Analyzing Narrative Reality

Jaber F. Gubrium, James A. Holstein

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9781412952194
• eBook ISBN: 9781483317113
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Investigación y metodología de las ciencias sociales

Analyzing Narrative Reality offers a comprehensive framework for analyzing the construction and use of stories in society. This centers on the interplay of narrative work and narrative environments, viewed as reflexively related. Topics dealing with narrative work include activation, linkage, composition, performance, collaboration, and control. Those dealing with narrative environments include close relationships, local culture, status, jobs, organizations, and intertextuality. Both the texts and everyday contexts of the storying process are considered, with accompanying guidelines for analysis and illustrations from empirical material. Methodological procedures feature interviewing, ethnographic fieldwork, and conversational and textual analysis. The conclusion raises the issue of narrative adequacy, addressing the questions of what is a good story and who is a good storyteller.

Analyzing Narrative Reality is truly multidisciplinary and should appeal to researchers working across the social and behavioral sciences and humanities, as well as to narratively focused researchers in nursing, education, allied and public health, social work, law, counseling, and management/organization studies.

PART I

Narrative Reality

Much of narrative analysis centers on written texts. The texts may start out as spoken accounts, but these eventually take transcribed textual form. For example, veterans of recent wars might be interviewed for their life stories, with special attention being paid to how particular war experiences figure into the accounts. The interviews are transcribed and the texts analyzed for various purposes. Researchers might wonder how popular wars such as World War II, as opposed to unpopular wars such as the Vietnam War, play out in the soldiers’ stories (see Hynes, 1997). In particular, they might ask whether popular wars figure more positively than unpopular ones in soldiers’ identities. Typically, the analytic strategy is to compare texts for similarities and differences, specifying these in terms of distinct vocabularies, plotlines, or themes, for instance.

In this approach, textual material is drawn from individuals’ accounts on the occasions they are asked or in some other way prompted to convey their stories. The accounts may be autobiographical, historical, or even literary. As open as the empirical horizons of such narratives might appear to be, boundaries are erected around the experiences as the stories are turned into concrete texts, beginning where the recorded and/or transcribed text starts and ending where it finishes. Characterization, emplotment, themes, inscription practices, and other textual matters are identified and then compared for omissions, organization, and the like. The features of stories, in other words, are found within the confines of their texts.

Part I of this book paves the way for a different view and an alternative form of analysis oriented both to the internal and especially to the external organization of stories. Rather than limiting the empirical horizons of stories to the boundaries of texts or transcripts, the horizons are expanded to include the diverse everyday contexts in which stories are elicited, assembled, and conveyed. The term narrative reality is meant to flag the socially situated practice of storytelling, which would include accounts provided both within and outside of formal interviews. The term suggests that the contexts in which stories are told are as much a part of their reality as the texts themselves. The narrative reality of the stories of WWII and Vietnam veterans, for instance, would not only include narratives elicited in research interviews, but extend to other circumstances in which such stories were incited and told. It could extend, for example, to occasions such as veterans’ reunions, therapy groups, or the exaggerated “war stories” that some circumstances encourage. Stories not only are told in interviews, but they also wend their way through the lives of storytellers. They are boundless in that regard, are told and retold, with no definitive beginnings, middles, or ends in principle, even while a sense of narrative wholes and narrative organization is always in tow. This obliges us to analyze stories and storytelling in an extended framework, with the aim of documenting what the communication process and its circumstances designate as meaningful and important, together with the various purposes stories serve.

The chapters of Part I locate narrative reality in everyday life. Chapter 1 orients to stories in society. The discussion is initially set against the background of the historical aim of social researchers to obtain narrative material from subjects themselves, in their own words. Of particular interest is how the practice of storytelling and the resulting features of stories relate to what is at stake on the occasions stories unfold. We introduce Clifford Shaw’s (1930) classic examination of a juvenile delinquent’s own story to illustrate various aspects of narrative practice. The study serves as an analytic touchstone throughout the book. The other two chapters of Part I expand on the orientation to stories in society. Chapter 2 compares forms of narrative analysis and suggests an innovative ethnographic approach. Chapter 3 elaborates narrative reality’s empirical terrain, discussing the procedural implications for studying narrative work, narrative environments, and their reflexive relationship.

1

Stories in Society

Stories have captivated social researchers ever since Henry Mayhew (1861–1862/1968) and his associates conducted observational surveys of London’s “humbler classes” in the 1850s. In the preface to Volume 1 of the study report, Mayhew indicated that, until then, what was known about the poor and their labor had been drawn from elite and administrative accounts. Those in the know provided information about the lives of those ostensibly without the knowledge or wherewithal to do so on their own. Members of the humbler classes were viewed as incapable of offering useful opinions, much less sensible descriptions of their circumstances. They were considered ignorant, if not incommunicative and irrational, subject to whimsy and exaggeration. Why ask them about their social world when others could provide more cogent accounts?

Mayhew’s strategy was to turn this around and, instead, begin by assuming that, while perhaps crude in the eyes of their betters, members of the humbler classes could speak for themselves. Like others, they could provide their own accounts of experience, even while the accounts required professional polish to turn them into public information. The humbler classes’ own stories, in other words, could be the basis of knowledge about their lives and labor. Referring to this unconventional perspective, Mayhew described his study as “curious for many reasons.”

It surely may be considered curious as being the first attempt to publish the history of a people, from the lips of the people themselves—giving a literal description of their labour, their earnings, their trials, and their sufferings, in their own [italics added] “unvarnished” language; and to portray the condition of their homes and their families by personal observation of the places, and direct communion with the individuals. (Vol. 1, p. xv)

Continuing to underscore the study’s novel approach, Mayhew was compelled to justify his research. He explained that the study filled a void of solid information about “a large body of persons,” meaning the London poor, whose existence wasn’t officially recognized.

It is curious, moreover, as supplying information concerning a large body of persons, of whom the public had less knowledge than the most distant tribes of the earth—the government population returns not even numbering them among the inhabitants of the kingdom; and as adducing facts so extraordinary, that the traveler in the undiscovered country of the poor, like Bruce, until his stories are corroborated by after investigators, be content to lie under the imputation of telling such tales, as travelers are generally supposed to delight in. (Vol. 1, p. xv)

If curious, the portrayal offered in the volumes of London Labour and the London Poor is described as nonetheless valid in its empirical claims.

Be the faults of the present volume what they may, assuredly they are rather short-comings than exaggerations, for in every instance the author and his coadjutors have sought to understate, and most assuredly never to exceed the truth.…Within the last two years some thousands of the humbler classes of society must have been seen and visited with the especial view of noticing their condition and learning their histories; and it is but right that the truthfulness of the poor generally should be made known; for though checks have been usually adopted, the people have been mostly found to be astonishingly correct in their statements,—so much so indeed, that the attempts at deception are certainly the exceptions rather than the rule. (Vol. 1, p. xv)

Mayhew concludes the preface on a moral tone. This will resonate in the future with similar indigenous studies of the disadvantaged on both sides of the Atlantic. These studies aimed to bring into view for purposes of social reform the stories that may have frequently been told, but that were largely unheard.

My earnest hope is that the book may serve to give the rich a more intimate knowledge of the sufferings, and the frequent heroism under those sufferings, of the poor—that it may teach those who are beyond temptation to look with charity on the frailties of their less fortunate brethren—and cause those in “high places,” and those of whom much is expected, to bestir themselves to improve the condition of a class of people whose misery, ignorance, and vice, amidst all the immense wealth and great knowledge of “the first city of the world,” is, to say the very least, a national disgrace to us. (Vol. 1, p. xv)

“Own Stories” and Social Worlds

In the first excerpt above from Mayhew’s preface, we emphasized the word “own” to make a point. While truthful portrayals of the unseen world of London’s poor were rare, it was important that those eventually produced were faithful to the poor’s unvarnished words and their own accounts of life. This launched a tradition of research that oriented to what American sociologist Clifford Shaw (1930) later would refer as “own story” material. Shaw believed that stories conveyed by those whose experience was under consideration were more telling, truthful, and useful than stories drawn from other sources. In a sense, Shaw assumed that those in question owned their stories and should be treated as proper proprietors. Their lives should not be conveyed by outsiders, if such accounts existed at all. Stories of indigenous life told in people’s own words were more authentic than stories offered in others’ words. The phrase “in their own words” would thus add to the significance of their “own story,” encouraging researchers to seek native accounts of indigenous life. This required that such accounts be sought in situ and as unobtrusively as possible. The researcher should listen to and faithfully record “their own stories,” avoiding “contamination” at all cost. It posed quite a challenge, as the individuals being studied were often portrayed as dangerous inhabitants of mysterious and threatening social worlds.

Shaw’s own work is exemplary. Writing of the “value of the delinquent boy’s own story,” Shaw (1930) describes his initial contact with Stanley, the subject of his book The Jack-Roller. The book is a “case-study of the career of a young male delinquent, to whom we will refer as Stanley.” It provides an inside glimpse of Stanley’s social world. The term “jack-roller” was part of the vernacular of the times, referring to the mugging of “jacks” or drunk working men. Younger males took advantage of the jacks’ inebriation to rob them of their money, especially at the end of the workweek on payday.

The case is one of a series of two hundred similar studies of repeated male offenders under seventeen years of age, all of whom were on parole from correctional institutions when the studies were made. The author’s contact with Stanley has extended over a period of six years, the initial contact having been made when Stanley was sixteen years of age. During this period it was possible to make a rather intensive study of his behavior and social background and to carry out a somewhat intensive study of social treatment. (p. 1)

The value of Stanley’s story is made clear as Shaw continues.

The case is published to illustrate the value of the “own story” in the study and treatment of the delinquent child. As a preparation for the interpretation of Stanley’s life-history, which comprises the major portion of this volume, a brief description of the more general uses of “own story” material, along with illustrations from a number of different cases, is presented in this chapter. (p. 1)

Echoing Mayhew, Shaw addresses the “unique feature” of own story material. We again hear references to their “own words” and the importance of recording them in what Mayhew called “unvarnished language.” Shaw is palpably excited at the scientific prospects of using this “new device of sociological research,” affirming that social truths be conveyed according to their subjects.

The life-history record is a comparatively new device of sociological research in the field of criminology, although considerable use has been made of such material in other fields. The life-record itself is the delinquent’s own account of his experiences, written as an autobiography, as a diary, or presented in the course of a series of interviews. The unique feature of such documents is that they are recorded in the first person, in the boy’s own words, and not translated into the language of the person investigating the case. (p. 1)

A decade later, sociologist William Foote Whyte (1943) continues the emphasis on indigenous stories in his classic study of the Boston Italian immigrant slum he calls “Cornerville.” The opening paragraphs echo the “we-them” distinction resonant in Mayhew’s plea for accurate knowledge of London’s poor. As Whyte initially addresses his reader, it’s evident he assumes that there is a story there (in Cornerville), but one that, because of broader social attitudes, remains untold. It is Cornerville’s own story, one that, like the story of London’s humbler classes, is silent in the face of the immense wealth and great knowledge of the elite Boston community.

In the heart of “Eastern City” there is a slum district known as Cornerville, which is inhabited almost exclusively by Italian immigrants and their children. To the rest of the city it is a mysterious, dangerous, and depressing area. Cornerville is only a few minutes’ walk from fashionable High Street, but the High Street inhabitant who takes that walk passes from the familiar to the unknown. (p. xv)

The subsequent parallel with Mayhew’s prefatory comments is remarkable.

Respectable people have access to a limited body of information upon Cornerville. They may learn that it is one of the most congested areas in the United States. It is one of the chief points of interest in any tour organized to show upper-class people the bad housing conditions in which lower-class people live. Through sight-seeing or statistics one may discover that bathtubs are rare, that children overrun the narrow and neglected streets, that the juvenile delinquency rate is high, that crime is prevalent among adults. (p. xv)

We are eventually told in a tone of surprise that this world has its own moral order, the inference being that it is as regulated and comprehensive as the familiar haunts of fashionable High Street. The punch line leading to “their own story” is clear. As if to say that human beings, unlike cardboard figures, have stories of their own to tell located in the integral scenes of their lives, Whyte concludes:

In this view, Cornerville people appear as social work clients, as defendants in criminal cases, or as undifferentiated members of “the masses.” There is one thing wrong with such a picture: no human beings are in it. Those who are concerned with Cornerville seek through a general survey to answer questions that require the most intimate knowledge of local life. The only way to gain such knowledge is to live in Cornerville and participate in the activities of its people. One who does that finds that the district reveals itself to him in an entirely different light. The buildings, streets, and alleys that formerly represented dilapidation and physical congestion recede to form a familiar background for the actors upon the Cornerville scene. (pp. xv–xvi)

Whyte moves on to present Cornerville’s story in its own unvarnished language, featuring racketeers, “big shots,” and the gangs he calls the corner boys and the college boys. Whyte’s interest in indigenous accounts reflects that of his predecessors, Mayhew and Shaw. He is keenly attuned to unrecognized social worlds, told in terms of inhabitants’ “own stories.”

Stories such as those relayed by members of the humbler classes, by Stanley and other delinquents, and by the corner and the college boys, were taken to portray social worlds. Individual accounts were not as important sociologically as what individuals told about the worlds they inhabited. While The Jack-Roller is all about Stanley’s life in poverty and his experience as a juvenile delinquent, through his story we learn about the world of juvenile delinquency as it plays out in a great metropolis, in this case in the city of Chicago. Whyte’s book, Street Corner Society, is about gang leaders Doc, Chick, and their boys, but the individual stories are presented as comprising “the social structure of an Italian slum,” the subtitle of Whyte’s book. Individual accounts add up to something more than biographical particulars, namely, stories of social worlds on their own terms.

Narratives of Inner Life

Psychological interest in individual stories moves in another direction. While continuing to emphasize their own stories, narratives in this case are viewed as windows on inner life rather than on social worlds. Eschewing indirect methods such as projective techniques and psychoanalysis, ordinary life stories are taken to reveal “who we are” as persons; they are the way individuals construct their identities as active agents of their lives. Inner life is a product of “narrative knowing,” as counseling psychologist Donald Polkinghorne (1988) puts it. The first sentences of the introduction to his exemplary book Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences set the stage for this perspective.

Experience is meaningful and human behavior is generated from and informed by this meaningfulness. Thus, the study of human behavior needs to include an exploration of the meaning systems that form human experience. This book is an inquiry into narrative, the primary form by which human experience is made meaningful. (p. 1)

As if to say that inner life comes to us by way of stories, Polkinghorne outlines how the “realms of human experience” are constructed through narrative expression. The last chapter of the book actually identifies narrative with human experience. If human experience is viewed as narrative, our stories become our selves; narratives structure who we are as meaningful beings in the world.

The basic figuration process that produces the human experience of one’s own life and action and the lives and actions of others is the narrative. Through the action of emplotment, the narrative form constitutes human reality into wholes, manifests human values, and bestows meaning on life. (p. 159)

There is a parallel between this “inner lives” approach to narrative and the “social worlds” perspective on stories. If Mayhew, Shaw, Whyte, and other sociological researchers point to social worlds by presenting members’ accounts of experience, Polkinghorne and those with a psychological interest in stories view the presentation of narrative accounts as the hearable embodiments of inner life. As William Randall (1995) implies in the title of his book The Stories We Are, we are our stories. The book i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• About the Authors
• Introduction: A Point of Departure
• Part I: Narrative Reality
• Part II: Narrative Work
• Part III: Narrative Environments
• Part IV: Narrative Adequacy
• Afterword: Stories Without Borders?
• References
• Credits
• Author Index
• Subject Index