Narratives: use in qualitative health-related research

Abstract

The present bibliographic review followed a path through several chains of thought concerned with studying narratives. Some classical studies on narrative structure with origins within literature, history, communications theory and psychoanalysis were analyzed with the aim of exploring whether their categories and concepts would be methodologically applicable to qualitative health-related research. In the conclusions, the potential for using narratives to study situations in which there is interest in mediations between experience and language, between structure and events, between subjects and collective groups or between memory and political action are highlighted. These are questions that traditionally are of interest within Brazilian public health with regard to the field of "Policy, Planning and Management".