Xi’an Narrative WorkshopFriday July 30th + Sunday Aug 1st

Overview

• Friday, July 30– Morning(i) General Introduction ---of ‘Narrative Methods’ in

Cross-Cultural Research---and of EACH OTHER(ii) Honing in on Small

Stories– Afternoon(i) The Davie Hogan story

(work with transcripts)(ii) Betty tells her story (work

with transcripts)

• Sunday, August 1– Morning(i) Introduction to ‘Small

Stories’(ii) 10-year-olds on “why girls

are disgusting”(iii) 13-year-olds on “why it is

okay to tease girls”– AfternoonWork with Participants’ stories(i) Introductions (self presentations)(ii) Collected transitions from

childhood to adulthood

General Introductionthis morning

Introductions Brief stories of who

we are -- in English (presentations of our selves in terms of ‘who I am’)

Introducing ‘Narrative Methods’ - for the purpose of doing Cross-Cultural Research

• Leading up to SMALL STORIES– What are small stories?

– How are they differrent from LIFE STORIES and LIFE-EVENT Stories

– Different Approaches in ‘NARRATIVE RESEARCH/METHODS’

– Merits of ‘Small Stories’ for Cross-Cultural Psychology

• INTRODUCTIONS I• Brief: name, country,

institution, what I’m doing

• Example: my self:

Michael Bamberg

-teach Psychology @ Clark University, US

-used to do research on children’s story-telling development

-now doing research on adolescents

• INTRODUCTIONS II– We tell my neighbor

who we are• a SHORT life story

– My neighbor takes notes (or records)

– Then we switchWe’ll use these notes

later <Sunday afternoon>

---DON’T WORRY!!!---NO TEST!!!

Narrative Research/Methodsand their use for Cross-Cultural Psychology

• What ARE narrative Methods?– People’s stories as ‘windows’ into their understanding

of ‘who they are’ <<self-understanding>>

– People’s stories as joint co-productions of ‘who they are’ <<self-understanding in contexts>>

– People’s stories as reflections of ‘cultural themes’ <<socio-historical “master narratives” -- “dominant discourses”>>

• How can we employ them for CCP?– Tyler’s article– Culture as components of our behavioral + cognitive

repertoires <culture as ‘conceptual’>– Culture as our interactive habits <culture as ‘doings’>

Analyzing the meaning of lived lives--in context--

• My First Kiss– what it meant to me “back then”

– refracted through what ‘kissing’ means - as a cultural schema/script

– refracted through my personal + social history (the here-and-now of my life-course + the telling situation)

• It’s not THE EVENT itself but its meaning– In the form of a STORY told in context

• to one’s peers

• to a teacher <in class>//parent over dinner table conversation

• to a researcher <one-on-one>

• to a researcher <in a focus group interaction> – same versus mixed gendered group

So what needs to be analyzed is not just THE STORY, but THE TELLING of the story IN CONTEXT

Why?

Because we’re not trying to find out about ‘kisses’, but how participants MAKE SENSE of ‘kissing’

Therafter we can begin to compare how the significance of ‘kissing’ changes - across age groups, different genders, and different cultures

Leading up to SMALL STORIES What ARE Small Stories?

Short Conversationally Embedded + Negotiated

• before• during• after

Fine tuned positioning strategies– fine-tuned vis-à-vis the audience– fine-tuned vis-à-vis dominant + counter narratives– multiple moral stances (testing out and experimenting with

identity projections) Low in tellability, linearity, temporality + causality

Two Small StoriesKimberly Speers -------- Yesterday’s Events

QuickTime™ and aDV/DVCPRO - NTSC decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

QuickTime™ and aDV/DVCPRO - NTSC decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Three Kinds of Narrative Approaches to the

Study of Self and Identity

• Life-Story Approaches• Life-Event Approaches• Small Stories

– short narrative accounts

– highly embedded in every-day interactions

– unnoticed as ‘stories’ by the participants

– unnoticed as ‘narratives’ by researchers

but highly relevant for identity formation processes

Life-Stories Life-Events– Dan McAdams (1985; 1993)

– Gabi Rosenthal (1998)

– Chamberlain (2002)

– Hollway & Jefferson (2000)

– Wengraf (2001)

– Hermans (1992)

– Holstein & Gubrium (2000)

– Miller 2000)

– Mishler (1986; 1999)

INTERVIEW TECHNIQUE:

unfocused, open-ended, in depth, detailed accounting, psychoanalytic, user-focused, ‘empowerment’

• Episodic interviews– Most narrative research– Particular Life-Events

• Chronic pain• My first kiss• My best friend• Growing up in the sixties• Falling in love• My divorce

INTERVIEW TECHNIQUE:

detailed accounts of particular experiences/events; ranging between open-ended and more focused interviews

Merits of Life-Story & Life-Event Approaches

• tap into constructions of the ‘who am I’-question• bring out aspects of LIVED EXPERIENCE• accentuate the CONTINUITY of experience• force participants to focus on the meaning of

particular events/experiences in THEIR lives• underscore a unified sense of personal (cultural)

identity

Narratives as tools // heuristics for the analysis of subjective sense-making

Open Questions------where small stories become worthwhile

• How does this unified sense of self come to existence (issue of development + acculturation)?– how does the person in his/her particular culture and

socio-historical context learn to “sort out” what is called life - and what makes life “worth living” (- a ‘good’ life)

• Overemphasis of stories about ‘the self’– underplaying stories we tell about others

• Overemphasis of ‘long stories’– cutting out everyday, small stories

Questions&

Discussion

WARNING:

• Narrative Elicitation– Interviewing Techniques

• Narrative Transcriptions

NARRATIVE ANALYSIS

• Publication of Narrative Research