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Notes 309

20 As an example, see J. Overcash (2004) “Narrative research: a viable method-
ology for clinical nursing,” Nursing Forum 39(1) (January–March): 15–22.
21 Notable examples are Dan P. McAdams (1993) The Redemptive Self: Stories
Americans Live By, New York: Oxford University Press; Catherine Kohler
Riessman (1993) Narrative Analysis, Newbury Park, CA: Sage; and Amia
Lieblich, Rivka Tuval-Mashiach, and Tamar Zilber (1998) Narrative Research:
Reading, Analysis, and Interpretation. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
22 A particularly interesting discussion of this approach is Megan Blumenreich
(2004) “Avoiding the pitfalls of ‘conventional’ narrative research: using post-
structural theory to guide the creation of narratives of children with HIV,”
Qualitative Research (4)1: 70–90.
23 See, in particular, Deborah Reed-Danahay (1997) Auto/Ethnography, New
York: Berg. For a notable variation, see Sherry Ortner (1993) “Ethnography
among the Newark: the class of ’58 of Weequakic high school,” Michigan
Quarterly Review 32: 411–29. Ortner embeds her own biographical ethnog-
raphy within an exploration of her high-school class. Another variation is the
field of “interpretive biography,” which uses narrative/interpretive techniques
in relation to biography (Norman K. Denzin (1989) Interpretive Biography,
Newbury Park, CA: Sage).
24 Paul Ricoeur (1991) From Text to Action, trans. Kathleen Blamey and John B.
Thompson, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, p. 15.
25 Paul Ricoeur (1992) Oneself as Another, trans. Kathleen Blamey, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, pp. 141–5.
26 Ricoeur (1992), pp. 165–8.
27 For a complete description of the methodology, see Lynn Schofield Clark, “The
Journey from Postpositivist to Constructivist Methods,” Chapter Two in
Hoover et al. (2004).
28 Charles Taylor (1989) Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity,
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, p. 27.
29 Erving Goffman (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Garden City,
New York: Doubleday.
30 The foundational theorist here is George Herbert Mead (George Herbert Mead
(1934) Mind, Self and Society, Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
pp. 138–40).
31 I should acknowledge here the existence of a literature that is critical of the
notion of narrative, in particular Galen Strawson’s (2004) thoughtful contribu-
tion in the Times Literary Supplement. While I don’t want to side-step the
important issues Strawson has raised, I would argue that the use of the concept
I am proposing here is a conditional one that resides within his “psychological”
category. It is the kind of thing that he accepts as narrative, but declares
“trivial.” The notion that, when asked, people construct presentations of them-
selves that have a certain consistency and narrativity is not directly addressed
by Strawson’s arguments. Neither does it directly confront those arguments.
32 Robert William Kubey and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990) Television and the
Quality of Life: How Viewing Shapes Everyday Experiences, Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
33 Kenneth Gergen (1991) The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in
Contemporary Life, New York: Basic Books, p. 16.
34 Anthony Giddens (1991) Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the
Late Modern Age, Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 52–3 (emphasis in
original).
35 As with all interviews in this book, these are not these interviewees’ real names.
This interview was conducted by Monica Emerich.