Trish wrote:
>Here's an offering from one of my students:
>
>
>"Water is to chocolate like story is to qualitative
>research" by Nancie Burns -Mccoy can be found at
>http://www.wmc.edu/academics/library/pub/jcp/issueI-2/burns-mccoy.html
>
>She argues that the methodologies that are used
>in qualitative research to "stabilise stories" (i.e. to
>demonstrate validity) and to separate "non-fiction" from
>"fiction" (which she considers to be a false
>dichotomy) actually silence narrative .She feels that the
>methodologies employed really tell their own separate story
>and quotes someone who feels that audience approval of
>research may reflect how the story told fits with cultural
>myths and values.
>
>Trisha Greenhalgh
My reaction is hostile -- based on the belief that, once we deny the
attempt to distinguish between non-fictional and fictional accounts of
reality, we instantly regress in cultural terms to pre-scientific states
of culture.
Some examples:
There is a story that the Nazi regime killed 6 million Jews and 6 million
non-Jews during their reign first in Germany and then in Europe. There is
another story which asks 'Did 6 million Jews really die?" and attempts to
doubt the reality of the Holocaust. There is another (meta) story which
asks us not to worry which is true (since there is no distinction to be
drawn at least in some English Departments between 'non-fiction' and
'fiction').
There is a story that 6,000 American citizens died in the attack on the
Pentagon and the World trade Centre; another story that only 3,000 died.
There is a story that over a million Afghans will die this winter from cold
and starvation as a result of the US attack on Afghanistan, and that, as
somebody said about the death of 500,000 Iraqui children from the embargo,
"it is a price worth (them) paying"..
There is a story that a child needs to know whether they were or were not
abused by their parent. There is another story that it doesn't matter
whether they were or they weren't.....
Coming from history and sociology, rather than literature, the perpetual
struggle to distinguish true stories from less truthful ones, real medical
conditions from plausible ones, seems crucial.
It is interesting to note that in Nancie Burns-McCoy's text cited by Trish
-- which makes for a very creative read -- she points out that direct
quotations from the original words spoken by her interviewee, Alicia, are
in italics to distinguish them from her own inventive play around it;
similarly, in respect of quotes from Equivel's novel, these are also
italicised to perform the same function.
If there really is no point in trying to distinguish 'fact' from 'fiction',
then there would be no point in distinguishing 'verbatim quotes' from
'imaginative inventions'....... and the powerful of this world who hate
investigative journalism and uncompromising social research, those who have
a powerful control over the media and the stories they 'spin' to hide what
a factual account would show, would be very relieved. Burns-McCoy's own
practice shows her proper respect for distinguishing between 'facts' and
'inventions'.
Those quite unconcerned for human suffering and/or determined to hide their
collusion with the forces that make for unnecessary suffering can only gain
from the denial that, for research as opposed to imaginative literature,
the attempt to distinguish between the 'factual' and the 'fictional'
components of people's stories about reality -- and the attempt to
understand why certain factualities are omitted or denied in certain
accounts -- is crucial.
Do we really wish to allow the 'sovereignty of some powerful participants'
voices' to silence the participants (like dead Jews in the Holocaust, dead
Palestinians after Sharon's massacres, dead patients after Dr Harold
Shipman's serial killings) who are less able to speak, or to speak
attractively for themselves?
The whole system of national and international justice -- faulty as it is
-- is an attempt to distinguish the 'least fictional accounts' from the
others.......
An attempt to understand the fact-based and fact-denying fictions that
patients, clients, and we ourselves weave around our practices, an attempt
to understand the roles of narratives in medicine, in historical
oppression, and human suffering, depends on trying to come to a 'truer
understanding'.... not in denying factual realities. In psychotherapy, and
elsewhere, people can suffer from untrue stories.... and denying the
distinction of truth and falsity is radically disempowering to individuals
and collectives.
What disease are we REALLY suffering from?
Details of my long-awaited (by me, at least!) and now recently published
textbook on
'Qualitative Research Interviewing: biographic narrative and
semi-structured method'
are on
<http://www.sagepub.co.uk/shopping/Detail.asp?id=4813>
Tom Wengraf
24a Princes Avenue
Muswell Hill
London N10 3LR
UK
(44)/
(0)
20 8883 9297
20 8444-4322
|
