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Why is the story of romance in books, magazines, and films still aimed at women rather than at men? Even after decades of feminism, traditional ideas and messages about romantic love still hold sway and, in our \"postfeminist\" age, are more popular than ever. Increasingly, we have become a culture of romance: stories of all kinds shape the terms of love. Women, in particular, love a love story. The Glass Slipperis about the persistence of a familiar Anglo-American love story into the digital age. Comparing influential classics to their current counterparts, Susan Ostrov Weisser relates in highly amusing prose how these stories are shaped and defined by and for women, the main consumers of romantic texts. Following a trajectory that begins with Jane Austen and concludes with Internet dating sites, Weisser shows the many ways in which nineteenth-century views of women's nature and the Victorian idea of romance have survived the feminist critique of the 1970s and continue in new and more ambiguous forms in today's media, with profound implications for women. More than a book about romance in fiction and media,The Glass Slipperillustrates how traditional stories about women's sexuality, femininity, and romantic love have survived as seemingly protective elements in a more modern, feminist, sexually open society, confusing the picture for women themselves. Weisser compares diverse narratives-historical and contemporary from high literature and \"low\" genres-discussing novels by Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë, Victorian women's magazines, and D. H. Lawrence'sLady Chatterley's Lover; Disney movies; popular Harlequin romance novels; masochistic love in films; pornography and its relationship to romance; and reality TV and Internet ads as romantic stories. Ultimately, Weisser shows that the narrative versions of the Glass Slipper should be taken as seriously as the Glass Ceiling as we see how these representations of romantic love are meant to inform women's beliefs and goals. In this book, Weisser's goal is not to shatter the Glass Slipper, but to see through it.

This chapter contains sections titled: Greek Myth and the Logic of Narrative Pragmatics: Performed Narratives Myth between Fiction and Performance Further Reading

For students and novice researchers, the choice of qualitative approach and subsequent alignment among problems, research questions, data collection, and data analysis can be particularly tricky. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to provide a concise explanation of four common qualitative approaches, case study, ethnography, narrative, and phenomenology, demonstrating how each approach is linked to specific types of data collection and analysis. We first introduce a summary and key qualities of each approach. Then, using two common research contexts, we apply each approach to design a study, enabling comparisons among approaches and demonstrating the internal consistency within each approach. Given the nuance and complexity of qualitative research, this paper provides an accessible starting point from which novice researchers can begin their journey of learning about, designing, and conducting qualitative research.

Abstract The mobilization of narratives is essential in integrating people and constructing identities that help in navigating complexity, uncertainty, and conflictuality. This paper explores how comparisons are used as a discursive tool to shape narratives and bring about changes in policy and society, using the High Speed Two megaproject in the UK as a case study. We examine the comparisons that promoters and protesters employ in an organizational setting. In particular, we explore how the narratives that result from these comparisons—on questions including the need for the megaproject, the benefits of the megaproject, alternatives to the megaproject, and issues of noise, sustainability, compensation, and branding—help their efforts to organize. The research highlights how comparisons serve as an important cue in discourse and how different forms of comparison can help to create narratives and shape policy outcomes.

In der sozialwissenschaftlichen Literatur werden die Konzepte Narrative und Frame zumeist nicht trennscharf verwendet. Für uns ist es jedoch nicht nur konzeptuell unpräzise, beide Begriffe auswechselbar zu nutzen, sondern wir gehen auch davon aus, dass die jeweiligen Analysen unterschiedliche Wissensarten produzieren. Eine systematische Trennung sowie ein Vergleich und eine Verfeinerung beider Begriffe benötigt einen Rahmen, der auf denselben Fall angewandt wird. Wir illustrieren dies am Fall eines großen, infrastrukturellen Küstenschutzprojekts. Im Ergebnis besteht ein zentraler Unterschied zwischen Narrative und Frame in der Situiertheit auf unterschiedlichen Ebenen: Frames verweisen auf Akteur*innenperspektiven, Narratives auf deren Produkte. Als Ausdrucksmittel der eigenen Perspektive lokalisieren wir Storytelling als die konzeptuelle Verbindung zwischen Narrative und Frame. Gleichzeitig ist das Konzept des Storytelling der Ursprung der konzeptuellen Verwirrung. Mittels des von uns vorgestellten Vergleichsrahmens verdeutlichen wir den terminologischen Gebrauch und eine informierte Methodenwahl je nach gewünschter Wissensart. Mithilfe dieses klareren terminologischen Verständnisses regen wir Forscher*innen an, ihre Methodenwahl von den Anforderungen und Eigenarten des spezifischen Forschungsinteresses und des Forschungskontexts abhängig zu machen. In diesem Sinne sollte unser Vergleichsrahmen als Heuristik gesehen werden und nicht als ein deduktiver Verfahrensvorschlag.

In the last two decades, interest in narrative conceptions of identity has grown exponentially, though there is little agreement about what a \"life-narrative\" might be. In connecting Kierkegaard with virtue ethics, several scholars have recently argued that narrative models of selves and MacIntyre's concept of the unity of a life help make sense of Kierkegaard's existential stages and, in particular, explain the transition from \"aesthetic\" to \"ethical\" modes of life. But others have recently raised difficult questions both for these readings of Kierkegaard and for narrative accounts of identity that draw on the work of MacIntyre in general. While some of these objections concern a strong kind of unity or \"wholeheartedness\" among an agent's long-term goals or cares, the fundamental objection raised by critics is that personal identity cannot be a narrative, since stories are artifacts made by persons. In this book, Davenport defends the narrative approach to practical identity and autonomy in general, and to Kierkegaard's stages in particular.

Cross-cultural differences in book sharing practices of American and Thai mother-preschooler dyads were examined. Twenty-one Thai monolingual and 21 American-English monolingual mothers and their four-year-olds completed a book sharing task. Results revealed narrative style differences between the American and Thai groups: American mothers adopted a high-elaborative story-builder style and used affirmations, descriptions, extensions, and recasting more than Thai mothers. Thai mothers adopted a low-elaborative story-teller style and used more attention directives and expansions than American mothers. American children produced longer narratives than their Thai peers, whereas Thai children repeated their mothers’ utterances more than their American counterparts. Maternal and child narrative styles were associated. These results suggest that maternal scaffolding styles differ across cultures and influence children's developing narrative skills.

Evaluations about comparison of literary texts usually relate to the author’s concern of being influenced and the reader’s point of view. Although there is no theoretical restriction about deep textual comparison, there is not a certain method whose validity is accepted. However, if the literary genre is novel, evaluation is generally focused on the plot. Considering Kristeva’s words, “Every text is formed as a mosaic of quotations,” it is seen that plot and discourse are realized in a frame of the concern of influence. In transferring story forms, this concern is either carried to a further degree or restricted to certain limitations. In this regard, the map of story and discourse structured by Seymour Chatman is important in the comparison of literary texts. When we evaluate the story and discourse forms first in terms of their existence and characters and then in temporal terms, the adventure of the text’s construction is revealed. In this study, the narrative journey of elephant in the examples of Mark Twain’s “White Elephant” and of the novels of Jose Saramago’s “The Elephant’s Journey” and Elif Şafak’s “Ustam ve Ben”

Comparative thinking is ubiquitous in human cognition. Empirical evidence is accumulating that PTSD symptomatology is linked to various changes in social, temporal and counterfactual comparative thinking. However, no systematic review and meta-analysis in this line of research have been conducted to this date. We searched titles, abstracts and subject terms of electronic records in PsycInfo and Medline from inception to January 2019 with various search terms for social, temporal and counterfactual comparative thinking as well as PTSD. Journal articles were included if they reported a quantitative association between PTSD and social, temporal and/or counterfactual comparative thinking in trauma-exposed clinical or sub-clinical samples. A total of 36 publications were included in the qualitative synthesis. The number of publications on the association between PTSD and social and temporal comparative thinking was too scarce to warrant a meta-analytic review. A narrative review of available literature suggests that PTSD is associated with distortions in social and temporal comparative thinking. A meta-analysis of 24 independent samples (n = 4423) assessing the association between PTSD and the frequency of counterfactual comparative thinking yielded a medium to large positive association of r =.464 (p <.001, 95% CI =.404; .520). Higher study quality was associated with higher magnitude of association in a meta-regression. Most studies collected data cross-sectionally, precluding conclusions regarding causality. Overall, study quality was found to be moderate. More longitudinal and experimental research with validated comparative thinking measures in clinical samples is needed to acquire a more sophisticated understanding of the role of comparative cognitions in the aetiology and maintenance of PTSD. Comparative thinking might be a fruitful avenue for a better understanding of posttraumatic reactions and improving treatment.

With China's rise to become Africa's largest bilateral creditor, much research has focused on an evidence-based critique of the politicised narrative about China's supposed 'debt trap diplomacy'. At a more fundamental level, this debate problematises the function of debt and related power differentials in late capitalism and calls into question development paradigms, notably the hegemonic infrastructure-led development regime, that have sustained Africa's financial dependency into the 2020s. As the International Monetary Fund is yet again shuttling between Addis Ababa, Lusaka, and Nairobi to resurrect fiscal discipline and to ensure debtor compliance for the post-pandemic 'payback period', it is argued that (i) periodic cycles of debt financing, debt distress and structural adjustment are a systemic feature of the malintegration of Africa into the global capitalist economy, and (ii) critical research on the social costs and economic beneficiaries of renewed rounds of austerity and privatisation in Africa's current debt cycle is needed.