Small stories with big implications

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Wooffitt ◽  
Alicia Fuentes-Calle ◽  
Rebecca Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Inquiry ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
Small Story ◽  
Small Stories ◽  
A Site ◽  
Work Done

Abstract In this paper we examine reports of poetic confluence, in which one person’s utterances seems to connect with another’s unspoken or unarticulated thoughts. We argue that analysis of these narratives can be investigated as a window onto social reality, and as a site in which social realities are produced, especially with respect to identity work. We show how this approach complements and develops from the small story paradigm in narrative inquiry. In our discussion we try to identify common principles that may underpin work on both the content of poetic confluence narratives, and the work done in the features of those narratives.

scholarly journals Narratives of sex-segregated professional identities

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa McEntee-Atalianis ◽  
Lia Litosseliti
Keyword(s):  
Professional Identity ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Professional Identities ◽  
The Social ◽  
Rapport Building ◽  
Small Story ◽  
Small Stories ◽  
And Performance ◽  
A Site

Abstract Building on recent investigations of the role of gendered discourses in constructing and maintaining sex-segregated professions this article highlights the significance of small story analysis for the identification of positioning acts which function as rhetorical warrants for career choices and trajectories. It analyses small stories told by Speech and Language Therapists (SLTs) and investigates the tensions expressed in the negotiation and performance of their gendered professional identities. Small stories act as a medium of professional identity construction, rapport-building and as a site of contestation, employed to (re)appraise the social order, particularly with respect to 'women's' and 'men's' work. Gendered discourses are shown to impact not only on the amount of men entering the SLT profession but also the specialisms and progression routes that men and women pursue. The analysis points to the reproductive and regulatory power of gendered discourses on individuals' experience of their gendered subjectivity and professional identity.

Practicing Narrative Inquiry II

2020 ◽  
pp. 283-328
Author(s):  
Arthur P. Bochner ◽  
Andrew F. Herrmann
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Narrative Inquiry ◽  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Pragmatic Development ◽  
The Social ◽  
Crisis Of Representation ◽  
Small Story ◽  
The Life Course

Narrative inquiry provides an opportunity to humanize the human sciences, placing people, meaning, and personal identity at the center of research, inviting the development of reflexive, relational, dialogic, and interpretive methodologies, and drawing attention to the need to focus not only on the actual but also on the possible and the good. In this chapter, we focus on the intellectual, existential, empirical, and pragmatic development of the turn toward narrative. We trace the rise of narrative inquiry as it evolved in the aftermath of the crisis of representation in the social sciences. The chapter synthesizes the changing methodological orientations of qualitative researchers associated with narrative inquiry as well as their ethical commitments. In the second half of the chapter, our focus shifts to the divergent standpoints of small-story and big-story researchers; the differences between narrative analysis and narratives under analysis; and narrative practices that seek to help people form better relationships, overcome oppressive canonical identities, amplify or reclaim moral agency, and cope better with contingencies and difficulties experienced over the life course. We anticipate that narrative inquiry will continue to situate itself within an intermediate zone between art and science, healing and research, self and others, subjectivity and objectivity, and theories and stories.

Convivial linguistic practices: lived togetherness through language in the United Arab Emirates

Multilingua ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
William Robert Amilan Cook
Keyword(s):  
United Arab Emirates ◽  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Everyday Language ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Language Choices ◽  
The Face ◽  
Small Story ◽  
Small Stories ◽  
Linguistic Practices ◽  
The City

Abstract This paper takes up conviviality as an analytical tool to investigate everyday language choices made by foreign residents living in Ras Al Khaimah, a small city in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It draws on recent work in human geography and cultural studies to understand conviviality in terms of practices rather than outcomes. Specifically, it investigates some of the linguistic dimensions of conviviality deployed by residents of the city in everyday situations of linguistic contact and negotiation of difference. The paper focuses on participants’ “small story” narratives (Georgakopoulou, Alexandra. 2015. Small stories research: Methods – analysis – outreach. In Anna De Fina & Alexandra Georgakopoulou (eds.), The handbook of narrative analysis, 255–272. Malden: John Wiley & Sons) that exemplify everyday language choices in the face of a highly ethnolinguistically diverse as well as racially and economically stratified society. Considering the multitude of ethnolinguistic and socioeconomic divisions in the city and the country as a whole, the paper unpacks how such cross-border contact is negotiated through everyday language practices. The paper identifies four types of convivial linguistic practices described by my participants: language sharing, benevolent interpretation, language checks and respectful language choices. In the process, I also probe the limits of what studying conviviality can tell us about everyday linguistic togetherness in highly segregated societies marked by stark inequalities.

scholarly journals A discursive analysis of the in situ construction of (Japanese) leadership and leader identity in a research interview. Implications for leadership research

Leadership ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 180-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Clifton ◽  
Wenjin Dai
Keyword(s):  
Social Practice ◽  
Careful Consideration ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Leader Identity ◽  
Membership Categorization ◽  
Research Interview ◽  
A Site ◽  
Leadership Research

Interviews are a way, if not the key way, in which knowledge of leadership and leader identity is sought. Yet, the interviews as a site of the construction of this knowledge are often “black-boxed” and few scholars consider how the “what” of leadership and leader identity are constructed as in situ social practice. Taking a discursive approach to leadership, and using membership categorization analysis as a methodological tool, this paper considers the identity work that participants do when constructing (Japanese) leadership and leader identity in a research interview. Findings indicate that leader identity is fragmented and contradictory and that identity work is skewed to producing a morally acceptable leader identity that has little to do with revealing underlying truths of leadership as often assumed. On the basis of these findings, we call for the discursive turn in leadership research to go beyond considering leadership-in-action to also consider the way in which both meanings of leadership and leader identities are discursively constructed as in situ social practice, notably in research interviews. Second, we call for more careful consideration and analysis of research interview as a site for building knowledge of leadership and leader identities, which, close analysis reveals to be fluid, changeable, and even contradictory. Third, we argue that researchers should also analyze what the particular constructions of leadership and leader identities “do.” This aligns with calls for more critical approaches to leadership studies that challenge hegemonic views of leadership and seek to make visible the power dynamics of presenting leadership and leader identity in one way rather than another.

Thinking big with small stories in narrative and identity analysis

2006 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 122-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Georgakopoulou
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Inquiry ◽  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
Narrative Research ◽  
Systematic Research ◽  
Meeting Point ◽  
Small Stories ◽  
Interactional Features

Narrative research is frequently described as a rich and diverse enterprise, yet the kinds of narrative data that it bases itself on present a striking consensus: they are autobiographical in kind (i.e., about non-shared, personal experience, single past events). In this paper, I put forth a case for under-represented narrative data which I collectively call (following Bamberg 2004a, b; also Georgakopoulou & Bamberg, 2005) “small stories” (partly literally, partly metaphorically). My aim is to flesh small stories out, to urge for the sort of systematic research that will establish connections between their interactional features and their sites of engagement and finally to consider the implications of their inclusion in narrative research for identity analysis (as the main agenda of much of narrative research). I will thus propose small stories research as a “new” narrative turn that can provide a needed meeting point for narrative analysis and narrative inquiry.

Small stories as resources for performing teacher identity

2010 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary M. Juzwik ◽  
Denise Ives
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Language Arts ◽  
Teacher Identity ◽  
English Language ◽  
Fluid Dynamic ◽  
Narrative Approach ◽  
Curricular Content ◽  
Small Story ◽  
Small Stories

This paper sets out to (a) Theorize teacher identity as fluid, dynamic, interactionally emergent in situ, (b) Operationalize a dialogic narrative approach for the study of teacher identity on these terms, and (c) Account for the locally unfolding process of teacher identity, over short periods of time, in relation to curricular content. We pursue the inquiry through multi-layered small story analysis of a narrative, “My Worst Mistake,” told by a veteran English language arts teacher in the Midwestern United States.

scholarly journals Soft Interventions

Tahiti ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Vuorinen
Keyword(s):  
Digital Art ◽  
Digital Environment ◽  
Artistic Creation ◽  
Artistic Process ◽  
Collaborative Models ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Single Authorship ◽  
Post Production ◽  
A Site ◽  
Work Done

Recently there has been a growing number of artists working between photography and digital art, creating artworks in which the signs of digital operations have been left visible. I focus on three contemporary artists who use photography as a starting point in a process in which the work done in the digital environment of photography editing software is an equally important creative phase as the initial taking of the photograph: Andrey Bogush, Liina Aalto-Setälä, and Aaron Hegert. Starting from a reconfiguration of single authorship, I examine what kinds of subjectivities and agencies these works and practices produce, and how producing and encountering the works through screens affect our understanding of them. I stress the activity and agency of the editing software as an integral part of the artistic process. The three main areas of inquiry are originality, collaborative models of production, and authenticity. In the analysis, automatization becomes a generative engine, and the editing software a site for artistic creation, rather than a mere post-production tool.

Interpretation in Practice

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Schiff
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Research ◽  
Male Identity ◽  
Narrative Psychology ◽  
Identity Constructions ◽  
Essential Questions ◽  
Small Story ◽  
Small Stories

“Interpretation in Practice,” Chapter 8 of A New Narrative for Psychology, compares analytic strategies in two studies central to the canon of narrative psychology: Amia Lieblich’s “Looking at Change: Natasha 21” and Michael Bamberg’s “Form and Functions of ‘Slut Bashing’ in Male Identity Constructions in 15-year-olds.” The two studies provide an excellent contrast between competing approaches to narrative research—big story and small story research. Lieblich’s analysis of Natasha’s transition to life in Israel is holistic, concentrating mostly on the person, while Bamberg’s analysis of a group of 15-year-old boys discussing a girl is microanalytic, emphasizing the linguistic and conversational properties that sculpt identity. The chapter enters into the debate on big and small stories, arguing that despite their differences in approach, they employ the same hermeneutic strategies for understanding narratives and would benefit from a more sustained discussion and consideration of the essential questions of who, where, and when.

Practicing Narrative Inquiry

2014 ◽  
pp. 194-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur P. Bochner ◽  
Nicholas A. Riggs
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Narrative Inquiry ◽  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Pragmatic Development ◽  
Ethical Orientations ◽  
The Social ◽  
Crisis Of Representation ◽  
Small Story

This chapter focuses on the intellectual, philosophical, empirical, and pragmatic development of the turn toward narrative, tracing the rise of narrative inquiry as it evolved in the aftermath of the crisis of representation in the social sciences. Narrative inquiry seeks to humanize the human sciences, placing people, meaning and personal identity at the center, inviting the development of reflexive, relational, and interpretive methodologies and drawing attention not only on the actual but also to the possible and the good. The chapter synthesizes the changing methodological and ethical orientations of qualitative researchers associated with narrative inquiry; explores the divergent standpoints of small- story and big- story researchers, draws attention to the differences between narrative analysis and narratives-under-analysis; and reveals narrative practices that seek to help people form better relationships, overcome oppressive canonical identities, amplify or reclaim moral agency, and cope better with contingencies and difficulties experienced over the course of life.

Estimating Traffic Accident Rates While Accounting for Traffic-Volume Estimation Error: A Gibbs Sampling Approach

2000 ◽  
Vol 1717 (1) ◽  
pp. 94-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary A. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Gibbs Sampling ◽  
Traffic Accident ◽  
Estimation Error ◽  
Estimation Method ◽  
Volume Estimation ◽  
Accident Rate ◽  
Traffic Count ◽  
Accident Rates ◽  
A Site ◽  
Work Done

Traffic-accident rates that are estimated for individual roadway sites are often used to identify potentially hazardous locations. Occasionally they are used to test whether an accident countermeasure is associated with a statistically significant change in accident rate. In assessing the uncertainty attached to estimated accident rates, it is often implicitly assumed that the total traffic at a site is known with certainty, when in actuality the total traffic almost always must be estimated from a short sample of traffic counts. This introduces estimation error, which, if ignored, can lead one to overstate the accuracy of an accident-rate estimate. An explanation is provided about how Bayes estimates of accident rates, which explicitly account for total traffic estimation error, can be computed readily using a (relatively) new estimation method called “Gibbs sampling.” A model of how traffic-count samples are related to total traffic is incorporated from earlier work done by the author and his students. In tests conducted using accident counts and traffic data from 17 automatic traffic-recorder sites in Minnesota, it was found that, when using a 2-day traffic-count sample, the traditional method for estimating accidents rates understated the likely error of these estimates by 12 to 40 percent, depending on the site.

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