Narrative Analysis

"An excellent resource for individuals interested in the systematic use of narrative in social science research." -- The American Journal of Family Therapy "In this text, Catherine Kohler Riessman discusses many of the important questions that face narrative scholars. As such, the book is a good introductory text for narrative methodology. For those who have read within the field previously, this work reminds the reader of some of the important questions that need to be addressed in narrative work...This text is a valuable effort in an attempt to synthesize some of the main aspects of narrative methodology." -- Journal of Contemporary Ethnography "[This book] does what it intends to do and does that clearly and with lively and interesting examples. I think both students and teachers will find it compelling and useful. I plan to assign it in my seminar on narrative and description next semester." -- Jay Gubrium "The book offers communication researchers some of the best recent work on qualitative inquiry in the human disciplines...Published by SAGE, the leading publisher of qualitative research in the social sciences today...The heart of her tightly argued text turns on forms of narrative (linked stories, conversations, life stories) and their analysis...This work should be read against and alongside Atkinson and Silverman...This work brings the communication scholar up-to-date on where qualitative methods are in current sociological and educational discourse." -- Norman K. Denzin "Catherine Kohler Riessman's handbook not only provides a basic introduction to the social scientist using narrative as a tool, but also offers a strand of feminist research as her central example...It is a useful text to include in course offerings on discourse analysis." -- Discourse and Society "Her concise and well-organized book, Narrative Analysis, contributes important insights to the qualitative methods literature. It is directed toward scholars and graduate students of various disciplines, as a methodological guide for analyzing transcripts of first-person stories or experiences. The book is also relevant for researchers interested in the substantive areas of women's lives and medical sociology...Riessman's book provides a useful guide for marketing researchers; particularly those aligned with the interpretive camp...because marketing researchers are increasingly interested in studying both consumers' and managers' stories...Narrative Analysis should be useful to an even wider audience." -- George M. Zinkhan & Denise E. Delorme in Journal of Marketing "This exposition of the principles of narrative analysis is a crisp and thankfully accessible introduction to a range of more or less formal techniques for the interpretation of first-person oral narratives...Riessman organizes her discussion in a down-to-earth way..." -- Patricia Uberoi in Contributions to Indian Sociology