Abstract
An increasing number of individuals worldwide are receiving home nursing care from loved ones. Many healthcare professionals are exploring the use of narrative to help family caregivers meet the personal demands of this work. Citing Ricoeur's notion of narrative identity as a social process in which cultural norms and values are negotiated between speaker and audience, this paper argues that health care professionals can assist their clients by viewing narrative as collaboration, not autonomous construction. Collaboration in construction of narrative identity was obsewed in interactions between family caregivers and public health workers on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts. There, caregivers were supported by a dialogic process in which interlocutors explored the cultural values that define and delimit the possibilities for living as caregivers.
Recommended Citation
Gale, Deborah Dysart
(2005)
"Negotiating Values in Stories of Illness and Garing on St. Kitts,"
Storytelling, Self, Society: Vol. 1:
Iss.
2, Article 4.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/storytelling/vol1/iss2/4