Narrative inquiry

Narrative inquiry or narrative analysis emerged as a discipline from within the broader field of qualitative research in the early 20th century.[1] Narrative inquiry uses field texts, such as stories, autobiography, journals, field notes, letters, conversations, interviews, family stories, photos (and other artifacts), and life experience, as the units of analysis to research and understand the way people create meaning in their lives as narratives.[2]

Narrative inquiry has been employed as a tool for analysis in the fields of cognitive science, organizational studies, knowledge theory, sociology and education studies, among others. Other approaches include the development of quantitative methods and tools based on the large volume capture of fragmented anecdotal material, and that which is self signified or indexed at the point of capture.[3] Narrative Inquiry challenges the philosophy behind quantitative/grounded data-gathering and questions the idea of “objective” data, however, it has been criticized for not being “theoretical enough."[4][5]

Background

Narrative inquiry is a form of qualitative research, that emerged in the field of management science and later also developed in the field of knowledge management, which shares the sphere of Information Management.[6] Thus Narrative Inquiry focuses on the organization of human knowledge more than merely the collection and processing of data. It also implies that knowledge itself is considered valuable and noteworthy even when known by only one person.

Knowledge management was coined as a discipline in the early 1980s as a method of identifying, representing, sharing, and communicating knowledge.[7] Knowledge management and Narrative Inquiry share the idea of Knowledge transfer, a theory which seeks to transfer unquantifiable elements of knowledge, including experience. Knowledge, if not communicated, becomes arguably useless, literally unused.

Philosopher Andy Clark speculates that the ways in which minds deal with narrative (second-hand information) and memory (first-hand perception) are cognitively indistinguishable. Narrative, then, becomes an effective and powerful method of transferring knowledge.

Narrative ways of knowing

Narrative is a powerful tool in the transfer, or sharing, of knowledge, one that is bound to cognitive issues of memory, constructed memory, and perceived memory. Jerome Bruner discusses this issue in his 1990 book, Acts of Meaning, where he considers the narrative form as a non-neutral rhetorical account that aims at “illocutionary intentions,” or the desire to communicate meaning.[8] This technique might be called “narrative” or defined as a particular branch of storytelling within the narrative method. Bruner’s approach places the narrative in time, to “assume an experience of time” rather than just making reference to historical time.[9]

This narrative approach captures the emotion of the moment described, rendering the event active rather than passive, infused with the latent meaning being communicated by the teller. Two concepts are thus tied to narrative storytelling: memory and notions of time, both as time as found in the past and time as re-lived in the present.[10]

A narrative method accepts the idea that knowledge can be held in stories that can be relayed, stored, and retrieved.[11]

Methods

1. Develop a research question

2. Select or produce raw data

3. Organize data

(When choosing a method of organization, one should choose the approach best suited to the research question and the goal of the project. For instance, Gee's method of organization would be best if studying the role language plays in narrative construction whereas Labov's method would more ideal for examining a certain event and its effect on an individual's experiences.)[15][16]
  • Labov's: Thematic organization[17] or Synchronic Organization.
This method is considered useful for understanding major events in the narrative and the effect those events have on the individual constructing the narrative.[18] The approach utilizes an "evaluation model" that organizes the data into an abstract (What was this about?), an orientation (Who? What? When? Where?), a complication (Then what happened?), an evaluation (So what?), a result (What finally happened?), and a coda (the finished narrative).[19] Said narrative elements may not occur in a constant order; multiple or reoccurring elements may exist within a single narrative.[20]
  • Polkinghorne's: Chronological Organization or Diachronic Organization
also related to the sociology of stories approach that focuses on the contexts in which narratives are constructed. This approach attends to the "embodied nature" of the person telling the narrative, the context from which the narrative is created, the relationships between the narrative teller and others within the narrative, historical continuity, and the chronological organization of events.[21] A story with a clear beginning, middle, and end is constructed from the narrative data. Polkinghorne makes the distinction between narrative analysis and analysis of narratives.[22] Narrative analysis utilizes "narrative reasoning" by shaping data in a narrative form and doing an in-depth analysis of each narrative on its own, whereas analysis of narratives utilizes paradigmatic reasoning and analyzes themes across data that take the form of narratives.[23]
  • Bruner's functional approach focuses on what roles narratives serve for different individuals. In this approach, narratives are viewed as the way in which individuals construct and make sense of reality as well as the ways in which meanings are created and shared.[24] This is considered a functional approach to narrative analysis because the emphasis of the analysis is focused on the work that the narrative serves in helping individuals make sense of their lives, particularly through shaping random and chaotic events into a coherent narrative that makes the events easier to handle by giving them meaning.[25] The focus of this form of analysis is on the interpretations of events related in the narratives by the individual telling the story.[26]
  • Gee's approach of structural analysis focuses on the ways in which the narrative is conveyed by the speaker with particular emphasis given to the interaction between speaker and listener.[27] In this form of analysis, the language that the speaker uses, the pauses in speech, discourse markers, and other similar structural aspects of speech are the focus. In this approach, the narrative is divided into stanzas and each stanza is analyzed by itself and also in the way in which it connects to the other pieces of the narrative.[28]
  • Jaber F. Gubrium's form of narrative ethnography features the storytelling process as much as the story in analyzing narrativity. Moving from text to field, he and his associate James A. Holstein present an analytic vocabulary and procedural strategies for collecting and analyzing narrative material in everyday contexts, such as families and care settings. In their view, the structure and meaning of texts cannot be understood separate from the everyday contexts of their production. Their two books--"Analyzing Narrative Reality" and "Varieties of Narrative Analysis" provide dimensions of an institutionally-sensitive, constructionist approach to narrative production.

4. Interpret data

Paradigm or theory Criteria Form of theory Type of narration
Positivist/postpositivist Internal, external validity Logical-deductive grounded Scientific report
Constructivist Trustworthiness, credibility, transferability, confirmability Substantive Interpretive case studies, ethnographic fiction
Feminist Afrocentric, lived experience, dialogue, caring, accountability, race, class, gender, reflexivity, praxis, emotion, concrete grounding Critical, standpoint Essays, stories, experimental writing
Ethnic Afrocentric, lived experience, dialogue, caring, accountability, race, class, gender Standpoint, critical, historical Essays, fables, dramas
Marxism Emancipatory theory, falsifiability dialogical, race, class, gender Critical, historical, economic Historical, economic, sociocultural analyses
Cultural studies Cultural practices, praxis, social texts, subjectivities Social criticism Cultural theory as criticism
Queer theory Reflexivity, deconstruction Social criticism, historical analysis Theory as criticism, autobiography

[31]

(The research question may have to change at this stage if the data does not offer insight to the inquiry.)
With these approaches, the researcher should draw upon their own knowledge and the research to label the narrative.[33]

Interpretive research

The idea of imagination is where narrative inquiry and storytelling converge within narrative methodologies. Within narrative inquiry, storytelling seeks to better understand the “why” behind human action.[36] Story collecting as a form of narrative inquiry allows the research participants to put the data into their own words and reveal the latent “why” behind their assertions.

“Interpretive research” is a form of field research methodology that also searches for the subjective "why."[37] Interpretive research, using methods such as those termed “storytelling” or “narrative inquiry,” does not attempt to predefine independent variables and dependent variables, but acknowledges context and seeks to “understand phenomena through the meanings that people assign to them.”[38]

Two influential proponents of a narrative research model are Mark Johnson and Alasdair MacIntyre. In his work on experiential, embodied metaphors, Johnson encourages the researcher to challenge “how you see knowledge as embodied, embedded in a culture based on narrative unity,” the “construct of continuity in individual lives.”[39]

The seven “functions of narrative work” as outlined by Riessman[40] 1. Narrative constitutes past experiences as it provides ways for individuals to make sense of the past. 2. Narrators argue with stories. 3. Persuading. Using rhetorical skill to position a statement to make it persuasive/to tell it how it “really” happened. To give it authenticity or ‘truth’. 4. Engagement, keeping the audience in the dynamic relationship with the narrator. 5. Entertainment. 6. Stories can function to mislead an audience. 7. Stories can mobilize others into action for progressive change.[41]

Practices

Narrative analysis therefore can be used to acquire a deeper understanding of the ways in which a few individuals organize and derive meaning from events[42] . It can be particularly useful for studying the impact of social structures on an individual and how that relates to identity, intimate relationships, and family.[43] For example:

See also

References

  1. ↑ Riessman, C. K., 1993. "Narrative Analysis" (Newbury Park: Sage Publications).
  2. ↑ D. Jean Clandinin and F. Michael Connelly, Narrative Inquiry: Experience and Story in Qualitative Research (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2000), 98–115.
  3. ↑ Snowden D (2010) Naturalizing Sensemaking' in Mosier and Fischer (eds) Informed by Knowledge: Expert Performance pp 223-234
  4. ↑ David M. Boje, Narrative Methods for Organizational and Communication Research (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2001), 83, 98.
  5. ↑ Clandinin and Connelly, 42. See also Laurel Richardson, “Narrative and Sociology,” in Representation in Ethnography, edited by John Van Maanen (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995).
  6. ↑ See Harlan Cleveland, The Knowledge Executive: Leadership in an Information Society (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1989).
  7. ↑ See Nico Stehr and Richard V. Ericson, eds., The Culture and Power of Knowledge: Inquiries into Contemporary Societies (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1992); and, Fritz Machlup, Knowledge and Knowledge Production (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980).
  8. ↑ Jerome S. Bruner, Acts of Meaning (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), 85.
  9. ↑ Donald Polkinghorne, Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences (Albany: SUNY Press, 1988), 132.
  10. ↑ See Jacques Le Goff, History and Memory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992).
  11. ↑ Ronald E. Fry, Appreciative Inquiry and Organizational Transformation: Reports from the Field (Westport: CN: Quorum Books, 2002), 166.
  12. ↑ Research question
  13. ↑ Coffey, Amanda & Paul Atkinson (1996). "Making Sense of Qualitative Data." Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
  14. ↑ Polkinghorne, Donald E. (1995). Narrative configuration in qualitative analysis. Qualitative studies in education, Vol. 8, issue 2.
  15. ↑ Riessman, C.K. (1993). "Narrative Analysis". Newbury Park: Sage Publications.
  16. ↑ Smith C.P. (2000). Content analysis and narrative analysis. In: Reis HT, Judd CM, eds. Handbook of research methods in social and personality psychology. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
  17. ↑ William Labov (1972). Some principles of linguistic methodology. Language in Society, 1, pp 97-120 doi:10.1017/S0047404500006576
  18. ↑ Smith C.P. (2000). Content analysis and narrative analysis. In: Reis HT, Judd CM, eds. Handbook of research methods in social and personality psychology. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
  19. ↑ Coffey, A. & Atkinson, P. (1996) Making sense of qualitative data. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
  20. ↑ Coffey, A. & Atkinson, P. (1996) Making sense of qualitative data. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
  21. ↑ Polkinghorne, Donald (1995). "Narrative Configuration in Qualitative Analysis". Qualitative Studies in Education 8 (1).
  22. ↑ Polkinghorne, Donald E. (1995). Narrative Configuration in Qualitative Analysis. Qualitative Studies in Education, Vol. 8, Issue 2.
  23. ↑ Polkinghorne, Donald E. (1995). Narrative Configuration in Qualitative Analysis. Qualitative Studies in Education, Vol. 8, Issue 2.
  24. ↑ Bruner, Jerome (1991). "The Narrative Construction of Reality". Critical Inquiry 18 (1): 1–21. doi:10.1086/448619.
  25. ↑ Bruner, Jerome (1991). "The Narrative Construction of Reality". Critical Inquiry 18 (1): 1–21. doi:10.1086/448619.
  26. ↑ Bruner, Jerome (1991). "The Narrative Construction of Reality". Critical Inquiry 18 (1): 1–21. doi:10.1086/448619.
  27. ↑ Riessman, C.K. (1993). "Narrative Analysis." Newbury Park: Sage Publications.
  28. ↑ Daiute, Colette & Cynthia Lightfoot (2003). Narrative Analysis: Studying the Development of Individuals in Society. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
  29. ↑ Riessman, C. K. (1993). "Narrative Analysis." Newbury Park: Sage Publications.
  30. ↑ Polkinghorne, Donald (1995). "Narrative Configuration in Qualitative Analysis". Qualitative Studies in Education 8 (1).
  31. ↑ Denzin, N.K. & Lincoln, Y.S. (1998) (Eds). Collecting and interpreting qualitative materials. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publication.
  32. ↑ Coffey, A. & Atkinson, P. (1996) Making sense of qualitative data. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
  33. ↑ Riessman, C.K. (1993). "Narrative Analysis." Newbury Park: Sage Publications.
  34. ↑ Polkinghorne, Donald E. (1995). Narrative Configuration in Qualitative Analysis. Qualitative Studies in Education, Vol. 8, Issue 2.
  35. ↑ Polkinghorne, Donald E. (1995). Narrative configuration in qualitative analysis. Qualitative studies in education, Vol. 8, issue 2.
  36. ↑ Nona Lyons and Vicki Kubler LaBoskey, Narrative Inquiry in Practice: Advancing the Knowledge of Teaching (New York: Teachers College Press, 2002), 163.
  37. ↑ H. Klein and M. D. Myers, “A Set of Principles for Conducting and Evaluating Interpretive Field Studies” MIS Quarterly 23, no. 1 (1999): 67–93.
  38. ↑ Heinz K. Klein and Michael D. Myers, “A Set of Principles for Conducting and Evaluating Interpretive Field Studies in Information Systems,” MIS Quarterly 23, no. 1 (March 1999): 69.
  39. ↑ Clandinin and Connelly, Narrative Inquiry, 3. See also George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1980).
  40. ↑ Riessman, Catherine (2008). Narrative Methods for the Human Sciences. Sage.
  41. ↑ Riessman, Catherine (2008). Narrative Methods for the Human Sciences. Sage.
  42. ↑ Polkinghorne, Donald (1995). "Narrative Configuration in Qualitative Analysis". Qualitative Studies in Education 8 (1).
  43. ↑ Frost, David M. (2011). "Stigma and Intimacy in Same Sex Relationships: A Narrative Approach". Journal of Family Psychology 25 (1).
  44. ↑ Michael Brecher and Frank P. Harvey (2002). Millennial Reflections on International Studies (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press), 326.
  45. ↑ Smith C.P. (2000). Content analysis and narrative analysis. In: Reis HT, Judd CM, eds. Handbook of research methods in social and personality psychology. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
  46. ↑ McAdams, D.P. & Zeldow, P.B. (1993). Construct validity and content analysis. Journal of Personality Assessment, 61. 243-245.
  47. ↑ Donald E. Polkinghorne (1995). Narrative configuration in qualitative analysis. Qualitative Studies in Education, Vol. 8.
  48. ↑ Leave, Patricia (2009). Method Meets Art: Arts Based Research Practice. Guliford Press.
  49. ↑ Leave, Patricia (2009). Method Meets Art: Arts Based Research Practice. Guliford Press.

Bibliography

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