Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Decreased Visibility: A Narrative Analysis Of Episodic Disability And Contested Illness, Melissa Jane Welch

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the United States alone, disability touches the lives of a tremendous amount of people. An increased prevalence of chronic illness, coupled with an aging population means it is likely and perhaps inevitable that everyone will experience disability in one way or another over the course of their lifetime. However not everyone who is disabled is recognized as such. Culturally, the narrative of “the healthy disabled person,” – or someone who is healthy, permanently, predictably, and visibly disabled renders many people with chronic and episodic pain, fatigue, and illness as unrecognizable as disabled. Even though increasing numbers of disability scholars …

The Experience Of Chronic Pain Management: A Multi-Voiced Narrative Analysis, Loren Wilbers

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Since the late 1990s, the abuse of prescription opioid painkillers has been constructed as a major social problem in the United States, commonly referred to in the media as the “prescription painkiller epidemic.” Stories of addiction, overdose deaths, robberies, and other tragedies related to prescription opioids have been, and continue to be, commonly featured in the media. In response to public outcry regarding the “epidemic,” government and medical institutions have enforced strict regulations on the distribution of opioids, targeting most of these regulations at the treatment of chronic pain in particular. In this dissertation, I examine the experience of chronic …

Beauty Is Precious, Knowledge Is Power, And Innovation Is Progress: Widely Held Beliefs In Policy Narratives About Oil Spills, Brenda Gale Mason

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Scholars from diverse perspectives have sought to understand the features and mechanisms that influence the design and implementation of public policy. Some (realists) have emphasized the role that material interests have played while others (idealists) have emphasized the influence of subjective ideas on ‘how policy means’ (Yanow 1996). Recently, observers in both camps have demonstrated curiosity in the influence of culture on policymaking and its consequences. Regrettably, this shared concern has not resulted in much collaboration across epistemological divides.

I argue that narrative analysis provides a way to bridge the divides by specifying an interpretive approach that identifies culture as …