Everyday Stories Research Articles

Young People’s voices on social justice: a participatory storytelling and action learning approach

ABSTRACT South Africa is home to a large youth population, defined in South Africa as aged between 18 and 34 years. In working to transform our unequal society, we need to take diverse youth voices, including young people at university, into account regarding what matters to them. To enable their voices, the paper recounts a participatory storytelling research project with students in the educational space of one South African university. Using individual and collective digital storytelling, participants produced an archive of everyday stories, which then comprised a data base for them to analyse social in/justice issues and themes and co-create knowledge from the ground-up, with their emergent ideas categorised in a social injustice map. Through the iterative action learning and reflective process, participants developed their critical awareness of injustices and enhanced their sense of their own epistemic agency to contribute to change. Both the project process and the formation of intersecting capabilities for the co-creation of substantive reparative knowledge about social injustices and fairness were advanced through the project. Finally, it is suggested that these two capabilities might be applied to young people globally as crucial for contributions to epistemic agency and for making more just future societies.

How Do You Move? Everyday stories of physical activity.

Stories can be a powerful method of exploring complexity, and the factors affecting everyday physical activity within a modern urban setting are nothing if not complex. The first part of our How Do You Move? study focused on the communication of physical activity guidelines to under-served communities. A key finding was that adults especially wanted physical activity messages to come from 'everyday people, people like us'. This finding also reflects a wider move to use more relatable imagery in health promotion campaigns. Using a portrait vignette approach to create monologues, we set out to explore the experiences of people from diverse backgrounds living in Bristol, all of whom took part in varied leisure time physical activities but would also be considered to lead 'normal' lives. We aim to demonstrate that stories of such 'experts by experience' can contribute to how physical activity is perceived and elucidate the complex interplay of barriers and enablers in everyday experiences of physical activity.

The art of novelist Afanasiy Fedorov

The article is devoted to the study of Afanasiy Fedorov's stories, which have a central place in the writer's heritage. His genre system includes various forms of short prose: from everyday stories to plot short stories, from small sketches, sketches of a character to psychological stories. The author's skill manifested itself primarily in the creation of a diverse artistic anthropology, consisting more of human rather than social types. Therefore, in his stories there is no tendentiousness and ideological bias characteristic of socialist realism. The characters' actions are psychologically motivated. The innovation of the Yakut writer was the creation of foreign heroes. In the poetics of his stories, the tradition of Russian literature was felt: like Anton Chekhov, he strove to show the complexity and significance of life phenomena through the simplest and most insignificant events of everyday life. On the whole, the logic of Afanasiy Fedorov's work was of an inductive nature: starting with small genres of prose, he gradually moved on to large epic forms.

Reflections on the Taste the Archive Event - Great Fish and Chips Exhibition at the University of Kent

The original exhibition – The Great British Fish and Chips – was commissioned by Counterpoint Arts in 2021 as part of National Refugee Week, in partnership with Canterbury Cathedral and Turner Contemporary, Margate. Reportage artist Olivier Kugler, and writer Andrew Humphreys, interviewed and illustrated the everyday stories and experiences of migration connected to Kent’s most celebrated high street food; fish and chips. They explored the history of fish and chips, Britain’s national dish through interviewing and learning the stories of shop owners, staff and customers at Fish & Chips shops across Kent, and discovered that it could not exist without global trade and migration. Migration and displacement are central themes. Fish & chips can be traced back to Huguenot and Jewish arrivals in the UK and people from all over the world continue to be central to the farming and fishing industries and the high street shops. The hosting of this travelling exhibition also includes a display of items from the University of Kent Special Collections & Archives.

Arabic Language Learning Methods at the Raudhatun Najah Islamic Boarding School, Langsa City

Every technique that experts have revealed has its advantages and disadvantages. This is a positive thing because they complement each other. Educators must have accuracy in determining the right method for students so that mistakes do not occur. Choosing the appropriate method for students is a very important first step to achieving success in teaching-learning. Conversely, errors in selecting methods by educators can be the initial cause of failure in achieving goals. The methodology in this study was to use qualitative field research conducted at the Raudhatun Najah Islamic Boarding School. In contrast, the research findings showed that at the Raudhatun Najah Islamic boarding school, students were asked to directly speak Arabic conversations without translating into their mother tongue. Although in practice, there are still many obstacles encountered. Some problems encountered at the Raudhatun Najah Islamic boarding school are the many words that need to be clarified for students, the lack of awareness of students to speak Arabic, and the lack of motivation from some teachers to create a good Arabic language environment. Arabic learning methods at the SMP/MTs level should focus on conversational aspects and everyday vocabulary mastery. This should continue to be practiced until students feel confident without having to focus too much on grammar from the start. After students feel comfortable speaking Arabic, then they are taught about grammar. It is important to remember that grammar in teaching Arabic is not an end but a tool to improve speaking and writing skills. This aspect of writing can be taught by asking students to write their everyday stories.

Apprehending the Contemporary Indian Society through the Lens of Social Realism- A Study of Shashi Tharoor's 'The Five Dollar Smile And Other Stories'

The emergence of Indian novels in English was not purely a literary phenomenon. Rather than a historical romance, it began as a novel of social realism. Social realism is the faithful representation of reality. It limns familiar real-life places and mundane, everyday stories of ordinary people, primarily society's middle and lower classes. The depiction of different shades of modern Indian life is one of the principal sources of appeal in Shashi Tharoor's fiction and non-fiction works. Tharoor's writings predominantly deal with India's historical, social or political aspects, and the characters are the central focus of the narratives. Tharoor's The Five Dollar Smile And Other Stories (1990) is a collection of short stories and a farce based on his childhood and early adulthood anecdotes. The stories reflect themes like love, hate, loss, deceit, and many other social evils. The paper attempts to explore and critically analyse Tharoor's collection of short stories in the light of social realism in modern India from an adolescent's perception.

A Conversation About Supporting Chinatowns and Cultural Preservation

Award-winning cookbook author, culinary historian, and Chinatown activist Grace Young and Di Gao, senior director of research and development at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, discuss taking action to support historic Chinatowns. American Chinatowns have served as bastions of community resilience and culture for nearly two centuries and continue to serve vital functions for older generations and new immigrants alike. Today, as the world returns to a post-pandemic reality, historic Chinatowns are still fighting for survival. By revealing the everyday stories and testimonies of legacy businesses, mom & pop shops, and residents of Chinatowns through the lens of preserving their ties to place and community, this work contributes vitally to empower and humanize all Americans and reaffirm that their history, identity, and places matter Protecting historic Chinatowns for future generations is vital to fostering understanding of America's complex past and building a more inclusive future.

Young children co-constructing stories with teachers

Children’s story experiences are foundational to their social, emotional, and communication development. Viewed through a sociocultural lens, variability in the ways children and teachers interact during stories across diverse learning contexts is expected. This article explores the social and cultural knowledge demonstrated by children of different ages as they co-construct meaning multimodally during stories with teachers across two early childhood educational settings, in Canada and New Zealand. Teachers’ gestures, gaze, questions, and verbal and non-verbal affirmations centred on themes, characters, and actions as they co-created stories with children. Teachers’ mediating roles and practices supported and sustained children’s embodied actions, languages, and cultures. Teacher–child stories shared in this article highlight the value of everyday stories as contexts for extending children’s learning, and the multimodal nature of story interactions underpinning the co-construction of meaning in early childhood education contexts.

The ins and outs of possible cities in comics: Procurando São Paulo1

Disappearing traffic jams, endless rain and the transformation of a city and of its inhabitants’ urban life due to mysterious and eventful incidents: these are the possibilities of everyday life in the short comic series Procurando São Paulo. Created by Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá, Procurando São Paulo explores the artists’ own relationship with their native city, expanding on the city’s existing urban imaginaries to approach a specific characterization and critique of its sociocultural and urban spaces. In other words, the urban imaginary is filled with alternative possibilities of the same city, offering different albeit real perspectives, as is the case with the Brazilian city of São Paulo in this comic. My analysis engages with the dynamics between this urban imaginary and a reality where hypothetical and fantastical situations are evoked within a realistic setting of everyday stories and places. This creative narrative used in a critical fashion precipitates examples of significance and identification with urban spaces, integrated with the whimsical situations depicted in the comic. Due to this comic’s engagement with both reality and imagination, I build upon Edward Soja’s concept of thirdspace and Alejo Carpentier’s concept of the marvellous real. This article calls for an improvement in the scope of comic studies to include the questioning of urban experiences and spatial representation. In addition, the case study investigated by this article calls for a critical postcolonial perspective to be brought forward in the construction of global comics production. More than just an escape from reality, Procurando São Paulo reflects on the real city and its issues, simultaneously questioning its conditions and the relationships between inhabitants and spaces through imagination.

Toddlers as active, competent story weavers: Lexie’s story

Communication and literacy development of young children is shaped by the nature of social and cultural relationships in everyday situations. Few studies, however, have explored early story experiences encountered by infants and toddlers in naturalistic settings. We argue that personal stories about everyday lived experiences are a vital context for considering how toddlers develop communicative competencies as they participate in these stories within their families and communities. The paper presents selected findings from a qualitative study underpinned by a broad theoretical view of story embedded in a sociocultural, participatory framework. We contend that stories are collaborative, social endeavours in which intersubjectivity is accomplished collectively and multimodally. Evidence is offered of the communicative process enacted by 1-year-old Lexie, her parent, teacher and peers, as they shared meaning together in a personal story about eating lunch. Lexie and her family were participants in a wider study of the story experiences of 1-year-old toddlers, within and across their family home and early childhood settings, in a culturally diverse community of Aotearoa New Zealand. Drawing on multimodal ethnography and video data, findings illustrate how Lexie and her family, teacher and peers actively participated together in the weaving of a shared personal story using verbal, visual and kinaesthetic forms of communication. The study contributes to the field of early childhood literacy by providing unique insights into the potential of everyday personal stories as a valuable context for exploring ways children’s communicative competencies are developed through relationships in family and community settings.

Telling stories, performing operations as a design method

Exploration of stories in architectural discourse has yet to generate a structured discussion in the methods of its operations as part of a design endeavour. This issue of ARSNET presents a collection of articles that demonstrates a variety of everyday stories emerging from the experience of space and objects, and outlines the methodologies of their corresponding spatial operations. Through the stories of occupying, manoeuvring, navigating, dispersing, and sensing, this issue highlights various methods of spatial operations. With operations ranging from tracing as a way of revealing space, reduction as manoeuvring strategy, connecting the virtual and the real as a way of finding new meaning and use of space, and creating a spatial atmosphere based on trajectories of senses; the issue expands the discussion of stories-driven architectural design methods.

Quilting Voices

Quilting Voices

Everyday stories in a forest: Multimodal meaning-making with Ojibwe Elders, young people, language, and place

Everyday stories in a forest: Multimodal meaning-making with Ojibwe Elders, young people, language, and place

Digital Health Intervention to Increase Health Knowledge Related to Diseases of High Public Health Concern in Iringa, Tanzania: Protocol for a Mixed Methods Study.

BackgroundTraditionally, health promotion and health education have been provided to communities in the global south in the form of leaflets or orally by health care workers. Digital health interventions (DHIs) such as digital health messages accessed by smartphones have the potential to reach more people at a lower cost and to contribute to strengthening of health care systems. The DHI in this study focuses on disseminating digital health education regarding 3 disease complexes of high public health concern: HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and Taenia solium (neuro)cysticercosis or taeniasis, a parasitic zoonotic disease that requires a One Health approach. The DHI presents the participants with animated health videos (animations) and provides access to information spots (InfoSpots) with a free-of-charge digital health platform containing messages about health to rural Tanzanian communities.ObjectiveThe objective of this study is to measure the effect of the DHI on health knowledge uptake and retention over time in the rural communities.MethodsThis is a mixed methods study including a nonrandomized controlled trial and qualitative interviews conducted in rural Tanzania. A health platform containing digital health messages for the communities was developed prior to the study. The health messages consist of text, pictures, quizzes, and animations of everyday stories, aimed at disease prevention and early treatment. The baseline and immediate postintervention assessments were completed in Iringa, Tanzania in May 2019. The participants were interviewed by enumerators and completed questionnaires regarding health knowledge. Participants in the intervention group were exposed to 3 different health animations once on a tablet device. The participants’ health knowledge was assessed again immediately after the exposure. The first follow-up survey was undertaken in August 2019. The InfoSpots with the digital health platform were thereafter launched in the intervention villages in November 2019. Qualitative interviews were undertaken in February 2020. The second follow-up was completed in June 2020.ResultsA total of 600 participants have been enrolled in the trial. We will assess (1) the difference in knowledge scores between baseline and the immediate postintervention assessments in the intervention group and (2) the difference in knowledge scores between the intervention and control groups at baseline, 3 and 6 months post-DHI rollout. Since a randomized design did not prove feasible, potential confounders (eg, age, gender, education, and time of exposure) may be introduced, and results will be adjusted. Data analysis for the 35 qualitative interviews is currently ongoing, and perspectives and experiences related to use and nonuse of the InfoSpots are being explored.ConclusionsThe data have been collected, and the analysis is ongoing in this digital health study, aimed at evaluating the effects of a DHI based on relevant health messages. The publications of results can be expected this year.Trial RegistrationClinicalTrials.gov NCT03808597; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03808597International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID)RR1-10.2196/25128

Decolonial Water Pedagogies: Invitations to Black, Indigenous, and Black-Indigenous World-Making

In this paper, I share everyday stories of young people’s pedagogical encounters with water. I share these stories as illustrations of pedagogies that welcome young people into caring relationships with more-than-human life. I focus on the decolonial potential of these pedagogical encounters in relation to what they activate for Black, Indigenous and Black-Indigenous world making.

Applying the Culture-Centered Approach to visual storytelling methods

ABSTRACT Visual and digital storytelling methods can reposition research participants as coproducers of knowledge, foster engagement and collaboration with marginalized peoples, and offer greater depth of self-expression. However, these methods are constituted in complex terrains of power. Without continual attenuation to power imbalances, the methods will contribute to the silencing and erasure of marginalized communities. This study outlines how reflexivity as a methodological tool and part of the Cultured-Centered Approach can enable the interrogation of terrains of power, allowing for the continual opening of democratic possibilities and community ownership of visual and digital storytelling infrastructures. Excerpts from the “Poverty Is Not Our Future” campaign illustrate the argument. The campaign's cocreated audio-visual advertisements communicate everyday stories of poverty among residents living in a poor suburban site in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand, and serve as a visual narrative of resistance to dominant structures. This study contributes to critical theorizing of culture and communication and the coconstruction of visual stories.

A. Averchenko’s works of the emigration period: development of the comic genre

The article examines the elements of the comic and their development in the writer’s works in accordance with changes of mood and life circumstances, clarifies the basic terms in this field of literature, means and methods of creating the comic, the relationship of dichotomous elements of the comic and tragic in his stories, analyses some of the author’s favourite literary images and features of his story. Based on a wide range of subjects of study of A. Averchenko’s works, covering the evolution of his views, mood swings, motives and themes of works – stories and feuilletons, as well as certain periods of creativity, including exile and emigration, the purpose of the article is analysis of scientific reception development of the comic genre in A. Averchenko’s works of the emigration period. It is determined that researchers divide the writer’s work into mainly humorous (pre-revolutionary period) and mainly satirical (postrevolutionary period), by genre varieties – everyday stories and humoresques devoted to the surrounding reality; stories, the plot of which is often created by the author’s imagination (with grotesque, hyperbole, caricature); to create a comic writer skilfully uses appropriate tools and techniques – irony, sarcasm, compositional, descriptive and narrative features; works of this period the context of tragedy is formed, in which the comic acquires other forms – black humour and tragicomic; the genre of satire is developing in his works, which characterizes the new literature. It is concluded that the peculiarities of the scientific reception of A. Averchenko’s works should reveal not only the significance of his works in the general development of literature, not only his place among famous satirists, but also their features within the general problem of small narrative genre, in particular comic poetics stories and feuilletons.

“Wir wollen hoffen, dass es nicht so lange dauert…”

While the major events of the First World War were scientifically examined early on, the “everyday stories” associated with the war received little attention for decades. It is only in recent years that this aspect has been recognised as an inte-gral part of history and has also been the subject of academic research in Tyrol and Trentino. Luckily, an extensive collection of field postcards and field letters from Felix, Candidus and Albin Crepaz has been preserved. They were deployed as soldiers on Col di Lana and the Siefsattel in the immediate vicinity of their hometown Lasta, and experienced the impact of the war on their homeland and their relatives at first hand. The preserved documents – even though the letters of reply are missing – give a deep insight into the psychological and physical problems of an ordinary soldier, as well as the concern for his relatives and neighbours, and are thus an important evidence of the everyday history of Tyrol during the First World War.

Crafting New Narratives of Diasporic Resistance with Indo-Caribbean Women and Gender-Expansive People across Generations

This study used participatory oral history and digital archiving to explore two interrelated questions: How do Indo-Caribbean women and gender-expansive people across generations experience processes of storytelling? What are the challenges and possibilities of oral history and digital archiving for constructing alternative histories and genealogies of resistance? In the first phase of the study, twelve Indo-Caribbean women and gender-expansive people across generations participated in an oral history workshop where they were introduced to oral history methods, co-created an interview guide, conducted oral history interviews of one another, and engaged in collective reflection about processes of storytelling. In the second phase, four co-authors of a community-owned digital archive participated in semi-structured interviews about their work to craft new narratives of diasporic resistance rooted in the everyday stories of Indo-Caribbean women and gender-expansive people. In this paper, I analyze how Indo-Caribbean women and gender-expansive people practice resistance by breaking silences in their communities around gender-based oppression, shift norms through producing analyses of their own stories, and reshape community narratives. Furthermore, I explore how oral history participants and co-authors of a digital archive understand the risks associated with sharing stories, raising the ethical dilemmas associated with conceptualizing storytelling as purely liberatory.

ТЕКСТООБРАЗУЮЩИЕ ФУНКЦИИ ПОВЕСТВОВАТЕЛЬНО-ХУДОЖЕСТВЕННОГО ОБРАЗА «ДРУГ ДОМА» КАК ПЕРСОНАЛИЗИРОВАННОГО НАРРАТОРА В ТЕКСТАХ КАЛЕНДАРНЫХ ИСТОРИЙ И. П. ХЕБЕЛЯ

The article focuses on the text-forming functions of the personalized narrator “The friend of the house” in the texts of J. P. Hebel's calendar stories. Applying the cross-cutting analysis of the practical material it has been determined that the auctorial narrator “The friend of the house” reflects a special historical path in the development of the “calendar story” (German: “Kalendergeschichte”) as part of a calendar. The personalized calendar figure of “The Rhenish friend of the house” (based on the image of the “lame messenger”) is characterized by the appearance of a typical German urban inhabitant of the 18th century, a locally determined polysemous name and a “heavenly” metaphorical image. In his “divine” purpose he yields to the prophet a bit and tells readers amazing everyday stories of a sentential nature. Sources of his stories are his personal observations, stories of anonymous or mentioned eyewitnesses, second or third parties (“The Rhenish brotherhood of the friend of the house”, the loyal helpers “the adjunct” and “the mother- in-law”) which also have a projection of the personal biography and the ambience of the writer - the author of the “calendar stories”...