Narrating Work Identity: Oral Testimony and the Place of Anecdotes

Abstract

The chapter, then, focuses on narrative analysis and aspects of cultural theory to explore oral testimonies of working lives that expand further some of the central themes already examined in our earlier chapters, drawing from a selection of workers from the three occupations that have been central throughout. The main focus of the analysis turns on an investigation of the place of anecdotes pertinent in the recounting of work-life histories through what we have been calling lived experience that appear, at one level, stories of individual events. And yet, as with many other instances, the individual and the collective — or social — experience dominate in significant and complicated ways. Anecdotes offer condensed but insightful perspective on this; ‘snap-shots’ of a wider canvas, or historical and existential landscape. This underlines the importance of oral testimonies. In many ways, it reflects Paul Ricoeur’s (1996) suggestion that narrative is the principal way human beings cope with the experience of time/temporality, a way of achieving a sense of order or account of human action or experience. Thus the chapter explores how modes of ‘telling’ reveal, unlock — while in other instances, perhaps conceal — central themes around the role of work and association with wider social identity formation and social action.