Narrative Sociology

Narrative Sociology defines classics, identifies exemplars of narrative analysis, and delineates a field in the making.



Table of Contents


Part I: Varieties of Narrative

• The Sociology of Storytelling | Francesca Polletta, Pang Ching Bobby Chen, Beth Gharrity Gardner, and Alice Motes

• The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality | Hayden White

• The Collective Story: Postmodernism and the Writing of Sociology | Laurel Richardson

• The Use of Personal Narratives in Social Science and History | Mary Jo Maynes, Jennifer L. Pierce, and Barbara Laslett

• Explanatory Narrative Research | Donald Polkinghorne

• From Causes to Events: Notes on Narrative Positivism | Andrew Abbott

• The Trouble with Stories | Charles Tilly

• Life as Narrative | Jerome Bruner

• Reclaiming an Orphan Genre: The First-Person Narrative of Illness | Arthur W. Frank

• Narrative Freedom | Robert Zussman

• Situated Actions and Vocabularies of Motive | C. Wright Mills


Part II: Narrative in Action

• The Normalization of Deviance, 1981–1984 | Dianne Vaughan

• Harvard: The Quota Controversy and the Quest for Restriction | Jerome Karabel

• Prologue to On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City | Alice Goffman

• A Little Room for Myself | Teresa Gowan


Part III: Narrative and Institutional Contexts

• Scientia Sexualis | Michel Foucault

• Grand National Narratives and the Project of Truth Commissions: A Comparative Analysis | Molly Andrews

• Narrating Social Structure: Stories of Resistance to Legal Authority | Patricia Ewick and Susan Silbey

• "It Was Like a Fever . . .": Narrative and Identity in Social Protest | Francesca Polletta

• Lifechangers and Lifesavers | Leslie Irvine