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The purpose of this paper is to construct historical perceptions of coal use in India and Japan in different historical time periods through the process of analyzing the narratives and discourses in academic, media and trade literatures.

In terms of methodology, this paper will utilize discourse theories/analysis and interpretive history to study the subject matter. In this paper, specific literatures on energy as well as general literatures on themes like technology are utilized.

The finding of the paper is that discourses and narratives about coal energy for example are constantly negotiated, constructed and then deconstructed again to fit and adapt to new realities, including the availability of newer technologies or priorities and concerns about the environment.

The research implication and originality of the paper is to demonstrate empirically the idea of the existence of narrative communities debating the use of coal energy in India and Japan. It highlights the communities of stakeholders interested in coal energy resource. The practical application and value of the ideas is the intellectual process of categorizing various contemporary narratives about coal energy use specific to two of the largest consumers and importers of coal in Asia. Through historical narratives of its past and recent coal use, the role and function of coal in the overall energy mix of India and Japan are instructive. The research limitation lies in its non‐quantitative nature and reliance on a combination of academic and trade secondary sources.

My feminist, narrative research privileges women’s voice. It comprises a cross‐cultural narrative analysis of 11 Mongolian and 11 Australian women’s stories of survival, recovery and remaking of self following domestic/intimate partner violence. With a major focus on narrative identity, I identified plots and themes of individual autobiographical narratives, as well as relevant canonical narratives (general stories of lives arising from dominant discourses in a particular culture). From these elements I created a meta‐narrative which constitutes the body of the research report. The strength of this narrative research method was to elicit narratives of women’s journeys through and beyond domestic violence. The research process involved myself as researcher, as well as participants themselves, bearing witness to and reflecting on the women’s stories. Particularly empowering for participants was hearing and responding to their own stories and the sharing of stories among participants. In this article I give an overview of my theoretical approaches and research methods, tell the story of conducting the research and give a brief summary of my findings and conclusions.

Approaches to the sociology of culture have largely been constituted around the long tradition of functionalism in sociology. This has hampered the field greatly. Among other shortcomings, this intellectual foundation has led to a limited understanding of ideology and civil society, a conservative political orientation and an overdeterministic view of social action and the actor. In this paper, I explore and then apply a new approach to the sociology of culture, one that attempts to conceptualize more robustly the dynamics of ideology, ideological conflict and civil society. As part of this project, I endeavor to map out a critical cultural perspective that establishes a multidimensional understanding of the contingency of social action.

The concept of (self-)identity has become increasingly central to institutional theory’s microfoundations, yet remains relatively underdeveloped. In this chapter, the authors use an autobiographical interview with a gay Protestant minister in the US to explore the role of narrative conventions in the construction of self-identity. The analysis of this chapter offers the basis for a new understanding of the relation between institutions, self-identity, and agency: how we agentically engage institutions depends not only on who we narrate ourselves to be, but also on how we narrate ourselves into being. This suggests that narration as a specific modality of micro-institutional processes has important performative effects.

Despite recent developments in the sociology of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), a critical analysis of the apparent affinity between CAM and nursing has, to date, remained essentially undeveloped. An empirical project is currently being conducted as an initial step to address the absence of such important critical research. A total of 30 written life history narratives were obtained from nurses working with and using CAM to explore such matters as professional boundaries and nurses' authentication strategies and conceptualisation and operationalisation of CAM. This paper addresses questions and conflicts that arose as the analytical tools were considered for these narrative accounts. Specifically, the paper explores whether the storied narrative sits easily with a critically oriented sociology of CAM; the differences between the role of “storyteller” or “story analyst”; and ask whether there is potential for developing a critical sociology of CAM nursing that retains the essence of personal stories.

Purpose – This chapter explores the complexity and tensions inherent in the question of how story becomes research with particular attention to the use of narrative research in studying teacher education.

Approach – To do this, we begin each section with a narrative fragment from earlier published research in which we collaborated (Hamilton, 1995). Then, we use narrative research analysis tools to explore the meaning of each fragment, lay that understanding alongside research accounts and wonderings about research in and by teacher educators, and consider the fragment in terms of specific understandings of narrative inquiry as research methodology for studying teacher education.

Findings – This chapter examines when story moves to research while probing the tensions between knowledge and living as teachers, teacher educators, and teacher educator researchers. Using the first fragment, we explore fulfilling roles as a teacher educator by using a narrative analysis tool that teases apart the author's role of narrator, actor, and character. In the second fragment, we consider the contexts that influence a teacher educator researcher by examining the fragment to determine the levels of narrative. In the third fragment, we utilize the tools of plotlines and tensions to unpack the competing plotlines of epistemology (modernist vs. narrative) ending with an examination of the importance of ontology in narrative work. In our fourth fragment, we unpack nine approaches to narrative by examining the essential role of story for each element of the research process.

Research implications – As teacher educator researchers, we always stand in the midst – in the midst of the story where we may be simultaneously narrator, character, and actor, in the midst of living the research we are most interested in studying. Within a single moment, we can act as teacher, teacher educator, and teacher educator researcher when our research focuses on our own practice. Our experience as we live it represents the tension between arrival and arriving.

Value – The value of this chapter is the way in which it demonstrates narrative analysis and distinguishes among various approaches to narrative research.

The purpose of this paper is to present some results of a qualitative study exploring people's memories of the pathways to the first episode of self-wounding. Specifically it will focus on the issue of “suicidality”.

In total, 11 participants, aged between 19 and 50, were described. They were asked to describe their first episode of self-wounding. The interviews were conducted using a semi-structured topic guide. An initial thematic and a subsequent narrative analysis were used to explore the participants’ stories.

The narratives of self-wounding show that the first episode occurs in a complex landscape of interactions between events and emotions. Even when participants were aware of suicidal feelings before self-wounding, the suicidal intention was abandoned as the self-wounding was shown to be an effective method for dealing with distress. For most of the participants the self-wounding was not associated with suicidality but with a strong need to gain or regain control of an emotionally charged and chaotic environment.

Focusing on the first episode of self-harm holds the key to a better appreciation of the underlying meanings of self-wounding as a complex and dynamic experience. It can provide health care practitioners with a new direction to understanding people's individual motivations rather than focusing relying on behaviour generalised assumptions.

This study provides a rare insight into the first episode of self-harm as a unique event. It is also a rare example of publicly funded service-user research with a focus on issues which are meaningful to them.

The goal of the study is to underline “Cinematic Architecture” as another source of architectural thinking and research. This study is also a response to the shortage in empirical research on architecture in the cinema. Moreover, the study introduces the architectural components that qualify the cinematic spaces to be influential cinematic experience. This is in addition to investigating the impact of these components on the viewers' cognitive and emotional experience of films.

In the reported study, an empirical experiment examined scenes from three different movies as experienced by a selected group of audience of movies fans (architects and laypersons). The audience was asked to report feelings the audience had about each scene using a questionnaire that was designed for this purpose, and the audience was asked to write down the aspects that affected the audience's emotions. The experiment evaluated selected emotional states and could specify the architectural features and/or objects that significantly contributed in inducing these emotions.

This study's findings concluded that emotions, which exist in the positive margin of the emotions “circumplex model,” were influenced by architectural components that were different from those that influenced emotions which lie in the negative margin of the model.

As for filmmakers, the study contributes in developing filmmakers' knowledge about the role of architecture in scenic creation and thus how that knowledge enhances filmmakers' film narrative and the narrative's spatial imagery. As for academia, this study contributes in developing the knowledge about film cognition as related to architectural semiotics. In the context of behavioral approach to architectural design, a behavior setting which is the basic element in environmental design can be dramatized by applying a cinematic narrative to a human activity system within a milieu of architectural design elements.

This study is important for architects, as the study provides architects with an alternative tool for fictional experience and for testing architectural ideas through cinematic architecture. This study also helps in developing new venues for the practice of architecture into the world of fiction. This study also contributes in developing the trend that architectural design thinking can learn from cinematic thinking and practice.

This study introduces an empirical approach to evaluate architectural entities as part of cinematic experience. This study also comes as a response to the shortage in empirical research on architecture in the cinema.

The purpose of this study is to determine stock market reactions to the news about innovations and other types of publications for illiquid stocks.

(1) The authors opt for machine learning techniques and expert analysis and propose their own lexicon of innovations based on the news articles published on the professional website; (2) the dataset consists of the data on 2,000 US companies for 6 years; (3) the text analysis including BERT and Top2 Vec models which are superior to Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) in information criteria allows for more accurate evaluation of news sentiment and idea; and (4) furthermore, random forest and gradient boosting were applied to increase validity of results and demonstrate factor importance.

(1) The paper presents theoretical findings adding to signalling theory and efficient market hypothesis for US illiquid stocks; (2) this study suggests that information on product innovations (unlike other types of innovations) has a direct and significant effect on the return of illiquid stocks; (3) the results also give evidence that under uncertainty innovation-related publications do not affect the return of illiquid stocks; and (4) the analysis of the news topics (narratives) demonstrates that only the narrative related to important corporate announcements has a positive impact on the return of illiquid stocks.

(1) The authors are the first to conduct a large-scale study of the impact of various information on the return of illiquid stocks; (2) the paper focuses on information on several types of innovations with regard to the return of illiquid stocks; (3) based on Top2 Vec model, this study identifies the key topics-narratives discussed by investors and assesses their impact on the return of illiquid stocks; and (4) as an information source, the authors use the sample comprising a total of 1.4m news articles released on the professional website for investors “Benzinga”.