Narrative analysis and identity research: A case for small stories

With this contribution, I attempt not to get involved in debates about the questions ‘what identity IS’ – or even worse, ‘what identity REALLY is’. Actually, I will try to stay away from those issues as far as possible. Rather, I am attempting to contribute to some recent debates on the issue of identity research (through the lens of biography) that are more empirically oriented. I nevertheless hope that my way of critically approaching current biographic research may spur some discussion that will help illuminate new and potentially alternative developments. More specifically, I will work through recent narrative approaches to identity that emerged in the wake of the narrative turn, outline the shortcomings of these approaches, and point up alternative perspectives that view identity as local and situational accomplishments; accomplishments in which the activity of ‘narrating’ will take a somewhat central place.