The narrative approach is a relevant and enriching technique for uncovering, describing and interpreting the meaning of experience. This collection explores the challenges of performing narrative work in an academic setting, writing about it in an ethical and revealing fashion, and drawing meaningful conclusions. This stellar collection of scholars examine such topics as: how the larger construct of `personality' can read out of a life story; the development of multicultural identity as a dynamic process; the transition away from delinquent behaviour; the importance of cultural continuity for understanding loneliness in elderly refugees; race relations and how it relates to the meaning of the decade in which the interviewee

This volume is essential for researchers, professionals, and students in research methods, developmental psychology, education, relationships, and language and discourse analysis.

The editors bring together an interdisciplinary and international group of creative researchers and theorists to examine the way the stories we tell create our identities. The contributors to this volume explore how, beginning in adolescence and young adulthood, narrative identities become the stories we live by.

A concise volume aimed at researchers and academics in sociology, anthropology, psychology and interpersonal communication.

Contributors from five countries, in fields including criminology, literature studies, nursing, psychology, and sociology, explore issues such as how to make meaning of narrative interviews by considering the problem of interpreting what is not said, how cultural meanings about gender are transmitted across generations, and uses of the transformati.

"In this volume, chapter authors successfully challenge readers to think about narrative research in its own context while also maintaining original, personal voices that underscore the value this field places on an individual's communication of his or her experience. By revealing their struggles with qualitative research's emerging and evolving processes and their experiences working with students at various educational levels, these authors subtly, but effectively, arm teachers with tools that anticipate common pitfalls and frustrations. At the same time, the authors relate professional triumphs that illustrate effective teaching - and doing - of narrative research."--BOOK JACKET.

"The brief, practical texts in the Essentials of Qualitative Methods series introduce social science and psychology researchers to key approaches to capturing phenomena not easily measured quantitatively, offering exciting, nimble opportunities to gather in-depth qualitative data. In this book, Ruthellen Josselson and Phillip L. Hammack introduce readers to Narrative Analysis, a qualitative method that investigates how people make meaning of their lives and experiences in both social and cultural contexts. This method offers researchers a window into how individuals' stories are shaped by the categories they inhabit, such as gender, race, class, and sexual identity, and it preserves the voice of the individual through a close textual analysis of their storytelling. About the Essentials of Qualitative Methods book series: Even for experienced researchers, selecting and correctly applying the right method can be challenging. In this groundbreaking series, leading experts in qualitative methods provide clear, crisp, and comprehensive descriptions of their approach, including its methodological integrity, and its benefits and limitations. Each book includes numerous examples to enable readers to quickly and thoroughly grasp how to leverage these valuable methods"--