Narrative Inquiry - Volume 14, Issue 2, 2004

Inquiries concerning the nature of ‘biographical aging’ within the emerging field of ‘narrative gerontology’ have pointed to the need for a detailed consideration of the parallels between lived texts and literary ones. This article draws on a number of such parallels in order to outline what might be called apoeticsof aging. The central proposal is organized around 3 key concepts: narrative imagination, narrative identity, and narrative environment. The article concludes by speculating on some of the applications of the proposal in relation to growing old, as opposed to merely getting old. (Aging, Narrative, Gerontology, Poetics, Imagination)

In our dominant discourses, anorexia and bulimia are identified with those persons suffering from their effects. Thus a person is anorexic or bulimic. By contrast, narrative therapists conceive of anorexia and bulimia as separate from the person. Consequently the problem, and the person's relationship with it, rather than the person themselves, can be recognised as “the problem”. Anorexia and bulimia may then be regarded as having “voices” of their own, which act as discursive parasites that draw a deal of their sustenance from the dominant discourses in society that are subscribed to by those they attack. Once the problem is divorced from the person, then those attacked by these parasites can, through therapeutic conversations, be helped to find alternative discourse resources that assist them in gaining power to resist these parasitic voices. (Narrative Therapy, Anorexia, Bulimia, Counter-Narratives, Discourse Resources)

In this article we read particular fragments of poststructuralist theory to constitute a narrative epistemological position that enables us to question the morality of psychology's narratives of gendered subjectivities. Drawing on the work of Lyotard (1984) and White (1987) we theorise narrative form as complicit with moral order and the morality of subject positioning. We then question the positioning of a particular woman through a narrative telling of her psychology. The specific narrative is the judge's summation in a murder trial where the case is defended through a plea of insanity. The accused woman's psychology is told through reference to trial evidence: the expert testimony of psychologists and psychiatrists. We read fragments from the judge's summation and from expert testimony to exemplify the moral order of the positioning they enable and constrain. Finally, we discuss the implications of our reading for interventions into the social power relations of legitimate psychological knowledges. (Feminism, Poststructuralism, Narrative, Morality, Insanity, Mental Disorder)

This was an exploratory study assessing how parents talk about salient child experiences, namely injuries serious enough to require hospital ER treatment. Preschool-aged (2–5 years) and school-aged (8–13 years) children were recruited from a hospital ER, and their parents were interviewed a few days later about their children's experience. The free recall portion of interviews are assessed here. Narratives of mothers and fathers differed little, but both parents were more elaborative, i.e., more descriptive and informative, when they talked about the injury of their daughters vs. their sons. Narratives about daughters were also more cohesive and included more context-setting information, i.e., orientation to where and when events occurred. Narratives about older children were also longer, more elaborative, more cohesive, and more contextually embedded than were those about younger children. Although the amount of explicit emotion descriptors did not differ, fathers tended to emphasize the absence of an emotional reaction by their sons, but not their daughters. Results were discussed in terms of concordance with gender stereotypes that describe males as tough and females as fragile. (Narratives, Gender, Parents, Story-telling)

This study examined cultural variations in parental goals of storytelling and story constructions to and with young children. Sixty-five (34 East India; 36 USA) mothers and their four-to-five year old children were audio taped as they read a non-worded picture storybook. East India mothers told longer stories that included more evaluative comments and responses to their child's questions than US mothers. Content and evaluation of character and story action reflected cultural themes of collectivism of India and individualism of USA. Enculturation through storytelling is discussed. (Mother-Child Storytelling, Individualism, Collectivism, Narrative)

The goal of this study was to provide cross-cultural data, comparing the fictional narrative structure and content of a population of 7-year old Bhutanese children with those of 7-year olds from a rural section of Pennsylvania. The two groups produced narrative structures containing comparable story grammar and story structure levels. Differences in content were evident in story resolution, where the Bhutanese had fewer success-oriented endings than the Pennsylvania group. The Bhutanese stories contained significantly more secondary characters as well as intense empathic responses for story characters. Secondary characters also provided goal structure in the Bhutanese stories whereas the two groups produced similar narrative structure, analysis of story content was necessary to fully describe the cultural aspects of the children's stories. (Macrostructure, Story Grammar, Story Structure Level, Story Ending Level, Perspective-taking)

This article examines the different positionings that preschool children develop towards the collective narrating of a school field trip to an educational farm in which only about half the class participated. The report of this excursion took place during the morningronda(the Spanish equivalent to sharing time or news sessions) and organized the children and the teacher in two groups of participants, those who went on the field trip and those who stayed home. I argue that these children displayed four discursive strategies towards the narrative and narrated events: (a) children who participated in the field trip couldincludeorexcludethe rest of the class from their narrative space; (b) children who did not participate in the field trip couldaffiliatewith orresistthe narrated events. The episode is discussed as exceptional in a classroom where precisely it has been argued thatrondaconversations play a key role in developing group identity, and shows how children have resources to develop varied stances towards school initiatives and even question the institutional and socio-economic arrangements that configure these activities. (Classroom Discourse, Ethnography of Communication, Narrative Inequality, Positioning)