Catherine Kohler Riessman

Narrative in Social Work A Critical Review

We examine how the concept of narrative has entered social work over the past 15 years, with special emphasis on research applications. Approaching our task from distinctive standpoints and locations, the article reviews definitions of narrative, criteria for ‘good’ enough narrative research, and patterns in social work journals. Our evaluation uncovered few studies, in contrast to the volume of narrative research in education, nursing and other practicing professions. Three exemplars of narrative inquiry - model research completed by social workers - show the knowledge for practice that can be produced with careful application of narrative methods, in all their diversity. Drawing on our respective locations and experiences, we cautiously suggest some reasons for the paucity of quality research in the USA, and greater representation in Europe.

Ruptures and sutures: time, audience and identity in an illness narrative

First-person accounts of the illnesses experienced by sociologists have taken hybrid experimental forms. I add my voice to this growing tradition with a story about the discovery and treatment of a soft tissue sarcoma in my thigh, chronicled in a journal I kept over many months. The fragments scribbled in the journal became the basis of an extended illness narrative. I interrogate features of the narrative itself, including the handling of time and imagined audiences - those I was writing for. The illness narrative traces how cancer transformed the many identities I enact on a daily basis and how the invisible labour of particular health workers enabled the restoration of several prized identities. These workers - radiation, occupational and physical therapists - are typically subordinated in the medical hierarchy and the interactional work that they do with patients to restore and reconfigure ruptured identities after serious illness needs attention in medical sociology.

Twists and turns: Narrating my career, Catherine Kohler Riessman

There are many ways I could narrate my career. I have traveled a crooked road to finally achieve a comfortable place in narrative studies. Looking back to write about it now, I could craft a linear and coherent account—how one choice and set of intellectual relationships led to others and the final outcome––but I think a line with lots of detours and false starts better represents my understanding. Like all narrators, I want to make some order and sense out of all that has happened to me—this is, after all, a major function of personal narrative––and by writing this piece I have discovered some of the teachers and ideas that clearly shaped the kind of work I do today. But the process wasn’t smooth and to construct a unity among the facts I would have to delete a great deal. So let’s see if I can craft the crooked line into a meaningful plot. My early life was spent in Northern California in the 40s and early 50s, where I grew up in a Republican family and was educated by nuns in a convent school. I credit one nun with initiating the politics behind my enduring interest in experiences of inequality; she tutored me one summer (in American history so that I could skip the 7th grade) when, I found out later, she was completing her dissertation at Stanford University on the Southern cotton slave economy. Her ideas about racial inequality, economic exploitation, and creative resistance practices didn’t appear in U.S. history books of the time. I was excited by the subversive stories and brought them home where they were not welcomed at all—it was 1950, after all, and most whites held an illusion of the ‘‘happy slave.’’ Another rub with my family’s politics occurred when I was in high school (no longer a Catholic one, I was then living in NY after my parents’ divorce). In this elite private girls’ school we read and discussed The Communist Manifesto––ironically for it was the height of the McCarthy era. I was totally persuaded by the ideas and brought them home excitedly to my mother—a highly educated attorney and former judge—who Qualitative Social Work 2015, Vol. 14(1) 10–17 ! The Author(s) 2014 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1473325014522285 qsw.sagepub.com

Career interview. Ann Hartman, a biography of ideas: Archiving intellectual history. Co-constructed with Catherine K Riessman and Karen M Staller

Ann Hartman is a major figure in the history of Social Work in the United States and, due to translations of her writings, a major contributor to direct practice elsewhere in the world. Dr Hartman was interviewed by Catherine Riessman as part of Qualitative Social Works career interviews project. Looking at the interview, we decided—in the spirit of co-construction—to preserve in certain sections the conversational nature of the exchange but also to offer historical context and other commentary in order to give readers––who might be less familiar with Dr Hartmans life and times––additional information. Dr Hartmans commitment to social work practice has had a global impact. Her scholarship offered new tools to social work practitioners, in particular the eco-map. In addition, she provided strong moral authority and leadership for social workers in the academy by emphasizing epistemological diversity and taking a stand on politically controversial topics with forceful conviction.

Book reviews and notices : SHALINI BHARAT, Child adoption in India: Trends and emerging issues (a study of adoption agencies). Bombay: Tata Institute of Social Sciences, 1993. xii + 218 pp. Figs., tables, appendices, bibliogr. Rs. 100:

Through a comparison of hijras with ’institutionalized alternative sex gender roles’ in other societies, like the ’xanith’ of Oman, the native North American ’berdache’, the ’alyha’ of Mohave, the ’mahu’ of Tahiti and the transsexuals of the West, the general point which Nanda tries to make is that the range of available gender identities is a culturally determined factor. That India seems to admit a broader range of such identities than most Western cultures is congruent with the conceptualisation of personhood in India and the significance of ambiguously gendered figures in Hindu mythology. However, in this study the crucial issue regarding the volition exercised by individuals undergoing the emasculation operation has neither been dealt with in any significant detail nor with the desirable criticality. The study could also have been more enriching had a perspective on the ongoing changes in the hijra community and its position within Indian society been built into it. For example, the fact that the hijra emasculation operation is illegal while sex change operations are not, is indicative of the fact that even in India there is now a movement towards the dichotomous gender norms already prevalent in the West. Nanda, however, does not draw upon such implications to go beyond the static image of hijra culture that seems to emerge from her otherwise impressive study.