months of fieldwork, Village Voices investigates the everyday mechanisms of coexistence and the continual creations of individual and social identity within the village ´La Brumaire´ and its surrounding hamlets.

Taking the discursive field as its point of departure, the book sets out to examine how individual and social being is created, recreated and negotiated in the space between people´s actions and others people talking about those actions.

Were it not for talking, stories and gossip, such actions would not carry social significance. Gossip and stories interpret and construct the village life; ultimately, they are the village life. As opposed to conventional ideas about strict village norms and stigmatization, the author posits that the system of evaluation and knowledge she identifies is in fact extremely flexible, leaving all statements and interactions open to negotiations.