Narrative Relations and Associations: Catherine Kohler Riessman’s Research Dialogism

In this paper, Esin and Squire provide their individual and collective reflections on the influence of Catherine Kohler Riessman's dialogical approach in research. Each researcher reinterpreted the dialogism in Riessman's approach in their own work, focusing on differing elements of it. While Esin examines her experience of relationality, reflexivity, and positionality in her work, Squire discusses her adoption of the approach to develop methodological interdisciplinarity in social science research. The authors then reflect on their dialogue in researching multimodal narratives, historical positioning in and beyond narratives, and power relations in the context of research

Narrative and ethical (in)action: creating spaces of resistance with refugee-storytellers in the Calais ‘Jungle’ camp

This paper explores how a multimodal narrative methodology can open a creative, relational and safe space, in which refugee-storytellers negotiate their positioning within racialised power imbalances. Personal narratives that facilitate storytellers’ agency have a potential to empower and elicit social change. When refugees are denied their right to claim/speak/act, the act of narrating becomes a vehicle for social change. Creative workshops delivered in the Calais ‘Jungle’ refugee camp in 2016–17 enabled us to co-construct a relational space with refugee participants, based on the principle of ethical hesitancy. In this paper we argue that the relational space offered possibilities for refugee storytellers to resist and challenge the representation of refugee stories, whilst giving rise to ethically important moments. These moments provide important perspectives on how practitioners and researchers can use narrative processes in creating spaces of resistance and social change with refugee participants

Seduction, Sharing Stories, and Borderlinking in Co-Constructed Narratives

Drawing on a co-constructed autobiographical narrative as our example, we explore the resonances of Catherine Kohler Reissman’s concept of seduction with Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger’s concept of martixial borderlinking. Borderlinking between theoretical domains, rather than comparisons or juxtaposition, brings forth potentialities and expands the theorization of feminine subjectivities in much the same was as a con-constructed narratives celebrate the we without obliterating the I

Introduction - Special Section: Narratives of Translation within Research Practice

Editors’ note: The papers in this special section were originally conceived in 2012 as presentations for the annual To Think is to Experiment seminar series organized by the Centre for Narrative Research at the University of East London and NOVELLA.2 The event is designed to “open up spaces in research imagination,” and it “invites presentations from research students in the UK and abroad” (CNR, 2008). The editors of Narrative Works arranged for the peer-reviewing of the papers, and are delighted to be able to publish them in their final form. We wish to thank Cigdem Esin for coordinating this special section

Telling Stories in Pictures: Constituting Processual and Relational Narratives in Research With Young British Muslim Women in East London

In this article, I explore the possibility that a narrative research methodology, which focuses on the processes that bring together multiple narrative modalities, could be used to gain insight into the ways in which young residents of East London construct and tell stories about their lives and negotiate their positioning as members of immigrant communities. Drawing on research undertaken with a group of young British Muslim women at the Keen Students' School in East London, I discuss the multimodal methodological approach arising within the relational, imaginative and spatial contexts of the research. I also describe how the zone of this multimodal narrative methodology facilitates an understanding of the positioning of storytellers as mobile, multiple and sometimes contradictory

Visual Autobiographies in East London: Narratives of Still Images, Interpersonal Exchanges, and Intrapersonal Dialogues

This article reports on how a study of visual autobiographical workshops, conducted with social diverse groups in East London, provides us with insights about the narrative nature of still images, and the co-construction of narratives across a number of contextual levels, including those of interpersonal interaction, and internal dialogues within the self and with imagined audiences. The paper argues that such research can support and perhaps extend contemporary reformulations of "narrative" in the verbal field as involving multiple, co-constructed, temporally uncertain, often contradictory and incoherent narratives. It also suggests that the still image narratives and their dialogic production indicate the fragmented, deferred and montaged narrative constructions that could usefully be explored within more conventional forms of narrative

Climate Change and Its Impact on Wheat Production in Kansas

This paper studies the effect of climate change on wheat production in Kansas using annual time series data from 1949 to 2014. For the study, an error correction model is developed in which the price of wheat, the price of oats (substitute good), average annual temperature and average annual precipitation are used as explanatory variables with total output of wheat being the dependent variable. Time series properties of the data series are diagnosed using unit root and cointegration tests. The estimated results suggest that Kansas farmers are supply responsive to both wheat as well as its substitute (oat) prices in the short run as well as in the long run. Climate variables; temperature has a positive effect on wheat output in the short run but an insignificant effect in the long run. Precipitation has a positive effect in the short run but a negative effect in the long run

'You Are Here': Visual Autobiographies, Cultural-Spatial Positioning, and Resources for Urban Living

This paper reports on a study of visual autobiographies produced in art workshops conducted in a variety of social contexts in East London with 19 research participants 11 women and girls, 8 men and boys – ranging from 10 to the 50s. From narrative analysis of the images, associated interviews, and field notes on the production and exhibition of the images, the paper argues that the study of cultural activity can allow us to identify cultural-spatial positionings related to, but also distinct from, socio-spatial positionings. Those cultural-spatial positionings indicate and in some cases produce cultural and symbolic resources that might not be discernable from other non-visual research data, that may differ importantly from participants' socioeconomic resources, and that could usefully receive more attention. The study also suggests that transnationalism is strongly tied to people's narratives of their cultural lives within global cities, is critically articulated, and can be under-recognised when it is rooted in family