Life Story Narratives Research Articles

Finally heard, believed and accepted – Peer support in the narratives of women with fibromyalgia

ObjectiveThe aim of the present study was to analyse how experiences of peer support were described and reflected upon several years after a group rehabilitation intervention. Moreover, we wanted to learn more about what meanings were ascribed to peer support in the narratives of women with a long history of fibromyalgia. MethodThis was a qualitative study in which narrative life story interviews of 20 women with fibromyalgia were collected and analysed to elicit the impact of peer support in their lives. ResultsWe identified four main domains of experienced peer support; permission to talk, need of information, reciprocity and self-evaluation through comparison. The meanings ascribed to peer support were mainly positive, although the participants also expressed thoughts about fear of future, hopelessness and mental health issues. ConclusionsLong-term fibromyalgia patients saw peer support as an impetus to an ongoing process of reconstruction of identity, illness acceptance and coping with fibromyalgia. Practice implicationsIn addition to up-dating their knowledge about fibromyalgia and its treatment, long term patients may need arenas where they can share and compare their experiences to those of other patients with a long history of fibromyalgia.

Telling tales: Discursive space and narratives in ESOL classrooms

This paper is about narrative and identity in classes of English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL). ESOL students, adult migrants to the English-dominant West, are positioned by policy and by their institutions primarily as potential employees and as test-takers. The paper considers ways in which ESOL students negotiate and perhaps resist the identity positions offered to them in policy and institutional discourse. I adopt a broadly constructivist approach to identity in narrative in my analysis of interaction in one ESOL lesson. The analysis advances a current theme in research into the language learning of minority language adults in migration contexts: bringing the outside in. Drawing on notions of positioning in interaction ( Davies & Harré, 1990) and in narrative tellings ( Bamberg & Georgakopoulou, 2008) I demonstrate how, by claiming discursive space in ongoing classroom discourse, students can introduce into the talk aspects of their life story narratives. The analysis suggests that claiming space to do so extends students’ options for the bringing in of a range of identity positions – and of opportunities for learning – as they open up, through narrative, aspects of their identities that remain under-explored when classroom talk is limited to instrumental concerns.

Fatigue, Worry, and Fear—Life Events in the Narratives of Women With Fibromyalgia

In this article we explored narrated life stories of 20 women with a long history of fibromyalgia to reach a deeper understanding of how people interpret the causes and consequences of different life events and illness experiences. Based on narrative analysis, we identified three model narratives that illustrate the different life courses of women with fibromyalgia. In addition, we described a counternarrative that questions fibromyalgia as a chronic disease. In this narrative study, we give insights to the invisible symptoms and unheard experiences that are associated with fibromyalgia and to the ongoing discussion on the etiology and maintenance of fibromyalgia.

Privaatne ja avalik nõukogude aja mõistmises ühe keskastme juhi eluloo näitel. Private and Public in the Soviet Era: The Example of a Mid-Level Manager’s Life Story

The focus of our analysis is the question of how the complex world of Soviet everyday life – which was characterised by a tension between public and private – has manifested itself in the recounting of life stories. In the article we first take a look at the problem of public and private, and the possibilities of using this theoretical model when researching everyday life in the Soviet Union. In approaching the subject, we support ourselves with the approaches of Garcelon, Voronkov and Zdravomyslova. Garcelon has, in research on Soviet society, distinguished the official and private spheres as opposites, and an area between these two spheres which encompasses features of both; Garcelon calls this the social sphere of working life. Zdravomyslova and Voronkov distinguish a third sphere: an in-between, an informal official part of life in which, in their view, Soviet society never gained total control of the individual. In both approaches, a situation arose in the Soviet society of the 1960s where informal rules began to dominate over official ones, thereby enabling a flexible kind of manipulation. In the article, we analyse the relationship between official, informal and private in the sphere of work using an oral history perspective. Here, we used Alessandro Portelli’s tripartite mode of history-telling. Portelli treats lifestory narrative as a structurally complex text where changes in usage of language and definitions of time denote general changes in experience. The characters, space and grammar change depending on the perspective used in narration. Proceeding from this, Portelli distinguishes an institutional, societal and personal level in the narration of history. The life story analysed was written by a mid-level industrial manager and sent to the life writing campaign ’My Life and the Life of My Family in Soviet Estonia and in the Republic of Estonia’ in 2001. A characteristic feature of the industrial manager’s work biography was the, for Soviet working life typical, wangling between the official and the informal. Nothing could take place in the public sphere without it also taking place in the other, and the managers were the ones who by virtue of their profession could perform this exchange. In the life story, it becomes apparent just how differently relations between the public and private sphere (among which we also find the narrator’s own person) are perceived autobiographically in the 1940s through 1950s on one hand, and the 1960s to 1980s on the other hand. In the recollections from the totalitarian period, the official/public sphere exists as a threat, its intrusion into the private sphere and influence on the individual‘s life is total and unavoidable. The narrative experience of the 1960s–1980s points more towards a parallellity between the official/public sphere and the private sphere. Instead, pragmatic relationships in the informal sphere dominate in the narrative experience of this period. The basic rule of everyday life which was analysed in the story was both the ability to use any existing free space – including spaces that the Soviet system unintentionally created in order to legitimise itself – as well as the ability to create such spaces through vertical and horizontal relationships.

The social science of biographical life‐writing: some methodological and ethical issues

The enterprise of biography inhabits a liminal world at the intersections of fact and fiction, (social) science and art, objective narrative and personal life story. While social scientists write, use and are the subjects of, biographies, there is relatively little discussion in the methodological literature as to the nature of biography as a form of life‐writing. This paper discusses some of the issues of method and of ethics and reflexivity encountered during the research and writing of a biography of the prominent social scientist Barbara Wootton (1897–1988). It considers questions of consent and responsibility, the ‘triangulation’ of data derived from different sources (e.g. interviews, archives, autobiographical accounts; letters, published work and references to, and about, it), the relationship between biographer and biographee, the legitimacy of links between the private and the public, and issues of ‘bias’ and interpretation in the production of biographical narrative.

Quiet please, there's a lady on stage:: Centering the person with dementia in life story narrative

This paper is drawn from a larger study based on traditional qualitative thematic methods, which explored the use of secondary biographical stories as a strategy in conversation with an older person who has dementia. The aim of this paper is to re-examine the data to facilitate further discussion in gerontology about the ways in which the ideals of Kitwood's (1997) personhood and narrative inquiry can be used keep life story of the person with dementia intact. By drawing upon narrative writers such as Mishler (1986), Gee (1991), Ramanathan (1995) and Riessman (2004, 2007), we describe a methodological approach utilising structural and thematic forms of narrative analysis to keep the person with dementia ‘centre stage’ in their own life story narrative. This paper demonstrates that by integrating a person-centred approach to interpretative and structural narrative analysis, people living with dementia can be the centre of their own story and communicate with their community what is important and why it is worth telling.

Abstracting and extracting: Causal coherence and the development of the life story

This study compared life story memories of emerging adults and early adolescents to other autobiographical memories. Participants described three scenes of their respective life stories, a high point, low point, and turning point narrative, and described the connections between them in a fourth narrative. Participants also related four autobiographical narratives from corresponding time periods for comparison. Narratives were analysed for two measures of causal coherence, narrative complexity and meaning making, and for thematic coherence. Life story narratives contained more self-related lessons and insights and greater recognition of complexity than non-life-story narratives, but these differences were confined to narratives of turning points and connections between events. Thematic connections between narratives were more abstract and self-related in life story narratives. Emerging adults' narratives, when compared to those of early adolescents, showed more evidence of self-related abstract thinking and recognition of multiple dimensions. Findings indicate consistent ways in which life story memories differ from other autobiographic memories, and show evidence of development in adolescence.

SHARING THE SAME FATE

ABSTRACT Peer support has become a growing source of consolation for individuals in contemporary social life. This article examines the social bond between selves and their fellow sufferers ‘sharing the same fate’ in support groups and personal networks. Analyzed fateful conditions include serious illness, premature loss of a spouse through death or abandonment, infertility and family disruptions. The results show that selves colonized by agonizing life experiences confront social isolation and turn to their fellow sufferers in order to find understanding. A distinct kind of social bond is proposed between fellow sufferers involving sharing at the level of generalized experiences. Further analysis of different states of the bonds and their consequences is drawn from Thomas Scheff's distinction of the social bond as one of three states: attuned, engulfed or isolated. When attuned to fellow sufferers, peer support can be genuinely self-empowering and healing, but also other consequences emerge. In engulfed bonds with fellow sufferers, the particular self stands at risk of being overpowered by others. Isolated bonds with fellow sufferers may not be capable of breaking the lonely state of suffering. This paper provides an elaborate empirical understanding of the interplay between fate, the social and the individual in the context of peer support. The data is made up of repeated in-depth interviews with 22 Finnish women and men that contain narrated life stories, accompanied by information about their network, of significant others and support contacts.

Using Life-Story Narratives in Adult Theological Education

The paper explores the use of life narratives within a contemporary theory of learning. It argues that narratives provide structure and assist in the scaffolding of learning. Thus the use of life narrative in religious education sits well with the Vygotskian idea of the zone of proximal development. A key example explores the development of conscience by centring on the contrast between two life narratives. The juxtaposition of these narratives invites the listener to know more about these individuals and what lead them to action. It also stimulates deep questioning about the origins and development of conscience.

What do men who serve as lay health advisers really do?: Immigrant Latino men share their experiences as Navegantes to prevent HIV.

HoMBReS was a lay health adviser (LHA) intervention designed to reduce sexual risk among recently arrived, nonEnglish-speaking Latino men who were members of a multicounty soccer league in central NC. Our community-based participatory research (CBPR) partnership collected, analyzed, and interpreted qualitative life-story narratives to characterize the roles of male LHAs known as Navegantes. Nine Navegantes were interviewed. Their mean age was 39 years (range: 26-62 years); six were from Mexico and three from El Salvador. Navegantes described the function and facilitators of serving as LHAs and identified leverage points for future HIV and STD prevention strategies. They highlighted psychosocial and sociocultural influences on HIV risk, settings for risky behavior, and personal changes from serving as Navegantes. This study provides preliminary evidence that an LHA approach is feasible and appropriate for Latino men, and can be effective in reaching men who might otherwise be difficult to reach.

This body which is not mine

This paper explores women's accounts of prostitution in terms of the lived experience of the body, drawing on life story narratives and arts images created by women in the sex industry. These narratives show that women's experiences of prostitution constitute a spectrum of (dis)embodiment that is inflected, not determined, by settings and contexts. Theoretical approaches to embodiment were sought that acknowledged tensions between violation and a sense of empowerment. Therefore, the ontology of selling sex, and associated experiences such as violence, drug use and self-harm are explored using feminist applications of Merleau-Ponty's notion of the `habit body'. A key focus is how the body is constituted by embodied experiences of abuse (e.g. the work of Parkins and of Weiss), and how women negotiate ownership of the body within commercial sex transactions. This highlights the process of repositioning the body by selling sex, in accordance with the accumulated experiences of the habit body. Thus, to borrow from Wendy Parkins, women perceive that they are acting meaningfully through the body, even when reproducing dynamics of objectification and dissociation.

Memories of suffering: Exploring the life story narratives of twice-widowed elderly women

Narratives of suffering often reflect remembered accounts of past traumas and other significant events in individuals' lives that they deem worthy of public presentation and feel comfortable enough to share. This paper examines the life stories of three elderly women who were widowed early in life (“off-time”), eventually remarried, and were later re-widowed “on time.” Their narratives illustrate the complexities of the transitions from wife to widow and from widowhood to remarriage and back again. Commonalities and differences in the narrative are explored, including how suffering was revealed, with an emphasis on understanding the utility of what the women chose to remember, tried to forget, and opted to reveal about their lives. Also considered is their outright rejection of the identity “widow.” Within the broader discussion of remembering and suffering, how individual histories contextualize reactions to subsequent events is also explored.

Participation in work: A source of wellness for people with psychiatric disability

Not enough is known about the relationship between work and health, particularly for people with psychiatric disability. A review of research investigating variables that predict success at work showed inconsistent and contradicting results. The voice of people with psychiatric disability was found to be largely missing from literature. A study was therefore undertaken to explore the influences that impacted on the work-lives of people with psychiatric disability. This paper elucidates the importance of participation in work as an essential ingredient in the promotion of occupational justice, in identity construction and in the process of recovery for persons with psychiatric disability. Interpretive biography was utilised to explore the experiences of people with psychiatric disability in the Western Cape, South Africa. Seventeen participants were identified using maximum variation sampling. Life story narratives were elicited during an average of three individual interviews per participant. Processes of analysis and interpretation were informed by a combination of paradigmatic narrative analysis and narrative analysis strategies. A complex interplay of influences that shaped the identities of participants in ways that can assist or hinder their participation in work was revealed. Participation in work was perceived to be a means of recovery and a source of wellness for participants. More conscious effort is needed to promote the use of work as source of support and resource for health for persons who live with psychiatric impairment.

Young Women, Local Authority Care and Selling Sex: Findings from Research

Summary Researchers, practitioners and policy makers have noted the disproportionate number of young women with backgrounds of local authority care who are involved in commercial sex. However, the lack of knowledge about why this occurs means that there is little evidence with which to develop interventions. This article describes research that explored young women’s routes into the sex industry from local authority care using a feminist participatory action approach. The women’s life-story narratives demonstrate that the psycho-social legacies of their care experiences—how they defined themselves and placed themselves in the world—were instrumental in their entry into selling sex. From these themes, a framework for understanding young women’s involvement in commercial sex is drawn that traces young women’s paths from living in/leaving care to selling sex. The article includes discussion of the implications for social work practice with vulnerable young women and recommendations for interventions.

ACCESSING IMAGINED COMMUNITIES AND REINSCRIBING REGIMES OF TRUTH

In this article, we explore the complex and nebulous terrain between two theoretical concepts, imagined communities (Norton, 2000, 2001), that is, individuals' imagined affiliations with certain groups, and regimes of truth (Foucault, 1980), dominant images inscribed and reinscribed into individual consciousness until they become normative. Using the context of two research studies, one a critical narrative study of life-story narratives of L2 users and the other a critical feminist ethnography of beginning ESOL teachers, the researchers examine the ways in which social structures and contexts can behave simultaneously as tyrannizing regimes of truth and as liberating imagined communities. This inherent contradiction illuminates the ways in which the two theoretical constructs taken together can lead to a more complex and nuanced understanding of identity construction. 1Authors' names are listed in alphabetical order and do not represent any hierarchy.

Patrimonialização de narrativas orais e o debate sobre os direitos individuais e coletivos

generated by an Adobe application 11.5606 Normal 0 34 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Tabela normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} Propondo o registro da memória e do patrimônio cultural do ABC a partir de gravações de histórias de vida narradas pelos moradores da região, orientadas pelas técnicas de história oral, o Núcleo de Pesquisas de Memórias do ABC , da Universidade Municipal de São Caetano do Sul - IMES, depara-se com uma gama de direitos do cidadão. Por isso, este texto tem como objetivo refletir sobre patrimonialização de narrativas orais e direitos individuais e coletivos que envolvem o processo de constituição do patrimônio cultural.

Learning difficulties and social class: exploring the intersection through family narratives

This article is concerned with the intersection between learning difficulties and social class. It also inevitably tells of the gender‐class interface in relation to women’s caring roles. I use the life story narratives of three mothers and a grandmother of a person with learning difficulties, together with concepts from Bourdieu, to explore the ways in which class‐related capital and habitus affect their life experiences and their interactions with educational and other professionals. The data are the stories of (grand)mothers reflecting on life events, particularly in relation to decision making surrounding education, while simultaneously providing subtle, rich pictures of their socio‐economic contexts. I illustrate how privilege and disadvantage are reproduced partly for the families through their institutional interactions, which are differentiated according to economic and social resources. The stories re‐presented in this paper provide powerful examples of how experiences of living with learning difficulties and disabilities are situated in one’s class position and how struggles for inclusion are at once common and particular.

I Have Mastered the Challenge of Living With a Chronic Disease: Life Stories of People With Rheumatoid Arthritis

Our aim with this study was to explore the narrative life story of individuals diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. An open qualitative approach, namely narrative biographic methodology, was applied to include the life context of the participants and to deliberately exclude predefinitions of concepts. Ten people with rheumatoid arthritis who retired early because of the disease participated and were interviewed three times according to a narrative biographic interview style. The biographical data and the interview texts were analyzed both individually and in comparison to each other. Some participants regarded rheumatoid arthritis as a challenge for mastery in their lives, whereas others adapted to the disease and "made the best out of a bad situation." Especially in countries where the medical model predominates in health care, our findings can be used to broaden the current view that some health professionals have toward patients, and stress the importance of patients being self-responsible.

Narratives: unveiling teachers’ identities

This study aims at reporting the results of a qualitative interpretative research on English as a foreign language teachers’ practical knowledge. More specifically, the objective was to identify the teachers’ rules and principles of practice, through life-story narratives. The result was a set of biographical stories through which the participants themselves could make meaningful connections between moments of their lives and their practical knowledge. The research process as a whole offered the participants a fruitful context for reflection on their professional identities as teachers and the bits and pieces of the unknown identities turned to be a bit more known. Finally, this study points out that life-story narratives can open a window into teachers’ practical knowledge, which may mean an alternative to possible changes on cognitive and/or behavioral level if introduced as a tool for reflection in early stages of teacher education programs.

Being Lakota: identity and tradition on Pine Ridge Reservation

Being Lakota explores contemporary Lakota identity and tradition through the life-story narratives of Melda and Lupe Trejo. Melda Trejo, nee Red Bear (1939-), is an Oglala Lakota from Pine Ridge Reservation, while Lupe Trejo (1938-99) is Mexican and a long-time resident at Pine Ridge. In their forty years together, the Trejos raised eleven children, supported themselves as migrant workers, and celebrated their lives and cultural heritage. Conversations between this Lakota/Mexican couple and scholar Larissa Petrillo convey key aspects of the couple's everyday life: what it means to be an Indian and Lakota; how they negotiate their different ethnic identities; their feelings about recent concerns with appropriating Lakota religious practices and beliefs; and the tenets of Lakota spirituality that shape their perceptions and actions. These issues are highlighted as they talk about their experiences setting up a Sundance ceremony. In the late 1980s they began holding a Sundance on the Red Bear family's land near Allen, South Dakota, and the ceremony was dedicated to Lupe after his death. Being Lakota deepens our understanding of modern Lakota life and affords a memorable glimpse of the choices and paths taken by individuals in a Native community. It also serves to explore new approaches to collaborative ethnography, with reflections on learning to work well in a Native community.