Irish Educational Studies

ISSN: 0332-3315 (Print) 1747-4965 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ries20

Institutional storytelling and personal narratives:

reflecting on the ‘value’ of narrative inquiry

Jacqueline O’ Toole

To cite this article: Jacqueline O’ Toole (2018): Institutional storytelling and personal
narratives: reflecting on the ‘value’ of narrative inquiry, Irish Educational Studies, DOI:
10.1080/03323315.2018.1465839

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/03323315.2018.1465839

Published online: 26 Apr 2018.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 44

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=ries20
Irish Educational Studies, 2018
https://doi.org/10.1080/03323315.2018.1465839

Institutional storytelling and personal narratives: reflecting on the ‘value’

of narrative inquiry
Jacqueline O’ Toole *

Department of Social Sciences, Institute of Technology Sligo, Sligo, Republic of Ireland

(Received 3 April 2017; accepted 7 April 2018)

With the ‘narrative turn’, a momentum gathered in the wider social sciences that
asserted that listening to, asking for, gathering and analysing stories provided a
new impetus to researching human behaviour. The argument evolved: people are
storied beings and to generate a more in-depth understanding of people and
their experiences, researchers need to begin with their stories. But the stories
people tell are also deeply embedded in narrative frameworks and narrative
environments that make up what I conceptualise as institutional storytelling.
Arguably, institutional storytelling has a profound impact on the stories people
can and do tell. Narrative inquiry has much to offer to the analysis of
institutional and personal narratives. In this article, I will address the question of
the relevance of narrative inquiry to gather and analyse the stories that people
and institutions tell. Drawn from an empirical sociological study of women’s
narratives of their weight management experiences in the context of their
participation in weight management classes, I present a case for narrative
ethnography as a critical methodological strategy to analyse the complex
relationship between institutional and personal narratives.
Keywords: Narrative ethnography; institutional storytelling; narrative inquiry;
critical weight studies

Introduction
The act of storytelling extends temporally and socially what otherwise might be an indi-
vidual, discrete and ephemeral transaction. (Ewick and Silbey 2003, 1328)

Institutional storytelling infers that narrative work is organisationally embedded and

‘localised configurations of meaning and related narrative practices are mediated by
organisations’ so that organisational voices and preferences can be heard (Gubrium
and Holstein 2009, 174). In other words, organisations set the conditions of possibility
for narrative production. This suggests that organisations have big stories to tell which
set the narrative agenda for the smaller, individual stories that follow along (Bamberg
2012; Phoenix and Sparkes 2009). My theoretical interest in the impact of institutional
storytelling aligned neatly with my deep concern with the dominant narratives circu-
lating about weight and body size in Irish society, rendering weight management as
normative, necessary and desirable for women. Indeed, the pervasiveness of anti-
obesity and anti-fat rhetoric indicates that very few people escape its evaluative

*Corresponding author. Email: otoole.jacqueline@itsligo.ie

© 2018 Educational Studies Association of Ireland
2 J. O’ Toole

gaze (Foucault 1980; Gailey 2014). A wide-ranging body of work has demonstrated
that there exists a set of normative expectations that constitute an ideal body type
for women described as the thin, slender, youthful, fit and ‘healthy’ body (Germov
and Williams 2008), and more recently as the thin and toned body (Cairns and
Johnson 2015). Bordo (2003, 202) claims that dieting is the ‘most popular form of cor-
rection’ for women in contemporary Western societies. Harjunen (2016) maintains
that weight loss dieting has been constructed as a ‘natural’/taken-for-granted occu-
pation for women. Weight management generally is underpinned by narratives of
health and well-being, responsible citizenship, and the pathologising of those
deemed to be ‘overweight’ and ‘obese’. This article is drawn from my Ph.D. study –
Narratives of Slimming: Women and Weight Management in Irish Society – which
addressed the question of the ways in which the narratives of weight management
are implicated in women’s narratives of their weight management experiences.
In the early stages of the research, it became evident that the cacophony of stories
about weight loss and dieting was unrelenting and could not be ignored. I moved to
conceptualise weight management as a storied landscape to explore the terrains
wherein such stories and narratives are lived, told and retold. Thus, from the outset,
the research focus was explicitly on the intersection between the women’s narrative
practices (the stories they tell and how they are told, the plots and storylines) and
the local narrative environments that are shaped by and shape their narrative practices.
There are a variety of settings wherein narratives of slimming are constructed and dis-
seminated including doctor surgeries, schools, gyms, magazines, friendship groups,
hospitals, on the internet and so forth. Slimming classes emerged as one key site for
the construction and dissemination of weight management narratives. They are
popular spaces where people gather in a public setting to discuss and learn about
weight management. The premise of the classes is that sustained weight loss is best
achieved in groups. They have an explicit aim to narrate, organise and regularise
the slimming lives of those who regularly attend, establishing order, structure and
routine. Slimming classes thrive on story telling.
Taking a different approach to previous work on women and slimming, I focused
my study on narratives of slimming, women and weight management in Irish society to
explore how these play out in the lives of women, immersed in the everyday, mundane
practices of weight management. By locating the study in slimming classes, I set out to
observe first hand, the meanings attached to the bodywork that is involved in slim-
ming, and the construction of stories and narratives that circulate about women
and weight management.1 In this article, I draw from the wider study then to
present a case for the deployment of one form of narrative inquiry that of narrative
ethnography to analyse the relationship between institutional storytelling and per-
sonal narratives.
While many advocates of narrative inquiry, myself included, espouse and celebrate
the ‘narrative turn’ in the wider social sciences, I would also argue that there is an
imperative to engage in an on-going interrogation of how narrative inquiry is deployed
in social research. In so doing, questions about the ‘value’ of narrative inquiry as a rich
methodological strategy in the social sciences can be addressed. However, how does
one finally decide on the ‘value’ of any methodological strategy? Key aspects of
such an evaluation process include ontological and epistemological considerations,
justification, transparency and ethics. Despite the exponential increase in narrative
inquiry research, I would caution that claiming authority on the assessment of the
 Irish Educational Studies 3

‘value’ of narrative inquiry is problematic. After all, arguably narrative inquiry is still a
‘field in the making’ (Chase 2011). In this article, through a demonstration of the criti-
cal relevance of this approach, the ‘value’ of narrative inquiry is carefully considered
drawing from an analysis of the procedures undertaken in designing and conducting a
narrative ethnography study on narratives of women and weight management. Similar
to Smith and Sparkes (2009, 10), my aim is to ‘illuminate, but not prescribe or finalise,
what this different kind of research can be’. Framed by the question of the critical rel-
evance of narrative inquiry, the focus of the article is to promote ethnographic narra-
tive inquiry as a significant methodological strategy in the complex study of the
intersection of our environment and the stories we tell about ourselves and our experi-
ences. I critically draw from my own study as an exemplar of such an approach. As an
educationalist, I argue that a narrative ethnography serves as an innovative approach
to analyse institutional storytelling in a variety of settings including schools, class-
rooms, curricula and wider informal learning spaces. To begin, I present a brief over-
view of narrative inquiry more generally.

What is narrative inquiry?

Narrative inquiry is a particular type of qualitative inquiry and ‘what distinguishes
narrative inquiry is that it begins with the biographical aspect of C. Wright Mills’
famous trilogy – ‘biography, history and society’ (Chase 2011, 421). As a sociologist,
my theoretical interests lie in what I term ‘narrative landscapes’. I define these as the
storied terrains in which narratives and stories are crafted and told. One central idea
of narrative inquiry is that stories are collected as a means of understanding how
people construct their experiences as lived and told (Savin-Baden and Van Niekerk
2007). In other words, by framing experience as narratively generated, researchers
are drawn to stories, where stories are analysed to comprehend such experiences.
In turn, the analysis of stories generally involves a multi-layered approach with a
focus on form (how the story is told), content (what is said in the story) and
context (wherein the story is produced and told) to illustrate the dimensions of tem-
porality, sociality and place. These make up the three-dimensional narrative inquiry
space within which narratives of experience are constructed (Clandinin 2007; Clan-
dinin and Connolly 2000).
Within the social sciences narrative inquiry is conceived of as both a philosophical/
theoretical approach that orients the researcher to ‘storied lives’, and as a methodo-
logical strategy that focuses on the use of stories as data (Elliot 2005; Riessman
2008). However, tensions arise therein, as there is some disagreement within the
broad field of narrative inquiry about an agreed set of ontological and epistemological
underpinnings (Caine, Estefan, and Clandinin 2013; Phoenix, Smith, and Sparkes
2010). Such tensions have not entirely been resolved and indeed its location in a
number of disciplines ensures the proponents of narrative inquiry have not always pre-
sented an unequivocal operationalisation of narrative inquiry (Andrews, Squire, and
Tamboukou 2013). Notwithstanding the continuing discussions in this regard, it is
best practice to make visible one’s ontological and epistemological commitments
(Caine, Estefan, and Clandinin 2013). As such, my use of narrative inquiry is informed
ontologically by the critique of positivism that is embedded within social construction-
ism and poststructuralism, and epistemologically by the pursuit of situated knowl-
edge, embedded within feminism (Abu Bakr 2014; Harding 2012).
4 J. O’ Toole

Emplotment is central to understanding narratives. In this sense, narratives are

generally understood to have some form of chronology. Sequencing of events is not
random due to the notion of a plot. A plot creates a meaningful connection
between these events, so prior events seem to lead inevitably towards later ones. The
plot is often constructed around a particular point or meaning that the narrator
wishes to convey to the audience (Griffin and May 2012). A broadly interpretive
approach to uncovering and analysing emplotment is adopted by most narrative
researchers, where language is understood as not giving direct access to what ‘really’
happened or to underlying psychological motives. Rather language is used to do
things. Thus how experiences are reconstructed and interpreted once they have
occurred is of central import.
Narratives are social and relational and infused with power relations. In this sense,
narratives and stories have capacity to accomplish things in that they can be strategic,
functional and purposeful (Griffin and May 2012). They can convey experiences, per-
sonal identities, preferred stories, justifications and explanations. Narratives can also
mobilise people to collective actions. Narrative inquiry engages in some depth with
temporality and allows narrators to come forward as characters in their own right
(Elliot 2005). Usually, events and experiences must be told or ordered in a temporal
fashion so that questions of how something happened, and why, can be addressed
(Maines 2006). This points to the necessity of thoroughly attending to the context
of narrative construction.

The context of narrative production

The stories people tell about their lives are never simply personal but are told in his-
torically specific times and settings. This suggests that stories and narratives are social
acts that emanate from cultural repertoires that are currently in circulation, and that
govern how story elements link together and can be told in the first place (Maynes,
Pierce, and Laslett 2008) and set limits on the ‘tellability’ of certain stories (Frank
1995; Smith and Sparkes 2009). Narratives are conveyed in specific social and cultural
contexts and are embedded in public narratives (Somers 1994) and master narratives
(Frank 2010). They tend to reside in the taken-for-granted background assumptions of
everyday life, resting in the realm of common sense where certain matters are depicted
as imply being just the way things are. The cultural conventions of telling, the motiv-
ations of the teller, the audience and the social context all influence the production of
narrative (Bruner 1984; Chase 2011; Gubrium and Holstein 2009). Therefore, as
knowledge is situated, the social, political, cultural and personal contexts of narrative
construction come into focus. This, in turn, has implications for the knowledge claims
that are made. People construct stories about experiences that are consistent with
notions of situated knowledge. In other words, how a narrative is told will depend cru-
cially on the cultural resources available. According to Elliot (2005), there are many
different established narrative forms sedimented at different depths within a culture,
to which individuals can turn in order to make sense of their own experiences and com-
municate that to others. Arguably, it is the interplay between these existing cultural dis-
courses or public narratives and the production of new individual/ontological
narratives that makes the idea of narrative construction so compelling within
sociology.
 Irish Educational Studies 5

My study on women and weight management is located within this body of

research that foregrounds the context of narrative production where the scrutiny of cir-
cumstances, their actors and actions in the process of formulating and communicating
accounts is centre-staged. In honing my approach, I drew particularly from Gubrium
and Holstein’s (2008, 2009) theorising of narrative contexts and narrative production.
They proffer that there are three levels underpinning narrative production – narrative
frameworks, narrative environments and narrative practices – and further, that there is
a complex reflexive interplay between these three levels. Narrative frameworks may be
restrictive and managed and maintained in different ways. In this sense, Gubrium and
Holstein (2009) argue that stories do not exist in isolation rather they circulate in nar-
rative environments. Narrative environments can enhance or inhibit the telling of par-
ticular stories. Chase (2011) states that narrative environments provide myriad
circumstances and resources that condition but do not determine the stories that
people tell and do not tell. Narrative environments can include such diverse entities
as intimate relationships, local culture, occupations and organisations (Chase 2011,
123). Narrative practices refer to the mechanics of how stories are activated and
ordered – how storytellers create and develop meaning through interaction with
each other; how speakers struggle with each other or struggle for control over
narrate meanings; how an otherwise chaotic narrative is made meaningful (Chase
2011; Hlavka, Wheelock, and Crossyleon 2015). The coherence of a story emerges
through narrative linkages to the ways in which experience is linked to other items:
linkage creates a context for understanding (Gubrium and Holstein 2009).

Unfolding a narrative ethnography

Listening for stories
Where a narrative ethnography differs from other forms of ethnography is in its expli-
cit seeking and listening out for stories and storytelling. My first decision appeared
relatively straightforward: to immerse myself within slimming classes for an extended
period to observe the construction and dissemination of the stories therein. Negotiat-
ing access was challenging and a more detailed account of this process is explained in
O’ Toole (2010, 2016).2 The first stage of the data collection process involved weekly
observations over a 1-year period in four slimming classes in the North West of
Ireland.
My initial observations focused on the rhythms, routines and layout of the classes.
Rhythms and routines are important aspects of everyday life that make social life poss-
ible. They provided comfort and stability and more importantly, were fundamental to
the generation of plausible weight loss narratives. The rhythm and routine of the slim-
ming classes was embedded in the structured operation of the weekly classes. A table
was placed at the top of the room, adorned with table cloths, Slim Ireland posters with
various slogans, signing in booklets, a cash box, food monitoring forms and sometimes
food items. The weighing scales were positioned to the right of the table and the actual
reading dial is placed on the table. The person who was being weighed cannot see the
dial clearly unless she tilted her head in particular ways. At every single class I
attended, members never looked directly at the dial save some swift sideways
glances. Instead, they generally waited until the leader revealed their weight status
to them. During the early stages of observations, I listened and watched, took brief
6 J. O’ Toole

notes and wrote these out in more detail after class and then reviewed these the next
day. I moved between paying attention to one or two members to observe what they
were doing in each class to trying to take in as much as I could of the many scenes
that were playing out. Many of the women eventually came to recognise me which
enabled me to engage them in conversations or, what have been described as, ethno-
graphic interviews (Spradley 1979). These usually took the form of them telling me
a story about their weight issues from that week.

Narrative interviews
The process of sampling and recruiting women to interview began from the very first
class I attended where I informed members that I would be conducting interviews at
some later stage. Over the course of the observations, I met hundreds of women. I
made notes from the many brief conversations I had with these women. A multi-
stage purposeful sampling process generated a final sample of 11 women: 9 women
class members and 2 class leaders. All identified as White and Irish, all were from
rural Ireland, and all were mothers. 10 of the women emanated from rural lower
class. They ranged in age from 27 to 67 and all had been engaged in slimming practices
for a considerable amount of time. I implemented a double interview approach. The
interviews all lasted between 1 and 2 hours and were taped using a Digital Voice
Recorder.
Interview context is central to the kinds of stories told and the stories collected
(Mishler 1986; Rubin and Rubin 2012). Context includes the conduct of the inter-
views, interview style and the positionality of the interviewer vis-à-vis the participant.
An understanding of context is premised on the assertion that stories are told in par-
ticular ways for particular audiences. The interviews took place in a variety of settings
of the women’s choosing. These included the women’s own homes, hotel cafés, restau-
rants and bars. The public locations impacted on the interviews as women would
whisper or lower their voice if they felt others were within earshot. Interviewing in
the home certainly added another layer of insight into their situations as I met
family members, was shown photographs and was brought into kitchens and sitting
rooms where there are many references to food.
There was a 4- to 6-week gap between interviews 1 and 2 to allow me to engage in
preliminary analysis of the data and reflect on the first interview. The first interview
gave me an insight into the women’s stories about how issues of bodies and weight
fit in to their everyday lives. Although tailored to each individual woman, the
second interview was designed as semi-structured to prompt further discussion
around key themes from the first interview and more generally from the research.
Between the two interviews, I read and summarised each interview and generated a
preliminary thematic schema which highlighted themes that seemed important
about form, content and context. This took time but was very useful for analysis
and for my stated concern at the outset of involving the women in the analysis of
their stories. Three of the women brought photographs with them to the second inter-
view. In those cases, we actually began the second interview by discussing these. Very
interesting stories emerged, often reflecting their difficulties in looking at themselves in
photographs.
I gave each woman the interview transcript and my summary notes and invited
questions/comments/reflections. Most of the women could not believe that their
 Irish Educational Studies 7

words had generated so many pages. Only one woman sought to change the script. The
rest of the women asked me to summarise what they had said. I was anxious at this
juncture that I was fixing their narrative, an on-going concern in narrative inquiry.
Indeed, during interview 2, three of the women wondered about what they were
telling me about their lives and what I could possibly do with this information. This
was and is a significant moment in the study that has implications for all narrative
researchers: what stories and narratives are we telling when we tell of the lives of
people who particulate in our research? And, perhaps, more importantly, whose
stories are we telling when we conduct and present the narrative analysis? Narrative
inquiry has to deal with different types of, sometimes ambiguous, representations of
talk, text, interaction and interpretation.

Narrative analysis: constructing plots and storylines

Institutional storytelling
To devise a strategy for analysis and to unpack the complexities of representation (Ely
2007; Larsson and Sjöblom 2010), I returned to the intent of this study. My empirical
focus was on the institutionally sanctioned ways of understanding and storying slim-
ming. Analytically the focus is on an ethnographic understanding of local contexts and
interactional circumstances, with attention also being paid to the content and form of
the stories collected. Coffey and Atkinson (1996) caution qualitative researchers to
consider different analytic strategies to explore different facets of the data. This was
a useful starting point for me to think about the form the analysis would take.
In a narrative ethnography, where the data corpus is vast (I had a significant
amount of data), choices must be made to both manage the data, and, more impor-
tantly, to elicit analytically significant interpretations. Interested in the analysis of
the construction of narratives-in-context requires a methodological commitment to
the integration of the biographical and contextual and to the ‘hows’ and ‘whats’ of
storytelling. Lieblich, Tuval-Masiach, and Zilber (1998) is a useful model of narrative
analysis as it is designed to analyse the form, content and the context of narrative pro-
duction. Lieblich, Tuval-Masiach, and Zilber (1998, 13) explain that the variety of
approaches to narrative analysis can be broadly captured along two axes that generate
a typology of analyses: holistic–categorical and form–content. In turn, these generate
a matrix of four cells, consisting of four modes of reading a narrative: holistic–form,
holistic–content, categorical–form and categorical–content.
A holistic focus seeks to preserve the narrative in its entirety, appreciate it as a com-
plete entity and understand sections of the text in the context of other parts of the
analysis. A categorical analysis examines short sections of text and places them into
categories for analysis (Elliot 2005, 38). In terms of the form–content axis, narrative
analysis can either hone in on the structure of the plot, the genre of the narrative
and use of metaphors [form], or have an explicit focus on what happened and why,
similar in ways to thematic narrative analysis (Riessman 2008). Lieblich, Tuval-
Masiach, and Zilber (1998) outline a strategy for each approach illustrating the over-
laps between them. Interested in exploring the plot-lines and structure of the story of
slimming presented in both the slimming classes (and later, in the women’s personal
narratives), I combined analytic approaches to analyse different parts of the data
corpus. This enabled comprehension of how slimmer identities are constructed
8 J. O’ Toole

within the classes and how each woman constructs her evolving weight management
experiences.
One happenstance that emerged as being of some significance during the obser-
vations related to the motivational talks supplied by Slim Ireland and delivered by
the class leaders during each class. Ethnographic research generally keeps open and
welcomes the possibility of unexpected turns. Narrative ethnography is no different.
One of the class leaders presented me with 22 hard copies of the talks she was given
by Slim Ireland and a further 10 that she had delivered before I had joined the
classes. They proved fascinating. Written texts are central to institutional storytelling.
The talks themselves became part of the overall story presented in this study.3
In a preliminary holistic–form analysis of the motivational talks, storylines, tem-
porality and characters featured strongly and revealed much about the workings of
the Slim Ireland narrative and the narrative frames and practices of storytelling associ-
ated with slimming. What was revealed was a narrow and defined set of storylines with
specific plots. These were produced in the talks and delivered weekly by the leaders (O’
Toole 2010). Dieting narratives are dominated by the storyline/character of the ‘suc-
cessful slimmer’, her journey into and through weight loss and the emergence of the
‘new me’ (O’ Toole 2010). As the analysis progressed, I interrogated all the ethno-
graphic data using a holistic–form approach. I began by examining the detail of my
observation field notes, post-observation write-ups, the texts of the hard copy motiva-
tional talks and the performance of these talks. I initially developed what Lieblich,
Tuval-Masiach, and Zilber (1998) term a ‘global impression’ and a sketch of the pro-
gression of the plot. I read and re-read the field notes several times in an attempt to
both understand and visualise the emerging story. A two-stage analysis was deployed.
First, I identified a thematic focus for the development of the plot. Content is impor-
tant here, insofar as it provides raw material for the structure. Certain themes immedi-
ately jumped out, including confessing, fat phobia, mind/body split and self-
transformation.
The second phase identified the dynamics of the plot inferred from specific forms
of speech (Lieblich, Tuval-Masiach, and Zilber 1998). I focused on the use of recurring
specific phrases and the use of terms that expressed the structural component of the
narrative, including epiphanies [the light switch turning on], progress/regress [the
scales don’t lie] and danger [Easter Eggs: Easter Legs].
What emerged was that a quest narrative template dominated the weight loss nar-
rative constructed in the slimming classes. Invoked was the idea that something con-
crete can be gained from pursuing the quest: the slim and thin body and a morally
presentable self, made visible through the slim(mer) body. The quest for a ‘better
body’ was constituted in the classes through the use of a narrative arc, a device
deployed to create a meaningful and understandable story for the class members.
Five dominant thematic narratives comprised the narrative arc constructed by Slim
Ireland (Figure 1).
Although slimming was presented as having a linear, progressive temporality,
paradoxically, the narrative arc was cyclical: there was an implicit understanding
that women who engage in weight loss will eventually regain weight and return to
start the weight loss journey again. In other words, built into the quest was the under-
standing that failure was ever-present. Each element within the arc played a role in the
production of the dominant narrative. In addition, the quest narrative was infused
 Irish Educational Studies 9

Figure 1. Narrative arc: slimming as quest for a better body.

with elements of risk and self-transformation narratives. Excerpts from field notes
illustrate the quest, the possibilities for self-transformation and the risks involved:

Slim people are slim because they take RESPONSIBILITY for what they eat and how
they live. They don’t need to be told what to do all the time. They decide for themselves
how to eat and exercise. You will become slim once you decide to take responsibility for
your decisions … Successful people are also totally FOCUSED … Successful people
also take CONTROL … You have the power to control your weight not the other way
around. By taking more control of your eating you take more control of your life. [Moti-
vational talk 36/08]

One way to show control is to deliberately leave food on the plate. That shows control.
And that’s the difference between us and them. They can eat what they like but mainly
it’s because they are in much more control than us … We must do this as the weeks
leading up to Christmas can be more dangerous than Christmas itself. [Field work
notes, Class 3]

The pursuit of the quest was rendered as a body-project ultimately cast as a positive
intervention in the care of the self (Gill, Henwood, and McLean 2005). Embedded in
the quest was a hegemonic identity, the ‘slimmer identity’. Thus:

Another woman who weighs in is told by Bernie [leader] to have a clean slate next week as
she has put loads of weight on. This woman has found it difficult to lose weight and tells
Bernie that she has a lot going on in her life. Bernie sighs and says ‘so be it. We all have all
lot going on but what do we want from this class, to get bigger? I don’t think so’. The
woman tries to explain that she mostly sticks to the plans but it is hard to be ‘good all
the time’. Bernie tells her to at least ‘be good some of the time’. The woman returns to
her seat but seems despondent. [Field work notes, Class 3]

Slimming was narrated as being cyclical, as being necessary and oft-times as being life-
long. Certainly, stories can shift meaning in the telling of them. For example, different
10 J. O’ Toole

and indeed new characters were introduced in different weeks during the classes. But
the overall plot and point of the story remained constant. In other words, Slim Ireland
pursued the same storyline every single week.

Personal narratives
The next stage of the analysis subjected the women’s interview texts to both a categ-
orical–content analysis and a holistic–form analysis. Here, I was explicitly interested
in combining an analysis of the ‘whats’ and the ‘hows’ of storytelling. The holistic–
form analysis proceeded in a similar fashion to the analysis of the observation notes
and motivational talks, in that I initially developed a global impression of each
woman’s story.4 In addition, I examined if the individual plot-lines converged or
not, across the cases and in relation to the slimming class.
A categorical–content analysis is similar to traditional content analysis and the-
matic analysis, as categories of the studied topic are defined and separate utterances
of the text are extracted, classified, coded and gathered into these categories (Lieblich,
Tuval-Masiach, and Zilber 1998). However, cognisant of the criticisms of this
approach in that it has the potential to fracture data and generate a detached analysis
of the whole experience of participants, I sought to refrain from isolating the selected
data from the personal contexts from whence they emanated. The aim was to keep the
story intact to preserve sequences rather than thematically coding individual seg-
ments.5 This is also termed a case-cantered approach. I kept my focus on the sequen-
cing of a priori and emerging themes paying particular attention to time and place of
narration. This was achieved through writing analytical memos about each interview
and each case [both interviews]. I reflected on the particularities of each of the women,
using the same categories and core themes that were emerging through the analysis.
This enabled me to examine the thematic similarities and differences across the
narratives.
Mine was a cyclic process of analysis necessitating ongoing reflection on the cat-
egories, their connections and the new themes that emerged. The whole process devel-
oped general knowledge about the core themes that make up the content of the stories
collected during the interviews, to identify narrative segments and categories within its
context (Smith and Sparkes 2002). Core themes included: health, struggle, routine,
motherhood, food and eating, and fat phobia. The analysis of the interviews was
initially individual, thematic and temporal, examining if, how and when the women
drew on the dominant quest/risk/transformation narratives to narrate their initial
intentions to lose weight and later practices of slimming. These individual stories
were then compared and patterns were identified.
Riessman (2008, 21) reminds us that the researcher does not find narratives as such
but participates in their creation. My analysis revealed that women have available to
them a narrow range of possible storylines and find it difficult to narrate outside of
the narratives generated in the slimming classes. I constructed two story type exem-
plars in the women’s narratives, those of ‘episodic commitment’ and ‘ambivalent par-
ticipation’. These uncovered a more complex account of the meanings of the mundane
practices of weight management for women than that generated within the slimming
class. Narratives are relational and, arguably, always partial, subject to reinterpreta-
tion. This renders narrative analysis an ethical undertaking. The two story types
were structured to engender a coherence. But narratives do not always cohere. As I
pushed towards my emerging understanding of the normative project that
 Irish Educational Studies 11

characterises many weight loss programmes, I maintained a key awareness of the dis-
ruption and discontinuities that arose in trying to neatly categorise the women’s tell-
ings to produce unifying story types.
The story types are not mutually exclusive as most of the women who engaged in
weight loss programmes on a cyclical basis drew from both story types in their narra-
tives. While each of the women’s narratives varied in terms of thematic content, the
identification of an over-arching plot revealed commonalities across the women’s nar-
ratives and the narrative resources [language, phrases, examples] being drawn on to
construct their narratives. The temporal dimension of slimming was central to an
understanding of both story types and to the ways in which women give meaning to
their experiences. Heyes (2006) demonstrates that women’s participation and immer-
sion in a weight loss programme must acknowledge the multiple temporalities of
dieting and the capabilities that dieting can promote. In other words, there are
many temporalities involved at once in dieting (Coleman 2010). The two story types
revealed that the linear temporality embedded in the quest narrative, as constituted
by Slim Ireland, was disrupted in the personal narratives of the women. This gave
rise to a questioning of the ‘successful slimmer’ whereby the struggles involved to
become a successful slimmer were challenged. Past ‘failures’ were a constant reminder
of the struggle involved in trying to lose and maintain weight. In turn, this generated a
pushing back against the quest narrative. While bodily transformation was a key
motivation for weight loss, there was keen recognition of the many uncertainties
and doubts attached to the pathway to weight loss.
An excerpt from Siobhán’s narrative illustrates the ‘episodic commitment’storyline:

I don’t really know I suppose, I’ve been on and off it so long, its, I suppose it’s just to keep
going … I fell off the wagon [laughs] so many times doing it too, but it’s just to get up and
do it again and do it for yourself because if you’re doing it for anyone else or to be like
anyone else you won’t do it, it’s you know all for yourself, your doing and just if you
never change size, it’s just for your own, your well-being and your own frame of mind.

In this extract, Siobhán drew together a number of different themes to frame her nar-
rative: an allusion to an addiction narrative (been on and off it so long, fell off the
wagon); an individualism narrative, emphasising fortitude (get up and do it again;
it’s you know all for yourself … your own well-being, your own frame of mind); and res-
ignation (I suppose it’s just to keep going). These offered Siobhán the opportunity to
sum up her own story and provided insight into how she constructed her ongoing com-
mitment to weight loss. She fully expected to remain in this cyclical pattern of weight
loss – maintenance – weight gain – practicing weight management – weight loss.
An extract from Niamh’s narrative illustrated the ‘ambivalent participation’ story
type. She had spent upwards of 15 years engaged in various weight loss practices
including the current weight loss programme. This generated some despair as she
reflected on the cyclical nature of weight management:

It [watching weight] is always there and it’s a constant cycle. And you know the awful
thing is, there’s such failure involved, you know every time. Like every time you lose it,
with me anyway, you know. Every time I lose it I put it back on.

Niamh cried when she spoke these words. We sat in silence until she was ready to begin
again.
12 J. O’ Toole

Lines of discontinuity and disruption to the dominant weight loss narrative were
also evident in the women’s personal narratives. As weight management developed
as an important body-project over time in their everyday lives, it necessitated a reflexive
working on their bodies both within and outside the slimming classes (Gill, Henwood,
and McLean 2005; Gimlin 2006; Shilling 2012). In this way, their involvement in
weight loss was a continual process of knowing and learning about the changes in
their bodies, relationships to food and the capabilities of their bodies. There were
some pleasures to be gained from immersing themselves in what they perceived to
be disciplined eating and exercising regimes. Although the women’s narratives revealed
how they subjected themselves to the intense surveillance of normalising practices on
the female body which could indicate a complicity in their own oppression (Spivak
1995), they also revealed moments of subversion and critical reflection on these nor-
mative practices.
Slimming classes generated limited narrative resources for the women to re-story
slimming as anything other than being a life-long struggle and an imperative for
them. Certainly, in telling aspects of the Slim Ireland narrative, the women verified
that they acquired an appropriate understanding of the necessity and trajectory of
weight management. Indeed, the tellability of certain stories in the slimming class rele-
gated more complex stories to the background. However, the findings also demon-
strated that women did not simply internalise and translate the Slim Ireland
narrative into their everyday narratives. In the context of the interviews, more
complex and difficult stories were told. These included stories of failure, of body
shame and of endless difficult relationships with food.

Concluding comments
A sociology of stories should be … more interested in inspecting the social role of stories:
the ways they are produced, the ways they are read, the work they perform in the wider
social order, how they change, and their role in the political process. (Plummer 1995, 19)

The integrity of all research must be grounded in the rigour and quality of the research
process. In this article, I outlined the contours of a narrative ethnography to elucidate
the critical relevance of narrative inquiry. I proffer that a narrative ethnography is an
excellent strategy to excavate institutional storytelling and the conditions of possibility
that frame the telling of stories and narratives. It serves to identify and deconstruct the
narrative resources available to people to give meaning to and narrate their personal
experiences. Such a strategy can also reveal lines of discontinuity and discordance
between the preferred stories constituted within particular narrative environments
and the personal narratives of those who inhabit such environments. It is in these
spaces that we might more fully realise the ‘value’ of narrative inquiry. Gailey
(2014) in her study of fat women sensitively observes that fat women must navigate
a liminal space as they seek to account for/hide their size in a fat phobic world.
Thus fat women become at once and at the same time, hyper visible and hyper invis-
ible. At some remove, reflecting on the long hours spent bearing witness to women’s
difficult stories of being visible and invisible and their struggles to accept and
account for themselves, the necessity of finding a methodological strategy to ‘get at’
both institutional storytelling and personal narratives, was most certainly realised
within narrative inquiry.
 Irish Educational Studies 13

Notes
1. The pseudonym of the slimming organisation wherein I conducted my study is Slim Ireland.
Data gathering involved 1 year of observation in four weight management classes in the
North West of Ireland, 11 double narrative interviews with women in the classes and a nar-
rative analysis of 32 texts of motivational talks presented in the classes.
2. Full ethical approval was received from the Research Ethics Committee in the National Uni-
versity of Ireland, Galway, prior to contacting any commercial weight loss organisation. Slim
Ireland received all the necessary participation information and consent documentation and
was fully appraised of the nature of the research process before and during the observation
period.
3. I also gathered other relevant documentation about Slim Ireland including the ‘healthy
eating’ programme it endorses, advice on exercise, its fitness DVD and recipe book,
weight loss stickers, the class leader manual, class advertisements and newspaper articles. I
monitored its website regularly, received its online newsletter and started following four of
its leaders on twitter.
4. I posed the following questions to guide my analysis. What was the plot-line within each
woman’s narrative? Who were the key characters in each narrative? Were there turning
points and epiphanies narrated? What settings were identified?
5. Riessman (2008) cautions that determining the boundaries of stories can be difficult and
highly interpretative.

Notes on contributor
Jacqueline O’ Toole is a Lecturer in Social Research in the Institute of Technology Sligo. Her
main interests are qualitative methodology; feminist theory; critical weight studies; and
gender and social care.

ORCID
Jacqueline O’ Toole http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0362-8744

References
Abu Bakr, S. W. 2014. “A Hijab Proper: The Veil Through Feminist Narrative Inquiry.” Visual
Culture and Gender 9: 7–17.
Andrews, M., C. Squire, and M. Tamboukou, eds. 2013. Doing Narrative Research. 2nd ed.
London: Sage.
Bamberg, M. 2012. “Why Narrative?” Narrative Inquiry 22 (1): 202–210.
Bordo, S. 2003. Unbearable Weight: 10th Anniversary Edition. Berkeley: University of California.
Bruner, J. 1984. “Life as Narrative.” Social Research 71 (3): 700.
Caine, V., A. Estefan, and D. J. Clandinin. 2013. “A Return to Methodological Commitment:
Reflections on Narrative Inquiry.” Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 57 (6):
574–586.
Cairns, K., and J. Johnson. 2015. Food and Femininity. London: Bloomsbury.
Chase, S. 2011. “Narrative Inquiry: Still a Field in the Making.” In The SAGE Handbook of
Qualitative Research, edited by N. K. Denzin, and Y. S. Lincoln. 4th ed., 421–434. Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage.
Clandinin, D. J., ed. 2007. Handbook of Narrative Inquiry: Mapping a Methodology. Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage.
Clandinin, D. J., and F. M. Connolly. 2000. Narrative Inquiry: Experience and Story in
Qualitative Research. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Coffey, A., and P. Atkinson. 1996. Making Sense of Qualitative Data. London: Sage.
Coleman, R. 2010. “Dieting Temporalities: Interaction, Agency and the Measure of Online
Weight Watching.” Time and Society 19 (2): 265–285.
14 J. O’ Toole

Elliot, J. 2005. Using Narrative in Social Research: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches.
London: Sage.
Ely, M. 2007. “In-Forming re-Presentations.” In Handbook of Narrative Inquiry: Mapping a
Methodology, edited by D. J. Clandinin, 567–598. London: Sage.
Ewick, P., and S. Silbey. 2003. “‘Narrating Social Structure: Stories of Resistance to Legal
Authority’.” AJS 108 (6): 1328–1372.
Foucault, M. 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977.
London: Vintage Books.
Frank, A. W. 1995. The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness and Ethics. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Frank, A. 2010. Letting Stories Breathe. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Gailey, J. 2014. The Hyper(In)Visible Fat Woman. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Germov, J., and L. Williams. 2008. A Sociology of Food and Nutrition: The Social Appetite.
Australia: Oxford University Press.
Gill, R., K. Henwood, and C. McLean. 2005. “Body Projects and the Regulation of Normative
Masculinity.” Body & Society 11 (1): 37–62.
Gimlin, D. 2006. “The Absent Body Project: Cosmetic Surgery as a Response to Bodily Dys-
Appearance.” Sociology 40 (4): 699–716.
Griffin, A., and V. May. 2012. “Narrative Analysis and Interpretative Phenomenological
Analysis.” In Researching Society and Culture, edited by C. Seale. 3rd ed., 441–458.
London: Sage.
Gubrium, J. F., and J. A. Holstein. 2008. “Narrative Ethnography.” In Handbook of Emergent
Methods, edited by S. Hesse-Biber, and P. Leavy, 241–264. New York: The Guilford Press.
Gubrium, J. F., and J. A. Holstein. 2009. Analysing Narrative Reality. Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage.
Harding, S. 2012. “Feminist Standpoints.” In Handbook of Feminist Research: Theory and
Praxis, edited by S. Hesse-Biber, 46–64. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Harjunen, H. 2016. Neo Liberal Bodies and the Gendered fat Body. London: Routledge.
Heyes, C. J. 2006. “Foucault Goes to Weight-Watchers.” Hypatia 21 (2): 126–149.
Hlavka, H., D. Wheelock, and J. Crossyleon. 2015. “Narratives of Commitment: Looking for
Work with a Criminal Record.” The Sociological Quarterly 56: 213–236.
Larsson, S., and Y. Sjöblom. 2010. “Perspectives on Narrative Methods in Social Work
Research.” International Journal of Social Welfare 19: 272–280.
Lieblich, A., R. Tuval-Masiach, and T. Zilber. 1998. Narrative Research: Reading, Analysis and
Interpretation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Maines, D. 2006. “Narratives and Accounts.” In Sociology: The Key Concepts, edited by J.
Scott, 113–117. London: Routledge.
Maynes, M. J., J. Pierce, and B. Laslett. 2008. Telling Stories: The Use of Personal Narratives in
the Social Sciences and History. Cornell: Cornell University Press.
Mishler, E. 1986. Researching Interviewing: Context and Narrative. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
O’ Toole, J. 2010. “‘Are You a Danger to Yourself ?” Motivational Talks in Group Slimming
Classes.” In Ireland of the Illusions, edited by P. Share, and M. Corcoran, 253–270.
Dublin: IPA.
O’ Toole, J. 2016. Narratives of slimming: Women and weight management in Irish society.
Galway: NUIG, unpublished Ph.D.
Phoenix, C., B. Smith, and A. Sparkes. 2010. “Narrative Analysis in Ageing Studies: A
Typology for Consideration.” Journal of Ageing Studies 24: 1–11.
Phoenix, C., and A. Sparkes. 2009. “Being Fred: Big Stories, Small Stories and the
Accomplishment of a Positive Ageing Identity.” Qualitative Research 9 (2): 219–236.
Plummer, K. 1995. Telling Sexual Stories: Power, Change and Social Worlds. London:
Routledge.
Riessman, C. K. 2008. Narrative Methods for the Human Sciences. London: Sage.
Rubin, H. J., and K. S. Rubin. 2012. Qualitative Interviewing. 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Savin-Baden, M., and L. Van Niekerk. 2007. “‘Narrative Inquiry: Theory and Practices’.”
Journal of Geography in Higher Education 31 (3): 459–472.
Shilling, C. 2012. The Body and Social Theory. 3rd ed. London: Sage.
 Irish Educational Studies 15

Smith, B., and A. Sparkes. 2002. “Men, Sport, Spinal Cord Injury, and the Construction of
Coherence: Narrative Practice in Action.” Qualitative Research 2 (2): 143–171.
Smith, B., and A. Sparkes. 2009. “Narrative Inquiry in Sport and Exercise Psychology’: What
Can It Mean Why Might We Do It?” Psychology of Sport and Exercise 10: 1–11.
Somers, M. 1994. “The Narrative Constitution of Identity: A Relational and Network
Approach.” Theory & Society 23: 605–649.
Spivak, G. 1995. “Can the Sub-Altern Speak?” In The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, edited by B.
Ashcroft, 4–28. London: Routledge.
Spradley, J. P. 1979. The Ethnographic Interview. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.