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As more and more people decide to commit their lives to print, autobiographies constitute a significant resource to explore stories of harm, violence and crime. Published autobiography, however, presents a unique form of storytelling, unavoidably entailing the accumulation and (re)telling of a mass of stories; about oneself, others, contexts and cultures. Relatedly, paratexts – or the elements that surround the central text, such as covers, introductions and prologues – demonstrate how these texts are both individually and collectively shaped. Taking the co-constructed nature of all narratives, including self-narratives, as its starting point, this chapter seeks to demonstrate how terrorists who have authored autobiographies understand the world and their actions within it. In doing so, this chapter provides a practical demonstration of how insight derived from literary criticism can profitably be brought to bear in systematically breaking down and analysing an autobiography – that of a notable American jihadist, Omar Hammami – including its paratextual elements. In particular, I argue that considerations of genre, the inclusion of different types of events and stories collected from others all provide valuable strategies for the ‘doing’ of narrative criminology using autobiographies.

This chapter examines the processes of rewriting nationhood in educational narratives regarding the Second World War (WWII) in Poland. Using mixed methods, this case study analyzes narrative change in state-approved history textbooks published between 1977 and 2008, thus covering the period of political transition from a communist to a democratic Poland. Although trends in learning theory and international norms suggest that attention to diversity should have increased in textbooks, in Poland these trends have been subsumed by more long-lasting Polish specific cultural tropes. WWII narratives, in particular, emphasize an ethnically homogeneous nation. Throughout the 31-year sample, educating youth about WWII in Poland continues to be focused on reclaiming “Polishness” rather than on espousing global understandings and citizenship.

In this article we consider how cultural resources rooted in religion help to constitute and animate people working in industrialized societies across both religious and nonreligious domains. We argue that redemptive self-narratives figure prominently in the symbolic constructions people attach to their experiences across the many domains of human experience; such redemptive narratives not only can shape their identities and sense of life purpose, they inform their practices and choices and animate their capacity for action. To consider how redemptive self-narratives can provide a basis for agency in organizations, we analyze and compare the career narratives of a retired Episcopal Bishop and a celebrated CEO.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze common emplotments of interpretations of the financial crisis of 2007‐2010.

The paper presents a text analysis.

The paper finds that the same “strong plots” are commonly used to explain financial crises to the general public.

The paper provides useful information on interpretations of financial crises.

Arthur W. Frank's dialogical narrative analysis (DNA) has been a recent addition to the plethora of methods in analysing stories. What makes this method unique from the rest is its concern for both the story's content and its effects. Stories are seen as selection/evaluation systems that do things for and on people. This chapter aims to provide the reader a heuristic guide in conducting DNA and emphasises learning through exemplars as the way of learning DNA. It provides an outline of DNA and reviews how researchers have applied it in different disciplines. Then, DNA will be applied in in the current ‘war on drugs’ in the Philippines. The stories of the policy actors – for and against the drug war – will be analysed to explore how stories affect policy choices and actions, call actors to assume different identities, associate/dissociate these actors and show how they hold their own in telling their stories. Finally, the potential of using DNA in criminology and criminal justice will be discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the process and impact of patient involvement in locally defined improvement projects in two hospital clinics. The paper particularly aims to examine how patient narratives, in the form of diaries and radio montage, help to create new insights into patient experience for healthcare professionals, and support professionals’ enrolment and mobilisation in innovation projects.

Two case studies were undertaken. These drew upon qualitative interviews with staff and participant observation during innovation workshops. Patient diaries and a recorded montage of patient voices were also collected.

The findings illuminate translation processes in healthcare innovation and the emergence of meaning making process for staff through the active use of patient narratives. The paper highlights the critical role of meaning making as an enabler of patient-centred change processes in healthcare via: local clinic mangers defining problems and ideas; collecting and sharing patient narratives in innovation workshops; and healthcare professionals’ interpretation of patient narratives supporting new insights into patient experience.

This study demonstrates how healthcare professionals’ meaning making can be supported by articulating, constructing, listening and interpreting patient narratives. The two cases demonstrate how patient narratives serve as reflective devices for healthcare professionals.

This study presents a novel demonstration of the importance of patient narratives for translating healthcare innovation in a clinical practice setting.

Using a risk and vulnerability framework, the purpose of this paper is to describe the characteristics of older adults that Adult Protective Services (APS) substantiated for neglect by caregivers, their caregivers and the interrelationships between them.

The paper uses a qualitative study of 21 APS case record narratives using a template analysis.

Neglect related to withholding or refusing medical care was the most common. The older adults had multiple health conditions and geriatric syndromes. Caregivers had difficulties in carrying out caregiving role due to health and mental health issues, work responsibilities and lack of insight into older adults’ needs. The refusal to access or accept services by both the older adults and the caregivers was a predominant theme.

The sample size was small, limited to one geographical area, and non-representative of all neglect cases. The data were extracted from written case narratives and not directly from the older adults and their family members. Case records varied in the case detail provided.

To protect vulnerable older adults and improve quality of life, APS involvement in cases of caregiver neglect needs strategies to get people to accept help and access services to address multiple health and psychosocial problems for both older adult victims and their caregivers.

This study provides in-depth information on APS cases involving caregiver neglect that add to understanding of this complex problem and points to areas for further study.

This paper aims to problematize the dominant narrative forms of disciplinary histories of management thought. Specifically, the authors explore the narrative mode of emplotment used in Wren’s (and later Wren and Bedeian’s) 50-year encyclical on the history of management thought, namely, The Evolution of Management Thought (EMT).

The authors propose that management histories operate as powerful narratives that shape our understanding of management thought and, consequently, our disciplinary futures. This paper explores the textual narrative of EMT. Additional data are drawn from other scholars’ observations of this text. This paper is positioned in the debates of management history.

While acknowledging the wealth of historical facts in EMT, the authors argue that the umbrella narrative orders events of the past in such a manner that the historical knowledge follows a form of Darwinian evolutionism. Thus, the narrative leads to problematic representations suffering from progressivism, presentism and universalism.

Disciplinary scholars in management and organization studies need to carefully reflect on how we construct our representations of the past and histories. This will allow us to better craft transparent and reflexive histories.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to propose a remedy, albeit a partial remedy, which we believe is needed to avoid adverse epistemological consequences associated with the use of problematic narratives in management and organizational histories.