Coming to Narrative: A Personal History of Paradigm Change in the Human Sciences: 14 (Writing Lives: Ethnographic Narratives)

Reflecting on a 50 year university career, Distinguished Professor Arthur Bochner, former President of the National Communication Association, discloses a lived history, both academic and personal, that has paralleled many of the paradigm shifts in the human sciences inspired by the turn toward narrative. He shows how the human sciences―especially in his own areas of interpersonal, family, and communication theory―have evolved from sciences directed toward prediction and control to interpretive ones focused on the search for meaning through qualitative, narrative, and ethnographic modes of inquiry. He outlines the theoretical contributions of such luminaries as Bateson, Laing, Goffman, Henry, Gergen, and Richardson in this transformation. Using diverse forms of narration, Bochner seamlessly layers theory and story, interweaving his professional and personal life with the social and historical contexts in which they developed.

Arthur P. Bochner is Distinguished University Professor of Communication at the University of South Florida and a Distinguished Scholar of the National Communication Association. He is the co-author of Understanding Family Communication (Allyn and Bacon); co-editor (with Carolyn Ellis) of Composing Ethnography (AltaMira), Ethnographically Speaking (AltaMira), and the Left Coast Press book series, Writing Lives: Ethnographic Narratives. He has published more than 100 articles and monographs on close relationships, communication theory, narrative inquiry, autoethnography and genre-bending modes of writing in the human sciences. His current research focuses on memory, narrative, and identity. In 2007, he served as president of the National Communication Association.