PARA LA PRODUCCIÓN DE GRANA COCHINILLA EN EL ESTADO DE HIDALGO

Having accepted that narrative constructs human experience, the next question becomes how to unpack the meaning of an experience in all of its complexity and contextual detail. Polkinghorne (1988) suggests that one way of hearing the meaning of a story is through hermeneutic reasoning. Originally, an interpretive approach to understanding the meaning of (biblical) texts (Hughes & Sharrock, 1990), hermeneutics in psychology has become a way of studying and

understanding, or interpreting human action. Hermeneutic methods are qualitative, as opposed to quantitative statistical techniques, using the same kind of linguistic processes that we use when constructing our own narratives to interpret the meaning of someone else’s story. Therefore, in the first instance analysts need to understand what a narrative is. You would expect that we all know what a story is, but as Polkinghorne points out, the emplotment of events into a story is such an ordinary part of life that we usually do not attend to how we do it, only the reality that it produces.

What is a narrative?

Individuals construct narratives by selecting important events, and then

sequentially organising or connecting them in a meaningful way for a particular audience (Riessman, 2008). Thus, a fundamental criterion of narrative is

consequentially. In this respect, narratives impose a meaningful pattern on what would otherwise be random and disconnected (Salmon, 2008). To put this another way, in the telling, by selecting or attending to certain events, thereby creating a plot, the experience becomes value-laden, or has meaning (Cronon, 1992). Referring back to the earlier discussion of social constructionism, narratives are best understood as being composed for particular audiences at particular moments in history, drawing on taken-for-granted discourses and values embedded in a particular culture (Riessman). Consequently, narratives do not speak for themselves or provide a transparent view into the phenomenon under study. Therefore, when used for research purposes they require interpretation, (a hermeneutic approach) which can be accomplished in a number of ways depending on the objectives of the investigation.

In narrative analysis, in the first instance, the object of investigation is the story itself, which, in this project is first-person accounts by participants of their experiences of EOL care. The purpose of the analysis is to see how the

participants order their experiences so that events and actions in their lives make sense. Therefore, the researcher examines the story, looking at how it is put

together, looking for the linguistic and cultural resources it uses, and deciding how it persuades listeners that it is authentic. In other words, the researcher asks, “why was the story told that way?” (Riessman, 1993, p.2)

Different kinds of narrative analysis

There is more than one way to conduct a narrative analysis. In fact, the term actually refers to a diverse set of methods or ‘family’ of interpretive approaches

(Riessman, 2004). For example, Riessman (2008) describes three different

approaches: thematic, structural, and dialogic or performance analysis. In addition each of these approaches could be applied at various levels: personal,

interpersonal, positional and societal (Murray, 2000). Throughout this study, I have utilised a variety of these, depending on the point that I am trying to make at the time.

An overview of the analysis process

When conducting a narrative analysis, there is a multi-layered interpretive process at work. In the first instance, when telling their story narrators select what they want to say and what they do not want to say. Their stories, which are

recollections of past events, are not neatly stored, intact, in the filing cabinet of their minds, ready to pull out in exactly the same form every time they are told. Rather, they are a selective re-presentation of an event or activity, narrated in a particular way at a particular time, with a particular purpose. In this way, in telling the story, narrators position themselves in a certain way to their audience (Murray, 2000). At the same time, depending on how the interview process is conducted and the researcher’s point of view, the researcher’s role as listener may also be considered part of the initial narration, which is then viewed as a co-construction (Riessman, 2008).

Once transcribed, the narrative is closely read, then analysed according to the method that the analyst thinks best fits the objectives of the study. In the next step, the researcher re-presents their interpretation of the original story in the form of another story to another audience. In this way, Riessman (2008) argues that the

researcher has not ‘found’ a narrative but rather, participated in its creation. Furthermore, the audience may, given enough information formulate their own interpretation of the original story. The whole exercise therefore, becomes a series of constructions or “a story about a story about a story about a story, ad infinitum” (Gelfand, Raspa, Briller & Schim, 2005, p. xxiii). In this respect, it appears that there is no single, fixed version of truth for a particular event.

However, Crossley (2000b, p.40) argues that narrative analysis “has a ‘topical’ or ‘substantive’ orientation to it”, which in fact, produces narratives that are “best characterized as ‘old-fashioned’ or ‘realist’” (p.41). In addition, Sarbin and Kitsuse (1994, p. 8) state that:

“even though ordinary folk are more likely to be realists, having reified the constructions acquired through experience or authority, they nonetheless report their constructions of the world through the use of stories. What they report are their social experiences, the making of which follow well-established narrative plots”.

These observations highlight a dilemma I faced when choosing which type of narrative analysis to use for my study. This, actually, was a ‘crisis’ point for me. I felt like I was caught between two paradigms. Personally, I was aligned more towards social constructionism and my interest in what language does; yet morally I felt that to honour the women’s stories, which were very ‘real’ to them, their experiences had to be presented in a realist paradigm that was meaningful and acceptable to them. In the end, the reason for taking a more ‘realist’ approach was political, relating back to one of the original aims of the study. In my initial

information to the participants, I had implied that this work could be presented to people who are responsible for planning EOL care. Therefore, I had a

responsibility to analyse and re-present the stories in a way that would most likely be influential in that context. While it might seem that I have done an about turn with regard to where this work sits epistemologically, I am comfortable that it remains under the umbrella of social constructionism, albeit at the weaker end of the social constructionist continuum (Moghaddam, 2005).