THE ROLE OF NARRATIVE METHODS IN SOCIOLOGY: STORIES AS A POWERFUL TOOL TO UNDERSTAND INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY

Abstract

The purpose in the article is to understand the role of the stories as well as storytelling in sociology. Rather than focusing on the significance of textual data based on narrativity, the author aims at underlining the role of the genres such as story, myth, irony, parable, drama, and aphorism, which are used in everyday life narratives. Sociology, as a discipline offering analyses at different levels of social life can borrow from these textual data in various different ways. In this sense, the ways in which narrativity and sociology come together would be related to the way we understand sociological methodology. Just as the lullabies are outcomes of collective references relatively independent of mothers' personal preferences, meta-narratives also have a characteristic of a multilayered texture embedded in our social and historical memory. In sum, firstly, the article will enlighten the intersection between the sociology and the narrative theory, second, examples of brief insights into popular cultural texts will be provided.