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full details for
Pioneering Over Four Epochs: Eight Prefaces| |
| Author | Ron Price |
Title of item | Pioneering Over Four Epochs: Eight Prefaces |
Subtitle of item | Subtitle of document: A Study of Autobiography |
| Date of this edition | 2010 |
| Language | English |
| Permission | author |
| Posted | 2010-05-02 by Ron Price |
| Classified in | Essays and poetry by Ron Price |
| URL | bahai-library.com/price_pioneering_prefaces_autobiography |
| Abstract | This autobiography of a Bahai over six decades of teaching and consolidation, travel-teaching and social activism is one of the few extensive personal accounts of the experience of a Western Bahai beginning in the 2nd epoch of the Formative Age(1944-1963) |
| Notes | Part 1:
This autobiographical study begins at the start of the first three North American and global teaching Plans of: 1937, 1946, & 1953, respectively. This study integrates a lifespan, a projected lifespan, 1944 to 2044, a life-narrative, into the context of the history of the Bahai community back to 1743, the year of the birth of that Bábí Faith's chief precursor Shaykh Ahmad. The author includes over 2000 references from the humanities and social sciences within the western intellectual tradition. His account goes through to the year 2044.
Part 2:
This work draws on many studies of autobiography, biography, life-narratives, memoirs and diaries as well as a broad range of experience, to analyse this author's society, his Faith, his community and himself in those critical first eight decades of organized and systematic teaching plans, 1936 to 2016. It is his hope that he will be able to extend this study of the teaching plans until at least 2036, when he will be in his 90s, and possibly until 2044 when he will have reached the age of 100. Time, of course, will tell.
Readers will find here at Bahá'í Library Online(BLO) the introductory sections, Parts 1, 2 and 3, of the author's epic 2600 page five volume 7th edition. These three Parts, now sub-divided into 6 separate sections, are an abridged, truncated and necessarily provisional edition for BLO. All of these Parts are kept updated in the author's computer file since the space available here at BLO makes additions to the content difficult. If he can find some means of publishing that 8th edition online he will do so.
This section, this post at BLO, is Part 1.1 and, as the title suggests, the entire work is a study of autobiography as a genre, an analysis of its process and its content, as much as if not more than, a study of the author's life, his society and his religion. The Office of Review of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of the United States has given him permission to post this work in its current form on the Internet.
Part 3:
The 3rd edition of this document was originally posted at BLO in 2003. A hard copy was placed in the Bahá'í World Centre library also in 2003; that 3rd edition has now been edited and revised many times in the dozen years since then. The current edition, the 7th, was posted here at BLO in celebration of the 50th anniversary, in April 2013, of the first election of the Universal House of Justice in April 1963. This document is now in the early stages of an 8th edition. This 8th edition is envisaged to be completed in its final form in the author's computer directory and, hopefully, in cyberspace, in April 2021 at the end of the first century of the Formative Age if, as the author points out, he lasts that long. In 2021 he will be 77, and in 2044 he will be 100, the end of the second century of the Formative Age, 1844 to 2044.
Part 4:
In some ways this autobiography is simply a form of self-reflection and writing known as auto-ethnography. Auto-ethnography explores the author's personal experience and connects his autobiographical story to wider cultural & political, sociological & psychological meanings & understandings. This account differs from ethnography which is a qualitative research method in which a researcher uses participant observation and interviews in order to gain a deeper understanding of a group's culture. Auto-ethnography focuses on: (i) the writer's subjective experience in interaction with the beliefs and practices of others, (ii) research and writing, (iii) story and method. The author's aim, among many, is to connect the autobiographical and personal to the cultural, social, and political. This is the core of auto-ethnography.
Part 5:
Analytical auto-ethnographers focus on developing theoretical explanations of broader social phenomena; auto-ethnographers like this author also focus on narrative presentations that aim to open-up conversations & evoke responses from others.
As part of the author's prefatory work, he takes his family history and his historical commentary on society, as well as on this latest of the Abrahamic religions, back to the century 1743 to 1844, the precursor period of the Bábí Revelation. He then continues into the century 1844 to 1944, the year he was born in Canada. He then takes his readers through the 2nd century of the Bahá'í Era, from 1944 to 2044.
In putting this account together the author deals with some 15 generations of history, of his family, of the Babi-Bahá'í religions and the Bábí Faith's precursor period, a total of 300 years, from 1743 to 2044. This series of volumes attempts to integrate the experience of these generations into a coherent whole. After more than 30 years of working on this vast expanse of history and personal experience, he feels he has just begun. This is one of the many works which this author and editor, online blogger and journalist is now working on as he goes through his last years on Earth.
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| Tags | Ron Price |
| Cross-references | See also https://bahai-library.com/price_pioneering_four_epochs. | | Page views | 8818 hits since 2010-05-02 |
| Edit quality | medium: minimally proofread or edited |
| Format quality | medium: lightly formatted |
Last edited | 2015-09-17 18:28 EST. See previous versions [archive.org]. Documents posted between 2003-2012 had various slightly different URLs and sometimes can be found in archive.org with addresses like bahai-library.com/file.php5?file=price_pioneering_prefaces_autobiography. | | |
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