The uses of narratology in social and policy studies

Abstract

This article suggests possible multiple uses of narratology in social and policy studies. It starts with a brief history of the narrative turn in social sciences. The structure of the remainder of the text follows the trajectory of a research project. First there is a suggestion that researchers may learn from narratologists how to monitor the construction of narratives in the field of social practice, how to look for narratives in documents, and how to encourage narratives when conducting interviews. Then I look at how narratologists can teach social scientists various techniques of close reading, useful in analyzing field material. There follows an examination of the multiple models of writing that narratology and literature have on offer. The article ends with a reflection on the difference between the genres of literary and scholarly writing.

Keywords:

• narratology
• narrative turn
• sensemaking
• storytelling
• explication
• explanation
• exploration
• mimesis
• emplotment

Notes

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narratology [Accessed 13 March 2010].

2. He then extended his analysis to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in his Rival Views of Market Society (1992).

3. Although metaphor goes beyond analogy. Analogy assumes continuity, metaphor assumes rupture. In other words, analogy reports similarity, metaphor creates it.