The Uses of Narrative

Social scientists increasingly invoke "narrative" in their theory and research. This book explores the wide range of work in sociology, psychology and cultural studies in which narrative approaches have been used to study meaning, subjectivity, politics, and power in concrete contexts.The Uses of Narrative presents a range of case studies, including: Princess Diana's Panorama interview, media coverage of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, memoirs of the wives of scientists who made the first atomic bomb, popular images of gay marriage, and the effect of the "Velvet Revolution" on writing autobiography.The book brings together contributions from European, Australian, and North American researchers, indicating the diversity and potential of narrative approaches. The editors adopt a distinctive and unique psychosocial approach to narrative, and set the individual chapters in the context of three broad themes: culture, life histories, and discourse. The Uses of Narrative complicates, challenges and stimulates--it will be of vital interest to sociologists, psychologists, social theorists, students of cultural studies, and others who are interested in the relationships between meaning, self and society.

I: Narrative and culture; Introduction; 1: Narrative, civil society and public culture; 2: Resurrective practice and narrative; 3: Wedding bells and baby carriages; 4: Narratives as bad faith; II: Narrative and life history; Introduction; 5: When the story's over; 6: A cautious ethnography of socialism; 7: 'Papa's bomb'; 8: Betrayals, trauma and self-redemption?; III: Narrative and discourse; Introduction; 9: Narrative, discourse and the unconscious; 10: Fictional(isitig) identity?; 11: 'Let them rot'; 12: Narrative and the discursive (re)construction of events