[(Making Meaning of Narratives: Volume 6)] [Author: Ruthellen Josselson] published on

by Ruthellen Josselson

The most challenging aspect of narrative research is to find and select stories that go beyond "a good story" to some kind of wider, theoretical meaning or implication. How can we know what is good work in narrative research if there are no methodological commandments? How can nonlinear concepts, such as persuasiveness, credibility, and insightfulness be measured? Exploring these provocative questions, the contributors to this volume examine such issues as the various guides to doing qualitative research, how scholars from two different disciplines (psychology and literature) respond to an analysis of several autobiographies that were published and analyzed by a third scholar, how to make meaning of narrative interviews by considering the problem of interpreting what is not said, how cultural meanings and values (particularly about gender) are transmitted across generations, the transformational power of stories within social organizations and the use of these stories as an agent of change, and more. The papers in this volume come from five countries (United States, Finland, Holland, Israel, and England) and five disciplines (criminology, literature studies, nursing, psychology, and sociology). These chapters will spur and support the quest for understanding through narrative and reflect the many ways to approach this type of research.

Unknown Binding

First published April 5, 1999

About the author

Ruthellen Josselson, PhD, is Professor of Clinical Psychology at Fielding Graduate University. She was formerly Professor at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Visiting Professor at Harvard University School of Education, and Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University. Dr. Josselson is a cofounder of the Society for Qualitative Inquiry in Psychology; coeditor of 11 volumes of The Narrative Study of Lives, a series dedicated to publishing qualitative research; coauthor of Five Ways of Doing Qualitative Analysis; and author of many journal articles and book chapters that explore the theory and practice of qualitative inquiry. She has conducted workshops on interviewing skills for qualitative inquiry in the United States, France, Norway, Finland, Israel, and the United Kingdom. Based on interviews she has conducted over 35 years, she has written two books exploring women’s identity longitudinally (Finding Herself and Revising Herself) and three other books (The Space Between Us, Best Friends, and Playing Pygmalion). Dr. Josselson is a recipient of the American Psychological Association’s Henry A. Murray Award and Theodore R. Sarbin Award as well as a Fulbright Fellowship.

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