Discourse and Narrative Methods: Theoretical Departures, Analytical Strategies and Situated Writings

Discourses and narratives are crucial in how we understand a world of rapid changes. This textbook constitutes a unique introduction to two major influential theoretical and methodological fields - discourse and narrative methods - and examines them in their interrelation. It offers readers an orientation within the broad and contested area of discourse and narrative methods and develops concrete analytical strategies to those who wish to explore both or one of these fields as well as their overlaps.

Illustrated with examples from real life and real research, this book: 

• Maps the theoretical influence from poststructuralist, postmodern, postcolonial and feminist ideas on the field of discourse and narrative.
• Acts as a guide to the most central analytical approaches in discourse and narrative studies supported by concrete examples of analytical strategies.
• Presents a variety of oral, textual, visual and other ’data’ for the purpose of analyzing discourse and narrative.
• Offers deeper insight into discourse and narrative methods within three themes of crucial importance for changing global context: media and society, gender and space, and autobiography and life writing.
• Acts as a helpful guide to situated writing based on concrete workshop exercises, which promotes ethical reflexivity, analytical thinking and creative engagement in the study of discourses and narratives.

Mona Livholts (BA, MA, PhD) is Associate Professor of Social Work at the Department of Social and Welfare Studies at Linköping University, Sweden, and coordinator of R.A.W., The Network for Reflexive Academic Writing Methodologies. The main focus of her work is emergent writing methodologies, discourse and narrative methods and artistic research processes. Research themes include media and social work, gender and intersectionality, space, memory and technological transformation. She has published monographs, co-edited and edited volumes in Swedish and English, including, ‘Women’, Welfare, Textual Politics and Critique. An Invitation to a ThinkingWriting Methodology in the Study of Welfare, Emergent Writing Methodologies in Feminist Studies, and a trilogy of untimely academic novellas: ‘The Professor’s Chair’, ‘The Snow Angel and Other Imprints’, and ‘Writing Water’.  

Maria Tamboukou (BA, MA, PhD) is a professor of feminist studies at the University of East London, UK. Her research activity develops in the areas of philosophies and epistemologies in the social sciences, feminist theories, narrative analytics, and archival research. Writing feminist genealogies is the central focus of her work. She is the author of seven monographs and more than 70 journal articles and book chapters. Recent publications include the monographs Sewing, Writing and Fighting; Gendering the Memory of Work; Women Workers’ Education as well as the coauthored the book The Archive Project.