A Return to Methodological Commitment: Reflections on Narrative Inquiry

In the 25 years since narrative inquiry emerged as a social science research methodology, it has been rapidly taken up in the social sciences. In what is sometimes called a “narrative revolution,” researchers with diverse understandings have co-opted the concept of narrative inquiry and used narrative inquiry or narrative research to name their methodology. In this paper, we lay out more clearly the ontological and epistemological commitments that underlay the methodological commitments of narrative inquiry. Within narrative inquiry, experience is viewed narratively and necessitates considerations of relational knowing and being, attention to the artistry of and within experience, and sensitivity to the overlapping stories that bring people together in research relationships. Working within the relational three-dimensional narrative inquiry space with dimensions of temporality, sociality, and place, we attend to the living, telling, retelling, and reliving of stories of experience.