Department of Sociology

Jaber F. Gubrium
Professor

Jay Gubrium was appointed Chair of the MU Department in 2002. He previously has taught at Marquette University and the University of Florida, was a Fulbright scholar at Tampere University, Finland, in 1996, and has been a visiting professor at Tampere, at Lund University in Sweden, and at the Universities of Copenhagen and Odense in Denmark. His areas of specialization are aging and the life course, health and illness, social interaction, identity, qualitative methods, and narrative analysis.

Research Interests

Jay works empirically at the border of ethnography and narrative analysis, combining them in new ways to deal with the perennial problems of linking observational data with transcripts of stories, speech, and other narrative material.

This has been applied in a long-standing program of research on the social organization of care and treatment in human service institutions. Gubrium's research on the everyday practice of caregiving in nursing homes, originally described in his monograph Living and Dying at Murray Manor, presents the lived details of care from the perspectives of the residents, the staff, and family members. Special attention has been paid to caregiving and the cognitively impaired in the context of broader cultural understandings, in particular how the Alzheimer's disease movement transformed the meaning of senility and the identities concerned, which was reported in his book Oldtimers and Alzheimer's: The Descriptive Organization of Senility.

The program of research has extended to institutional practices across the life course. Ethnographies of several institutional settings have set the basis for comparison. Earlier research on interpretive practices in a residential treatment center for emotionally disturbed children has been followed by ethnographic and narrative studies of clinical practices in physical rehabilitation, a psychiatric hospital, family counseling, and self-help groups for home caregivers. The program currently centers on strategic storytelling and strategic memory in everyday life, especially as these unfold in institutional context.

Gubrium is also founding and current editor of the Journal of Aging Studies (www.elsevier.com/locate/jaging).

Courses Taught

Professional Perspectives
Self, Language, and Social Life
Seminar on Interview Theory and Technique
Seminar on Narrative and Identity
Seminar in Qualitative Methods
Sociology of Aging
Ethnographic Fieldwork

Recent Publications and Presentations

Jaber F. Gubrium & James A. Holstein.  Forthcoming.  “The Constructionist Analytics
    of Interpretive Practice.”  In Handbook of Qualitative Research, 4^th edition, edited by
    Normal K. Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln.  Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Jaber F. Gubrium.  Forthcoming.  “Narrative Events and Biographical Construction in
    Old Age.”  In Storying Later Life: Issues, Investigations, and Interventions in
    Narrative Gerontology, edited by Gary Kenyon, Ernst Bohlmeijer, and William
    Randall.  New York: Oxford University Press.

Keynote Address. "Narrative Events and Strategic Memory." ISA/CFR Families & Memories Conference, June 15 - 17, 2009, Oslo, Norway.

Jaber F. Gubrium.  2009.  “How Murray Manor Became an Ethnography.”  In
    Ethnographies Revisited: Constructing Theory in the Field, edited by Antony
    Puddephatt, William Shaffir & Steven W. Kleinknecht.  New York: Routledge.

 Jaber F. Gubrium & James A. Holstein.  2009.  “The Everyday Work and Auspices of
    Authenticity.”  In Authenticity in Culture, Self, and Society, edited by Phillip Vannini
    & J. Patrick Williams.  United Kingdom: Ashgate.

Jaber F. Gubrium & James A. Holstein.  2009.  Analyzing Narrative Reality. 
    Thousands Oaks: Sage.

Gubrium, Jaber F. and James A. Holstein. 2008. “Narrative Ethnography"
      In Handbook of Emergent Methods , edited by Sharlene Hesse-Biber and
      Patricia Leavy. New York: Guilford Publications.

Holstein, James and Jaber F. Gubrium. 2008. Handbook of Constructionist Research. New York: Guilford

“Constructionist Perspectives on the Life Course” . 2007. (with J. Holstein). 
    Sociology Compass 1: 1-18.

"Metaphors Shifts in Stroke Recovery” (with C. Boylstein, M. Rittman, and R.
    Hinojosa,).  Health Communication 21(3), pp. 1-9.

Rejoinder (pp. 569-70) to Charles Briggs’s 2007 article “Anthropology, Interviewing,
    and Communicability in Contemporary Society” in Current Anthropology 48(4) 551-
    580.

Holstein, James A. and Jaber F. Gubrium. 2008.“Constructionist Impulses in
     Ethnographic Fieldwork.” Handbook of Constructionist Research. New York:
     Guilford Publications.

Gubrium, Jaber F. and James A. Holstein. 2006. Couples, Kids, and Family
      Life. New York: Oxford University Press.

Gubrium, Jaber F. 2005. "Narrative Environments and Social Problems." Social
      Problems 52(4): 525-528.

Brekhus, Wayne, John Galliher, and Jaber F. Gubrium. 2005. "The Need for
      Thin Description." Qualitative Inquiry 11(6): 861-879.

Seale, Clive, Giampietro Gobo, Jaber F. Gubrium, and David Silverman (eds.).
      2004. Qualitative Research Practice. London: Sage

Gubrium, Jaber F. and James A. Holstein (eds.). 2003. Ways of Aging. Boston:
      Blackwell.

Gubrium, Jaber F., Maude Rittman, Mary Ellen Young, Christine Williams &
      Craig Boylstein. 2003. “Benchmarking as Everyday Functional Assessment
      in Stroke Recovery.” Journal of Gerontology 58B:S203-S211.

Gubrium, Jaber F. and James A. Holstein. 2002. "The Active Subject in
      Qualitative Gerontology." Pp. 154-171 in Qualitative Gerontology, edited by
      Graham D.Rowles and Nancy Schoenberg. New York: Springer.

Gubrium, Jaber F. and James A. Holstein (eds.). 2002. Handbook of Interview
      Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Holstein, James A. and Jaber F. Gubrium. 2000. The Self We Live By: Narrative
      Identity in a Postmodern World. New York: Oxford University Press.

Gubrium, Jaber F. 2000. "Narrative Practice and the Inner Worlds of the
      Alzheimer's Disease Experience." Pp. 181- 203 in Concepts of Alzheimer
      Disease, edited by Peter J. Whitehouse, Konrad Maurer, and Jesse F.
      Ballenger. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.

312 Middlebush Hall
University of Missouri
Columbia, MO 65211-6100
(573) 882-8331
Fax: (573) 884-6430