Recollection and Relocation in Immigration: Russian‐Jewish Immigrants “Normalize” Their Anti‐Semitic Experiences

This study conceptualizes the relationship between recollection of the past and relocation in the context of immigration. Combining symbolic interactionist and narrative paradigms, it explores how immigrants'representations of past experiences inform their identity construction and the process of entering the host society. Our interpretive analysis of personal narratives related spontaneously by eighty‐nine Russian‐Jewish immigrants in Israel and Germany reveals that they choose to “normalize” their anti‐Semitic experiences by representing them as secondary, expected, and “normal.” They do so via four narrating tactics of normalization: obscuring, self‐exclusion, vindication, and essentializing stigma. Each tactic devalues the cultural depiction (grand narrative) of anti‐Semitic experiences as transformative and traumatic. By normalizing their past, the immigrants deconstruct and resist the authority and moral commands of the national narrative they encounter in both societies. Putting forward normalization as an alternative interpretation, the immigrants claim ownership of their biography and cultural identity.     

Negotiating Personal Experience over the Lifetime: Narrative Elasticity as an Analytic Tool

Sociology and neighboring disciplines have produced different analytic tools to examine the dialogical relationship between individuals and society (“narrative work,” “identity work,” “moral career,” “moral breakdown”). However, the question of how individuals negotiate the interpretation of personal experience over their lifetimes in a changing cultural context remains unexplored. This article introduces narrative elasticity as a feature of narrative work and as a time‐sensitive analytic tool for conducting inquiries into processes of temporal retraction and expansion of what storytellers conceive as the normal order of significance. The application of this tool to the analysis of mature and elderly Chileans' life stories shows how cultural change occurs at the individual level, considers factors that motivate and inhibit processes of reinterpretation of personal experience, and identifies different levels at which it operates.     

From Prowar Soldier to Antiwar Activist: Change and Continuity in the Narratives of Political Conversion among Iraq War Veterans

This study examines conversion narratives of Iraq War military veterans who have become antiwar political activists. I examine how antiwar veterans construct and emplot prewar, wartime, and postwar narrative periods to shape and reclaim their moral identities as patriots fighting for a just cause, and how through a communal antiwar story they work to both challenge and reappropriate the rhetorical framework they associate with justifications for the invasion of Iraq. The study draws on in‐depth interviews with forty members of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). In sum, the research describes how veterans engage with dominant narratives, shape new moral identities, and transition from soldiers to political activists.     

Transgression narratives,dialogic voicing,and cultural change1

The narrative discursively analyzed in this paper is taken from a larger study involving life history interviews with Latina/o immigrants in California. It exemplifies a type of narrative among these interviews in which tellers recount how they or their family members have broken with cultural expectations. In this story, the teller, a Nicaraguan woman, recounts how her uncle violated traditional values in her family by enlisting in the Sandinista army during wartime. Despite discursively distancing herself from this transgression, she ends by evaluating the transgressor and his recent accomplishments positively. Through an analysis of the appraisal strategies and interdiscursivity within this narrative, the paper contends that the narrators of such stories can go beyond managing deviations to dialogically position themselves among competing ‘social and historical voices’( Bakhtin 1981 ). Thus, the paper contends that transgression narratives represent the tellers’ efforts to come to terms with cultural changes in their communities.     

Connecting Practical Doings to Cultural Meanings: Exploring the Work of Moral Mediators in Human Service Organizations

This study illuminates the work of moral mediators, which I define as organizational actors who work to strategically monitor, maintain, and manage the moral identity of others. My layered, organizational, narrative analysis of the mentoring organization Big Brothers Big Sisters draws on two types of data: client stories featured on the national website and ten in‐depth interviews with case managers at a local agency. My analysis demonstrates how case managers employ an emotional labor technique of drama dilution, or work done to add ambiguity to public storytelling in ways that leave more space for variations of deservingness, success, and morality. This article emphasizes the paradoxical nature of public organizational narratives and highlights the need for continued exploration of day‐to‐day work in conjunction with organizational structure and cultural values and beliefs.     

“Becoming a Parent Changes Everything”: How Nonbeliever and Pagan Parents Manage Stigma in the U.S. Bible Belt

Despite the increasing visibility of secularism and alternative religions in the United States, few have paid attention to the relationship between family roles and religious identity outside of mainstream Christian denominations. Guided by insights from theories of identity work, I compare stigma management strategies by two religiously marginalized groups. Based on participant-observation, in-depth interviews, and textual analysis, I show how nonbeliever and Pagan parents in the Bible Belt respond to perceived threats to their moral identities as “good parents.” Nonbeliever and Pagan parents manage their spoiled identities by engaging in defensive othering amongst subordinates, a form of stigma management, to distance themselves from discrediting stereotypes—specifically the “militant atheist” and the “hedonistic Pagan.” I demonstrate that access to greater financial and cultural capital (nonbeliever parents) allows for reliance on defensive othering to massage interpersonal relations, whereas access to low levels of financial and cultural capital (Pagan parents), prompts the need to rely on defensive othering as a matter of survival. Becoming a parent changes the dynamic of stigma management for individuals; pushing individual parents away from social justice activism and ultimately undercutting broader social movements for equality.     

Narratives of Commitment: Looking for Work with a Criminal Record

Unemployment is one of the most often cited barriers to reentry, yet we know little about how understandings of work inform the job‐search strategies of men and women with felon status. How and why do individuals remain committed to the legitimate labor market and continue their search for employment? We categorized interviews from 38 Milwaukee County residents into four narrative typologies that (1) reflected understandings of work and job market challenges and (2) mapped onto reported job‐search strategies. Findings inform discussions about reentry and stigma that have yet to draw on narratives of commitment to the labor market.     

Stories of AIDS: The use of narrative as an approach to understanding in an AIDS support group

This paper shows how the co-creation and telling of narratives helped members of an AIDS support group transform their unique and separate experiences of suffering into shared insights, intense connections and comfort. Examples of narratives are drawn from the author's experience as a co-leader of a support group for gay men living with AIDS. Current literature on group work with persons living with AIDS is embedded in a modernist orientation in which the therapist is the scientist/expert, the client has the problem and the therapist helps the client's through exploring and interpreting the client's story according to a superseding theory (Gergen and Kaye, 1992). This approach emphasizes the need for leaders to maintain objectivity and emotional distance to avoid burnout (Gabriel, 1991; Grossman and Silverstein, 1993; Tunnell, 1991). In contrast, in a post-modern therapeutic approach, there is no privileging of the therapist's narrative and the traditional hierarchical relationship is replaced by a mutual effort as therapist and client together develop stories that translate and transcend experience. Using the AIDS work as illustration, this paper offers a post-modern, narrative approach to group work and shows how persons living with AIDS can use narrative to move beyond finite structures and the limits of life.This paper couldn't have been written without the help of the group members and my co-leader Sally Bowie. I want to thank them and other friends and colleagues-particularly the members of my Philosophy Study Group for their suggestions and support.The paper is dedicated to the memory of Jack, Paul, Mark, Alex, Richard, Hugh, Stan, Tim, Michael and Bill—all members of the group who have died and to Dean who, though not a member of the group, also died of AIDS and like the others—taught me much about dignity and courage, about being gay and about living with AIDS.     

THE STUDY OF IDENTITY AS CULTURAL, INSTITUTIONAL, ORGANIZATIONAL, AND PERSONAL NARRATIVES: Theoretical and Empirical Integrations

I argue that the study of narrative identity would benefit from more sustained and explicit attention to relationships among cultural, institutional, organizational, and personal narratives of identity. I review what is known about these different types of narrative identity and argue that these narratives are created for different purposes, do different types of work, and are evaluated by different criteria. After exploring the inherently reflexive relationships between and among these various narratives of identity, I conclude with demonstrating how examining these relationships would allow a more complete understanding of the mutual relevance of social problem construction and culture, of the work of social service organizations attempting to change clients' personal narratives, and the possibilities of social change. Exploring relationships between and among different types of narrative identity would yield a better understanding of how narratives work and the work narratives do.     

Transitions to motherhood: young women’s desire for respectability,responsibility and moral worth

ABSTRACT

In the UK, teenage motherhood is depicted in the media and government policy as highly negative and problematic. Pregnant and mothering young women are constructed as socially excluded members of society who belong to an assumed underclass who lack responsibility and respectability. This article draws on the views and perspectives of pregnant and mothering young women in the east of England to examine how positive and successful subjects are defined and understood. It is illustrated how this group of working-class young women negotiated and resisted their positioning as ‘unfit’ mothers and ‘bad’ citizens. Central to their narratives was a desire to reassert themselves as respectable and responsible individuals through engaging in education and employment in order to achieve financial independence. It is argued that this notion of respectability provides a limited and limiting understanding of inclusion and moral worth for working-class young women.     

Constructing Personal and Couple Narratives in Late‐stage Cancer: Can a Typology Illuminate the Caring Partner Perspective?

There is a large body of work focusing on the well‐being and relationships of couples facing late‐stage cancer. The systemic study underpinning this paper explored a less researched topic: How do people caring for a partner with terminal cancer construct their experience and relationships through personal and couple narratives? This UK‐based study drew upon dialogical approaches to narrative analysis to focus on six caring partners and their care relationships. Following individual case analysis, two methods of cross‐narrative analysis were developed, and an analysis of narrative themes and a typology of archetypal narratives were drawn from the data. This paper focuses on the typology. The clinical implications of the study are considered, focusing on the contribution of a typology to this and future studies.     

The storyscapes of teenage pregnancy. On morality,embodiment, and narrative agency

Young women tell different stories about teenage pregnancies. Their stories are embedded in the storyscape of their environment, which offers a limited set of narratives. Normative discourses influence the stories young women tell about their pregnancies. Social norms and stigma play an important role in the construction of the meaning of teenage pregnancies. However, the embodiment of being pregnant constitutes meaning as well. This paper draws on findings from a qualitative study conducted in 2015 among 46 young Dutch women who got pregnant before their 20th birthday. Our study explores how young women navigate the moral arena when they are confronted with a teenage pregnancy and which role the embodiment of pregnancy plays in the construction of social meanings. The concept of storyscapes visualises how young women are constrained by their embeddedness in multiple storyscapes, defined by different and often contrasting audiences. Nevertheless, our study indicates that the momentum of pregnancy can offer agentic possibilities to take up another position towards their social environment and develop narrative agency.     

The importance of volitional narrative in treatment: An ethnographic case study in a work progran

The revised theory of the model of human occupation expands the concept of volition to include volitional narrative. This paper focuses on the application of this theory of volition to a client's experience in a work program. This ethnographic case study describes the volitional narrative and life world of one client who attended the occupational therapy work based program. For fifteen months the client was the subject of narrative interviews, participant observation, videotapes and telephone contacts. The findings will illustrate how knowledge of a client's volitional narrative and life world can shed critical light on understanding treatment conflicts. Finally, the discussion will underscore how important it is for work based programs to be designed to encourage therapists to adapt their treatment approaches to maximize the opportunities to seek out the client's volitional narratives and to create meaningful experiences that are consistent with the client's life world.     

Awakenings: Autobiography,Memory, and the Social Logic of Personal Discovery

Taking a formal, sociocognitive approach to narrative analysis, I explore autobiographical stories about discovering “truth” in political, psychological, religious, and sexual realms of social life. Despite (1) significant differences in subject matter and (2) conflicting or oppositional notions of truth, individuals in different social environments tell stories that follow the same awakening formula. Analyzing accounts from a wide variety of social and historical contexts, I show how individuals and communities use these autobiographical stories to define salient moral and political concerns and weigh in on cultural and epistemic disputes. Awakening narratives are important mechanisms of mnemonic and autobiographical revision that individuals use to redefine their past experiences and relationships and plot future courses of action while explaining major transformations of worldview. Awakeners use two ideal‐typical vocabularies of liminality to justify traversing the social divide between contentious autobiographical communities. Further, awakeners divide their lives into discrete autobiographical periods and convey a figurative interaction between the split personas of a temporally divided self. Individuals use this autobiographical formula to reject the cognitive and mnemonic norms of one community and embrace those of another. Advancing a “social geometry” of awakening narratives, I illuminate the social logic behind our seemingly personal discoveries of “truth.”     

The economy of risk and respect: accounts by Puerto Rican sex workers of HIV risk taking

Three-hundred-eleven female drug-using sex workers in urban Puerto Rico were asked to describe their last negotiation with a client. They described efforts to protect themselves from many hazards of sex work, including violence, illness, and drug withdrawal. They also described efforts to minimize the stigma and marginalization of sex work by cultivating relationships with clients, distinguishing between types of clients, and prioritizing their role as mothers. Sex workers adopted alternating gender roles to leverage autonomy and respect from clients. Their narratives suggest that sex workers negotiate a world in which HIV is relative to other risks, and in which sexual practices which are incomprehensible from an HIV-prevention perspective are actually rooted in a local cultural logic. Future HIV prevention efforts should frame condom use and other self-protective acts in terms that build upon sex workers own strategies for understanding their options and modifying their risks.     

Towards a Sociocultural Perspective on Identity Formation in Education

This article discusses a sociocultural approach to processes of identity that has implications for how we understand learning and identity formation in education. Focusing on the socially constructed and culturally figured nature of language, tools, and interactions in learning contexts, this approach assists in the appreciation of how students navigate through and develop an understanding of themselves in different educational contexts. To this end, reference is made to Wortham's work on interactional positioning in narratives and the work of Holland and colleagues on figured worlds. Wortham provides the tools for a systematic analysis of how individuals construct their identities by positioning themselves in discursive interaction. Holland and colleagues alert us to the cultural shaping of such positioning in cultural worlds and the artifacts mediating identity formation. To explore the potential of combining these lenses, a case study is described involving a series of interviews with medical students about their self-perceptions in two contexts of clinical training. The case study highlights how different worlds and identities are formed in these educational contexts.     

Placeholders and Changemakers: Women Farmland Owners Navigating Gendered Expectations

Gendered expectations are central to the continuation of agricultural land tenure systems that concentrate land and power in the control of men. These expectations about how land should be used and by whom are communicated through cultural narratives and maintained through social interactions. Through analysis of qualitative data collected through in‐depth interviews with women farmland owners in Iowa, this article identifies a pivotal person without whom the success of these stories is in jeopardy: the “placeholder.” In this article, I identify how cultural narratives place two gendered expectations on women in the placeholder position: (1) that women landowners maintain farmland through the continuance of its use and preexisting land agreements with tenants or co‐owners, and (2) that women landowners defer their authority as landowners to men. Further, I identify the “changemaker” as an emerging character within cultural narratives—one who refuses to fit the expectations of placeholder and whose behavior may or may not be accepted by the community. Finally, I find that alternative social networks provide enabling environments for changemakers as sites of potential narrative revisions or shifts.     

Moving Ahead,Falling Apart,Losing Power: Three Narratives to the Development of Human Services

Scholars agree that we live in a society in which the lion’s share of human needs is supplied by formal organizations. This article deals with how society reached this situation and the challenges embedded in it. We will postulate that there are three basic narratives of human services, which we have named the progress, the social disintegration, and the power narrative. The narratives will be demonstrated through examples from the field of juvenile and adolescent mental health services. We claim that meaningful professional training in human services must expose students to the interpretations, insights, and possible directions for practice in light of each of the narratives.     

The economy of risk and respect: Accounts by Puerto Rican sex workers of HIV risk taking

Three‐hundred eleven female drug‐using sex workers in urban Puerto Rico were asked to describe their last negotiation with a client. They described efforts to protect themselves from many hazards of sex work, including violence, illness, and drug withdrawal. They also described efforts to minimize the stigma and marginalization of sex work by cultivating relationships with clients, distinguishing between types of clients, and prioritizing their role as mothers. Sex workers adopted alternating gender roles to leverage autonomy and respect from clients. Their narratives suggest that sex workers negotiate a world in which HIV is relative to other risks, and in which sexual practices which are incomprehensible from an HIV‐prevention perspective are actually rooted in a local cultural logic. Future HIV prevention efforts should frame condom use and other self‐protective acts in terms that build upon sex workers' own strategies for understanding their options and modifying their risks.     

Children's narratives of post-divorce family life: from individual experience to an ethical disposition

This article draws on interviews with 60 children and young people to explore how they construct narrative accounts of post‐divorce family life. Rather than seeking to describe children's experiences as if their accounts are simple factual recollections, the focus of the article is on how young people position themselves in their narratives and the ways in which they construct their past experiences. It is argued that these narratives are multi‐layered, often revealing ambivalence and contradictions. The conclusion turns to the question of whether these individual accounts can give rise to what might be referred to as an ethical disposition in which children's experiences can inform a broader social ethos on how to divorce ‘in the proper manner’.