Based on life history data, this article explores the manner in which coherence is constructed in the narratives told by two men who have acquired a spinal cord injury through playing sport. Drawing on the principles advocated by Gubrium and Holstein, and Holstein and Gubrium, along with a number of analytic concepts provided by others (e.g. Frank, Gerschick and Miller, Leder, van Manen and Yoshida), we illustrate how various narrative practices inform this process and how they are framed by both the local and cultural conventions of telling. It is suggested that coherence is not an inherent feature of narratives but is both artfully crafted in the telling and drawn from the available meanings, structures and linkages that comprise stories.
Becker, G. (1997) Disrupted Lives. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
2.
Charmaz, K. (1987) ‘Struggling for a Self: Identity Levels of the Chronically Ill’, in J. Roth and P. Conrad (eds) Research in the Sociology of Health Care: A Research Manual, Vol. 6, pp. 283-321. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
3.
Charmaz, K. (2000) ‘Grounded Theory: Objectivist and Constructivist Methods’, in N. Denzin and Y. Lincoln (eds) Handbook of Qualitative Research, pp. 509-535. London: Sage.
4.
Charmaz, K. (2002) ‘Qualitative Interviewing and Grounded Theory Analysis’, in J. Gubrium and J. Holstein (eds) Handbook of Interview Research, pp. 675-694. London: Sage.
5.
Coffey, A. and Atkinson, P. (1996) Making Sense of Qualitative Data. London: Sage.
6.
Connell, R. (1995) Masculinities. Cambridge: Polity Press.
7.
Cortazzi, M. (1993) Narrative Analysis. London: Falmer Press.
8.
Crossley, M. (2000) Introducing Narrative Psychology: Self, Trauma and the Construction of Meaning. Buckingham: Open University Press.
9.
Eakin, P. (1999) How Our Lives Become Stories: Making Selves. London: Cornell University Press.
10.
Faircloth, C. (1999) ‘Revisiting Thematisation in the Narrative Study of Epilepsy’, Sociology of Health and Illness21(2): 209-227.
11.
Frank, A. (1991) ‘For a Sociology of the Body: An Analytical Review’, in M. Featherstone, M. Hepworth and B. Turner (eds) The Body, pp. 36-102. London: Sage.
12.
Frank, A. (1995) The Wounded Storyteller. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
13.
Gergen, K. (1999) An Invitation to Social Construction. London: Sage.
14.
Gerschick, T. and Miller, A. (1995) ‘Coming to Terms: Masculinity and Physical Disability’, in D. Sabo and D. Gordon (eds) Men’s Health and Illness, pp.183-204. London: Sage.
15.
Gubrium, J. and Holstein, J. (1997) The New Language of Qualitative Method. New York: Oxford University Press.
16.
Gubrium, J. and Holstein, J. (1998a) ‘Narrative Practice and the Coherence of Personal Stories’, Sociological Quarterly39(1): 163-187.
17.
Gubrium, J. and Holstein, J. (1998b) ‘Standing Our Middle Ground’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography27(3): 416-421.
18.
Gubrium, J. and Holstein, J. (2000) ‘Analysing Interpretive Practice’, in N. Denzin and Y. Lincoln (eds) Handbook of Qualitative Research, pp. 487-508. London: Sage.
19.
Harvey, M., Mishler, E., Koenen, K. and Harney, P. (2000) ‘In the Aftermath of Sexual Abuse: Making and Remaking Meaning in Narratives of Trauma and Recovery’, Narrative Inquiry10(2): 291-311.
20.
Hermans, H. (2000) ‘The Coherence of Incoherent Narratives’, Narrative Inquiry10(1): 223-227.
21.
Holstein, J. and Gubrium, J. (2000) The Self We Live By. New York: Oxford University Press.
22.
Hughes, B. (1999) ‘The Construction of Impairment: Modernity and the Aesthetic of Oppression’, Disability and Society14(2): 155-172.
23.
Kleiber, D. and Hutchinson, S. (1999) ‘Heroic Masculinity in the Recovery from Spinal Cord Injury’, in A. Sparkes and M. Silvennoinen (eds) Talking Bodies: Men’s Narratives of the Body and Sport, pp. 135-155. SoPhi: University of Jyvaskyla Press.
24.
Leder, D. (1990) The Absent Body. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
25.
Lieblich, A., Tuval-Mashiach, R. and Zilber, T. (1998) Narrative Research: Reading, Analysis, and Interpretation. London: Sage.
26.
Linde, C. (1993) Life Stories. New York: Oxford University Press.
27.
Mathieson, C. and Barrie, C. (1998) ‘Probing the Prime Narrative: Illness, Interviewing, and Identity’, Qualitative Health Research8(5): 581-601.
28.
Mishler, E. (1986) Research Interviewing: Context and Narrative. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
29.
Mishler, E. (1995) ‘Models of Narrative Analysis: A Typology’, Journal of Narrative and Life History5: 87-123.
30.
Mishler, E. (1999) Storylines: Craft Artists’ Narratives of Identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
31.
Morse, J. (2001) ‘The Cultural Sensitivity of Grounded Theory’, Qualitative Health Research11(6): 721-722.
32.
Oliver, M. (1996) Understanding Disability: From Theory to Practice. London: Macmillan.
33.
Pamphilon, B. (1999) ‘The Zoom Model: A Dynamic Framework for the Analysis of Life Histories’, Qualitative Inquiry5(3): 393-410.
34.
Paterson, K. and Hughes, B. (1999) ‘Disability Studies and Phenomenology: The Carnal Politics of Everyday Life’, Disability and Society14(5): 597-610.
35.
Polkinghorne, D. (1995) ‘Narrative Configuration in Qualitative Analysis’, in J. Hatch and R. Wisniewski (eds) Life History and Narrative, pp. 5-24. London: Falmer Press.
36.
Riessman, C. (1993) Narrative Analysis. London: Sage.
37.
Shotter, J. (1993) Conversational Realities. London: Sage.
38.
Smith, B. (1999) ‘The Abyss: Exploring Depression though a Narrative of the Self’, Qualitative Inquiry5(2): 264-279.
39.
Sparkes, A. (1996) ‘The Fatal Flaw: A Narrative of the Fragile Body-Self’, Qualitative Inquiry2(4): 463-494.
40.
Sparkes, A. (1997) ‘Reflections on the Socially Constructed Physical Self’, in K. Fox (ed.) The Physical Self: From Motivation to Well-Being, pp. 83-110. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics Press.
41.
Sparkes, A. (1998) ‘Athletic Identity: An Achilles’ Heel to the Survival of Self’, Qualitative Health Research8(5): 644-664.
42.
Sparkes, A. (1999) ‘Exploring Body Narratives’, Sport, Education and Society4(1): 17-30.
43.
Sparkes, A. (2002) ‘Bodies, Identities, Selves: Autoethnographic Fragments and Reflections’, in J. Denison and P. Markula (eds) ‘Moving Writing’: Crafting Movement and Sport Research, pp. 51-76. New York: Peter Lang.
44.
Sparkes, A. and Silvennoinen, M. (eds) (1999) Talking Bodies: Men’s Narratives of the Body and Sport. SoPhi: University of Jyvaskyla Press.
45.
Sparkes, A. and Smith, B. (1999) ‘Disrupted Selves and Narrative Reconstructions’, in A. Sparkes and M. Silvennoinen (eds) Talking Bodies: Men’s Narratives of the Body and Sport, pp. 76-92. SoPhi: University of Jyvaskyla Press.
46.
Sparkes, A. and Smith, B. (2002) ‘Sport, Spinal Cord Injury, Embodied Masculinities and the Dilemmas of Narrative Identity’, Men and Masculinities4(3): 258-285.
47.
Swain, J. and French. S. (2000) ‘Towards an Affirmative Model of Disability’, Disability and Society15(4): 569-582.
48.
Thomas, C. (1999) ‘Narrative Identity and the Disabled Self’, in M. Corker and S. French (eds) Disability and Discourse, pp. 47-55. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
49.
van Manen, M. (1998) ‘Modalities of Body Experience in Illness and Health’, Qualitative Health Research8(1): 7-24.
50.
Yoshida, K. (1993) ‘Reshaping of Self: A Pendular Reconstruction of Self and Identity among Adults with Traumatic Spinal Cord injury’, Sociology of Health and Illness15(2): 217-245.
