ABSTRACT
Whether or not there has been the often-claimed, grand scale “narrative turn” in social sciences, is open to question (Atkinson, 1997); that a whole range of disciplines have looked to narrative theory and narrative-based research is undeniable. In his manifesto of narrative psychology, Sarbin (1986, p. 8) proposed that we all, “think, perceive, imagine and make moral choices according to narrative structures”. Narratives create meanings by organiszing episodes, aspects, and, subsequently, accounts of our actions; in the words of the philosopher, we are “story-telling animals” (MacIntyre, 1984). And just as Tomasello (1999) argued that the human species is distinguishable from other primates by our elaborate intersubjectivity and ability to “mind read” each other, so Bruner (2002) argued that our very collective life depends on our ability to organise and express our experience in narrative forms. Time only becomes human time to the extent to which it incorporates this narrative, lived dimension; simply put, there are no people who exist without narrative.
