Narrative Inquiry : Philosophical Roots

We sit together to dream ideas for this book, a dreaming that asks us to gather our thoughts, our lives and our writings to tell a story of the ideas that are part of, integral to, thinking narratively. What we dream calls us to write somewhat differently than we have in other works focussed on concerns of methodology and on particular research projects or around particular research puzzles. In this writing we return to the central ideas of narrative inquiry, ideas that emerged not only from living and inquiring alongside multiple participants in many research projects, but also from reading the work of scholars from diverse disciplines and professions, from different national contexts and from different times. In this book our aim is to make visible the philosophical roots of narrative inquiry as methodology and phenomenon. We take up these key ideas in individual chapters. The whole of the book will make visible the philosophical ideas in narrative inquiry. At the end of each section we include methodological notebooks in which we show the link to, and the relevance of, our thinking to narrative inquiry as methodology. ## Why This Book, Now? As we trace our reasons for writing this book, we name multiple. For many years now we have engaged in narrative inquiry studies and in naming the phenomena under study as narrative. We learned much along the way and, in this book, we trace some of our philosophical roots, as well as the ways in which we developed as researchers and worked to develop the field of narrative inquiry. We strongly believe that philosophical work is important to graduate students, yet few opportunities exist for them to engage with philosophical readings. Larger narratives are at play in academic institutions and in funding agencies that have shifted what we do over the past many years and have governed, both intentionally and unintentionally, how we spend our time. This is often evidenced in shifting work arrangements, increasing pressures to measure outcomes, as well as in research agendas that are no longer driven by a sense of curiosity. For us, engagement with philosophy speaks to a love of knowledge (understood in a broad way, and something we will return to in a later chapter) and inquiry, an engagement with ideas that exist in the world and that exist and shape the lives of people we engage with, as well as ourselves. For years we have been particularly interested in the philosophy of life and the philosophy of ethics as they shape how we understand experience, as well as in the practical consequences of our thinking about experience. One of the challenges we face as we write about the philosophical roots of narrative inquiry is that we cannot lose sight of the beginning place of narrative inquiry as situated in people's experiences. Experience is where we begin and where we end in narrative inquiry. Woven into experiences are, always, the complexities of life and living. We cannot start with one aspect of experience and set aside the rest of experience, the rest of life, without doing damage to the person, the individual who is having the experience. If we start with a concept, for example, identity or community or imagination or some other concept, the concept is unfolded, followed through to its complexities and, perhaps, to the ways the concept is lived in experience. It is the concept that provides the organizing frame. The concept is privileged, placed as the starting point for understanding experience. As narrative inquirers, our task is quite a different one. We cannot figure out the concept first and then see 'it' in experience. We start in the experience, at the outset seeing the messy interwoven threads, knowing each is important and needs to be addressed. But, as we pull one thread of an experience, we always know the rest of experience is present. This makes this book especially difficult to write as we can neither select the concepts to develop and then see their application to understanding experience nor can we select a theorist or group of theorists within a particular discipline. And yet, our task is to show how theoretical our work is, how different theorists, and some of their writings, have become part of how we have developed narrative inquiry as phenomenon and methodology and ethics. We draw forward concepts and ideas from a range of theoretical sources, including feminist scholars, pragmatist philosophers and philosophies of resistance. Given that we are situated in a large research intensive university, with large graduate programs, we have also paid close attention to graduate United States during the twentieth century unless one realizes that Edward L. Thorndike won and John Dewey lost' (p. 185). We turned away from philosophy to our work in education and nursing, in part, because we were unable to locate ourselves in the philosophical discourse of objectivity and neutrality. For example, Jean, when she worked in schools as a teacher, counsellor, and later in her work in the academy in teacher education, created spaces congruent with the ideas of the early pragmatists, ideas such as those of the classical pragmatists. Jean also sees her work as linked to what McKenna and Pratt (2015) call a tradition of resistance. ## Methodological Notebooks In the methodological notebooks we make the ideas, and our understandings of them, visible by drawing on our most recent study alongside refugee families with young children from Syria. In this study we work with eleven families who recently arrived in Canada; that is, we met them less than two Narrative Inquiry: Philosophical Roots introduces key ideas of narrative inquiry and is the first book to explore in depth the theoretical underpinnings of the methodology. The authors open up ways of thinking about people’s experiences and their lives, which are situated and shaped by cultural, social, familial, institutional, and linguistic narratives. The authors draw on a range of theorists, creative nonfiction writers, poets, and essayists including Mary Catherine Bateson, Maria Lugones, David Carr, John Dewey, Maxine Greene, Eva Hoffman, Anthony Kerby, Hannah Arendt, Jane Addams, and Vivian Paley. The book is arranged into five parts covering a range of topics including: embodiment, memory, knowledge, wonder, imagination, community, responsibility, and place. Each section ends with a methodological discussion of their work involving refugee families with young children from Syria. Cover 1 Contents 6 Acknowledgements 8 Introduction 10 Section I Starting with a Particular View of Experience 22 1 Experience 24 2 Knowledge 38 3 Embodiment 52 Section I: Methodological Notebook 62 Section II Temporality 68 4 In the Midst 70 5 Memory 82 6 Intergenerationality 96 Section II: Methodological Notebook 108 Section III Living within and on Landscapes 114 7 Place 116 8 Community 126 Section III: Methodological Notebook 138 Section IV Imagination, Inquiry, Wonder and Playfulness: Opening into Liminality and Uncertainty 144 9 Imagination 146 10 Inquiry and Wonder 158 11 Uncertainty and Liminality 170 12 Playfulness 182 Section IV: Methodological Notebook 196 Section V Relationality 202 13 Political and Social Landscapes 204 14 Commitment, Responsibility and Obligations 218 Section V: Methodological Notebook 230 Epilogue 238 References 243 Index 252 "Introducing key ideas of narrative inquiry, this is the first book to explore in depth the theoretical underpinnings of the methodology. The authors open up ways of thinking about people's experiences and their lives, which are situated and shaped by cultural, social, familial, institutional, and linguistic narratives. The authors draw on a range of theorists, creative nonfiction writers, poets, and essayists. The book is arranged into five parts covering a range of topics including: embodiment, memory, knowledge, wonder, imagination, community, responsibility, and place. Each section ends with a methodological discussion of their work involving refugee families with young children from Syria"-- Provided by publisher In this definitive guide and comprehensive resource, the authors draw from more than 20 years of field experience to show how narrative inquiry can be used in educational and social science research.