Knowledge production, positioning and power in the chronicle workshop

Abstract

Chronicle Workshops have become popular in recent years as a research method in working life research in Denmark. The chronicle workshop is a method, which aims to provide a collective, participantdriven narrative of a workplace’s history and development. The method is characterized by negotiation and consensus-seeking, sharing some features with focus groups. At the same time the method aims to grasp the existence of multiple and competing narra- tives in a workplace, and their appearance in the workshop is thought to be a way for researchers to observe social relations, including conflicts, in the workplace. This article contributes to the development and discussion of the chronicle workshop as a research method. The authors find the method useful and valuable in working life research, but also argue for an increased attention to and analysis of the interaction of participants during the workshops and the impact of this interaction on the knowledge constructed through the workshops. With a point of departure in positioning theory and poststructuralist understand- ings of power and knowledge production, the article argues that chronicle workshops should be seen as spaces in which complex relationships between power, knowledge and subject positions unfold. Empirical illustrations are drawn from two chronicle workshops conducted with social and health care helpers and nurses in a municipal care unit, providing home care and nursing for elderly citizens. The illustrations show the importance of attention to the concrete interaction in the workshops, in order to understand how certain narratives come to appear legitimate, true, and dominant in the chronicle workshop’s collective production of knowledge. The article shows how discourses; hierarchical relationships; and the chronicle workshop’s focus on collective narratives, have noticeable consequences in terms of which narratives and subject positions achieve dominance, and which are marginalized in the workshops. Following this analysis, the argument is put forward that systematic analysis of interaction and positioning in the workshops can generate new insights in relation to the analysis of the organizational narratives created in the workshops. Finally, the article presents a number of focus points that can contribute to an increased awareness of positioning and power relations in the facilitation and analysis of chronicle workshops.