Background
Swanson, Jeffrey was born on March 24, 1957 in St. Paul. Son of Wallace Leroy and Charlotte Dillon Swanson.
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book
Echoes of the Call: Identity and Ideology among American Missionaries in Ecuador
(Drawing on the personal histories of one hundred evangeli...)
Drawing on the personal histories of one hundred evangelical missionaries in Ecuador, Echoes of the Call explores the lives of missionaries as sociological "strangers." In a study as compelling as it is insightful, Jeffrey Swanson illustrates how missionaries are distanced, not only from their culture and homeland, but also from their own era. The work begins with Swanson's interpretation of how his own experience as a child of missionaries shaped the viewpoint of estrangement from which the book is written. Swanson renders the formation of a missionary identity as the rhetorical composition of a personal testimony, in which life stories of separation, loss, conflict, and conversion are melded symbolically with historical mission themes of sacrifice, heroism, spiritual militancy, and divine calling. Relying on his subjects' own narratives, he traces the missionaries' personal journeys as their sense of calling first emerges, and then as it must be reinterpreted to account for unexpected, ambiguous, and often disillusioning experiences in their host country. Swanson argues that missionaries are marginal individuals who use their vocation creatively to produce a meaningful social world, and who use rhetoric effectively to maintain that world, for themselves and for supporters in their home countries. An informative and nuanced study, this book is a significant contribution to present sociological literature concerning missionaries and American evangelicals. Anyone interested in the sociology of religion, culture, and folklore will find Echoes of the Call to be a valuable and intriguing work.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195068238/?tag=2022091-20
Jeffrey Swanson
Edit Profileeducator researcher sociologist
Jeffrey Swanson, American sociologist, researcher, educator. Achievements include seminal research studies on links between violent behavior and severe mental illnesses, effectiveness of involuntary outpatient mental health treatment, and psychiatric advance directives. Grantee Indiana Research Scientist Career Award, National Institute of Mental Health, since 2004.
Education
Bachelor, Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California, 1979. Doctor of Philosophy, Yale University, New Haven, 1985.
Career
Assistant professor psychiatry and behavioral science University Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, 1985—1991. Postdoctoral fellow U North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1991—1993, Duke University Medical Center, 1991—1993. Professor psychiatry and behavioral science Duke University School Medicine, Durham, since 1993.
Member John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Mandated Community Treatment, since 2002.
Achievements
Works
book
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Echoes of the Call: Identity and Ideology among American Missionaries in Ecuador
(Drawing on the personal histories of one hundred evangeli...)
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Echoes of the Call: Identity and Ideology among American Missionaries in Ecuador
Connections
Married Pamela Ruth Mydske, August 23, 1983. Children: Angela Nicole, Alexandra Jane, Matthew Thomas.
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Born
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Nationality
American -
Political Party
Progressive