Concept of Narrative Identity in Sociological Research of Religion and Morality

Abstract

The article is an attempt to answer the question in what way Charles Taylor’s concept of narrative identity can be applied in sociological qualitative research on religiosity to reveal the relationship of religiosity to self-identity. A sense of self-identity is connected with solutions to multiple problems, e.g. an answer to the fundamental question: who am I? According to the author of Sources of the Self, people used to discover their identity through listening to stories about history and the past. Religious narration is one of the most important aspects of human narration.
Taking into consideration various levels of a religious story, i.e. ritual narration or spiritual experience narration, the researcher may examine understanding and reasons for approval or rejection of a given religious narration. These explorations by means of the biographic-narrative-interpretative method may lead to a discovery of how religious narration influences self-identity. The article is divided into three parts. The first part discusses Taylor’s theory from the general perspective and the second part examines its particular key concepts. Finally the author indicates how to apply Taylor’s theory in the analysis of the individual narratives.