Description
Personal narrative and its significance for social change is a prominent topic in the psychological and wider social sciences. Yet while the importance of narrative for social change is commonly assumed by narrative researchers, no single text addresses it exclusively and from a variety of scholarly perspectives.Stories Changing Lives explores the strong and qualified significance of personal stories and how they catalyze and contribute to social change. The first of the book's three sections examines the embeddedness of personal narratives within larger narratives, and how these narratives shift towards justice. The second section considers how narrative language supports and generates social change. Finally, the concluding section addresses the ways in which re-narrations of the past taking place in the present, and narrations of the future using the present and past, impact social change.Stories Changing Lives sets out the theory and methodology underpinning a range of narrative projects that are committed to progressive change, delineating the strengths and limitations of that research. Chapters focus on projects in Africa, South and North America, and Europe, and bring to the fore the multiplicity of stories, narrative multimodalities, and the importance of intersectionality; they also highlight the interdisciplinarity, historical reach, and transnationalism of narrative research. This volume will further develop our understanding of generating narratives and pursuing social change as two intertwined processes that exemplify the personally and socially transformative characteristics of politics.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: The Personal is Political: The Social Justice Functions of StoriesElliot Mishler and Corinne SquireChapter 2: The Mystery of the Dangerous BookMolly AndrewsChapter 3: Using Narrative Analysis to Inform About Female and Male Sexual VictimizationJennifer O'Mahoney and Irina AndersonChapter 4: Changing Lives in Unanticipated Ways? Disagreements About Racialized Responsibilities and Ethical Entanglements in Joint Analysis of Narrative StoriesAnn PhoenixChapter 5: Hidden From View: Some Written Accounts of Community ActivismMichael MurrayChapter 6: The Power of Bearing Wit(h)ness: Intergenerational Storytelling About Racial Violence, Healing And ResistanceAlisa Del Tufo, Michelle Fine, Loren Cahill, Chinyere Okafor and Donelda CookChapter 7: Living Lives of Resistance in Multiple Registers: Dialogic Co-Constructions, Genocidal Violence and Post-Genocide Transitional JusticeM. Brinton LykesChapter 8: Narrative Subjects: Tense, (In)tension & (Im)possibilities For ChangeJill BradburyChapter 9: Cultural Identities and Narratives That 'Race': Representations and Resistance in the Context of a South African UniversityShose Kessi
