Making Meaning of Narratives

Ruthellen Josselson, Amia Lieblich, Ruthellen H. Josselson, Amia Lieblich

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 1999
• Print ISBN: 9780761903277, 9780761903260
• eBook ISBN: 9781506338712
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Research & Methodology
• Index: Social Sciences

The most challenging aspect of narrative research is to find and select stories that go beyond "a good story" to some kind of wider, theoretical meaning or implication. How can we know what is good work in narrative research if there are no methodological commandments? How can nonlinear concepts, such as persuasiveness, credibility, and insightfulness be measured? Exploring these provocative questions, the contributors to this volume examine such issues as the various guides to doing qualitative research, how scholars from two different disciplines (psychology and literature) respond to an analysis of several autobiographies that were published and analyzed by a third scholar, how to make meaning of narrative interviews by considering the problem of interpreting what is not said, how cultural meanings and values (particularly about gender) are transmitted across generations, the transformational power of stories within social organizations and the use of these stories as an agent of change, and more. The papers in this volume come from five countries (United States, Finland, Holland, Israel, and England) and five disciplines (criminology, literature studies, nursing, psychology, and sociology). These chapters will spur and support the quest for understanding through narrative and reflect the many ways to approach this type of research.

1

In Acknowledgment

A Review and Critique of Qualitative Research Texts

June Price

Recently, there has been a flood of general and discipline-specific textbooks about qualitative methodology, and the student or teacher may be bewildered about where to enter this conversation. In the following review, I acknowledge those writers who have provided me with insights, sensitivity, and technical knowledge about these methods; in doing so, I hope to provide a guide to those beginning to explore the possibilities in qualitative research. I was first introduced to these scholars during my years as a doctoral student, and now I use their works in teaching research methods myself. I chose the texts I review here for their readability, for their appeal to beginning researchers, and for their practical and transferable knowledge. The authors of these texts are regarded as both proficient and influential in the field.

Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? (Harding, 1991)

Developing a qualitative study positions the author as artist, interpreter, and composer. Therefore, the initial step in the design of a study is an investigation and acknowledgment of one’s own worldview about how we know what we know. The very act of posing a research question will influence and shape the answer. This personal stance may range from a rationalist, empiricist search for truth and underlying law to a postmodern, deconstructionist view of the world as complex, chaotic, and unknowable; from a highly structured process of inquiry to a more individualized perception and interpretation.

Works about qualitative methods illustrate this wide span, and each author is a firm believer at some point along this spectrum. For instance, Miles and Huberman’s (1994) sourcebook clearly acknowledges the belief “that social phenomena exist not only in the mind but also in the objective world—and that some lawful and reasonably stable relationships are to be found among them” (p. 4). They provide interpretative forms most familiar to the quantitative approach: figures, graphs, tables, and conceptual frameworks of boxes and arrows.

Grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Strauss & Corbin, 1990) is further along the continuum; rather than testing hypotheses derived from theory, these researchers espouse generating theory based on the actual data through an inductive approach. Grounded theorists assume that science is a process of induction, deduction, then verification. Proof is not only possible; it is preferable.

Phenomenologists (Giorgi, 1985; Moustakas, 1994; van Manen, 1990) favor detailed descriptive documentation of experiences, relying on the interpretation of text in specific contexts for meaning making. Phenomenologists seek to discover what has been unknown or hidden rather than to verify and objectify an experience.

Deconstructionism, postmodernism, and feminism fall at the other end of the epistemological spectrum, philosophical stances that value the unique experience, multiple realities, and voices that are bound in the contexts of history and gender and that acknowledge the researcher as a participating influence of the product. Frequently, the goal is to challenge and re-view the received knowledge of the day.

At one time, the worldview/worthiness/scientific debate focused on qualitative versus quantitative methods. Today, pedagogical potshots are aimed at philosophical stances within the field. In choosing a text, it is wise to become familiar with the author’s assumptions about how we know what we know, for this will direct and shape the entire process of developing and conducting the study.

Choosing a qualitative method is akin to choosing specific statistical analyses in quantitative research. The choice will frame the question and influence the answer; the method should be compatible with the researcher’s philosophical assumptions regarding knowledge and the research question.

Research strategy is also determined by the experience and discipline of the researcher. In my own study of child-abusing mothers (Price, 1997), I chose a method that corresponded to the way I work as a clinician: intimately, intuitively, and with a frequent sense of puzzlement. In my clinical work with emotionally disturbed children and their families, I have come to view human behavior as frequently irrational: Any meaning attached to it is embedded in multiple contexts of an individual’s history and culture. This stance led me to choose a feminist phenomenology, with its emphasis on description.

Method and Process

At first, methods appear so similar: gather data, examine data, make small interpretations by coding the text, make larger interpretations through the development of themes, write it up. The recent plethora of available texts and resource books can be overwhelming and confusing. But there is a significant difference in the underlying assumptions, the style, and the product among the main schools of thought.

Phenomenology

Phenomenologists describe their method as the study and description of lived experience. This human experience is viewed as contextual, subjectively interpreted, and complex in nature. Phenomenologists search for all possible interpretations and permutations emerging from the data through a hermeneutic process, a continuous review and reinterpretation of text. Initially, meaning units (Giorgi, 1985) are developed by coding very small units of the data. Insight and theme development evolve through personal interpretation. Intuitive leaps and the use of metaphors are encouraged, what Moustakas (1994) terms imaginative variation (p. 97). Other descriptions that may echo or interpret the phenomenon under study, such as those found in fiction, poetry, and visual media, may be incorporated to enrich understanding of the primary data source.

Masters of the phenomenological process include Spiegelberg (1975, 1976), Giorgi (1985), van Manen (1990), and Moustakas (1994). All of these authors provide a rich background in the philosophy of phenomenology, as well as the techniques of the method.

An example of the product is Oscar Lewis’s (1966) La Vida. In his brief preface, Lewis describes the study of the lives of impoverished families in Puerto Rico and touches on his theory of the culture of poverty. Following the preface are the forceful and disturbing narratives in the participants’ voices of the stories of their lives, without any commentary or interpretation by Lewis.

Grounded Theory

Based on the sociological concept of symbolic interaction (Blumer, 1969), the purpose of this method is to discover, describe, or develop a theoretical basis for social interaction. Interpretation of meaning is seen as a social contract, agreement among the players. Symbols, speech, dress, and gestures are all shared forms of communication. The interaction and interpretation of these symbols, the identification of shared meanings, and a description of the process of developing these meanings are the foci of inquiry.

Proponents feel that grounded theory is a reverse of the empirical approach. Rather than developing and testing hypotheses from theory, one relies on the data to develop theory, a bottom-up, inductive approach. Glaser and Strauss (1967), the fathers of grounded theory, assumed that one can detect universality of meaning and that generalizing is possible. Most frequently, grounded theorists stress constant comparative analyses, with the goal of developing relationships between concepts and a continual striving to verify these relationships or hypotheses. The emphasis is on conceptualization rather than on description.

Classic works of this genre include Glaser and Strauss (1967) and Strauss and Corbin’s (1990) Basis of Qualitative Research. An excellent and brief overview is provided by Strauss and Corbin (1994). An exemplar of this school is Glaser and Strauss’s (1968) Time for Dying, a study of terminally ill patients.

Ethnography

The study of a particular culture, whether foreign and exotic or homebound, was initially the bailiwick of anthropologists and sociologists. Ethnography relies on techniques of participant observation and was also influenced by the principles of symbolic interaction. The focus is on the investigation of shared meanings and on the interpretation of words and events in a particular society.

A general resource is Clifford and Marcus (1986) Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. An illustrative study of this school is Tally’s Corner by Liebow (1967), a beautifully written account of the lives of black men on the urban streets. Van Maanen’s (1988) Tales of the Field is an exceptional resource on how this methodology is presented as text and how social reality is created through the interpretation of the researcher. Three different formats are described in detail: the realist tale, which is a factual third-person presentation; the confessional tale, focusing on the researcher’s experience as much as on the topic researched; and the impressionistic tale, a more free-wheeling and imaginative interpretation of fieldwork experience. Van Maanen (1988) provides detailed examples of each format, as well as an excellent reference list.

Historical Research

Tuchman (1994) provides an outstanding overview of this methodological format. Historical research relies on information (or the lack of information) recorded in the past or on oral history. Primary sources, or documented firsthand accounts, and secondary sources at least once removed provide the database. There are myriad approaches; some assume factual documentation, some acknowledge all sources to be an interpretation. There are also schools of the elitist approach versus the ordinary perspective; one may come to very different conclusions basing one’s information on the memoirs of a general versus the diary of a foot soldier.

Historical researchers may focus on patterns, cause and effect relationships, or interpretations contextualized at a certain point in time. The product may be presented as factual, multivocal, or even idiosyncratic. Examples of these different approaches include Erikson’s (1958) psychoanalytic interpretation of the Protestant revolution through the Great Man approach, Young Man Luther, and Carlos Ginzberg’s (1966) work, The Night Battles, about witchcraft and cults from the perspective of peasants’ belief systems.

Feminist Research

Philosophically, this research movement has relied on critical theory and postmodernism and has stemmed from the concern that science, at best, has neglected the influence of gender in the process of inquiry and in the interpretation of results. Adherents postulate that women’s experiences and interpretations of meaning have been ignored. Simultaneously, feminists posit that Western, male-oriented science has been concerned with the control of events rather than the empowerment of the individual in a social context.

For postmodern feminist researchers, the research question vies in importance with the ethical purpose and product of the study. The goal is to enrich and empower the participants and to consciously avoid the exploitation of those individuals.

Within this framework, feminist research can range from experimental to action-oriented formats, as the researcher works “in the space between the personal and the political” (Olesen, 1994, p. 168). The works of Hekman (1990), Nielson (1990), Reinharz (1992), and Nicholson (1990), as well as Olesen’s overview (1994), are among the most thoughtful representations of this school. A noteworthy study is Lather’s (1995) study of women with HIV/AIDS. Her first full book publication is intended to be written by and for the participants. Lather refers to the product of her study as “a text that is as much trying to write me as the other way around” (p. 41).

Triangulation

Triangulation is the mixing of qualitative and quantitative methods within a study, and it remains a controversial approach. One camp views the process as enriching, whereas the opposition insists it represents muddied thinking, the apples and oranges of epistemology. Tripp-Reimer (1989) noted that the debate may be moot:

As soon as you start looking for themes and categories in qualitative research, you have objectified the subjects, and that’s no different than looking for statistical means. You take two similar experiences, and you “average” them, and that’s your description or interpretation. (p. 12)

Triangulation is most often used to enrich presentations and to heighten the credibility of a study. Triangulation may also be accomplished through the use of multiple researchers, multiple disciplinary approaches, and multiple sites for data collection. Outstanding resources include Lincoln and Guba (1985), Miles and Huberman (1994), and Patton (1990).

General Resources

If you are choosing only one book for your personal library, I would recommend Denzin and Lincoln’s (1994) Handbook of Qualitative Research. Although I was at first wary of any text entitled “handbook” (reminding me of a Cliff Notes approach), I have developed the highest regard for the scope and the consistent, outstanding quality of the work of the contributors. Denzin and Lincoln have gone to the masters in the field. Each contribution provides extensive coverage of a specific topic regarding paradigms, strategies, and methods, with excellent bibliographies. This sourcebook also has a highly usable, detailed, and logical index. It is the best overall resource available: sophisticated and scholarly, yet highly readable.

Ely’s (1991) publication, Doing Qualitative Research, is unique in that it describes the process of doing qualitative research through the reflections and voices of researchers (including neophyte students). This work teaches by example, by inviting the reader to share in the struggles and emotions of the process, as well as in technique and procedure. Philosophical assumptions are up front. Chapter headings reflect the living nature of the process of inquiry: doing, feeling, interpreting, and reflecting.

Miles and Huberman’s (1994) Qualitative Data Analysis lies near the positivist pole in its conceptual framework and is a clearly written, cogent, and invaluable sourcebook for its scope and richness in the analysis of findings of both within-case and between-case presentations. Chapter 10 on analysis and interpretation is useful and thought-provoking, regardless of the researcher’s stance. Chapter 11 on ethical issues is a first-rate discussion on issues that are too frequently neglected by other authors.

Lincoln and Guba’s (1985) Naturalistic Inquiry is a cla...

Table of contents

• Cover page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. In Acknowledgment: A Review and Critique of Qualitative Research Texts
• 2. Autobiography and the Value Structures of Ordinary Experience: Marianne Gullestad’s Everyday Life Philosophers
• 3. “Black Holes” as Sites for Self-Constructions
• 4. An Interpretive Poetics of Languages of the Unsayable
• 5. Gender, Generation, Anxiety, and the Reproduction of Culture
• 6. The Recruitment of Women Into the Academic Elite in Israel: Anna’s Narrative
• 7. Powerful Stories: The Role of Stories in Sustaining and Transforming Professional Practice Within a Mental Hospital
• 8. Writing as Performance: Young Girls’ Diaries
• 9. Ding Ling and Miss Sophie’s Diary: A Psychobiographical Study of Adolescent Identity Formation
• 10. Love Stories in Sexual Autobiographies
• Index
• About the Authors