Table of Contents

Introduction
Locating Narrative
Personal Narratives as Data
Studying Narratives
Organization of the Book
PART ONE: THEORETICAL CONTEXTS
The Representation of Experience
Narratives as Representations
PART TWO: PRACTICAL MODELS
A Life Story
Linked Stories and Meaning in Conversation
Poetic Structures and Meaning
PART THREE: DOING NARRATIVE ANALYSIS
Telling
Transcribing
Analyzing
Conclusion
Validation
Uses and Limitations of Narrative Analysis

About the Author

Catherine Kohler Riessman is Research Professor in the Department of Sociology at Boston College, and an Emerita Professor at Boston University. She serves as a Visiting Fellow in the Centre for Narrative Research, University of East London. She earned a Ph.D. in Sociomedical Science from Columbia University. Riessman has authored four books and numerous articles and book chapters in medical sociology and qualitative methodologies.

Reviews

"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*

"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*

"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*

"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*

"[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*

"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*

"An excellent resource for individuals interested in the systematic use of narrative in social science research."  
*The American Journal of Family Therapy*