Narrative’s Virtues

Abstract

Reacting to the charge that personal narratives, especially illness narratives, constitute a “blind alley” that misconstrues the essential nature of narrative by substituting a therapeutic for a sociological view of the person, this article speaks back to critics who regard narratives of suffering as privileged, romantic, and/or hyperauthentic. The author argues that this critique of personal narrative rests on an idealized and discredited theory of inquiry, a monolithic conception of ethnographic inquiry, a distinctly masculine characterization of sociology, and a veiled resistance to the moral, political, existential, and therapeutic goals of this work. Layering his responses to the critique with brief personal stories regarding the suppressed emotionality that motivates academics to oppose innovations, the author examines his own motives as well as those of the critics, concluding that multiplicity is easier to pronounce than to live and urging a commitment to a social science that can accommodate diverse desires.

Narrative analysis in aging studies: A typology for consideration

“…Like story analysts, storytellers often collect, invite and generate stories. In contrast to story analysts that conduct an analysis of stories however, for storytellers analysis is the story (Bochner, 2001;Ellis, 2004). Stories, it is argued, do thework of analysis and theorizing.…”

“…Moreover, a number of the studies on aging called upon in the remains of this paper might use more than one lens for their analytical purposes. Narrative analysis: Story analysts and storytelling Organised through the umbrella term narrative analysis, two standpoints toward analysing narratives may be teased out from within the literature (e.g., Atkinson, 1997;Atkinson & Delamont, 2006;Bochner, 2001Bochner, , 2002Ellis, 2004;Lieblich et al, 1998;Polkinghorne, 1995;Riessman, 2008;Richardson, 2000;Smith & Sparkes, 2006). These may be termed a story analyst and storyteller.…”

Opening up dialogues and airways: using vignettes to enrich asthma understandings in sport and exercise

“…Advocates of the narrative approach in healthcare (for example, Frank 1995, Bochner 2001, Charon 2006, Carless and Douglas, 2008, Lewis 2011, Sparkes and Smith 2011 argue that investigating people's lived illness experience can bridge what may be very different understandings of asthma held by patients and clinicians. Debates about what constitutes a narrative approach, narrative methods or illness narratives (e.g.…”

Narratives on Longing, Being, and Knowing Envisioning a Writing Epistemology

“…In a recent essay, Bochner (2001) defends stories about illness and points out that these stories show us struggles between cultural and personal meanings. He tells us, "the ill person must negotiate spaces between the domination of cultural scripts of bodily dysfunction out of which one's meanings are constructed and defined, and the situated understanding of one's experience that seeks a unique and personal meaning for suffering.…”