Swapping stories: comparing plots: triangulating individual narratives within families (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Bonds and Burdens of Family Life: Using Narrative
2011
Attempts to understand difficult family relationships have ignored the inextricable links between positive and negative relationships. Narrative analysis provides insight into complex relationships within social context. We analysed interviews with older people in New Zealand using levels of narrativity to reveal the negotiations required to manage personal identity at the intersection of competing public narratives. Participants and interviewers used public narratives of family life that reinforce family roles while simultaneously drawing upon alternative narratives of identity and morality. Investigating narratives of difficult family relationships reveals the influence of dominant social norms on the negotiation of social identities through personal stories.
International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 2014
To some extent, policy-relevant research on families and households addresses timeless questions designed to understand the processes that lead to particular social practices and outcomes for parents, children and professionals. Yet, the social contexts in which families and households negotiate their everyday practices are necessarily dynamic, as are research methods. In order to stay relevant, therefore, it is crucial that researchers update their theoretical frameworks and methods as well as their orientation to the social context. Julia Brannen's successful accomplishment of research over the last 40 years exemplifies the ways in which continuing to do relevant research is not simply a question of remaining relevant, but also requires conceptual and methodological reframing over time. This paper traces some of the theoretical and methodological shifts and adjustments that have served to keep Julia Brannen's research cutting edge, exciting and policy relevant. It does so both by considering how her preoccupations have shifted, expanded and remained and illustrating these shifts by drawing on literature more broadly.
I. The Family Narrative Consortium: A Multidimensional Approach to Narratives
Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 1999
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Narrative Practices Versus Capital- D Discourses: Ways of Investigating Family
Journal of Family Theory & Review, 2014
Narrative Practices Versus Capital-D Discourses: Ways of Investigating Family I would like to start my commentary on Galvin and Braithwaite and Harrison by stressing the radical difference of the type of contribution we have in front of us. Galvin and Braithwaite have chosen the genre of a summary or overview. They outline current research traditions in family communication and summarize theories and methodologies that make discourse, talk, and narratives in and about families an interesting starting point for the exploration of family relations. As promised in the title for their article, they review both research that starts from the assumption that discourse reflects concepts, beliefs, and ideologies about family, and research that works with the assumption that discourse and/or talk constitutes our current assumptions. Overall, however, it appears as if the latter orientation, according to which ''families are talked into (and out of) being,'' takes dominance over the position that views discourse and narratives as representative or reflective of family realities. In contrast to Galvin and Braithwaite's review article of discursive or narrative approaches to family research, Harrison enters the discussion of family relations as a scholar of literature, as a literary critic and historian. She documents convincingly how over the past 250 years, literary form and literary content have created an alliance to result in a powerful complot that
Sociological Research Online, 2008
It is often suggested that in carrying out research into the lives of LGBT people, researchers have an advantage if they share the same sexual orientation with their respondents – including greater access to respondents and the production of research accounts that perhaps have greater validity. However the process of doing research and writing up research is more complex than this suggests. In this article I seek to examine some of these assumptions in greater depth. A central (although not exclusive) concern of feminist debates is the extent to which the researcher's identity and experiences impact on the processes of doing research - and as such, the extent to which these should be made explicit. In examining some of these complexities, I draw upon these debates, the experiences of other researchers in the field of LGBT research and my own research examining the family lives of twenty lesbian parent families in the UK. I conclude that the ways in which the researcher may be po...
Home truths: ethical issues in family research
Qualitative Research, 2010
This article interrogates the shifting ethical contours of research on contemporary childhood and family living. I reflect on increases in ethical regulation and the role of ethics review panels. Drawing on original data from empirical research I examine some of the ethical issues that arise in studies of family life with particular attention to qualitative mixed methods research and the use of psychosocial approaches. I propose that multilayered in-depth approaches require us to consider carefully ethical standpoints, affecting how we thread together individual and/or family case studies. Unsettling stories in research on emotional—social worlds refine our understandings of ‘harm’ and ‘distress’ and reconfigure ideas of ‘responsible knowing’. Qualitative mixed methods research situates ‘messy’, conflicting and unfavourable data as part of ordinary parenthood, reformulating ethical and epistemological dilemmas for researchers of personal lives.
Enduring Themes of Qualitative Family Research
Journal of Family Theory and Review, 2012
Enduring Themes of Qualitative Family Research Contemporary qualitative family research has a rich intellectual heritage that provides researchers with ideas and language that guide them in the procedures of their work and helps them to explain to themselves and to others the traditions on which their work is based. The characteristics of qualitative research that I discuss in this article are understanding experiences in context, immersion, interpretations grounded in accounts that individuals provide of their experiences, and research as action oriented. These characteristics have a strong philosophical base that extends from 19th century German philosophy to American pragmatism and interactionism to contemporary research. This article examines this heritage and shows that today's qualitative family researchers stand on the shoulders of giants. Qualitative family researchers build on a rich intellectual tradition. Although many of today's qualitative family researchers feel isolated in the midst of other scholars who do not share their perspectives, qualitative family researchers actually have a heritage that not only affirms our identities as researchers but also provides us with ideas and language that guide us in the procedures of our work and help us explain to ourselves and to others what we do, why we do it, and why what we do is important (