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University of California Press

About the Book

Harm takes shape in and through what is suppressed, left out, or taken for granted. This book is a guide to understanding and uncovering what is left unsaid—whether concealed or silenced, presupposed or excluded. Drawing on a variety of real-world examples, narrative criminologist Lois Presser outlines how to determine what or who is excluded from textual materials. With strategies that can be added to the tool kits of social researchers and activists alike, Unsaid provides a richly layered approach to analyzing and dismantling the power structures that both create and arise from what goes without saying.

About the Author

Lois Presser is Professor of Sociology and Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She is a coeditor of Narrative Criminology: Understanding Stories of Crime and the author of Inside Story: How Narratives Drive Mass HarmBeen a Heavy Life: Stories of Violent Men, and Why We Harm.

Table of Contents

Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments

1. Kept Quiet
2. Too Little or Too Much Said
3. Figurative Expression
4. Missing Subjects 
5. The Social Construction of Absences
6. Concluding Remarks: Boundless Texts, Better Worlds

Appendix: A Word on Sampling
Glossary 
Notes 
References
Index 

Reviews

"Presser concedes the impossibility of creating a comprehensive, all-inclusive text in which nothing is left unsaid as she advocates for honest and critical reflection to identify the unspoken assumptions and silenced viewpoints characteristic of all texts."
CHOICE
"This book provides a set of really good methods for discovering what is not being said and will be a great reference guide for researchers in multiple disciplines."
American Journal of Sociology
"An immensely innovative, elegantly written, highly imaginative, and important contribution. Unsaid provides a wealth of examples and a methodological guide on how to identify what many might deem impossible to identify."—Joachim J. Savelsberg, author of Knowing about Genocide: Armenian Suffering and Epistemic Struggles

"A significant contribution to the literature on narrative and discourse analysis. Engagingly written and well thought through, Unsaid offers a compelling conceptual apparatus for considering the centrality of the unsaid, especially in relation to harm-doing and exclusionary, minoritizing practices."—Stephen Frosh, author of Those Who Come After: Postmemory, Acknowledgement and Forgiveness