LIFE STORY RESEARCH SAGE BENCHMARKS IN SOCIAL RESEARCH METHODS LIFE STORY RESEARCH VOLUME I EDITED BY Barbara Harrison Los Angeles • London • New Delhi • Singapore Introduction and editorial arrangement © Barbara Harrison 2008 First published 2008 Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means, only with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers. Every effort has been made to trace and acknowledge all the copyright owners of the material reprinted herein. 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Croatia Contents VOLUME I Appendix of Sources ix Editors’ Introduction: Researching Lives and the Lived Experience Harrison 00 PART I: HISTORICAL ORIGINS AND TRAJECTORIES 1. The Life History and the Scientific Mosaic H. Becker 3 2. Herbert Blumer and the Life History Tradition Ken Plummer 14 3. Pioneering the Life Story Method Paul Thompson 38 4. The Life Story Approach: A Continental View Daniel Bertaux and Martin Kohli 42 5. Four Paradigm Transformations in Oral History Alistair Thomson 66 6. Telling Our Stories: Feminist Debates and the Use of Oral History Joan Sangster 85 7. Stories Carolyn Steedman 109 8. Writing Autobiography Bell hooks 125 9. The Problem of Other Lives: Social Perspectives on Written Biography Michael Erben 130 10. “Narrative Analysis” Thirty Years Later Emanuel A. Schegloff 142 11. Reflections on the Biographical Turn in Social Science Michael Rustin 153 12. Reflections on the Role of Personal Narratives in Social Science Camilla Stivers 173 13. Digital Life Stories: Auto/Biography in the Information Age Michael Hardey 191 vi CONTENTS PART II: THEORETICAL AND CONCEPTUAL ISSUES IN LIFE STORY RESEARCH 14. Is Oral History Auto/Biography? Joanna Bornat 211 15. Situating Auto/Biography: Biography and Narrative in the Times and Places of Everyday Life Ian Burkitt 224 16. Why Study People’s Stories? The Dialogical Ethics of Narrative Analysis Arthur W. Frank 242 17. Narrative Research and the Challenge of Accumulating Knowledge Ruthellen Josselson 254 18. Who’s Talking/Who’s Talking Back? The Subject of Personal Narrative Sidonie Smith 263 19. What Is the Subject? Shelley Day Sclater 279 20. Reflections on the Narrative Research Approach Torill Moen 291 21. Rescuing Narrative from Qualitative Research Paul Atkinson and Sara Delamont 309 22. Life Histories and the Perspective of the Present Margaretha Järvinen 319 23. A Matter of Time: When, Since, After Lobov and Waletzky Elliot G. Mishler 340 24. Autobiographical Time Jens Brockmeier 346 VOLUME II 25. A Suitable Time and Place: Speakers’ Use of ‘Time’ to Do Discursive Work in Narratives of Nation and Personal Life Stephanie Taylor and Margaret Wetherell 3 26. Individual Remembering and ‘Collective Memory’: Theoretical Presuppositions and Contemporary Debates Anna Green 23 27. Creative Memories: Genre, Gender and Language in Latina Autobiographies Sobeira Latorre 37 28. Reading Narratives Corinne Squire 53 29. The Epistolarium: On Theorizing Letters and Correspondences Liz Stanley 68 30. The Narrative Self: Race, Politics, and Culture in Black American Women’s Autobiography Nellie Y. McKay 99 31. Personal Narratives, Relational Selves: Residential Histories in the Living and Telling Jennifer Mason 115 CONTENTS vii PART III: TYPES OF LIFE STORY RESEARCH – TRADITIONAL AND NEW SOURCES OF LIFE STORY DATA 32. The Ethnographic Autobiography Harry F. Wolcott 137 33. Analytic Autoethnography Leon Anderson 149 34. Called to Account: The CV as an Autobiographical Practice Nod Miller and David Morgan 171 35. The Personal or ‘Lonely Hearts’ Advertisement as an Autobiographical Practice Helen Pearce 183 36. Writing to the Archive: Mass Observation as Autobiography Dorothy Sheridan 198 37. Tattoo Narratives: The Intersection of the Body, Self-Identity and Society Mary Kosut 212 38. Reconsidering Performative Autobiography: Life Writing and the Beatles Kenneth Womack 243 39. Glimpses of Street Life: Representing Lived Experience through Short Stories Marcelo Diversi 262 40. Photographic Visions and Narrative Inquiry Barbara Harrison 280 41. Articulate Image, Painted Diary: Frida Kahlo’s Autobiographical Interface Mimi Y. Yang 303 42. Venues of Storytelling: The Circulation of Testimony in Human Rights Campaigns Kay Schaffer and Sidonie Smith 323 43. Generic Subjects: Reading Canadian Death notices as Life Writing Laurie McNeill 342 44. Narrative Practice and the Coherence of Personal Stories Jaber F. Gubrium and James A. Holstein 355 VOLUME III 45. Life “on holiday”? In Defense of Big Stories Mark Freeman 3 46. Psychoanalytic Narratives: Writing the Self into Contemporary Cultural Phenomena Ian Parker 12 47. Writing the Self versus Writing the Other: Comparing Autobiographical and Life History Data David R. Maines 24 48. Reminiscence and Oral History: Parallel Universes or Shared Endeavour? Joanna Bornat 31 viii CONTENTS 49. Confidantes, Co-Workers and Correspondents: Feminist Discourses of Letter Writing from 1970 to the Present Margaretta Jolly 53 PART IV: DOING LIFE STORY RESEARCH 50. The Makings of Mother in Diary Narratives Eeva Jokinen 71 51. Biography as Microscope or Kaleidoscope: The Case of Power in Hannah Cullwick’s Relationship with Arthur Munby Liz Stanley 94 52. Narratives of the Night: The Use of Audio Diaries in Researching Sleep Jenny Hislop, Sara Arber, Rob Meadows and Sue Venn 115 53. Careful What You Ask For: Reconsidering Feminist Epistemology and Autobiographical Narrative in Research on Sexual Identity Development Lisa M. Diamond 140 54. The Biographical-Interpretative Method – Principles and Procedures Roswitha Breckner 154 55. Eliciting Narrative through the In-Depth Interview Wendy Holloway and Tony Jefferson 187 56. Questioning the Subject in Biographical Interviewing Jennifer Harding 206 57. Constructing Meaningful Lives: Biographical Methods in Research on Migrant Women Umut Erel 226 58. Researching Chinese Women’s Lives: ‘Insider’ Research and Life History Interviewing Jieyu Lui 250 59. Shifting Gears in Life History Research: The Case of an Assimilated American Jewish Woman in Palestine/Israel, 1989–1991 Batya Weinbaum 265 60. Telling Lesbian Stories: Interviewing and the Class Dynamics of ‘Talk’ Elizabeth McDermott 280 61. But Sometimes But Sometimes You’re Not Part of the Story: Oral Histories and Ways of Remembering and Telling Antoinette Errante 297 62. Listen to Their Voices: Two Case Studies in the Interpretation of Oral History Interviews Ron Grele 325 63. Loss, Collective Memory and Transcripted Oral Histories Barry S. Godfrey and Jane C. Richardson 344 64. Photographs in the Cultural Account: Contested Narratives and Collective Memory in the Scottish Islands Andrew Blaikie 359 65. Imaginary Pictures, Real Life Stories: The FotoDialogo Method Flavia S. Ramos 383 CONTENTS ix 66. Researching Identities with Multi-Method Autobiographies Anna Bagnoli 422 67. Showing and Telling Asthma: Children Teaching Physicians with Visual Narrative Michael Rich and Richard Chalfen 444 68. A Story behind a Story: Developing Strategies for Making Sense of Teacher Narratives Tansy S. Jessop and Allen J. Penny 475 VOLUME IV 69. Content, Context, Reflexivity and the Qualitative Research Encounter: Telling Stories in the Virtual Realm Nicola Illingworth 3 70. Technobiography: Researching Lives Online and Off Helen Kennedy 23 71. The Use of Biographical Material in Intellectual History: Writing about Alva and Gunnar Myrdal’s contribution to Sociology E. Stina Lyon 42 72. Tracing Heterotopias: Writing Women Educators in Greece Maria Tamboukou 66 73. Swapping Stories: Comparing Plots: Triangulating Individual Narratives within Families Jo Warin, Yvette Solomon and Charlie Lewis 90 PART V: RESEARCH CONTEXTS AND LIFE STORIES 74. Against Good Advice: Reflections on Conducting Research in a Country Where You Don’t Speak the Language Molly Andrews 109 75. Narratives of Challenging Research: Stirring tales of Politics and practice Erica Burman 120 76. Ethics and Institutions in Biographical Writing on Indonesian Subjects David T. Hill 142 77. A Note on the Ethical Issues in the Use of Autobiography in Sociological Research Barbara Harrison and E. Stina Lyon 158 78. Exporting Ethics: A Narrative about Narrative Research in South India Catherine Kohler Riessman 167 79. Snippets and Silences: Ethics and Reflexivity