Born to Write: Discovery and Construction of Self in the Identity Stories of Poets and Writers

The explorative study hereby presented is based on in-depth interviews with 16 renowned Israeli writers of prose and poetry. The aim of the study is to examine the identity-stories of these masters of the written word. By the term "identity-story", we relate to the self-reflective or "arspoetic" sides of the life stories our interviewees presented, the hows, whens and whys which had brought them to realize their identities as their cultures' authorized authors or poets. Thematic analysis of these stories, conducted in the spirit of the Schutzian Phenomenological-Interpretive approach, reveals an interesting interplay of two seemingly contradictory core meta-themes - identity-creation and identity-discovery. The present paper is focused on the identity-discovery meta-theme. Unlike the identitycreation meta-theme, which illustrates active, deliberate and conscious processes of identity construction within the social world, the identitydiscovery meta-theme is based on narratives that detect the belief in the feasibility of a transcendental revelation of a given identity, whose roots lies beyond the ties of time and place.

Domestic Violence in Immigrant Communities: Case Studies (Hindi)

This document contains excerpts from the book Domestic Violence in Immigrant Communities: Case Studies by Dr. Ferzana Chaze, Dr. Bethany Osborne, Ms. Archana Medhekar and Dr. Purnima George that have been translated into Hindi so that a wider audience can access them. The book is a freely accessible educational resource to be used in training with social work and legal practitioners.<div><div>The translated case studies in this document are real life stories of immigrant women who have experienced domestic violence in Canada. The cases emerged from closed legal case files handled by Archana Medhekar Law Office and reflect the stories of racialized immigrant women who experienced domestic violence in Canada and who sought legal help. Permission to carry out this research was received from the Research Ethics Board of both Ryerson University and Sheridan College in June 2019. All cases included in this research took place within the past ten years and were closed for at least one year prior to the start of the research.</div></div><div>In addition to the case studies, included are questions for discussion with community groups on the topic of domestic violence. We hope you will find this tool useful as you engage your communities on issues around domestic violence.<br></div>

Domestic Violence in Immigrant Communities: Case Studies (Hindi)

This document contains excerpts from the book Domestic Violence in Immigrant Communities: Case Studies by Dr. Ferzana Chaze, Dr. Bethany Osborne, Ms. Archana Medhekar and Dr. Purnima George that have been translated into Hindi so that a wider audience can access them. The book is a freely accessible educational resource to be used in training with social work and legal practitioners.<div><div>The translated case studies in this document are real life stories of immigrant women who have experienced domestic violence in Canada. The cases emerged from closed legal case files handled by Archana Medhekar Law Office and reflect the stories of racialized immigrant women who experienced domestic violence in Canada and who sought legal help. Permission to carry out this research was received from the Research Ethics Board of both Ryerson University and Sheridan College in June 2019. All cases included in this research took place within the past ten years and were closed for at least one year prior to the start of the research.</div></div><div>In addition to the case studies, included are questions for discussion with community groups on the topic of domestic violence. We hope you will find this tool useful as you engage your communities on issues around domestic violence.<br></div>

Musical life stories coherence through musicking in the prison setting

Despite the strong relationships evidenced between music and identity little research exists into the significance of music in prisoners’ shifting sense of identity. This article explores musicking as part of the ongoing identity work of prisoners in light of theory on musical performance, narrative and desistance and discusses implications for penal practice and research. Through the presentation of an ethnographic study of music therapy in a low security Norwegian prison we show how participation in music activities afforded congruence between the past, the present and the projected future for participants by way of their unfolding musical life stories. Complementing existing conceptualisations of music as an agent for change, our study suggests that musicking afforded the maintenance of a coherent sense of self for participating prison inmates, whilst offering opportunities for noncoercive personal development. We argue that research into musicking in prison offers fruitful ways of tracing how the complexities inherent in processes of change are enacted in everyday prison life, and that it can advance our knowledge of relationships between culture, penal practice and desistance.

Why, How, and When to Integrate Narrative Identity Within Dimensional Approaches to Personality Disorders

Researchers and clinicians are beginning to adopt dimensional approaches in the study and treatment of personality disorders (PD). Although dimensional approaches in the DSM-5 and ICD-11 hold considerable benefit, they need to better incorporate an appreciation of individuals’ life stories, or narrative identities. Doing so will be necessary to flesh out the emphasis that both frameworks place on the role of identity in personality pathology. In this article, the authors review why, how, and when narrative identity theory and research can be integrated within dimensional approaches to PD. The authors describe established ways to assess narrative identity, review extant research on this construct in relation to PD, and signal areas crucial for future research. Stories lie at the heart of what it means to be human. The authors conclude that a greater consideration of the ways in which the self is storied can help further understanding and treatment of PD.

Authenticity in Literary Tourism Places

Author-related literary tourism places can create attractive elements for visitors who have an inner interest in the life stories of authors. Literary pilgrims place particular emphasis on authenticity level in literary sites. One of the attractive literary places in terms of authenticity, which is also Turkey's first literary museum, is Asiyan Museum where Tevfik Fikret lived between the years 1906-1915. In 2010, the museum underwent a comprehensive restoration. During this restoration, serious archive research was carried out and the house approached the original condition in the period of the 1910s. This study aims to examine the relationships between the authenticity of the place and the museum management mentality, research, and tourists' expectations by pointing out the prominence of authenticity in literary places. Using the interview technique, data were collected from the museum official in March 2018 on subjects such as the history of the museum, interpretation techniques, restoration works.

What Do You Want Us to Know?: Learning From Life Stories to Improve Veterans’ Healthcare Experiences

My Life My Story (MLMS) is a national Veterans Health Administration (VA) life story interview program that aims to provide more humanistic care for veterans by focusing on the patient as a person. Our project took place at the Pittsburgh VA Healthcare System and had 3 main goals: (1) describe themes that emerge in MLMS interviews from the prompting question, what do you want your healthcare provider to know about you?; (2) identify topics of importance to veterans and suggest ways for healthcare providers to explore them; and (3) foster a culture at the Pittsburgh VA that places not only the health but also the personal triumphs, hardships, and aspirations of veterans at the center. Veterans provided verbal consent to have their previously recorded stories used in this study. Stories were coded and then analyzed for patterns and themes. A total of 17 veterans participated in our study. Themes that emerged from the stories include (1) Early Hardships; (2) Economic Disadvantage; (3) Polaroid Snapshots; (4) Around the World; (5) Haunted by Combat; (6) Life-altering Moments; (7) Homecoming; (8) Romantic Beginnings & Obstacles; (9) Inequity across Gender & Race; and (10) Facing Mortality. This study's findings underscore the need to address the traumas associated with military service, as well as the challenges faced with re-integration into civilian life, when working with veterans. The MLMS interviews explored in this study can help clinicians identify topics of importance to veterans, strengthen their relationships with their patients, and improve the care that veterans receive.

Reading the Stories

The life stories of the surveilled are contained in the digital representation and their analog presence. These stories make up the narrative bits—narbs—that eventually create the profiles of institutions and people. These narbs eventually become the big data that offer the information that the watchers seek.

Narratives and Life Stories From the Machine to the Person

Contemporary society changes its social perspective from an anthropocentric environment to a space in which intelligent algorithms, present in every digital device, are increasingly acquiring a status of subject and less of object. Existential practices change at every moment, at every access to these intelligent agents who, in addition to supporting the user's requests, become anticipatory and prescient, demonstrating how it is essential, today, to sociologically analyse society through the image it gives the car. The intent of the contribution, mainly of a theoretical nature, will be to dialogue on the centrality of artificial intelligence as a leading actress of the multiple manifestations of digital cultures and practices, with the aim of renewing the debate on reflection on contemporary complexity starting from the event.

Qualitative Approaches to the Study of the Sense of Coherence

In recent years, there has been rapid growth in qualitative studies of the sense of coherence (SOC). This chapter aims to address the following questions: how is the SOC measured qualitatively, when is such measurement relevant or preferable, and what should we strive to achieve as we continue developing qualitative approaches?Based on our search of the literature, we report on four types of research: studies that intentionally and directly measured the SOC using qualitative methodologies, studies designed within the salutogenic framework that were open to analyzing people’s life stories or artwork and which looked for expressions which reflect the SOC, studies interpreting their findings in hindsight in terms of the SOC, and studies that did not originate with salutogenesis in mind and came to appreciate that something akin to the SOC had been measured.Qualitative salutogenic research is expanding. Its theoretical and empirical contributions include demonstrating the utility in SOC research of thick descriptions of microanalytic behaviors and methods to document SOC development. An important step for the future is to develop quality criteria for qualitative salutogenic studies.