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Vital Signs: Paper Session 3b
Wednesday 10 September, 11.30-1pm, Room G32
3b. Stories and narratives
'The presentation of a moral self in personal narratives' - Dr Vanessa May (Morgan Centre, University of Manchester)
This paper examines how mothers negotiate the sometimes tricky waters of presenting themselves as ‘moral’ given potential or actual breaches against social norms governing motherhood. I look particularly at the case of divorce/separation and lone motherhood in Finnish women’s written life stories. The life stories offer insights into how individuals account for their actions in situations where they face the moral dilemma of clashing ethical norms – care for self and care for children – and how individuals with a (potentially) ‘spoiled identity’ manage a moral presentation of self. The paper concludes by critically examining the consequences of using written life stories rather than face-to-face interviews as data in a study of the moral tales that individuals tell.
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Christmas Stories: Participant filmed family events – Dr Stewart Muir (Real Life Methods , University of Manchester)
Camcorders in the hands of research participants can afford a glimpse into realms of everyday life that might otherwise be difficult for the researcher to access. In the Family Backgrounds in Everyday Lives project, participants were given camcorders to record the events surrounding their family Christmas and New Year. As such, participants were asked to act as visual auto-ethnographers of occasions that blend formal celebration and the everyday; that bring together family members and entail and engender stories and narratives of what different sides or parts of families are like.
However, such footage does not provide an unmediated entry point into the film-maker’s world. Participants (both the filmmaker and the filmed) draw on different filmic and narrative genres in even the shortest of films and the resulting footage often represents an attempt by the filmmakers to tell the family story in the ‘right’ way.
