STORIES FOR RESEARCH 327tation, one cannot meaningfully take statements out of their narrative context; doing so obscures
their meaning. Words, phrases, and other text elements were meaningful only within the context
of the story; they lost most of their meaning when isolated from the descriptions of events and
characters and the plot sequence that were so essential to a story’s integrity. For example, the
statement in the “Happy Ending” story reproduced below that they “got creative” means little out
of the context of the narrative. In the end, there were no shortcuts to carefully reading the texts
and then discussing interpretations with research team members.
ONE STORY OF MANY
In our research, patterns and themes emerged because we examined a range of narratives—we
would not have heard the Citizen-Agent Narrative theme and identified its patterns and elements
from a single story—but interpretation proceeds one story at a time. Stories have an intactness, a
wholeness, that should not be fractured during analysis. In our research we collected 157 stories,
and most of our insights came as we discovered patterns of judgment and sense making about
street-level work across numerous stories. But some stories stood out, either at first reading or
after having analyzed many, for their ability to contain and express what we heard across an array
of story texts and contexts. One such exemplar is depicted below. It, like other exemplars, conveys
key elements of the Citizen-Agent Narrative and has a richness that enables readers to gain a feel
for how workers confront the dilemmas inherent in street-level work. Before we describe the
various dimensions of the Citizen-Agent Narrative, let us first listen to the voice of a street-level
worker as he describes encounters with one client, as it was from these voices that this alternative
narrative emerged. This story was told by a vocational rehabilitation counselor. We emphasize
that the words of this story are the storyteller’s, not ours.
Midwestern Vocational Rehabilitation, “A Happy Ending”
This is a happy-ending story. This is one of those that poor [supervisor] would probably just
faint away dead. This is one she [the supervisor] does not want to know about....
This is about a lady with severe chronic mental illness. She came through the mental
health center through the support of an employment grant.
This is somebody who had been Miss Texas or Miss Oklahoma or something. You know,
a real high achiever and then bang. I don’t remember if it was depression or what happened.
Well, anyway, she ended up in a series of mental hospitals. Somewhere along there she was
married and had a little boy and was divorced. So now she is in [Midwestern City], she is a
single mom living with zero money practically in a real bad part of town with this little guy.
And she worked so hard to put herself back together. She was doing so well. She had
picked up an associates degree in electronics something, computer something, but had never
actually worked with the degree or anything because of her mental illness.
Meanwhile back at home in the neighborhood, her little boy was probably the only white
guy in the neighborhood and the neighborhood bullies were just beating the crap out of this
little guy. The parents were like, “So what?”... So all these other stresses were coming
back on her. She couldn’t move until she got a job and she can’t get a job.
Somehow she caught a ride to [nearby town] and interviewed. And they were hiring
bachelor’s degree people to do these jobs... and somehow she waltzed in there and con-
vinced them that she could do the job... and they hired her, which was amazing in itself.
And plus she had done it on her own which was even more wonderful except she didn’t
have a car.