What is the most effective way for a researcher to read and analyze life-story materials? Using a new model for the classification of types of readings, Narrative Research shows readers how to read, analyze and interpret life story materials. The authors first introduce readers to four models of reading and interpreting a text: the holistic-content reading, the holistic-form reading, categorical-content reading, and categorical-form reading. They next present two complete narratives so that readers can compare the author?s interpretations against the actual text as well as try to analyze the stories on their own. The subsequent chapters provide readings, interpretations, and analyses of the narrative data from the four models. Each of the examples is highlighted by sharing with the reader some of the processes of the researcher? work, including various considerations, doubts, self-criticism, and dialogues about the narratives. Readers wanting to learn more about life story research will not only learn the tools for doing this analysis, but will be inspired to contribute their own creativity to this developing field.

In Narratives of Positive Aging, Amia Lieblich presents a qualitative study that explores the life narratives of elderly men and women who engage in practices of "positive aging." They belong to a spontaneous community that assembles daily, early in the morning, on a beach near Tel-Aviv, Israel. At the seaside, the elders practice various outdoor sports, and converse over coffee at the local cafe. Based on their narratives, procured by individual open-ended interviews, and the author's participant observation, the book explores the impact of routine, physical activity, and social relationships on successful aging. Lieblich additionally presents an analysis of the tension-minimizing discourse adopted at the cafe and the pleasant bubble-like environment it fosters amongst the community members. Finally, the book debates the adaptive role of narrating one's life story, and its perceived manifestation of wisdom. A combination of complete life stories and extracts of conversations recorded on the beach color every chapter. These texts are complimented and elucidated by a variety of academic claims, theories and findings concerning narratives and aging. This book, based on an Israeli field study, may be viewed both as a local case study as well as a lesson relevant to aging everywhere.

How does context shape biography? How do language and relationships affect the development of people's work lives? An international group of scholars from diverse disciplines addresses these and other issues in this volume of The Narrative Study of Lives. They explore what it means to take narrative seriously and how an empathic stance in narrative research opens out on the dialogic self. The contributors also consider questions of how participants make meaning out of their experience in the framework of available interpretive horizons. In addition, there are sections that use narrative approaches to develop a deeper understanding of loneliness and the "coming out" process in homosexuality. This volume examines the many ways in which people interpret their experience and explores conceptual avenues to make use of these understandings in the analysis of human life. Those interested in qualitative methods, evaluation, and education research will find Interpreting Experience to be an invaluable contribution.

How does a narrative serve as a way for uncovering and constructing a person's identity? Does a narrative differ in any systematic way from life as lived versus life as constructed by women and men? Addressing these and other issues related to the use of narratives for understanding human lives, Exploring Identity and Gender, the second volume in The Narrative Study of Lives annual book series, focuses on narratives of girls' and women's lives as well as other identity issues. Among the issues this volume addresses are individual identity in the context of a familial heritage and how one's sense of individuality relates to their style of management. The international team of authors also explores such issues as how women construct the lives of other women in biographical work, how individuals conduct their life episodes in patterns similar to the plots of stories, how the women's movement influenced three women's adult lives, and how girls' sense of themselves changes as they move into adolescence. Students and researchers will find Exploring Identity and Gender illuminating in the intelligent application of the use of narratives.

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.

What is the most effective way for a researcher to read and analyze life-story materials? Using a new model for the classification of types of readings, Narrative Research shows readers how to read, analyze and interpret life story materials. The authors first introduce readers to four models of reading and interpreting a text: the holistic-content reading, the holistic-form reading, categorical-content reading, and categorical-form reading. They next present two complete narratives so that readers can compare the author?s interpretations against the actual text as well as try to analyze the stories on their own. The subsequent chapters provide readings, interpretations, and analyses of the narrative data from the four models. Each of the examples is highlighted by sharing with the reader some of the processes of the researcher? work, including various considerations, doubts, self-criticism, and dialogues about the narratives. Readers wanting to learn more about life story research will not only learn the tools for doing this analysis, but will be inspired to contribute their own creativity to this developing field.

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 be read out of life story; life narratives of reform, i.e., the transition away from delinquent behavior; 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 interviewees came of age; the experience and meaning of resilience among survivors of childhood sexual abuse; and the use of narrative work as an additional approach within a larger quantitative research project. Amia Lieblich and Ruthellen Josselson provide insight into how the narrative appraoch enriches the study of the rare, the unusual, the common, and the prevalent, always searching for meaning in peopleAEs lives.

Conversation as Method is a most unique and engaging discussion among four women, all feminist scholars, who explore the different ways of knowing. The quantitative orientation of one combined with the qualitative methodology of the other three make for stimulating development of interview and exchange on how growing up communally affects relationships later on in life. All four authors have worked, independently, on issues relative to the kibbutz experience, and each brings her own perspective to this dialogue and to the active pursuit of data gathering and understanding. From the premise that knowledge is co-constructed by observer and observed and both must be clearly visible in research reports, Conversation as Method is rich social science evolving from people coming together to talk, listen, and learn from one another. Readers are also encouraged to participate in the conversation by making their own individual assessments of interpretations each author puts forth. This cutting-edge presentation is a must have for academics, researchers, and students in feminist or qualitative methodology, as well as for courses covering social/personality psychology, close relationships, developmental psychology, and family studies.

How does context shape biography? How do language and relationships affect the development of people's work lives? An international group of scholars from diverse disciplines addresses these and other issues in this volume of The Narrative Study of Lives. They explore what it means to take narrative seriously and how an empathic stance in narrative research opens out on the dialogic self. The contributors also consider questions of how participants make meaning out of their experience in the framework of available interpretive horizons. In addition, there are sections that use narrative approaches to develop a deeper understanding of loneliness and the "coming out" process in homosexuality. This volume examines the many ways in which people interpret their experience and explores conceptual avenues to make use of these understandings in the analysis of human life. Those interested in qualitative methods, evaluation, and education research will find Interpreting Experience to be an invaluable contribution.

"This volume is especially appealing in that it celebrates diversity and embraces disagreement. . . . The narrative scholar, regardless of her/his research tradition or field, will most certainly benefit from the diversity and depth provided in The Narrative Study of Lives. Editors Ruthellen Josselson and Amia Lieblich have admirably fulfilled their criteria of breadth, coherence, and aesthetic appeal for works included in this volume. Moreover, they have provided the necessary forum for the study of lives and life histories. We can only hope to continue the conversation in future volumes." --Journal of Contemporary Ethnography "Few questions have a longer, deeper, and livelier intellectual history than how we 'construct' our lives--and, indeed, how we create ourselves in the process. But it is a question newly alive today, for modern scholarship has brought challenging new perspectives to the study of life writing. Literary theorists, linguists, legal scholars, and even political activists are bringing new and powerful insights to bear. The Narrative Study of Lives provides a needed forum for the debates now in progress and should attract a loyal and numerous band of readers." --Jerome Bruner, New York University "For those psychologists searching for new approaches to the study of lives, this volume takes an important step toward the editors' promise of filling this gaping hole in psychology." --The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease How do we derive concepts from stories and then use these concepts to understand people? What would have to be added to transform story material from the journalistic or literary to the academic and theoretically-enriching? Addressing these and other such issues as the interface between life as lived and the social times, this group of distinguished contributors from six different countries and four different disciplines explores this emerging new field. Beginning with the philosophical framework that underlies the study of narrative, the book covers such questions as: What makes people want to preserve the stories of their past? What methods can be used to deconstruct a narrative text? Can what we learn from people's narratives of their past be used to account for their current psychological functioning? What happens if people lose their ability to narrate their story? Can people's narrative accounts tell us something about identity and its development? Useful to researchers and students of human development and behavior, The Narrative Study of Lives provides rich stories and analysis of narrative approaches to life history.