Life Stories in Development: Thoughts on Narrative Methods with Young People
| Author | Anne Robinson |
Introduction
Human beings are natural story-tellers (McAdams & McLean, 2013); we habitually create narratives to give purpose and meanings to our lives, actions and identities. It is also argued that stories serve a variety of social functions, including evaluating past experiences, persuading an audience of a particular point of view or drawing the audience into the experience of the narrator (Reissman, 2008). Although not necessarily used consciously, narratives may nevertheless be viewed as 'strategic, functional and purposeful. Storytelling is selected over non-narrative forms of communication to accomplish certain ends' (Reissman, 2008:8). It is therefore not surprising that narratives have caught the attention of social researchers and that over the past two decades we have seen a decisive 'narrative turn' in qualitative research.
Of course there is huge variation in what 'counts' as narrative and the extent to which stories are developed and sustained (Bamberg, 2006; Phoenix & Sparkes, 2009). In particular, narratives of self and identity tend to differ in complexity and coherence according to age. McAdams (1993) suggests that our personal myths are constantly reworked over the lifecycle, starting with the early creation of story themes and our own personal fables from adolescence. The qualitative methods used with young people to collect their biographical stories must, therefore, reflect their growing sense of 'a life lived' and abilities to make connections between, and derive meaning from, their life experiences. Different methods, of course, may be needed where the research is actionoriented, rather than reflective, and focused on the use of narrative in social interactions to construct identity (Bamberg & Georgakopoulou, 2008). In either case research has to engage young people and sustain their interest. To this end, researchers in areas such as youth studies, social geography, anthropology and education have explored innovative methodologies including visual or walking methods, diaries in various media or a combination of these. This article explores examples of such methods and considers their use within criminology. Here we have seen narrative enquiry used with adults (most famously by Shadd Maruna (2001) in Making Good: How Ex-Convicts Reform and Rebuild Their Lives) but strikingly little attention to creative methods as a means of eliciting narratives from young people.
The article goes on to examine concerns about the power relations that exist, of course, in all research but are heightened in the case of young people. This is especially so where the research takes place within schools, for example, or where access is negotiated through institutional gatekeepers (Heath et al., 2009; Hopkins, 2010). Furthermore, while creative methodologies can help reduce power differentials between adults and young people, researchers should not assume that this will happen automatically. Close attention to the research process and a reflexive and critical approach is therefore needed throughout (Punch, 2002). The article ends with thoughts on the benefits and potential limitations of creative methods and narrative research generally with young people, and their potential value within criminology.
Emerging life stories
Unlike life history, which has a basis in objective facts, life stories are subjective, fashioned from memories and reflections (Habermas & Bluck, 2000). The ability to construct stories and to make meaning out of events and personal experience develops over childhood and increases during adolescence. Research shows that in mid-adolescence young people typically master a greater range of cognitive skills that better equip them to manage contradictions and paradox both in the world around them and in aspects of their own identities (McAdams & McLean, 2013). Self-stories consequently grow in complexity, linked to the growing capacity for what Habermas and Bluck (2000) term autobiographical reasoning. They argue that this is the principal mechanism through which 'individuals attempt to integrate past and present events into a coherent and meaningful representation of their lives' (Bluck & Habermas, 2000:136). They suggest that this involves constructing a cognitive schema to order and to make sense of these life events and their emotional, motivational and other impacts.
In truth there is no universally accepted account of the relationship between the narrative construction of self and identity, with authors giving different degrees of weight to psycho-social processes, cultural repertoires and resources, and performance and social relations (Smith & Sparkes, 2008). McAdams (1993; 1996), for example, sees identity construction through narrative as happening through an imaginative rendering of past, present and future in a way that gives meaning and coherence. This is a largely internal process at one end of Smith and Sparkes' (2008) suggested continuum. At the other, externalising versions see narrative identity as situated in specific social contexts and interactions (including the many transactions that take place in youth justice settings).
This invites us to consider the social and psychological elements of narrative identity in adolescence and the extent to which it is produced through internal processes or in response to external events and relations, a question that seems by no means settled. Naturally, young people will engage in 'identity-work' in diverse ways but research nevertheless suggests typical progress towards the developmental task of constructing a relatively stable, albeit not fixed, adult identity. Interestingly Habermas and Bluck's (2000) review of the relatively few studies on the life stories of adolescents outlines the evidence of their growing capacity to bring events and experiences together to create an overarching narrative which integrates diverse elements and displays increasing global coherence. They further identify four key domains where cognitive development contributes to coherence: temporal which includes a sense of the sequence of past events and how they are related; cultural which implies growing awareness of biographical norms and expectations of life stages and transitions; thematic, including elements of evaluation and summary, as well as comparison across life episodes; and causal coherence, by which they mean the ability to link events and to develop explanations (Habermas & Bluck, 2000). The timing and rate of development may vary across these domains. Growth in causal coherence is possibly the most significant (Bluck & Habermas, 2000) as a young person starts to employ the skills of autobiographical reasoning to explain actions or suggest causes for events in terms of personality traits, needs or motivations that are continuous across time (Fivush et al., 2011). And on occasions there is also an opposing need to account for discrepancies or discontinuities. Again the young person may associate him or herself with relatively stable personal qualities, but in this case to underline how a particular behaviour or event - perhaps drug use or act of aggression - is atypical or out of character, essentially a 'not like me' event (Pasupathi et al., 2007:105).
In relation to coherence and credibility, McAdams marks the distinction between the 'I' that is narrating and creating self, and the 'Me' that is the self that is being narrated. He contends that:
'The main function of a life story is integration. By binding together disparate elements within the Me into a broader narrative frame, the selfing process can make a patterned identity out of what may appear, at first blush, to be a random and scattered life. The I can provide an integrated telling of the self as a more or less followable and believable story.' (McAdams, 1996:309)
Of course, the process he outlines may be more or less complex depending on cultural context or the skills of the narrator, and according to the different demands and functions of the life story at particular life stages. Both distance and perspective are needed to understand the past and its connection to the self (McLean, 2008). These tend to come into play during adolescence as individuals start to identify the life events which have been most personally significant, what Fivush et al. (2011) call 'self-defining memories'. This coincides with wider societal expectations of self-presentation in adolescence (Habermas & Bluck, 2000) which (in modern Western society at least) presuppose a high degree of reflexivity and active work on identity (McAdams, 1996). At this pivotal stage, young people may draw on their parents and families as a key resource to help them develop autobiographical content and co-construct identity from shared memories and stories. Yet even where such support is in place, the work involved in making meaning out of events and experiences is not necessarily comfortable and, for some young people, may be detrimental to well-being (McAdams & McLean, 2013).
Related work by Pasupathi and colleagues (2007) examined the relationship between life experiences and identity, exploring the developmental implications of these 'self-event relations'. Many narratives have no immediate relevance to self and identity, having other purposes entirely. But they were able to group those that do into four categories. The first type of self-event link they suggest is explanatory, where the narrator seeks to show how the 'self' caused the event to occur and presents this as evidence of stability and continuity in his or her personal traits or qualities. This then allows the event to be incorporated into his or her life narrative, in a way that reaffirms the existing sense of self. Pasupathi et al. call their second type of link 'dismissal'. Here the narrator sees the behaviour or event as incongruent with self, so may explain it away as due to circumstances or as a 'first and last time' incident and...
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