What is Narrative Research? by Corinne Squire

What is Narrative Research? by Corinne Squire

Author:Corinne Squire
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781849669702
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Published: 2014-07-14T16:00:00+00:00


Qualitative research in general is said to have value because it can shed light on phenomena about which little is known. It is often used in an exploratory way to ‘illuminate’ the life circumstances of individuals and communities, particularly those circumstances that deepen forms of harm and exclusion. The case study on violence and abuse presented in Chapter 4 is an example. There we argued that one problem faced by people who experience violence is finding a safe way in which to be able to give voice to their story, have it heard and legitimized. In what follows, we look more closely at another example of research investigating phenomena about which little is known, in connection with critical reflections on narrative ‘voice’.

The following extract comes from an interview with Alan who participated in research conducted in Scotland to inform health promotion for gay men with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV; Davis and Flowers, 2011; Flowers and Davis, 2013). In the example below, Alan, who has HIV, discusses HIV treatment, its effects and considerations for his HIV negative partner:

We found that once we settled well into the relationship, I became very comfortable with the whole kind of HIV thing, and I suppose I, at some stage in that time, decided well it wouldn’t be that bad a thing, given today’s treatments and you know, today’s kind of view of HIV and such like. It wouldn’t be that bad a thing if it were to happen. So I took the view that I wasn’t going to be this, ‘Right we’ve got to do every last thing properly and not share toothbrushes and be very careful with razors!’ . . . I just thought ‘no, we use razors and if you cut yourself, you know, stick it in the bin or something’. You know, it would just be that. But of course that’s not always enough because you don’t always see things right? I don’t know how many people normally get that off a razor, probably never, [laughter] . . . people can be very, you know, would separate everything and the different towels and just do everything, doing condoms for everything and I just took the view that wasn’t really a kind of normal way of viewing our relationship . . . I suppose kind of sort of settled into this idea, well this might happen at some stage, you know, and I think once I started to take that view, even things like condoms they’d disappear, at least until the point when either of us were going to cum sort of thing. (Alan, aged 30)



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