Sunday, November 21, 2010

Narrative Research, Seniors, and all of *those* stories

I couldn't help but think of all of my own interests in research this week when reading the article
Narrative Research: A Comparison of Two Restorying Data Analysis Approaches. I have been working with seniors for the last number of years, and hearing their stories was one of the biggest highlights of my job. It was also the highlight of many of their days-- and often made appointments go way, way over their allotted time.
It also made me wonder- the stories the authors use (and most of the discussion of the article allude to the same) relate to made-up stories-- where does that leave the semi-made up or creatively-remembered stories so commonly told within families? So many families have 'lineage stories' and the like- which have been filtered, sometimes, through many generations. How much of the 'restorying' has already been done for you, when you are hearing something that has been filtered and changed and reprocessed through members of the family and retellings in family gatherings?

The Friends of Veterans Canada has been advertising their campaign to tape veterans' stories. What a fascinating collection that will be.
With options like that-- how could you not want to be involved in narrative research?

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