Born on: September 5, 1999

WELCOME TO MODULE 3: MICROSTORIA


Title of this web page -->Narrative Methods for Organizational and Communication Research
by David M. Boje, Ph.D.
Purpose: a web resource library of qualitative materials, exercises, and study guides to supplement the (2001) book titled Narrative Methods for Organizational and Communication Research. London: Sage Publications. See Amazon to order book and/or read book review.

Each module on this web site will tackle a different analysis in Narrative Analysis for Management and Communication Research (hereafter NA). Then we situate that analysis in its philosophy of science context - (press here) for summary table.

Readings Index & Abbreviations Explained (All Modules)

  1. NA Narrative Analysis for Management and Communication Research (book) by Boje (2001) the modules that follow are keyed to the chapters of this book.
  2. HQR: Handbook of Qualitative Research by Denzin & Lincoln (can buy the soft cover books; excellent book for background on methods and qualitative philosophies of science).
  3. ES: Ethnostatistics by Gephart (this book transcends all false dichotomies of qualitative and quantitative).
  4. WC: Writing Culture by Clifford & Marcus (optional good for intermediate).
  5. PO: Participant Observation by Spradley (optional good for beginners).
  6. GC: Greening Culture by Herndl & Brown (optional great for very advanced QM writing).
  7. FG: Focus Group text by Krueger (required for Marketing, optional for others).
Background Reading for Microstoria  Module (bold = required).
  • HQR: Vidich & Lyman. QM: Their history in sociology and anthropology. Pp. 23-59.

MODULE 3 MICROSTORIA (Continued)  - there is a floating menu on your left that takes you between modules or to the top of this one.

The Italians are doing the important work in microstoria analysis (also called microhistory). "The purpose of microhistory" says Muir (1991: cci) "is to elucidate historical causation on the level of small groups where most of real life takes place and to open history to peoples who would be left out by other methods." Instead of the teleology of progress, microstorians focus on the excluded narratives of women, ethnic minorities, witches, day laborers, peasants, charlatans, and other "little people." Instead of Great-man Grand narratives of the hegemony of a unitary macrohistory, the point is to create many histories from below. Microstoria relies upon systematic archival analysis from property registries, notary records, ecclesiastical archives, trial proceedings, pamphlets, etc.  The problem in Microstoria is they do not want to be positioned in the typical cells of Philosophy of Science. They do not fit with Burell and Morgan's four paradims or with Guba and Lincoln's four paradigms.
 

Assignment: This could be part of your project. Do a microstoria analysis of available archival text material.  Do it with an eye for including the excluded "little people." Trace either names, clues or survivals in the texts. Work through several of the microstoria assumptions in NA.
More background - For some reason Microstorians are against deconstruction. Why? Because microstorians insist they deal with "real" subject matter in their analysis. They are quite positivistic (post-positivistic). Microstorians are also quick to point out that they are not doing a Clifford Geertz version of "thick description."  And they do not see themselves as doing any sort of postmodern genealogical methods (i.e. Foucault).  They do appear to adopt Charles Sanders Peirce's semiotic theory of "abduction."

Readings
*NA- Microstoria Analysis
*HQR: Strauss & Corbin. Grounded theory methodology: An overview. Pp. 273-285.

What is Abduction? -- Yu, C. H. (1994, April). Induction? Deduction? Abduction? Is there a logic of EDA? Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of American Educational Researcher Association, New Orleans, Louisiana. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 376 173). 
 

Recommended Follow Up Reading
Boje, David M.
1999 "Corporate Imperialism Spectacle." Chapter 3 of Spectacles and Festivals: Managing production and consumption with Ahimsa. Book in review. Chapter dated January, 1999.

Ginzburg, Carlo
1980 The Cheese and The Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller. Translated by John and Anne Tedeschi. Original in Italian 1976. English 1980. Baltimore/London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Glaser, Barney G. & Anselm L. Strauss
1967 the Discorvery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research. Ny: Aldine Publishing Company.

Iggers, Georg G.
1997 Historiography in the Twentieth Century From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge. Hanover/London: Wesleyan University Press (University Press of New England).

Levi, Giovanni
1992 "On microhistory." In Peter Burke (ed.) New Perspectives on Historical Writing. Pp. 93-113. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press.

Muir, Edward
1991 "Introduction: Observing trifles." In E. Muir & G. Ruggiero (Eds.). Microhistory and the Lost Peoples of Europe. (pp. vii-xxviii) Translated by Eren Branch. Baltimore/London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Introduction "Observing trifles" by Edward Muir.

Muir, Edward and Guido Ruggiero (Eds.)
1991 Microhistory and the Lost Peoples of Europe. Translated by Eren Branch. Baltimore/London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Introduction "Observing trifles" by Edward Muir.

Peirce, Charles Sanders
1955 Philosophical Writings of Peirce. Edited by Justus Buchler. First published in 1940. NY: Dover Publications, Inc. See in particular Chapter 2, "Abduction and Induction" with writing of Pierce on the topic between 1896 and 1908.

WEB RESOURCES constructivist philosophy of science

Adapted from Guba & Lincoln (1994: 109-111) and Schwandt (1994:118-137)

Here is a problem for you.  The framework is being widely used, ust as the Burrell and Morgan (1979) framework, but both collapse so many different approaches that we have a "sociology of regulation" as opposed to a "sociology of radical change" and inquiry (Schwandt, 1994: 130). does it make sense to collapse Critical Theory, poststructualism, and postmodernism into one box and all the many forms of social construction and interpretivism into another, and oppose these to positivism/post-positivism? Does this perpetuate duality thinking when we out to reject dichotomous thinking?  On the one side, the paradigm grids sell qualitative methods to the uninitiated. On ther other hand, as you learn more about each cell the fun stuff is in between the cells and the diversity trying to break free of each cell. In the end, there is hegemony here. For an alternative rendition of a set of paradigms (press here). But there is still hegemony here.

 

 

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