Xi’an Narrative Workshop Friday July 30th + Sunday Aug 1st Overview Friday, July 30 –Morning (i)General Introduction ---of ‘Narrative Methods’ in Cross-Cultural Research ---and of EACH OTHER (ii) Honing in on Small Stories –Afternoon (i) The Davie Hogan story (work with transcripts) (ii) Betty tells her story (work with transcripts) Sunday, August 1 –Morning (i) Introduction to ‘Small Stories’ (ii) 10-year-olds on “why girls are disgusting” (iii) 13-year-olds on “why it is okay to tease girls” –Afternoon Work with Participants’ stories (i) Introductions (self presentations) (ii) Collected transitions from childhood to adulthood

General Introduction this morning  Introductions  Brief stories of who we are -- in English (presentations of our selves in terms of ‘who I am’)  Introducing ‘Narrative Methods’ - for the purpose of doing Cross-Cultural Research Leading up to SMALL STORIES –What are small stories? –How are they differrent from LIFE STORIES and LIFE-EVENT Stories –Different Approaches in ‘NARRATIVE RESEARCH/METHODS’ –Merits of ‘Small Stories’ for Cross-Cultural Psychology

INTRODUCTIONS I Brief: name, country, institution, what I’m doing Example: my self: Michael Bamberg -teach Clark University, US -used to do research on children’s story-telling development -now doing research on adolescents INTRODUCTIONS II –We tell my neighbor who we are a SHORT life story –My neighbor takes notes (or records) –Then we switch We’ll use these notes later ---DON’T WORRY!!! ---NO TEST!!!

Narrative Research/Methods and their use for Cross-Cultural Psychology What ARE narrative Methods? –People’s stories as ‘windows’ into their understanding of ‘who they are’ > –People’s stories as joint co-productions of ‘who they are’ > –People’s stories as reflections of ‘cultural themes’ > How can we employ them for CCP? –Tyler’s article –Culture as components of our behavioral + cognitive repertoires –Culture as our interactive habits

Analyzing the meaning of lived lives --in context-- My First Kiss –what it meant to me “back then” –refracted through what ‘kissing’ means - as a cultural schema/script –refracted through my personal + social history (the here-and-now of my life-course + the telling situation) It’s not THE EVENT itself but its meaning –In the form of a STORY told in context to one’s peers to a teacher //parent over dinner table conversation to a researcher –same versus mixed gendered group

So what needs to be analyzed is not just THE STORY, but THE TELLING of the story IN CONTEXT Why? Because we’re not trying to find out about ‘kisses’, but how participants MAKE SENSE of ‘kissing’ Therafter we can begin to compare how the significance of ‘kissing’ changes - across age groups, different genders, and different cultures

Leading up to SMALL STORIES What ARE Small Stories?  Short  Conversationally Embedded + Negotiated before during after  Fine tuned positioning strategies –fine-tuned vis-à-vis the audience –fine-tuned vis-à-vis dominant + counter narratives –multiple moral stances (testing out and experimenting with identity projections )  Low in tellability, linearity, temporality + causality

Two Small Stories Kimberly Speers Yesterday’s Events

Three Kinds of Narrative Approaches to the Study of Self and Identity Life-Story Approaches Life-Event Approaches Small Stories –short narrative accounts –highly embedded in every-day interactions –unnoticed as ‘stories’ by the participants –unnoticed as ‘narratives’ by researchers but highly relevant for identity formation processes

Life-Stories Life-Events –Dan McAdams (1985; 1993) –Gabi Rosenthal (1998) –Chamberlain (2002) –Hollway & Jefferson (2000) –Wengraf (2001) –Hermans (1992) –Holstein & Gubrium (2000) –Miller 2000) –Mishler (1986; 1999) INTERVIEW TECHNIQUE: unfocused, open-ended, in depth, detailed accounting, psychoanalytic, user-focused, ‘empowerment’ Episodic interviews –Most narrative research –Particular Life-Events Chronic pain My first kiss My best friend Growing up in the sixties Falling in love My divorce INTERVIEW TECHNIQUE: detailed accounts of particular experiences/events; ranging between open-ended and more focused interviews

Merits of Life-Story & Life- Event Approaches tap into constructions of the ‘who am I’-question bring out aspects of LIVED EXPERIENCE accentuate the CONTINUITY of experience force participants to focus on the meaning of particular events/experiences in THEIR lives underscore a unified sense of personal (cultural) identity Narratives as tools // heuristics for the analysis of subjective sense-making

Open Questions where small stories become worthwhile How does this unified sense of self come to existence (issue of development + acculturation)? –how does the person in his/her particular culture and socio-historical context learn to “sort out” what is called life - and what makes life “worth living” (- a ‘good’ life) Overemphasis of stories about ‘the self’ –underplaying stories we tell about others Overemphasis of ‘long stories’ –cutting out everyday, small stories

Questions & Discussion

WARNING: Narrative Elicitation –Interviewing Techniques Narrative Transcriptions  NARRATIVE ANALYSIS Publication of Narrative Research