The article is devoted to an attempt to present a biographical approach in pedagogical research, taking into account not only exploratory but also therapeutic functions of narrative interviews. The reflections focus of looking for the answer to the question: whether and to what extent telling a story of one’s life (especially marked by traumatic experiences) may contribute to integrating the past and the present, increasing self-awareness, and thus (re-)constructing the narrator’s identity? I ask a question about the conditions to be met in order for the narrator to realize the limitations posed by the past and next to overcome the crisis by pointing out the main motives of action, epiphanies, crises, or breakthrough moments.
In this paper, we analyze the narrative strategies employed by horse racing gamblers in the context of their interactions within interviews. The empirical base consisted of 20 semi-structured interviews conducted with long-term regular gamblers from Warsaw, Poland. First, we state our position in the context of interviews with people aware they may be assessed negatively regarding a very important part of their lives. Second, we discuss how the interlocutors presented their biographies and employed discursive methods of protection against negative interpretation. The research reveals how bettors justify their passion by referring to individual myths about the origins of their interest in gambling. We reveal how bettors consciously employ emotive discursive methods that alleviate the discourse of addiction. Emotions are not presented as triggered by compulsively realized needs but as a result of intellectual passion, pursued by like-minded people joined by a drive for agency.
To acquire how to do an ethnographic field research of the living society and culture is a part of the university ethnology studies. The author deals with several examples of student’s field researches in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Bulgaria in the past and nowadays. Since 2008 the author itself organizes student’s field researches within her own ethnology classes for students of the Balkan studies on the Department of Slavonic studies on the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University in Brno. Foreigners from Southeast Europe (Bulgarian, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, Macedonian, Greek, Albanian, Turks and Romanian) living in the Czech Republic are the research subjects. They either themselves or their ancestors moved to the Czech Republic in the past. During 2008–2016 the students collected a lot of material: 221 research reports, including 40 descriptions of participant observation during the community celebrations and 171 transcribed and commented interviews. The interviews aimed to study their coming to the Czech Republic and the relation to the Czech majority, ethnocultural traditions and language, private and family life, family relationships, contacts and gatherings, religious and ethnic identity, how the traditions are handed down from generation to generation, acculturation. Apart from the educational benefits of these researches there is a heuristic benefit, which author presents by an example of the research of Bulgarians in the Czech Republic.
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