3.2 The Theoretical Frameworks that Guided the Study
3.2.2 Narrative theory
43 | P a g e This figure illustrates that dysfunctional beliefs are a vulnerability factor (a diathesis). When activated by appropriate environmental events such as stress, these dysfunctional beliefs lead a person who is prone to depression to interpret experiences in negative and distorted ways. These negative interpretations, in turn, lead to negative views of oneself, one’s world, and one’s future.
These negative beliefs are what Beck refers to as the ‘negative cognitive triad’ as they are primary symptoms of depression which, in turn, stimulate other features of the disorder, including somatic (sleeplessness), motivational (passivity) and affective (sadness) disturbances.
44 | P a g e phenomenology of experiences in relation to depression, which was the phenomenon the study investigated. It accommodated the collection of emic perspectives and allowed authentic descriptions of what the participants had experienced or were experiencing. It allowed me to typically focus on the lives of individuals as they told their own stories (Project Narrative, 2019).
Butina (2015:190) asserts that narrative inquiry “...is a form of qualitative research in which the stories themselves become raw data”. He further states that narrative theory has been used to learn more about the culture, historical experiences, identity, and lifestyle of the narrator as it opens a window to the process of identity construction. Through the construction of narratives, individuals form and re-form who they have been, are presently, and hope to become, and this is within the scope of accepting that people are part of a microcosm which impacts all people differently. Their narratives therefore depicted their cognitive state as they reflected on their unique situations.
Through narratives, anthropologists are able to draw a lot of data from expressed emotions while they are also able to observe the body language of those who narrate their experiences. This enables the researcher to document variables and shift ways of understanding the narrated experiences of and among individuals (Butina, 2015). When I engaged in this process, I was constantly mindful that the subjects could (and would) construct their own world, and I could thus record social constructs that emerged from the narratives. According to Vromans (2007), narrative theorists contend that people’s narratives are comprised of different stories occurring simultaneously; each story is embedded in a cultural context and is impacted by powerful cultural discourses. The potential of these theories to elicit rich data thus encouraged me to pose questions that would encourage the participants to narrate and clarify their thoughts about what depression actually is from their own points of view. In this manner I was able to probe for in-depth responses and could elucidate the factors that contributed to depression in the participants.
3.2 3 Social Constructivism Theory
The third theory that I employed was the social constructivism theory which is concerned with how people think about and use categories to structure their experiences and understandings of the world around them (Galbin, 2014). To say that something is socially constructed is to emphasize its dependence on a contingent aspect of the social self. It is therefore like saying that something
45 | P a g e may not have existed had society not built or constructed it (Goffman, 1999). According to Galbin (2014:3), certain such constructs exist naturally and independent of us “...and we did not have a hand in shaping it [them]”. The latter scholar further argues that the nurturing approach posits that, rather than genetic or inborn traits, social ideas and categories that include stereotypes are socially constructed and then accepted as reality (Galbin, 2014:1). Social constructivism is not only applied to worldly items, things, kinds, and facts, but also to the beliefs about them. Boghossian (2008, cited in Moussa, 1992), who investigated social constructivism associated with women refugees, suggests that the idea of social construction is to expose the way in which a particular belief has been shaped by social forces, such as the belief that there is a particular kind of person (for example female women refugees) that is deserving of being singled out for social attention. According to Gergen (1958:265), “...the social construction of reality is a theory of knowledge of sociology and communication that examines the jointly constructed development and understanding of the world”. Social constructivism may thus be understood as the perspective that a great deal of human life exists as it does due to social and interpersonal influences. Despite the fact that both genetically inherited and social factors are at work at the same time, social constructivism does not deny the influence of genetic inheritance, opting instead to focus on social influences on communal and individual life. Social constructivism is interested in subjects an environment that anthropologists refer to as culture and that sociologists refer to as society. Essentially, both are the shared social aspects of all that is psychological (Galbin, 2014:83).
There are several different versions of social constructivism as various scholars place different emphasis on societal and environmental influences. The rejection of assumptions about the nature of mind and causality theories, as well as an emphasis on the complexity and interconnectedness of the many facets of individuals within their communities, are two distinguishing features of social constructivism. Causality may exist within specific cultures, but much work needs to be done before these connections can be described with any certainty (Owen, 1995:15). Social constructivism essentially involves challenging most of our common-sense knowledge of ourselves and the world we live in. This means that it does not merely offer a new analysis of topics such as ‘personality' or ‘attitudes' that can simply be slotted into our existing framework of understanding, as the framework itself must change and, with it, our understanding of every aspect of social and psychological life (Burr, 1995:12).
46 | P a g e The Social Constructivism theory was useful in the data analysis process of this study as it helped me to explored how the participants’ perceptions and attitudes towards depression had been socially constructed. In other words, it was acknowledged that society plays a vital role in forming and creating beliefs and stereotypical perceptions about depression and persons living with it, but these perceptions are often not true despite the fact that they are often accepted as local and even universal truths. In conjunction with the cognitive theory of depression and the narrative theory, the social constructivism theory thus allowed the study to explore the socially constructed meanings of depression from the sampled population and to record factors that led to the participants’ state of being depressed as well as the social constructs that were attached to (or associated with) their state of being depressed. Emerging social constructs will also be contributed in the cope of linguistic anthropology. Ultimately, the evaluation of the data that is presented in the final chapter, and the summative conclusions that are drawn, will encapsulate the anthropological contribution that this study makes to existing literature on depression.