Customer Reviews

Narrative Inquiry: Experience and Story in Qualitative Research

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I wish this text was out when I was writing my dissertation. The authors provide meaningful ways to study, interpret, and present narrative research. The writing is completely clear and always reflective. This is a book about how to study experience based on the authors' own experiences in the field. A wonderful and necessary text for any qualitative researcher interested in using personal documents.

Based on the reviews of Lincoln and others, I had high expectations for this text. Specifically, I'd hoped that the text would prove useful in terms of my research into the construction of self through personal narrative. I was sorely disappointed.

The text is virtually atheoretical, does not provide much in the way of explorations of past and present paradigms for narrative inquiry (though paradigms in education are discussed ad nauseum), says little about the interpretation of texts, and neglects current thought on narrative from the disciplines of cultural studies, anthropology, semiotics, and sociology. A perfunctory glance at the references section reveals egregious omissions.

For those interested in exploring the intersections of (auto) biography, self, culture, and narrative forms, I would suggest Riessman's 1993 text Narrative Analysis, Dezin's Interpretive Biography, or Reed-Danahay's collection Auto/Ethnography. These are more accessible, lucid, and instructive.

I was in the midst of struggling through my thesis process when I picked up this book on Narrative Inquiry. It was such a relief to find that some one had so clearly articulated dimensions of the process that I hadn't had the good fortune to find elsewhere. The writing is very clear, accessible and incisive. The concepts put forward: the 3-dimensional inquiry space, the role of temporality and memory -- these are all extremely helpful and I found directly applicable to my own research. This book really provided me with a road map out of thesis despair -- I recommend it!