“Why Am I the Way I Am?” Narrative Work in the Context of Stigmatized Identities

Abstract

There are particular complexities faced by people attempting to tell their stories in the context of social stigma, such as the hostility which often surrounds injecting drug use. In this article, we identify some of the distinct advantages of taking a narrative approach to understanding these complexities by exploring a single case study, across two life-history interviews, with "Jimmy," a young man with a history of social disadvantage, incarceration, and heroin dependence. Drawing on Miranda Fricker's notion of "hermeneutical injustice," we consider the effects of stigmatization on the sociocultural practice of storytelling. We note the way Jimmy appears both constrained and released by his story-how he conforms to but also resists the master narrative of the "drug user." Narrative analysis, we conclude, honors the complex challenges of the accounting work evident in interviews such as Jimmy's, providing a valuable counterpoint to other forms of qualitative inquiry in the addictions field.

“I Was Raised in Addiction”: Constructions of the Self and the Other in Discourses of Addiction and Recovery

“…The interpersonal context of the data collection, along with the structured questions that guided the interaction, likely circumscribed what participants felt impelled to share and how they chose to share it. This tension has previously been noted in qualitative studies involving PWUDs (Rance et al, 2017); however, discourse analysis (DA) is well suited for addressing the contradictions and complexities (i.e., within-text variability) of narrative accounts (Wetherell & Potter, 1988).…”

Experience as Evidence: The Prospects for Biographical Narratives in Drug Policy

“…This, we contend, holds particular implications for those whose lived experience and identities are intimately bound up with a stigmatized social practice […] Struggles over narration therefore become struggles over identity. (Rance et al, 2017, p. 2224)…”

“…Struggles over narration therefore become struggles over identity. (Rance et al, 2017(Rance et al, , p. 2224 The category of experience has also long been the focus of different forms of critical scholarly attention. Among the most influential examples is Scott's (1991) paper "The evidence of experience."…”

“…Research methods in these disciplines are mobilized to do analytic justice to both experience itself and the strategies that people use to narrate it. This is particularly important and challenging, as Rance et al (2017) argue for the lived experience of people who use drugs. That lived experience is shaped by intense social opprobrium and disadvantage, social forces that also produce and constrain narratives of the self.Storytelling is thus an intrinsically social process; so called “personal” stories necessarily reflect and incorporate wider social meanings, drawing on specific historical moments and sociocultural contexts.…”

“…This, we contend, holds particular implications for those whose lived experience and identities are intimately bound up with a stigmatized social practice […] Struggles over narration therefore become struggles over identity. (Rance et al, 2017, p. 2224)The category of experience has also long been the focus of different forms of critical scholarly attention. Among the most influential examples is Scott’s (1991) paper “The evidence of experience.” Scott was concerned with, among other things, how identity categories become either subject to historical and political analysis or naturalized as unmediated evidence of truth.…”