How Things Work - Doha Academy of Tertiary Studies

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Storytelling
Illustrating How Things Work
You want to say how something works. You want to say it in words
people understand, but also in words to be respected by other researchers.
Researchers have the freedom to talk in many ways, including quoting
other people, from sages to practitioners to children. Many people
have ideas as to how the thing is working, and even the apocryphal may
lead to understandings. As a researcher, you do not have the privilege
to invent stories, but your perception of how something has been working
can be told in story form, including the stories other people tell you.
Storytelling is part of the craft of the qualitative researcher.
Some qualitative study is fundamentally the capture of a story. Not
only the story of a person or group, but also the story of an organization
or social movement. The recording and publication of oral history is
such a venture. The story or history is seen to exist, and the researcher’s
job is to dig it out, interpret it, and make it available to others. Musicology,
particularly ethnomusicology, sometimes uses a story form for
presentation of its findings. In her dissertation on urban music, Brazilian
Walênia Silva (2007) wrote:
Dave’s guitar learning at the Institute lasted about 8 months. After that,
he practiced on his own and played professionally in a local group. Four