The Narrative Study of Lives series – serie

In taking up the topic of ethics and narrative inquiry, The Narrative Study of Lives rightfully establishes itself as the site where the most critical theoretical, methodological, and interpretive work on narrative in the human disciplines is now occurring. The editor and the contributors to this volume are to be thanked for their deeply probing, forward-looking analyses of the ethical problems that arise when researchers produce narratives about persons with whom close personal relationships have been formed. --Norman K. Denzin, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign "All of us who work with life-history narratives are grateful to Dr. Josselson and her colleagues for moving us step-by-step toward a discipline with definable ethics and methodology, and at the same time holding up for us the incredible diversity of the field and the range of insights it offers." --Mary Catherine Bateson, author of Peripheral Visions The most significant truths about human beings are to be found in the stories of their lives. But what happens to those stories and to the people whose lives are told when a researcher seeks to make those stories known? Ruthellen Josselson has assembled an international cast of scholars to reflect on the process of life-narrative study and the ethical dilemmas that face researchers whose very mode of narrative inquiry may inevitably involve a violation of another and unwittingly lead to a sense of betrayal, shame, or guilt. In these disarmingly candid and engaging essays, narrative researchers of many different stripes talk about the morally delicate and epistemologically precarious enterprise of telling another's story. The authors raise fascinating questions about who ultimately controls the tellings, what happens to stories once they are told, and why stories influence not only the people whose lives are told but also the tellers themselves, whose own professional and personal lives may even be captured by or appropriated into the stories they are aiming to tell. This exceptional volume, the latest in The Narrative Study of Lives series, is essential for researchers, professionals, and students in research methods, including qualitative methods, developmental psychology, education, relationships, and language and discourse analysis.

The narrative approach is a relevant and enriching technique for uncovering, describing, and interpreting the meaning of experience. This collection explores the challenges of performing narrative work in an academic setting, writing about it in an ethical and revealing fashion, and drawing meaningful conclusions. This stellar collection of scholars examine such topics as how the larger construct of "personality" can be read out of life story; life narratives of reform, i.e., the transition away from delinquent behavior; the importance of cultural continuity for understanding loneliness in elderly refugees; race relations and how it relates to the meaning of the decade in which the interviewees came of age; the experience and meaning of resilience among survivors of childhood sexual abuse; and the use of narrative work as an additional approach within a larger quantitative research project. Amia Lieblich and Ruthellen Josselson provide insight into how the narrative appraoch enriches the study of the rare, the unusual, the common, and the prevalent, always searching for meaning in peopleÆs lives.

This volume is especially appealing in that it celebrates diversity and embraces disagreement. . . . The narrative scholar, regardless of her/his research tradition or field, will most certainly benefit from the diversity and depth provided in The Narrative Study of Lives. Editors Ruthellen Josselson and Amia Lieblich have admirably fulfilled their criteria of breadth, coherence, and aesthetic appeal for works included in this volume. Moreover, they have provided the necessary forum for the study of lives and life histories. We can only hope to continue the conversation in future volumes. --Journal of Contemporary Ethnography "Few questions have a longer, deeper, and livelier intellectual history than how we 'construct' our lives--and, indeed, how we create ourselves in the process. But it is a question newly alive today, for modern scholarship has brought challenging new perspectives to the study of life writing. Literary theorists, linguists, legal scholars, and even political activists are bringing new and powerful insights to bear. The Narrative Study of Lives provides a needed forum for the debates now in progress and should attract a loyal and numerous band of readers." --Jerome Bruner, New York University "For those psychologists searching for new approaches to the study of lives, this volume takes an important step toward the editors' promise of filling this gaping hole in psychology." --The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease How do we derive concepts from stories and then use these concepts to understand people? What would have to be added to transform story material from the journalistic or literary to the academic and theoretically-enriching? Addressing these and other such issues as the interface between life as lived and the social times, this group of distinguished contributors from six different countries and four different disciplines explores this emerging new field. Beginning with the philosophical framework that underlies the study of narrative, the book covers such questions as: What makes people want to preserve the stories of their past? What methods can be used to deconstruct a narrative text? Can what we learn from people's narratives of their past be used to account for their current psychological functioning? What happens if people lose their ability to narrate their story? Can people's narrative accounts tell us something about identity and its development? Useful to researchers and students of human development and behavior, The Narrative Study of Lives provides rich stories and analysis of narrative approaches to life history.

How does a narrative serve as a way for uncovering and constructing a person's identity? Does a narrative differ in any systematic way from life as lived versus life as constructed by women and men? Addressing these and other issues related to the use of narratives for understanding human lives, Exploring Identity and Gender, the second volume in The Narrative Study of Lives annual book series, focuses on narratives of girls' and women's lives as well as other identity issues. Among the issues this volume addresses are individual identity in the context of a familial heritage and how one's sense of individuality relates to their style of management. The international team of authors also explores such issues as how women construct the lives of other women in biographical work, how individuals conduct their life episodes in patterns similar to the plots of stories, how the women's movement influenced three women's adult lives, and how girls' sense of themselves changes as they move into adolescence. Students and researchers will find Exploring Identity and Gender illuminating in the intelligent application of the use of narratives.

How does context shape biography? How do language and relationships affect the development of people's work lives? An international group of scholars from diverse disciplines addresses these and other issues in this volume of The Narrative Study of Lives. They explore what it means to take narrative seriously and how an empathic stance in narrative research opens out on the dialogic self. The contributors also consider questions of how participants make meaning out of their experience in the framework of available interpretive horizons. In addition, there are sections that use narrative approaches to develop a deeper understanding of loneliness and the "coming out" process in homosexuality. This volume examines the many ways in which people interpret their experience and explores conceptual avenues to make use of these understandings in the analysis of human life. Those interested in qualitative methods, evaluation, and education research will find Interpreting Experience to be an invaluable contribution.