11 - Narrative as method
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2021
Summary
In order to get to narrative as method — that is to say, how to use the story-form as a path of discovery, and as a way of accounting for or describing what was found — we need to draw a contrast between different kinds of stories.
When people ask me – as they often do – how it is that I can tell the best stories of anybody in the Transvaal (Oom Schalk Lourens said), then I explain to them that I just learn through observing the way that the world has with men and women. When I say this they nod their heads wisely, and say that they understand, and I nod my head wisely also, and that seems to satisfy them. But the thing I say to them is a lie, of course.
For it is not the story that counts. What matters is the way you tell it. The most important thing is to know just at what moment you must knock out your pipe on your veldskoen, and at what stage of the story you must start talking about the School Committee at Drogevlei. Another necessary thing is to know what part of the story to leave out. And you can never learn these things (McKenzie 2000: 37).
Herman Charles Bosman's story about story-telling illustrates where the paths diverge between telling a ‘good story’ and using stories for reflective public administration. For a start, presentation cannot take the whole burden of what a story conveys; furthermore, adding irrelevant bits for colour and leaving data out for effect might border on deception when it comes to using stories for making knowledge; and lastly, it has to be possible to learn (or teach) what a certain method is about, if knowledge is to be possible at all.
This does not mean that Oom Schalk is not perfectly correct about the kind of stories he tells! Also, we ought not to neglect to note that he too talks about ‘emplotment’ or the art of composition as we will encounter below in the work of Ricoeur (1984; 1985; 1988).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Reflective Public AdministrationContext, Knowledge and Methods, pp. 195 - 206Publisher: University of South AfricaPrint publication year: 2015