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1 – 10 of over 12000Tuukka Niemi and Kathrin Komp-Leukkunen
Interest in older employees increases in times of population ageing. Previous research exploring the situation has underlined older employees' struggle with workplace changes…
Abstract
Purpose
Interest in older employees increases in times of population ageing. Previous research exploring the situation has underlined older employees' struggle with workplace changes. However, it has not explored their master narrative – the socially shared narrative about older employees that steers behaviour. This study explores this narrative and its differences across changing workplaces. It draws on Lyotard's suggestion that master narratives disintegrate in post-modern societies.
Design/methodology/approach
This study conducts focus groups among older Finnish employees of an airline, postal service and social care. These groups experienced different kinds of workplace changes, namely mass layoffs, digitalisation and restructuring. The focus groups highlight the individuals' shared narratives, thereby pinpointing the master narrative.
Findings
The master narrative describes how simultaneous changes at the workplace and in their health lead older employees to look for ways to exit their jobs. This narrative is largely stable across workplaces, showing no disintegration but some variation.
Originality/value
This is the first study on the master narrative of older employees and its disintegration. To the authors’ knowledge, it is also the first study to use focus groups to explore a master narrative.
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The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of prison experience in ex-political prisoners in Northern Ireland in the context of changing and conflicting master narratives.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of prison experience in ex-political prisoners in Northern Ireland in the context of changing and conflicting master narratives.
Design/methodology/approach
A series of nine interviews were conducted with Loyalist and Republican political ex-prisoners in Northern Ireland. Eight were male and one was female. All had been in prison for substantial sentences relating to the Troubles.
Findings
This study highlighted the challenges faced by political ex-prisoners regarding the changing conflicting master narratives in Northern Ireland and identified how they deal with these challenges. The participants adapted to post-conflict society by attempting to understand and make sense of their experiences, including justifying their actions as appropriate for the era and identifying positive changes in society resulting from the conflict.
Research limitations/implications
A narrative approach can be beneficial for understanding the experiences of political ex-prisoners. It enables a theoretical perspective to look not only at the personal but also at social elements of why people behave as they do. The findings demonstrate that political ex-prisoners do have different experiences to non-political ex-prisoners. The sample size was small and was drawn from a specific group of political ex-prisoners who were actively seeking reconciliation. The findings may be different for other groups.
Practical implications
A narrative approach can help the practitioner understand the context in which a person lives; ex-political prisoners may be very different from ordinary ex-prisoners because of the context in which they were imprisoned and the reasons for which they were imprisoned. They are likely to continue with the narrative of the conflict they fought in and may still have the same aims (e.g. Northern Ireland to become part of Ireland), though they may or may not believe in the same means. These are issues that should be discussed and elaborated when working with ex-political prisoners.
Social implications
The master narratives active in the society into which the political ex-prisoner is released may impact the success or otherwise of their re-integration into society.
Originality/value
Understanding the role of conflicting master narratives in dealing with the implications of being an ex-political prisoner.
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Following recent terrorist attacks in the US and Europe, Western Muslims have been criticised for not taking a firm stand against radical Islam and extremist organisations…
Abstract
Following recent terrorist attacks in the US and Europe, Western Muslims have been criticised for not taking a firm stand against radical Islam and extremist organisations. Drawing on insights from narrative criminology, we challenge such assertions and reveal Muslims' narrative mobilisation against violent jihadism. Based on 90 qualitative interviews with young Muslims in Norway, we show how violent extremism is rejected in a multitude of ways. This narrative resistance includes criticising extremist jihadist organisations for false interpretations of Islam and using derogatory terms to describe them. It also includes less obvious forms of narrative resistance, such as humour and attempts to silence jihadist organisations by ignoring them. While narrative criminology has effectively analysed the stories that constitute harm, less attention has been paid to narratives that counter harm. We argue that stories that counter jihadi narratives are crucial to understand the narrative struggles of Muslim communities, whose outcomes can help determine why some individuals end up becoming religious extremists – while others do not. By distinguishing between factual, emotional and humorous counternarratives and describing silence as a form of resistance, we show resistance to extremism that is often concealed from the public and the state.
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The author addresses ways in which secondary American history textbooks reflect and perpetuate the normative American story and identity by framing American Indians as the “first…
Abstract
The author addresses ways in which secondary American history textbooks reflect and perpetuate the normative American story and identity by framing American Indians as the “first Americans,” while at the same time silencing indigenous voices in the telling of their own stories. This paper contributes to existing literature by providing an updated and critical analysis of a particular dimension of social studies texts and provides concrete examples and critical discussion of the master narrative at work in curricula. Suggestions are made for applying critical multiculturalism to the portrayal of the origins of humans in North America, using examples of indigenous texts currently used in classrooms that offer a truly multicultural resource for teachers.
Tove Faber Frandsen, Kristian Møhler Sørensen and Lyngroes Fladmose Anne
Libraries are increasingly trying to communicate the library's contributions and telling the library stories. Stories can be a component of impact assessment and thus add nuance…
Abstract
Purpose
Libraries are increasingly trying to communicate the library's contributions and telling the library stories. Stories can be a component of impact assessment and thus add nuance to an assessment. Evaluations of libraries can include collecting and presenting stories of change, which can serve as evidence in impact assessments. The narrative field allows for many different approaches to a narrative perspective in the study of libraries, but the existing literature provides little overview of these studies. The purpose of this study is to introduce the narrative field and present a systematic review of the existing studies of libraries that use narrative approaches.
Design/methodology/approach
The methods in this study comprise of a systematic review of publications reporting narrative approaches to studying libraries. To retrieve the relevant studies, Library and Information Science Abstracts, Scopus, Web of Science and Proquest Dissertation were searched. Furthermore, the authors examined reference lists and performed citation searches. Study selection was performed by two reviewers independently. Using designed templates, data from the included studies were extracted by one author and confirmed by another.
Findings
The database searches retrieved 2,096 records across the four databases which were screened in two steps, resulting in 35 included studies. The authors identify studies that introduce narrative enquiries in library studies as well as studies using narrative approaches to the study of libraries.
Originality/value
Exploring narratives and stories for understanding and evaluating the library's worth is a promising field. More work is needed, though, to develop theoretical and methodological frameworks. Several of the included studies can serve as examples of the potential of a narrative perspective in the study of libraries.
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Qualitative researchers embrace insider narratives and affirm an environment where stories of lived experiences are acceptable and welcomed. Equally, subjective narratives often…
Abstract
Purpose
Qualitative researchers embrace insider narratives and affirm an environment where stories of lived experiences are acceptable and welcomed. Equally, subjective narratives often are presented for publication with an assumption that they will reach a readership, after a rigorous but empathic review process. Such assumptions and expectations underpin Indigenous, postmodern, feminist, critical and narrative research and writing approaches, all of which seek to foreground non‐dominant stories, and expose untold lived experiences through publications. However, this paper aims to challenge the somewhat implicit narrative that “lived experiences would always be welcomed”.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors discuss qualitative researchers and narratives, including excluded stories, and then reveal their own experiences of trying to publish less common, confronting, adoption narratives.
Findings
The authors find that stories that do not meet the authorized or conventional version of a social transcript, or those beyond current comprehension, may remain silenced. They speculate that the adoption stories they presented for publication were rejected because they were too confronting.
Originality/value
The authors contend that some stories challenge convention to such an extent that they become unacceptable. They tell different but interwoven stories of rejected, adoption‐related manuscripts, before reflecting on implications for the presentation of qualitative narratives.
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The purpose of this paper is to explore storytelling in sustainability reporting. The author posits that large PLCs use their sustainability reports to support the construction of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore storytelling in sustainability reporting. The author posits that large PLCs use their sustainability reports to support the construction of a fairytale of “sustainable business”, and asks if organisations with an alternative purpose (social enterprises, values-based SMEs) and/or ownership structure (co-operatives, partnerships) can offer a counter-narrative of the sustainability–business relationship.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses the literature on storytelling and organisational mythmaking to gain insight into the construction of narratives and their impact on the reader. A narrative analysis is conducted of the sustainability reports of 40 organisations across a range of entity classes, including large PLCs, values-based SMEs, co-owned businesses and social enterprises.
Findings
The analysis indicates that the narratives presented in sustainability reporting are of much the same form across entity classes. The author argues on this basis that sustainability reports represent stories targeted at specific stakeholders rather than accounts of the organisation’s relationship with ecological and societal sustainability, and urges scholars to challenge organisations across entity classes to engage with sustainability at a planetary level.
Originality/value
The paper seeks to contribute to the literature in two ways. First, the author illustrates how the literature on storytelling can be used to analyse organisational narratives of sustainability, and how narrative forms and genres can be mobilised to support potential counter-narratives. Second, the author explores and ultimately challenges the proposition that organisations less often examined in the literature, such as social enterprises and co-operatives, can offer alternative narratives of the sustainability–business relationship.
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The purpose of this paper is to examine the ways in which foreign live-in carers are able to construct agentive identities which counteract negative discourses regarding care…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the ways in which foreign live-in carers are able to construct agentive identities which counteract negative discourses regarding care work, sex and nationality.
Design/methodology/approach
Interviews with women working as carers in Bologna form the basis of this research which focuses on “small stories”. Using positioning analysis, both the immediate context where the narrative takes place and the wider societal discourses being referenced are examined. Subsequently, common recurrent discourses related to being a foreign carer in Italy are identified.
Findings
The interviewees make strategic use of prevailing negative discourses to construct counter narratives to avoid being positioned as low-skilled workers and to permit them to reject negative stereotypes of what it means to be a carer. In addition, more positive identities are constructed.
Practical implications
These findings suggest that a sociolinguistic approach can help towards a better understanding of the lived-experiences of foreign care workers, as it can reveal aspects of carers’ lives which do not easily fit into the categories which are often the focus of larger-scale, thematic studies.
Originality/value
This paper combines an analysis of content together with an analysis of the construction of narrative to present a more complete picture of the reality of working as a carer today.
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Rebecca Moran, Julie Hollenbeck and Cassandra Phoenix
This chapter proposes a way to deepen our understanding of the health impacts of climate change. It explores how and why individuals and communities may experience the climate…
Abstract
Purpose
This chapter proposes a way to deepen our understanding of the health impacts of climate change. It explores how and why individuals and communities may experience the climate change-human health interface in different ways.
Design/methodology/approach
We suggest that the concepts of structural vulnerability and narrative inquiry can provide a thick (ethnographic) description of how and why individuals and communities experience and give meaning to the health impacts of climate change. We begin by defining the two concepts before bringing them together to explore the relationship between climate change and health.
Findings
The combination of these two concepts offers the potential to advance our knowledge in two key ways. Firstly, they facilitate a critical and interpretive approach to both the notion of agency and the public health paradigm of the ‘rational-actor’. Secondly, they reveal how vulnerability to climate change is embodied at the level of the mundane and everyday.
Social implications
These concepts, when applied to the climate change–human health interface, can help demonstrate how vulnerability is often a social construction, and, with sufficient political will, may be ameliorated. We see the combination of the concepts discussed here as an opportunity for research to address inequality and justice.
Originality/value
This paper takes two innovative and established concepts in medical anthropology (structural vulnerability) and social science (narrative inquiry) and invites their application to our understanding of climate change and human health. Research analysed via these concepts will provide a clearer understanding of the impacts of climate change and experiences of vulnerability.