Narrative Inquiry

“The task for the analysis is therefore to find a way to avoid the pitfalls of individualistic and societal reductionism.” - wertsch

One of the major benefits of narrative analysis is the inclusion of all the parts to make up the whole, and the whole also itself. Specifically, to notice how the parts move, move in and out of the things around them, gradiate into different things/each other and very importantly, be non congruent with other parts. Narrative inquiry is an approach that notices the whole by the way of every particular.

Vygotsky gave an example of chemicals. If someone was trying to figure out why water puts out fire, and looked at just the particulars, oxygen and hydrogen, they would have trouble as hydrogen is actually flammable and oxygen sustains fire!

Here is a very simple example in practice:

1)What did zen masters say

1.5) What aspects of culture had relevant impact on that?

2) What do the compilers and creators (sometimes make uppers) of the texts say?

2.5) What aspects of culture had relevant impact on that?

An easy place to start is by looking at the possible differences between 1.5 and 2.5.

What was going on in zen when the zen masters that are famously written about were walking around?

What was going on in zen years later when the people that compiled the ZMs bios and sayings where living?

If we answered these, we could have 2 different ways to look at zen as the answers would likely be very different. But, we can also make judgement on sufficient definitions of zen that includes the whole. The picture that is painted by both.

When we look at the story of from ‘1’ (what the zen masters said) to 2.5 (what aspects of culture had relevant impact on the biographers) we can get a story which can supplant even the biographers definition of zen! We might find the particulars are non congruent.

Submitted May 04, 2019 at 08:11AM by TFnarcon9 http://bit.ly/2LnK1wz