This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Narrative research has become a catchword in the social sciences today, promising new fields of inquiry and creative solutions to persistent problems. This book brings together ideas about narrative from a variety of contexts across the social sciences and synthesizes understandings of the field. Rather than focusing on theory, it examines how narrative research is conducted and applied. It operates as a practical introductory guide, basic enough for first-time researchers, but also as a window onto the more complex questions and difficulties that all researchers in this area face. The authors guide readers through current debates about how to obtain and analyse narrative data, about the nature of narrative, the place of the researcher, the limits of researcher interpretations, and the significance of narrative work in applied and in broader political contexts.

Using original research and focusing on occupational ill-health in relation to women workers, this book presents a perspective for the analysis of both gender and work and work and ill-health. The author gives a critique of traditional theoretical accounts of gender relations, state intervention and industrial ill-health. The chapters examine the extent to which feminist activists got involved in debates about health and industrial work, and show how activists went beyond the concerns of suffrage.; The book presents a historical period which was marked by a change in the role of the state with respect to intervention in industrial conditions, and analyses the coincidence of this with three other significant developments: the growth of expertise in industrial disease; the employment of women in the factory to take on responsibilities in relation to other women; and changes in the direction of feminist activism. In light of this analysis, the author suggests that some theoretical approaches to both gender relations and health and safety requirements require modification.

Narrative research has become a catchword in the social sciences today, promising new fields of inquiry and creative solutions to persistent problems. This book will bring together ideas about narrative from a variety of contexts across the social sciences and synthesizes understandings of the field. Rather than focusing on theory, the book will examine how narrative research is conducted and applied. It will operate as an introductory guide, simple enough for the beginner, but also as a window onto the more complex questions and difficulties that all researchers in this area face. It will guide readers through current debates not just about how to obtain and analyse narrative data, but about the nature of narrative, the place of the researcher, the limits of researcher interpretations, and the significance of narrative work in applied and in broader political contexts.