Narrative practice and the coherence of personal stories

While the sociological analysis of personal stories is becoming more sophisticated, it would benefit from a refined appreciation for narrative practice. The theme of this article is that the coherence of stories and the experiences they convey are reflexively related to the manifold activities and the increasingly diverse conditions of storytelling. Drawing on ethnographically assembled story material, we offer an empirically sensitizing vocabulary to illustrate how practice constitutes coherence through the interplay of narrative composition and the local conditions of storytelling. The vocabulary highlights the growing need to think of personal stories and their coherence as an active ensemble of narrative practice, now "owned" as much by the diverse auspices of storytelling as by the storyteller (Alasuutari 1997).