Searching for the Narrative Thread
How do researchers and others identify the narrative themes in a life history? A 1998 article by the Marilyns Nouri
and Helterline has me interested in the concept of Narrative Accrual. Jerome Bruner may have coined the term in his 1991 article,
“The Narrative Construction of Reality.” Bruner argued that out of life’s chaos the mind constructs reality
using (learned) cultural devices, one of which is narrative. He describes narrative as having ten characteristics, among them
“accrual,” the idea that a narrative is cumulative – that new stories build on older ones. This strikes
me as a particularly rational, linear understanding of reality, akin to popular theories of human development. The story advances.
The human develops. Society improves. Not consistent with the complex, twisting world I live in. Not
consistent, either, with the beloved fantastical writing of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Isabelle Allende, among others.
Nouri and Helterline were seeking to understand how elders “construct meaning about the life course.”
So they conducted life history interviews (sometimes in several sittings) with 30 people in New York who had been born before
1920. The authors identified a central narrative theme “the will and the cosmos,” around which five life stories
revolved. These were: the “American dream,” “life is struggle,” “life is simple,” “God
determines,” and “life is shared.” Some fairly predictable gender differences emerged, as when only women
told their stories as “life is shared.” As the authors explained, “Men construct male identities as individual
heroes or as individuals in struggle against the cosmos. Women construct narratives in which they exist in relation to God
or to others.” (p. 53). I wonder whether they noticed that while men were constructing identities women were constructing
narratives. Narrative accrual describes the process people use to make sense of the changes and continuities of their lives.
Agency and self-efficacy were important themes, reflecting cultural demands as much as personal imperatives.
These authors constructed a framework from the 30 life histories they collected. Yet they told us nothing about the
very instruments they used to make sense of the interviews: themselves. They were also sparing in describing the method used.
How, I wonder, did they come up with the central narrative theme of individual will vs the cosmos? Their interpretations make
sense, I’m skeptical. Looking at five life stories I see bits of myself throughout. How did they so tidily assign each
person to one and only one category? I’d love to talk to them, but google produced no contact information that worked.
Perhaps the construction of a life narrative is more an exercise in “creative non-fiction,”
than in truth. Perhaps, as Bruner suggests, the narrative method is more about verisimilitude than verifiability.
Sources:
Bruner, J.S. (1991). The narrative construction of reality. Critical Inquiry.
18: 1-12.
Nouri,
M. & Helterline, M. (1998). Narrative accrual and the life course. Research on Aging, 20(1), 36-64.
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Autoethnography: Studies at the Boundary Between Self and
Society
Standing before the full-length mirror in my bedroom I am confused. This morning when I posed
in my underwear I thought, “Not bad for 53. You go girl!” This evening it’s “How did you get so stocky
so quickly? Cover that thing up now!” How can the same mirror present such contrasting images in the space of
a single day? Isn't anything true for more than 12 hours? This, I think, is the source of my mistrust of authobiography
- my never-ending quest for eternal truths. When I let go of that, life becomes more interesting. I redefine what I mean by
truth - I'm thinking it's personal (it grabs ms), it's relevant (to someone else) and it's fluid (changing). Letting go of
eternal truths enables me to ask what my judgmental response says about older women in our culture. It brings me to interface
between personal and political, where feminist theory once resided. And this is what I like about autoethnography.
Auto-ethnography is quite seductive. It’s the ultimate post-modern research approach and you don’t even need
Ethics (IRB) approval! Examine your life then use your knowledge of social theory, history, philosophy, and/or anthropology
to reflect on what this means for you and others.
There
are measures for assessing the quality of auto-ethnographic reports: resonance, validity, and narrative truth. Aha! Someone
cares about truth! This would suggest that it’s not just navel-gazing. Then Allan Sparkes (2001)[or was it Carolyn Ellis,
1999?] offered more evocative criteria: “the use of systematic sociological introspection and emotional recall; the
inclusion of the researcher’s vulnerable selves, emotions, body ad spirit; the production of evocative stories that
create the effect of reality; the celebration of concrete experience and intimate detail; the examination of how human experience
is endowed with meaning; a concern with moral, ethical, and political consequences; an encouragement of empathy; a focus on
helping us know how to live and cope; the featuring of multiple voices and the repositioning of readers and “subjects”
as co-participants in dialogue; [and] the search for a fusion between social sciences and literature…” (p 214)
Auto-ethnography combines personal and societal reflection, teasing forth the warp and the woof of our social fabric.
Shifting our gaze back and forth from internal to external in a way that others can follow. I stuck my toe in with Love Stories
of Later Life, and plan to dive in headfirst in my next book, Parenting Reflections. It’s a bit scary. Who wants
to be accused of self-indulgence? But hey, “you gotta do what you gotta do.” And where did that come from?
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Sources of interest
Narrative
Methods
Blumenfeld-Jones Donald. “Fidelity as a Criterion for
Practicing and Evaluating Narrative Inquiry.” Life History and Narrative. Eds. J.A. Hatch and R. Wisniewski.
London: Falmer, 1995.
Carter, Duncan and Sherrie Gradin. Writing as Reflective Action.
Clandinin, D.Jean and
F. Michael Connelly. (2000). Narrative Inquiry: Experience and Story in Qualitative Research.
Clandinin, D. Jean (Ed) (2006). Handbook of Narrative Inquiry: Mapping a methodology.
Sage Publications.
Cowling, W.R. (2008).
An essay on women, despair, and healing: A personal narrative. Advances n Nursing Science, 31(3), p.
249-58.
Herman, D. (Ed.)
(2007). The Cambridge Companion to Narrative. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Hermann, Marie-Luise (2007). Narrative gerontology: Survey
of current literature and research. Psychotherapie und Sozialwissenschaft: Zeitschrift fur Qualitative Forschung. 9(1),
7-32.
Jones, K. (2008). Narrative
Matters: The power of the personal essay in health policy. Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, 19(3),
p. 1011.
Jones, R., Latham, J. &
Betta, M. (2008). Narrative construction of the social entrepreneurial identity. International Journal of Entrepreneurial
Behavior & Research, 14(5), p. 330.
Josselson, R, Leibich, A.& McAdams, A. (2003). Up close and personal: The teaching and learning of narrative
research. Available online.
Josselson,
R. & Liebich, A. (1995). Interpreting Experience: The narrative study of lives. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Laszlo, J. (2008). The Science of Stories:
An introduction to narrative psychology. Longon: Routledge.
Knudson, R.M., Adame, A.L., Finocan, G.M. (2006). Significant dreams: Repositioning
the self narrative. Dreaming, 16(3), 215-222.
McAdams, D.P., Josselson, R., & Lieblich, A. (eds.)(2006). Identity and Story: Creating
self in narrative. APA Books. (Part of a series called “The Narrative Study of Lives.”)
Pagnucci,
Gian. Living the Narrative Life: Stories as a Tool for Meaning Making.
Phoenix, C. & Sparkes, A.C. (2008). Athletic bodies and aging in context: The narrative
construction of experienced and anticipated selves in time. Journal of Aging Studies. 22(3), p. 211.
Randall, W.L. & McKim, E. (2008).
Reading our Lives: The poetics of growing old. NY: Oxford University Press.
Runyan, W.M. (1982). Life Histories and Psychobiography: Explorations in Theory
and Method. New York: Oxford University Press.
Wengraf, T. (not dated) Guide to The Biographic-Narrative Interpretive Method (BNIM). He's at London
East Research Institute, University of East London, UK.
Wenner, J.A., Burch, M.M., Lynch, J.S., & Bauer, P.J. (2008). Becoming a teller of tales: Associations
between children, fictional narratives, and parent. Journal of Experimental Chid Psychology, 101(1).
P. 1.
Westerhaus, M., Panjabi, R.,
& Mukherjee, J. (2008). Violence and the role of illness narratives. The Lancet. 372(9640), p. 699.
Autoethnography
Anderson, L. (2006). Analytic
Autoethnography. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 35(4), 373-395.
Berger, (2001). Inside Out: Narrative autoethnography as a path toward rapport. Qualitative Inquiry, 7(4),
504-518.
Chang, Heewon (2008). Autoethnography as method. Walnut
Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.
Clough, P.T. (1997). Autotelecommunication
and autoethnography: A reading of Carolyn Ellis’s Final Negotiations. Sociological Quarterly,
Duncan,
M. (2004). Autoethnography: Critical appreciation of an emerging art. International Journal of Qualitative Methods.
Retrieved 1 July, 2009 from http://www.ualberta.ca/~iiqm/backissues/4_1/html/muncey.htm.
Ellis, C. (1999). Heartful
Autoethnography. Qualitative Health Research, 9(5), 669-683.
Ellis, C. (1997) Evocative Autoethnography:
Writing Emotionally About Our Lives. In Tierney, W.G. & Lincoln, Y.S. (Eds). Representation and
Text: Reframing the narrative voice. New York: SUNY Press
Ellis,
C. (1997) Evocative Autoethnography: Writing Emotionally About Our Lives. In Tierney, W.G. & Lincoln, Y.S.
(Eds). Representation and Text: Reframing the narrative voice. New York: SUNY Press.
Ellis C., & Bochner, A.P.(2006). Analyzing analytic autoethnography: An autopsy. Journal
of Contemporary Ethnography, 35, 429-449.
Fraser, H. (2004).
Doing Narrative Research: Analyzing personal stories line by line. Qualitative Social Work, 3, 179-201. (This one's really good!)
Humphreys, M. (2005). Getting personal: Reflexivity and autoethnographic vignettes. Qualitative Inquiry, 11(6),
840-860.
Meneley, A. & Young, D.J. (2005)(Eds). Auto-ethnographies:
The anthropology of academic practices. Orchard Park, NY: Broadview Press.
Muncey, T. (2005). Doing autoethnography. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 4(3),
Article 5. Retrieved 1 July, 2009 from http://www.ualberta.ca/~iiqm/backissues/4_1/html/muncey.htm
Pelias, R.J. (2003). The academic tourist: An autoethnography. Qualitative Inquiry, 9(3),
369-373.
Reed-Danahay, D.E (1997) (Ed). Euto/ethnography: Rewriting
the self and the social. Oxford: Berg,
Roth, W.-M. (2008) (Ed). Auto/Biography and Auto/Ethnography: Praxis of Research Method.
Sparkes, A.C. (2001) Autoethnography: Self-indulgence or something
more? In Bochner, A & Ellis, C. (Eds) Ethnographically Speaking: Autoethnography, Literature, and Aesthetics.
Alta Mira Press.
