Story-telling, women's authority and the "Old Wife's Tale": "The Story of the Bottle of Medicine"

The focus of this article is a single personal narrative – a Shetland woman's telling of a story about two girls on a journey to fetch a cure for a sick relative from a wise woman. The story is treated as a cultural document which offers the historian a conduit to a past that is respectful of indigenous woman-centred interpretations of how that past was experienced and understood. The "story of the bottle of medicine" is more than a skilful telling of a local tale; it is a memory practice that provides a path to a deeper and more nuanced understanding of a culture. Applying perspectives from anthropology, oral history and narrative analysis, three sets of questions are addressed: the issue of authenticity; the significance of the narrative structure and storytelling strategies employed; and the nature of the female performance. Ultimately the article asks what this story can tell us about women's interpretation of their own history.     

Quiet please, there's a lady on stage: : Centering the person with dementia in life story narrative

This paper is drawn from a larger study based on traditional qualitative thematic methods, which explored the use of secondary biographical stories as a strategy in conversation with an older person who has dementia. The aim of this paper is to re-examine the data to facilitate further discussion in gerontology about the ways in which the ideals of Kitwood's (1997) personhood and narrative inquiry can be used keep life story of the person with dementia intact. By drawing upon narrative writers such as Mishler (1986), Gee (1991), Ramanathan (1995) and Riessman (2004, 2007), we describe a methodological approach utilising structural and thematic forms of narrative analysis to keep the person with dementia ‘centre stage’ in their own life story narrative. This paper demonstrates that by integrating a person-centred approach to interpretative and structural narrative analysis, people living with dementia can be the centre of their own story and communicate with their community what is important and why it is worth telling.     

(Potential) patients like me: testing the effects of user-generated health content on social media

As media technology becomes increasingly participatory, individuals may use social media to share health information and connect with those who have similar health concerns. While prior research has focused on evaluating the feasibility, usability, and effectiveness of traditional health messages, this study investigates the effects of user-generated health content on individuals’ cognitive and emotional responses, as well as their behavioral intentions. An experimental study with a two (story source: personal story vs news story) by two (story ending: happy ending vs sad ending) factorial design was conducted. The results confirmed the positive effects of identification with the narrative character on the experience of being transported, which further led to the behavioral intentions to take countermeasures and viral communication on social media. The sad ending of a narrative was found to elicit emotions that were sufficiently strong to increase perceptions of susceptibility to dengue fever, which, however, failed to result in behavioral intentions.     

Narrative analysis in aging studies: A typology for consideration

This article seeks to expand our understanding on narrative and the analysis of stories researchers invite and collect in the domain of aging studies. To do so, we first offer an understanding of what narrative inquiry can be by laying out a theoretical basis for this kind of research, and making a case for the relevance of narrative as an alternative methodology. Painting with broad strokes, narrative analysis as a method is then considered before a typology of different ways in which stories can be analyzed is introduced. Illuminated by the typology are two contrasting standpoints toward narrative analysis—storyteller and story analyst—and three specific methods—structural, performative, and autoethnograpic creative analytic practices—that each standpoint might use to analyse the whats and hows of storytelling. The article closes by suggesting that in order to assist us to understand the complexities of aging researchers might consider using a variety of analyses.     

Selling your soul to the devil: an autoethnography of pain, pleasure and the quest for a child

In this article I present an autoethnography in the form of a quest narrative linked as a self‐reflexive text to my continuing research of children and adults with spina bifida. My story centers on the themes of chronic illness, pain and sexuality, highlighting gaps in the literature related to these topics. I narrate my story as a manifesto for women with physical impairments to break their silence and talk about their sexuality. I recommend autoethnography as a method of understanding disability as embodied.

Faustus:?Now tell me, what says Lucifer thy lord?     

Teaching and Learning Guide for “Gender In/equality in Worker‐owned Businesses”

This teaching and learning guide accompanies the article, “Gender In/equality in Worker‐owned Businesses,” which reviews existing literature on gender in businesses with employee stock ownership plans, worker cooperatives, and communes. Worker ownership has attracted renewed interest as a possible solution to the social and economic problems confronting our society. In worker‐owned businesses, workers have greater control over what they produce, how they produce it, and how they are compensated. If workers ran things themselves, so the story goes, jobs would be better and workplaces would be more equal. What do we actually know about work in alternative organizations? Do women fare better? Can they offer alternatives or solutions to the gender inequality that permeates working life? This teaching and learning guide provides supplemental information to facilitate the use of this article in the classroom. This includes a list of recommended readings, online resources, a sample syllabus, focus questions, and project suggestions.     

Constructing a Life That Works: Part 2, An Approach to Practice

The 1st article (C. Campbell & M. Ungar, 2004) of this 2‐part exploration of postmodern approaches to family therapy and narrative approaches to career counseling explored the differences between traditional trait and factor counseling models and postmodern approaches using life narratives and social constructionism. In this 2nd article, the authors discuss 7 aspects of their practice as postmodern career counselors that ask clients to (a) know what you want, (b) know what you have, (c) know what you hear, (d) know what constrains you, (e) map your preferred story, (f) grow into your story, and (g) grow out of your story. Several case studies demonstrate the applicability of these theories to practice.     

Topmanager im Spiegel ihrer Selbstorientierung

A whole collection of technical and popular scientific literature describes business thinking and communication processes. But what do we know about the thinking and communication processes of those that actually give important impulses in their leadership positions as members of the board and top managers? What do we know about their strategies and mechanisms? What is their underlying self and world view? This article gives answers to these questions in form of certain types and structures. The raw data was obtained as set of narrative, biographically oriented interviews, conducted with eight top managers. They have leading positions in companies with upwards of EUR 70 billion annual sales volume, and more than 300 000 employees. Most of the managers interviewed are members of the board. All companies considered are based in Germany.     

An opera house for the “Paris of South America”: pathways to the institutionalization of high culture

Who has the power to institutionalize culture? How is it that cultural forms become legitimated and appropriated by certain groups? And what are the organizational forms that guarantee the continuity of the interlocks among classifications, etiquette, and resources in the long run? This article explores these questions by observing the struggle over the institutionalization of opera as high culture during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century in Buenos Aires, a region of the world understudied by cultural sociologists. It contends that to answer these questions we need to observe the contested dynamics though which the process of institutionalization happens. It also shows how this contestation affects, in the long-term, the processes of evaluation and legitimation of the classification upheld, and the consequences it has in terms of audience stratification. In the Discussion section, I present a novel framework for the study of pathways to high culture institutionalization that highlights how the role of the state and competing stakeholders can introduce variable relationships among the elites, the arts, and social closure.     

A growing tradition?

This article develops a basic knowledge of African American family foundations from which additional research can be generated. It addresses the following questions: From what types of professional backgrounds do the founders of African American family foundations hail? In which areas of the country are African American family foundations located? What is the range of assets possessed by African American family foundations, and how are these assets managed? How do African American family foundations use board members, employees, and volunteers to support their organizations? What are the overarching goals of African American family foundations? And in what areas are they concentrating their donations?     

DisPovertyPorn: Benefits Street and the dis/ability paradox

In this article, we offer a timely socio-cultural analysis, informed by a critical disability perspective, of UK Channel 4’s reality television series Benefits Street. Drawing on the work of Allen, Tyler, and De Benedictus and Jensen on ‘poverty porn’, we broaden their analysis to ask how dis/ability disrupts the ‘poverty porn’ narrative. We pay attention to the dis/appearance of dis/ability on Benefits Street and, in doing so, we also extend an analysis of how impairment labels function in people’s lives as socio-cultural categories that place limits on what labelled people can do and can be. We suggest that both the articulation and erasure of dis/ability are used as a form of narrative prosthesis to support the overarching story line that people on benefits are unworthy ‘scroungers’.     

Marriage,the Final Frontier? Same‐Sex Marriage and the Future of the Lesbian and Gay Movement

Given hostility within segments of LGBT communities toward same‐sex marriage, how do Australian activists justify their efforts toward achieving marriage equality? In this article, we expand the social movement literature by examining how activists construct identity, meaning, and goals in contradistinction to others within the same movement. We draw on interviews with Australian lesbian and gay activists to examine what enables them to pursue the contested goal of same‐sex marriage in light of internal movement critiques that marriage equality will undermine the significance of lesbian and gay identity and impair activism on other issues as a result of the view that equality has been achieved. We expand debates over the post‐gay trajectory of lesbian and gay activism and identity by illustrating how activists attach different, what we term, mobilizing meanings, to the same movement goal which enables them to withstand internal movement critiques. We provide a typology of mobilizing meanings that can be applied more generally.     

Closed Circuits of Interaction?

Are CCTV images of such evidential strength that they speak for themselves? If not, then for whom do they speak? CCTV cameras form a growing presence in Britain's high streets. There are estimated to be 2.5 million cameras in operation in Britain, there is an increase in legislation relating to cameras and there is increasing concern amongst civil liberties groups about cameras' effects. Claims are frequently made such as 'if you are doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about' and 'CCTV evidence is clear to see.' These claims depend upon acceptance of the proposal that CCTV images are simply left to speak for themselves and that CCTV staff do little interpretative work. However, to investigate these claims, we need to ask: How do CCTV systems actually operate in practice. How are identities for CCTV images made 'clear', accounted for and mobilized? What work is done to promote the notion that we have nothing to worry about with CCTV? How do issues such as 'surveillance', 'privacy' and 'public' become implicated within these identity production processes? This article seeks to tackle these questions through the interrogation of a single story involving a high-street CCTV system, local police, local residents, a national television company and civil liberties group. This analysis of interactivity (based on a broadly ethno-methodological remit) augments current sociological accounts of CCTV. Instead of accepting panoptic metaphors as a means of understanding CCTV, the article will open up the closed circuit of CCTV through an analysis of the pantopticon in practice.     

“Y,what do you think about what X just said?” Conversation analysis of stance-eliciting questions in open dialogue network meetings

Open dialogue is a resource-oriented approach to mental health, which aims to help those involved in a crisis situation support each other and engage in dialogue. While language use in open dialogue is generally characterized as being open-ended, nondirective, and nonevaluating on the professionals' side, little is known about the specific conversational features. The aim of this study was to analyze the interactional functions of a stance-eliciting question of the form: “Y, what do you think about what X just said?” We used conversation analysis (CA) to examine this in eight video-recorded Danish open dialogue network meetings. In CA, stance involves expressions of attitude, affect, or judgments about people or events. We describe the interactional functions of these stance-eliciting questions and discuss how clinicians used them as a tool for accomplishing neutrality. The findings can be used to gain a more nuanced understanding of open dialogue psychotherapeutic practices.     

Grieving for mestizaje: alternative approaches to Maya identity in Yucatan,Mexico

This article takes as its point of departure the highly contested theoretical terrain of ‘Maya’ identity in Yucatan, Mexico. Set in the physical terrain of a state psychiatric hospital, this article uses a framework of identity culled from the narrative of a young woman, ‘Claudina’, committed to its wards, to argue that being ‘in-between’ categories of ethnic identity, an experience she characterises as a painful sense of ambiguous loss, can be fruitfully analysed using an analytical framework of ethnic identity introduced by Claudina herself. Specifically, I argue that categories of identity culled from Claudina's story – mestizaje and elegancia – represent a valuable opportunity to think about how power dynamics and relationships operate in situations of ambivalent identities and social suffering. To this end, I use Claudina's language as a point of departure for understanding the lived experience of everyday life in Yucatan today.     

Theory as Story: A Postmodern Tale

After locating postmodernism in its historical and epistemological contexts, this article takes the postmodern position that the behavioral theories that have informed clinical social work practice over the last century are stories with texts written by authors whose place in historical time, life experience, and personal proclivities shaped both the plots of the stories and the manner in which they were told. A review of the most influential theory-stories lays the groundwork for addressing two questions: What can postmodernism do for clinical social work? And what can clinical social work do for postmodernism?     

Using Psychodynamic, Cognitive-Behavioral, and Solution-Focused Questioning to Co-Construct a New Narrative

The narrative and social construction metaphors are used as the conceptual frame for the clinical work with a client who felt trapped in an emotionally abusive relationship. To help the client deconstruct a problem-saturated narrative, questions were asked which drew from psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral, and solution-focused models. The rationale for the use and timing of deconstructive questions from the various models is discussed. The problem-saturated story during the time of intake is presented, as is the change process that led to a more solution-focused narrative. An effective short-term treatment was created through the use of interventions drawn from multiple clinical models. Effectiveness was judged by client's improved emotional state, and the ability of the client to imagine and pursue identified solutions.     

Illness and the Interactionist Vocation

The disenchantment of our times is described as a contest between what are called the ride and the story. The ride represents an array of desires to treat the body as a project for perpetual enhancement and medicine as a venue of commodity capitalism. The story imagines illness as a moral project. The interactionist vocation is thus placed in the context of what Weber called our fate: how do we confront the moral dilemma of our present moment?     

Skuka and the Absurd in Gogol'’s Tale of the ‘Two Ivans’

The present article is devoted to an analysis of Gogol'’s last story from his Ukrainian cycle, “The Story of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarrelled with Ivan Nikiforovich”; it makes use of canonical as well as innovative approaches to Gogol'’s tale in order to explore the significance of the epilogue to an interpretation of the story as a whole. The examination will encompass ideas on the temporal aspects of the narration, the philosophical concept of ennui/skuka, and the possible significance of the camera obscura as the setting for one of the key moments in the story. Whereas the camera obscura is the setting of the quarrel between the two main characters, the story ends with a manifestation of skuka from the narrator: how do these two elements relate to each other, and what do they suggest in terms of the possibility of reaching an all-encompassing interpretation of the ‘Two Ivans’?     

The algorithmic imaginary: exploring the ordinary affects of Facebook algorithms

ABSTRACT

This article reflects the kinds of situations and spaces where people and algorithms meet. In what situations do people become aware of algorithms? How do they experience and make sense of these algorithms, given their often hidden and invisible nature? To what extent does an awareness of algorithms affect people's use of these platforms, if at all? To help answer these questions, this article examines people's personal stories about the Facebook algorithm through tweets and interviews with 25 ordinary users. To understand the spaces where people and algorithms meet, this article develops the notion of the algorithmic imaginary. It is argued that the algorithmic imaginary – ways of thinking about what algorithms are, what they should be and how they function – is not just productive of different moods and sensations but plays a generative role in moulding the Facebook algorithm itself. Examining how algorithms make people feel, then, seems crucial if we want to understand their social power.