Telling the Collective Story: Symbolic Interactionism in Narrative Research

Deborah K. van den Hoonaard

doi:10.18778/1733-8077.9.3.03

Authors

Deborah K. van den Hoonaard St. Thomas University, Canada

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.9.3.03

Keywords:

Narrative Research, Symbolic Interaction, Sensitizing Concepts, Widowhood, Bahá’í, Marginalized Populations

Abstract

Recent years have seen tremendous growth of interest in narrative approaches to research in both the social sciences and the humanities. Much of this research focuses on the stories of individuals and how they tell them. This article addresses the contribution of a symbolic interactionist approach to develop the “collective story” (Richardson 1990) through the use of sensitizing concepts. It focuses on research on the experience of widows, widowers, and Iranian Bahá’í refugees to Canada to demonstrate how one can use sensitizing concepts to craft a collective story of members of marginalized populations that sit at the bottom of the “hierarchy of credibility” (Becker 1967).

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Author Biography

Deborah K. van den Hoonaard, St. Thomas University, Canada

Deborah K. van den Hoonaard is Canada Research Chair in Qualitative Research and Analysis and a Professor in the Gerontology Department at St. Thomas University in New Brunswick, Canada. Her research interests lie in studies of members of marginalized social groups, such as old widows, widowers, and non-European immigrants to Atlantic Canada, as well as how they interact as research participants. She is the author of The Widowed Self: The Older Woman’s Journey through Widowhood (2001), By Himself: The Older Man’s Experience of Widowhood (2010), and Qualitative Research in Action: A Canadian Primer (2012). With Will C. van den Hoonaard, she has co-authored The Equality of Women and Men: The Experience of the Bahá’í Community of Canada (2006) and Essentials of Thinking Ethically in Qualitative Research (2013).

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