Personal narrative and its significance for social change is a prominent topic in the psychological and wider social sciences. Yet while the importance of narrative for social change is commonly assumed by narrative researchers, no single text addresses it exclusively and from a variety of scholarly perspectives. Stories Changing Lives explores the strong and qualified significance of personal stories and how they catalyze and contribute to social change. The first of the book's three sections examines the embeddedness of personal narratives within larger narratives, and how these narratives shift towards justice. The second section considers how narrative language supports and generates social change. Finally, the concluding section addresses the ways in which re-narrations of the past taking place in the present, and narrations of the future using the present and past, impact social change. Stories Changing Lives sets out the theory and methodology underpinning a range of narrative projects that are committed to progressive change, delineating the strengths and limitations of that research. Chapters focus on projects in Africa, South and North America, and Europe, and bring to the fore the multiplicity of stories, narrative multimodalities, and the importance of intersectionality; they also highlight the interdisciplinarity, historical reach, and transnationalism of narrative research. This volume will further develop our understanding of generating narratives and pursuing social change as two intertwined processes that exemplify the personally and socially transformative characteristics of politics.

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.

Current western feminism and psychology have a particularly close relationship, with feminism finding an increasingly important voice in psychology. In this clear introductory text, originally published in 1989, Corinne Squire examines what feminism and psychology mean to each other, concentrating on the different ways in which feminism is articulated in psychology. Each of the feminist 'movements' within psychology is explored, with clear and critical explanations of the ways in which they differ significantly from conventional psychology. Squire looks at the dominant, egalitarian form of feminist psychology, which tries to work within traditional psychology, and at the woman-centred feminist psychology, which has developed largely outside the conventional discipline, and analyses the limitations and advantages of these approaches. She goes on to look at more complex feminist attempts to deal with psychological concerns, and identifies feminist initiatives, throughout psychology and outside it, which manage to address psychological issues but refuse to respect the boundaries of mainstream psychology, forming instead helpful associations with other forms of knowledge in order to change the nature of psychological discourse.

This volume brilliantly advances our understanding of the use of narrative in the social sciences. It brings together contemporary work on narrative theory and methods and presents a fascinating range of case-studies, from Princess Diana's Panorama interview to the memoirs of the wives of US nuclear scientists.

'...for us, the main attractions when reading Lines of Narrative were the range of topics covered and the inclusive approach to theorizing. Albeit, this is not a book for the faint-hearted; if the reader is willing to engage on a variety of levels then it has a great deal to offer in terms of illuminating and opeing up an expansive appreciation of the 'narrative turn'. - Feminism and Psychology, Christine Horrocks and Nancy Kelly.

Full Contributors:
Rhoda Unger, Lynne Segal, Michelle Fine, Jane ussher, Stephen Frosh, Valerie Walkerdine.

This edited book guides students and researchers through the processes of researching everyday stories about families. Showcasing the wide range methods and data sources currently used in narrative research, it features: Examples of real research into historical and contemporary family practices from around the world. Coverage of both traditional and cutting-edge topics, like multi-method approaches, online research, and paradata. Practical advice from leading figures in the field on how to incorporate these methods and data sources into family narrative research. With accessible language and features that help readers reflect on and internalize key concepts, this book helps readers navigate researching family lives with confidence and ease.

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.

This edited book guides students and researchers through the processes of researching everyday stories about families. Showcasing the wide range methods and data sources currently used in narrative research, it features: Examples of real research into historical and contemporary family practices from around the world. Coverage of both traditional and cutting-edge topics, like multi-method approaches, online research, and paradata. Practical advice from leading figures in the field on how to incorporate these methods and data sources into family narrative research. With accessible language and features that help readers reflect on and internalize key concepts, this book helps readers navigate researching family lives with confidence and ease.

Written by an international team of experts in the field, the second edition of this popular text considers both the theoretical underpinnings and practical applications of narrative research. The authors take the reader from initial decisions about forms of narrative research, through more complex issues of reflexivity, interpretation and the research context. Existing chapters have been updated to reflect changes in the literature and new chapters from eminent narrative scholars in Europe, Australia and the United States have been added on a variety of topics including narratives and embodiment, visual narratives, narratives and storyworlds, new media narratives and Deleuzian perspectives in narrative research.

This book will be invaluable for all students, researchers and academics looking to use narrative methods in their own social research.

Explores the moral debates that shape U.S. culture.

"We are arguing both that moral confusion is valuable and that more negotiation of morality is desirable and possible. This approach does not require a new universal moral order.... To be a nation that engages productively with moral issues, there is no need to have a single, simple set of morals. Morality can live side by side complexity".

A woman becomes pregnant through in vitro fertilization by her son-in-law so her infertile daughter will have a child to raise. Is this arrangement the epitome of mother love, a perversion of family structure, or a rational solution to a medical dilemma? At the end of the twentieth century, this kind of ethical uncertainty is found everywhere. Morality USA charts our confusion, untangling conflicting traditions and exploring our culture's moral ambiguity.

Ellen G. Friedman and Corinne Squire look at a diverse range of subjects -- the law and issues of "justice", O. J. Simpson, family relationships, political correctness, "lite" culture, New Age spirituality, Dr. Jack Kervorkian, Tawana Brawley, TV talk shows, the Million Man March, and Promise Keepers. Morality USA traces our ethical confusion to rapid social change and events that have acted as moral breaks with the past. The Holocaust, the Kennedy and King assassinations, the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 60s, feminist and gay rights campaigns, Watergate, and the Hill-Thomas hearings have progressively eroded confidence in moral universals. Stripped of grand moral narratives, people are left with mere cost-benefit analyses of their ethical options or with only a personal sense of right and wrong, a privatized moralorder.

Morality USA asserts that moral diversity cannot, and should not, be suppressed. It calls for recognition of the multiplicity of moral structures that exist in the United States and argues that we need to think about morality as local, contingent, and revisable, a product of argument and compromise, not as a self-evident truth or the self-interest of the powerful.

Controversial, comprehensive, engaging, and timely, Morality USA defines the moral zeitgeist in ways that will spark debate and contemplation across the political and social spectrum.

Current western feminism and psychology have a particularly close relationship, with feminism finding an increasingly important voice in psychology. In this clear introductory text, originally published in 1989, Corinne Squire examines what feminism and psychology mean to each other, concentrating on the different ways in which feminism is articulated in psychology. Each of the feminist 'movements' within psychology is explored, with clear and critical explanations of the ways in which they differ significantly from conventional psychology. Squire looks at the dominant, egalitarian form of feminist psychology, which tries to work within traditional psychology, and at the woman-centred feminist psychology, which has developed largely outside the conventional discipline, and analyses the limitations and advantages of these approaches. She goes on to look at more complex feminist attempts to deal with psychological concerns, and identifies feminist initiatives, throughout psychology and outside it, which manage to address psychological issues but refuse to respect the boundaries of mainstream psychology, forming instead helpful associations with other forms of knowledge in order to change the nature of psychological discourse.

Winner of the Sociology of Health and Illness Book Prize 2008 Of approximately 37 million HIV positive people in the world, 24.7 million live in sub-Saharan Africa and about 5..5 million in South Africa. Despite its relatively powerful economy and infrastructure, South Africa has been dramatically affected by the HIV pandemic. Using narrative analysis of a three year interview study and textual analysis of political materials, HIV in South Africa examines the impact of HIV on people's everyday lives in the country. Examining the relationship between personal accounts of living with HIV and wider medical, political and religious discourses, the book also highlights the significance of class, race and gender on individuals' experiences. These engaging stories of everyday lives provide an accessible way to connect with HIV as a health and development issue. Fascinating, challenging and constructive, this is an important contribution in an area of great social relevance. The ebook is available free of charge to those with addresses on the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Index of Medium and Low Rankings (see http://hdr.undp.org/hdr2006/pdfs/report/HDR_2006_Tables.pdf), who can apply to the following address: www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk