Reading :: Handbook of Narrative Inquiry

 Handbook of Narrative Inquiry: Mapping a Methodology

Edited by D. Jean Clandinin

As mentioned in a previous review, I have been looking for good sources for better understanding narrative inquiry. This behemoth of a book (24 chapters, 693pp) delivers, although as is often true with such handbooks, it covers such a broad swathe that it’s hard to get one’s arms around it. 

Partly because it is so broad, and partly because I have discovered that I’m not that interested in narrative inquiry, I’ll just provide a broad overview.

In Part I: Situating Narrative Inquiry, the contributors offer a historical overview and a map of the “landscape.”

Part II: Starting with Telling Stories offers six chapters, covering archival work, narrative interviewing, autobiography, conversation, and life stories.

Part III: Starting with Living Stories includes four chapters, one of which was written by Boje, with whom I have already become familiar. 

Part IV: Narrative Inquiry in the Professions offers four chapters, focusing on teaching, organizations, anthropology, and psychotherapy.

Part V: Complexities in Narrative Inquiry examines narratives of young children, cross-cultural narratives, and indigenous narratives.

Part VI: Narrating Persisting Issues in Narrative Inquiry covers ethics in NI and writing up narrative research.

Part VII: Future Possibilities ends with two chapters: One on NI’s future influence on policy/practice and one conversation with prominent NI researchers.

A few chapters in, it struck me that NI researchers primarily work in the mode of storytelling, so everyone was going to reach into the same bag of tricks. This turned out to be largely true. This volume is 693pp of story after story, not always told that engagingly, with each story taking the foreground and methodological details fading into the background. What I learned from this was that although I always thought I liked a good story as much as anyone, that wasn’t strictly true; I found myself skimming stories and looking for methodological details that weren’t always present. 

So should you read this book? If you are planning to use NI, definitely — it provides a good comprehensive view of NI, although this edition (2006) is probably a bit dated. If you are a qualitative researcher thinking about using NI, this book is still a good resource, but you might not read it cover to cover.