One of the central functions of narrative is the ability to create and shape worlds. Certainly, n... more One of the central functions of narrative is the ability to create and shape worlds. Certainly, narrative can provide the resources for producing shared worlds in order to develop commonly held meanings. But a shared world is not the only possible consequence. Narratives can also establish competing versions of the world, which sometimes divide persons and groups so deeply that they can appear to be occupying different realities. Of course, persons and groups have always inhabited disparate worlds. However, the protracted violent wars raging across the globe, new modes of communication and technologies, the multiplication of sources, and the rise of political extremism seem to have exacerbated the situation, fracturing groups and calcifying existing divisions. The result is that disparate narrative worlds with alternative facts and multiple truths form the contours of our everyday reality. Disparate narrative worlds are not only a feature of the political landscape but are also embedded in aspects of daily life where social divisions and patterns of affiliation generate divergent realms of meaning. We can thus speak about disparate narrative worlds between generations, developmental stages, social roles and classes, religions, ethnicities, races, neurotypes, and persons. We also find worlds of men and women, young and old, the able and disabled as well as doctors and patients, teachers and students, and more. Disparate worlds are also represented in literary and more generally artistic and cultural narratives: contemporary or anachronistic worlds, disparate on the political, cultural, private levels, worlds populated by diverse and sometimes segregated groups. We encourage participants to take up the conference theme in order to shed light on what literary narratives and narrative works across media can bring to the exploration of these disparate worlds and their dysphoric consequences, but also of the possibility of hopeful intersections between worlds. The question of the construction of disparate narrative worlds is only part of this conference's scope. In addition, we are very interested in contributions oriented toward bridging divides in order to arrive at novel alliances and solidarities that can more effectively address the myriad challenges that confront our shared world. How can we connect narrative worlds to create, more or less, common spaces? Narrative Matters 2025, the 12th biennial conference, is co-organized by the George and
Using life narrative interviews with Arab students with Israeli citizenship collected in 1997-98,... more Using life narrative interviews with Arab students with Israeli citizenship collected in 1997-98, I inquire into the processes and problems in talking about one's collective iden- tity. In particular, I address how Arab students manage multiple identifications and the role of social relationships in shaping identity narratives. First, I argue that identity narratives do not voice a single point of view. Rather, identity narratives articu- late multiple affiliations that, often, cohere in an uneasyfashion. Our identities are not incoherent, but such multiplicity provides the opportunityfor talking about identity in novel ways. Second, I argue that social relationships are an integral part of identity stories that work to introduce, close off, balance, and rebalance possible self-identifications. In talking about identity, we narra- tivize our social relationships, and these narrated relationships are key points in the plotline of our identity stories. Drawing on this interpretati...
Abstract: This research investigates the use of stories that are found through vicarious experien... more Abstract: This research investigates the use of stories that are found through vicarious experience and told in a life narrative in order to communicate the meaning of the personal past. Through the interpretation of the life narratives of Holocaust survivors, we argue that stories outside of direct experience, collected stories, form the background of personal narratives. Collected stories are pieces of social interaction and context that are integrated in our presentation of the past, and self understanding, because they are personally relevant ...
Chapter 7 of A New Narrative for Psychology applies the interpretive framework developed in the p... more Chapter 7 of A New Narrative for Psychology applies the interpretive framework developed in the previous chapter to an interview with Ben, a Holocaust survivor who was imprisoned in Krakow Plaszow during World War II. The aim of the analysis is to illustrate the value of asking the hermeneutic questions of “who,” “where,” and “when” and how narrative psychology opens the researcher’s ability to better understand the multilayered and complex personal, social, and temporal influences on how persons make sense of their lives.
Chapter 5 of A New Narrative for Psychology develops the idea of making present in order to addre... more Chapter 5 of A New Narrative for Psychology develops the idea of making present in order to address one of the central problems in narrative studies: how narrating produces accounts that we take to be real or true of what is, was, and will be. Narrative is commonly described as possessing the capacity to build worlds or truths, or to construct realities. This chapter asks, how, exactly, do interpretive actions help us to understand what life is and means, as well as who I am and who we are? Using research interviews with couples, it shows how a narrative perspective allows us to understand the multilayered, and reciprocal, connections between persons, social relationships, and culture that are implicated in building, and rebuilding, a sense of the real.
“Interpretation in Practice,” Chapter 8 of A New Narrative for Psychology, compares analytic stra... more “Interpretation in Practice,” Chapter 8 of A New Narrative for Psychology, compares analytic strategies in two studies central to the canon of narrative psychology: Amia Lieblich’s “Looking at Change: Natasha 21” and Michael Bamberg’s “Form and Functions of ‘Slut Bashing’ in Male Identity Constructions in 15-year-olds.” The two studies provide an excellent contrast between competing approaches to narrative research—big story and small story research. Lieblich’s analysis of Natasha’s transition to life in Israel is holistic, concentrating mostly on the person, while Bamberg’s analysis of a group of 15-year-old boys discussing a girl is microanalytic, emphasizing the linguistic and conversational properties that sculpt identity. The chapter enters into the debate on big and small stories, arguing that despite their differences in approach, they employ the same hermeneutic strategies for understanding narratives and would benefit from a more sustained discussion and consideration of the essential questions of who, where, and when.
“Reasoned Interpretations,” Chapter 9 of A New Narrative for Psychology, examines the bases for m... more “Reasoned Interpretations,” Chapter 9 of A New Narrative for Psychology, examines the bases for making sound research arguments in psychology. It argues that there is a general form for making arguments that is found not only in psychology but everywhere. Psychological science becomes the deliberate activity of “going after” knowledge and framing knowledge claims in the form of a reasonable argument. The chapter argues for a critical examination of research arguments in order to arrive at general, but flexible, means for evaluating research claims. Research arguments in psychology, narrative and otherwise, should be credible, trustworthy, and useful. In order to examine how narrative research can meet these standards, the chapter presents a detailed analysis of a life story interview with a Palestinian student with Israeli citizenship studying at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
“Interpreting Interpretations,” Chapter 6 of A New Narrative for Psychology, discusses the premis... more “Interpreting Interpretations,” Chapter 6 of A New Narrative for Psychology, discusses the premises for the analysis of narratives in research in the field of psychology and in everyday life. The chapter focuses on how researchers think about narratives after the data have been collected and on how narratives should be understood and analyzed. It details an interpretative, hermeneutic approach to narrative analysis in which the interpreter is always once removed, always interpreting the interpretations of others. It argues that there are no recipes for narrative analysis, only general analytic strategies. The process of narrative analysis is one of asking questions in order to open up the data and understand the complex relationships between a particular interpretative action and the contexts of person, time, and space.
A New Narrative for Psychology is a far-reaching book that seeks to reorient how scholars and lay... more A New Narrative for Psychology is a far-reaching book that seeks to reorient how scholars and laypersons study and think about persons and the goals of psychological understanding. The book provides a challenging critique of contemporary variable-centered, statistical methods, revealing what these approaches to psychological research leave unexplored; it presents readers with a cutting-edge, narrative, approach for getting at the thorny problem of meaning making in human lives. For readers unfamiliar with narrative psychology, this is an excellent first text, which considers the history of narrative psychology and its place in contemporary psychology. The book goes well beyond the basics, however. A New Narrative for Psychology offers a fresh and innovative theoretical perspective on narrative as an active interpretive process that is implicated in most aspects of everyday life, and the ways in which narrative functions to make present and real subjective and inter-subjective experi...
In this article, we study the oral history interviews of eight survivors of Auschwitz-Birkenau. W... more In this article, we study the oral history interviews of eight survivors of Auschwitz-Birkenau. We give a detailed analysis of a central narrative in their life story, the selection narrative, the experience of being forcibly separated from family into groups for labor or death, as it is told in the late ...
... Bergman, LR, Magnusson, D., & El Khouri, BM (2003) (Eds.). Studying individual develop-me... more ... Bergman, LR, Magnusson, D., & El Khouri, BM (2003) (Eds.). Studying individual develop-ment in interindividual context: A person-oriented approach. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erl-baum. Gergen, KJ (1994). Realities and relationships: Soundings in social construction. ...
Through a close reading of 20 interviews, the authors look at how survivors (mean age 72 yrs) pre... more Through a close reading of 20 interviews, the authors look at how survivors (mean age 72 yrs) presently make sense of their survival, overcoming conditions of severe deprivation and mass murder that took the lives of about six million Jews and five million other Europeans during the years of National Socialism. Following the ideas of P. Ricoeur (1980), it is suggested that narrative time, the properties of plot and sequence that configure all stories, exerts an influence on self-understanding in the life histories of Holocaust survivors. Ricoeur compared the process of recollection to an act of reading that takes place in time. Perhaps this is more accurately characterized as a re-reading. It is shown that stories of purpose (told by 9 of 20 survivors) are often contradicted by equally powerful assertions of meaninglessness or the lack of purpose. The voice of purpose is not unitary, but paradoxical. For many of the interviewees, the process of reading the past backward was co-prese...
International journal of aging & human development, 2005
In this article, I inquire into the life of a single Holocaust survivor in order to give a "... more In this article, I inquire into the life of a single Holocaust survivor in order to give a "thick description" of the dynamics of talking about the past over time. David K., born in 1928 in Gheorgheni Hungary, was deported to Auschwitz in 1944, where he spent one month before entering slave labor camps in Mühldorf and Mittergars. My reading of David's life is based upon two interviews, the first from 1982 (at age 54) and the second from 1995 (at age 67). I employ a method of structural interpretation, "narrative mapping," which is based upon the work of Labov and Waletzky (1967), in order to visualize the amount of overall consistency between the two interviews. I also carefully study individual narratives that are repeated over time. My reading of David's interviews suggests strong consistency along with significant changes. There is enormous consistency in the structure and content of narratives but differences in the point or evaluations of narratives....
One of the central functions of narrative is the ability to create and shape worlds. Certainly, n... more One of the central functions of narrative is the ability to create and shape worlds. Certainly, narrative can provide the resources for producing shared worlds in order to develop commonly held meanings. But a shared world is not the only possible consequence. Narratives can also establish competing versions of the world, which sometimes divide persons and groups so deeply that they can appear to be occupying different realities. Of course, persons and groups have always inhabited disparate worlds. However, the protracted violent wars raging across the globe, new modes of communication and technologies, the multiplication of sources, and the rise of political extremism seem to have exacerbated the situation, fracturing groups and calcifying existing divisions. The result is that disparate narrative worlds with alternative facts and multiple truths form the contours of our everyday reality. Disparate narrative worlds are not only a feature of the political landscape but are also embedded in aspects of daily life where social divisions and patterns of affiliation generate divergent realms of meaning. We can thus speak about disparate narrative worlds between generations, developmental stages, social roles and classes, religions, ethnicities, races, neurotypes, and persons. We also find worlds of men and women, young and old, the able and disabled as well as doctors and patients, teachers and students, and more. Disparate worlds are also represented in literary and more generally artistic and cultural narratives: contemporary or anachronistic worlds, disparate on the political, cultural, private levels, worlds populated by diverse and sometimes segregated groups. We encourage participants to take up the conference theme in order to shed light on what literary narratives and narrative works across media can bring to the exploration of these disparate worlds and their dysphoric consequences, but also of the possibility of hopeful intersections between worlds. The question of the construction of disparate narrative worlds is only part of this conference's scope. In addition, we are very interested in contributions oriented toward bridging divides in order to arrive at novel alliances and solidarities that can more effectively address the myriad challenges that confront our shared world. How can we connect narrative worlds to create, more or less, common spaces? Narrative Matters 2025, the 12th biennial conference, is co-organized by the George and
Using life narrative interviews with Arab students with Israeli citizenship collected in 1997-98,... more Using life narrative interviews with Arab students with Israeli citizenship collected in 1997-98, I inquire into the processes and problems in talking about one's collective iden- tity. In particular, I address how Arab students manage multiple identifications and the role of social relationships in shaping identity narratives. First, I argue that identity narratives do not voice a single point of view. Rather, identity narratives articu- late multiple affiliations that, often, cohere in an uneasyfashion. Our identities are not incoherent, but such multiplicity provides the opportunityfor talking about identity in novel ways. Second, I argue that social relationships are an integral part of identity stories that work to introduce, close off, balance, and rebalance possible self-identifications. In talking about identity, we narra- tivize our social relationships, and these narrated relationships are key points in the plotline of our identity stories. Drawing on this interpretati...
Abstract: This research investigates the use of stories that are found through vicarious experien... more Abstract: This research investigates the use of stories that are found through vicarious experience and told in a life narrative in order to communicate the meaning of the personal past. Through the interpretation of the life narratives of Holocaust survivors, we argue that stories outside of direct experience, collected stories, form the background of personal narratives. Collected stories are pieces of social interaction and context that are integrated in our presentation of the past, and self understanding, because they are personally relevant ...
Chapter 7 of A New Narrative for Psychology applies the interpretive framework developed in the p... more Chapter 7 of A New Narrative for Psychology applies the interpretive framework developed in the previous chapter to an interview with Ben, a Holocaust survivor who was imprisoned in Krakow Plaszow during World War II. The aim of the analysis is to illustrate the value of asking the hermeneutic questions of “who,” “where,” and “when” and how narrative psychology opens the researcher’s ability to better understand the multilayered and complex personal, social, and temporal influences on how persons make sense of their lives.
Chapter 5 of A New Narrative for Psychology develops the idea of making present in order to addre... more Chapter 5 of A New Narrative for Psychology develops the idea of making present in order to address one of the central problems in narrative studies: how narrating produces accounts that we take to be real or true of what is, was, and will be. Narrative is commonly described as possessing the capacity to build worlds or truths, or to construct realities. This chapter asks, how, exactly, do interpretive actions help us to understand what life is and means, as well as who I am and who we are? Using research interviews with couples, it shows how a narrative perspective allows us to understand the multilayered, and reciprocal, connections between persons, social relationships, and culture that are implicated in building, and rebuilding, a sense of the real.
“Interpretation in Practice,” Chapter 8 of A New Narrative for Psychology, compares analytic stra... more “Interpretation in Practice,” Chapter 8 of A New Narrative for Psychology, compares analytic strategies in two studies central to the canon of narrative psychology: Amia Lieblich’s “Looking at Change: Natasha 21” and Michael Bamberg’s “Form and Functions of ‘Slut Bashing’ in Male Identity Constructions in 15-year-olds.” The two studies provide an excellent contrast between competing approaches to narrative research—big story and small story research. Lieblich’s analysis of Natasha’s transition to life in Israel is holistic, concentrating mostly on the person, while Bamberg’s analysis of a group of 15-year-old boys discussing a girl is microanalytic, emphasizing the linguistic and conversational properties that sculpt identity. The chapter enters into the debate on big and small stories, arguing that despite their differences in approach, they employ the same hermeneutic strategies for understanding narratives and would benefit from a more sustained discussion and consideration of the essential questions of who, where, and when.
“Reasoned Interpretations,” Chapter 9 of A New Narrative for Psychology, examines the bases for m... more “Reasoned Interpretations,” Chapter 9 of A New Narrative for Psychology, examines the bases for making sound research arguments in psychology. It argues that there is a general form for making arguments that is found not only in psychology but everywhere. Psychological science becomes the deliberate activity of “going after” knowledge and framing knowledge claims in the form of a reasonable argument. The chapter argues for a critical examination of research arguments in order to arrive at general, but flexible, means for evaluating research claims. Research arguments in psychology, narrative and otherwise, should be credible, trustworthy, and useful. In order to examine how narrative research can meet these standards, the chapter presents a detailed analysis of a life story interview with a Palestinian student with Israeli citizenship studying at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
“Interpreting Interpretations,” Chapter 6 of A New Narrative for Psychology, discusses the premis... more “Interpreting Interpretations,” Chapter 6 of A New Narrative for Psychology, discusses the premises for the analysis of narratives in research in the field of psychology and in everyday life. The chapter focuses on how researchers think about narratives after the data have been collected and on how narratives should be understood and analyzed. It details an interpretative, hermeneutic approach to narrative analysis in which the interpreter is always once removed, always interpreting the interpretations of others. It argues that there are no recipes for narrative analysis, only general analytic strategies. The process of narrative analysis is one of asking questions in order to open up the data and understand the complex relationships between a particular interpretative action and the contexts of person, time, and space.
A New Narrative for Psychology is a far-reaching book that seeks to reorient how scholars and lay... more A New Narrative for Psychology is a far-reaching book that seeks to reorient how scholars and laypersons study and think about persons and the goals of psychological understanding. The book provides a challenging critique of contemporary variable-centered, statistical methods, revealing what these approaches to psychological research leave unexplored; it presents readers with a cutting-edge, narrative, approach for getting at the thorny problem of meaning making in human lives. For readers unfamiliar with narrative psychology, this is an excellent first text, which considers the history of narrative psychology and its place in contemporary psychology. The book goes well beyond the basics, however. A New Narrative for Psychology offers a fresh and innovative theoretical perspective on narrative as an active interpretive process that is implicated in most aspects of everyday life, and the ways in which narrative functions to make present and real subjective and inter-subjective experi...
In this article, we study the oral history interviews of eight survivors of Auschwitz-Birkenau. W... more In this article, we study the oral history interviews of eight survivors of Auschwitz-Birkenau. We give a detailed analysis of a central narrative in their life story, the selection narrative, the experience of being forcibly separated from family into groups for labor or death, as it is told in the late ...
... Bergman, LR, Magnusson, D., & El Khouri, BM (2003) (Eds.). Studying individual develop-me... more ... Bergman, LR, Magnusson, D., & El Khouri, BM (2003) (Eds.). Studying individual develop-ment in interindividual context: A person-oriented approach. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erl-baum. Gergen, KJ (1994). Realities and relationships: Soundings in social construction. ...
Through a close reading of 20 interviews, the authors look at how survivors (mean age 72 yrs) pre... more Through a close reading of 20 interviews, the authors look at how survivors (mean age 72 yrs) presently make sense of their survival, overcoming conditions of severe deprivation and mass murder that took the lives of about six million Jews and five million other Europeans during the years of National Socialism. Following the ideas of P. Ricoeur (1980), it is suggested that narrative time, the properties of plot and sequence that configure all stories, exerts an influence on self-understanding in the life histories of Holocaust survivors. Ricoeur compared the process of recollection to an act of reading that takes place in time. Perhaps this is more accurately characterized as a re-reading. It is shown that stories of purpose (told by 9 of 20 survivors) are often contradicted by equally powerful assertions of meaninglessness or the lack of purpose. The voice of purpose is not unitary, but paradoxical. For many of the interviewees, the process of reading the past backward was co-prese...
International journal of aging & human development, 2005
In this article, I inquire into the life of a single Holocaust survivor in order to give a "... more In this article, I inquire into the life of a single Holocaust survivor in order to give a "thick description" of the dynamics of talking about the past over time. David K., born in 1928 in Gheorgheni Hungary, was deported to Auschwitz in 1944, where he spent one month before entering slave labor camps in Mühldorf and Mittergars. My reading of David's life is based upon two interviews, the first from 1982 (at age 54) and the second from 1995 (at age 67). I employ a method of structural interpretation, "narrative mapping," which is based upon the work of Labov and Waletzky (1967), in order to visualize the amount of overall consistency between the two interviews. I also carefully study individual narratives that are repeated over time. My reading of David's interviews suggests strong consistency along with significant changes. There is enormous consistency in the structure and content of narratives but differences in the point or evaluations of narratives....
The History of the Holocaust has taken a spatial turn, borrowing concepts and tools from geograph... more The History of the Holocaust has taken a spatial turn, borrowing concepts and tools from geography. Two recent edited collections are representative: Geographies of the Holocaust (Knowles et al. 2014) and Hitler's Geographies (Giaccaria and Minca 2016). However, these recent local and spatial studies deal almost exclusively with the killing areas, camps, and ghettos. They pay less attention to the " ordinary " western and southeastern European cities where persecution proceeded in a looser space. Anti-Jewish persecution did not only happen in specifically designed or transformed spaces such as camps and ghettos. It invaded spaces of everyday life in European cities: public spaces, work places and private spaces such as homes. In this landscape not only Jews and agents of persecution appear but also their immediate residential environment: concierges, neighbors, nannies, landlords, property managers, sub-tenants, local administrations, etc. These figures have an essential place in the memories of Jewish survivors. Though, so far, scholars have hardly addressed their role. The spatial turn that occurred during the last fifteen years in Anglophone Holocaust studies focused on the symbolic places of genocide. Much work has been done on the looting and the seizure and reallocation of the apartments occupied by Jews, mainly in Reich's cities, but apartment blocks and ordinary cities as spaces of persecution, occupied territories and other Axis countries, the interactions with non-Jewish neighbors as well as spatial aspects are still in need of study. Recent work opened this new field of investigation. It inspired the conference to come. This conference intends to bridge various perspectives and methods and focus on urban housing as a place for anti-Jewish persecution. We hope to gather social scientists from various fields to confront various methods investigation and cases, in Reich cities but also in Western and Eastern European occupied cities. Inspired by the organizers' current research on the Parisian case, the conference will deal with policies of seizure and reallocation of the apartments of the Jews in Paris, but will not be restricted to those questions.
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