Written by an international team of experts in the field, the second edition of this popular text considers both the theoretical underpinnings and practical applications of narrative research. The authors take the reader from initial decisions about forms of narrative research, through more complex issues of reflexivity, interpretation and the research context. Existing chapters have been updated to reflect changes in the literature and new chapters from eminent narrative scholars in Europe, Australia and the United States have been added on a variety of topics including narratives and embodiment, visual narratives, narratives and storyworlds, new media narratives and Deleuzian perspectives in narrative research.

Bodies, Embodiment and Stories

Bodies, Embodiment and Stories

Lars-Christer Hydén

Introduction

In social scientific research on narratives it's not uncommon that the body is left out of the analysis. In a comment on the state of the art in narrative studies, the British sociologist Brett Smith wrote:

Narrative researchers should not simply be content with theories and conceptual musing on and about the body. We also might turn our attention to generating stories from and with actual lived and living human bodies […]. Bodies are partly connected and ‘known’ through narrative – the stories they tell. Indeed, we tell stories about, in, out of, and through our bodies. Likewise, as a resource, stories from outside our bodies endow us with a sense of interior, subjective reality ...

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