Ethical Mindfulness: Narrative Analysis and Everyday Ethics in Health Care

Abstract

There has been growing interest in narrative ethics over the last three decades. However, narratology, or the study of narratives, has a much longer history dating back to Plato and Aristotle.³ Structural linguistics, and its formal study of grammar and structure of language, was a major contributor to the development of the classification and interpretation of narratives.⁴ This structuralist period was followed by an increased interest in the relationships between narratives and social and historical dynamics and ideologies. Key social theorists, such as Derrida, Bakhtin and Ricoeur, have urged us to consider the relationship of the text to the way we understand ourselves and the worlds we inhabit. In summary, the study of narratives long preceded its association with ethics, and it was only recently that the interest in narratives has been adopted by the health-care disciplines, notably medicine and nursing.

Citation

Guillemin, M. and Gillam, L. (2007), "Ethical Mindfulness: Narrative Analysis and Everyday Ethics in Health Care", Katz Rothman, B., Mitchell Armstrong, E. and Tiger, R. (Ed.) Bioethical Issues, Sociological Perspectives (Advances in Medical Sociology, Vol. 9), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 157-178. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1057-6290(07)09006-7