Workshop: Doing Narrative Criminology

Session Submission Type: Workshop

Abstract

Narrative analysis have gained increased interest throughout the social sciences. Narrative criminology takes the perspective that stories influence action, therefore stories influence harmful action. Most relevant are stories of who actors and others in the world are. The stories themselves – beyond the experiences and perspectives they report on – are impactful. This workshop teaches methodological strategies for doing narrative analysis in criminology. We describe different forms of narrative studies including thematic, structural, performative and dialogical narrative analysis. We further go into depth on issues such as the elements of narrative, characters, metaphors, and narrative boundary work. We discuss genres, narrative coherences and plurivocality, and the importance of narrative environment or storytelling context. The workshop will focus on methods for analyzing narratives as well as questions of the importance, truth and validity of stories.

Sub Unit

• Workshops

Instructors

• Sveinung Sandberg, University of Oslo

• Lois Presser, University of Tennessee, Knoxville