Collective Narratives Research Articles

Ghosts, tigers and landmines in the nursery: Attachment narratives of loss in Tamil refugee children with dead or missing fathers.

To build an account of how bereaved Tamil refugee and asylum seeker children, resettled in Australia, had processed the loss of their dead or missing fathers. Phenomenological and discourse analysis was applied to attachment narratives of nine children (aged 11-17 years) and their surviving mothers in families that lost fathers in war-related circumstances. The narratives were analysed through the lens of Crittenden's Dynamic-Maturational Model of Attachment and Adaptation (DMM) and Klass' cross-cultural model of grief. Two divergent pathways - 'burying the past' and 'reifying the past' - emerged, encompassing the children's contrasting patterns of information processing regarding loss and trauma (dismissing or preoccupying) and representation of the past (distant-buried or rich-reconstructed). Each pathway reflected a strategic compromise between the constraints and resources presented to the child by the circumstances of the loss (ambiguous or confirmed), the response of their surviving parent (stricken or stoic) and the collective narrative surrounding the loss (silenced or valorised). The DMM's conceptualisation of attachment as self-protective strategies for navigating danger was helpful in explaining the contrasting adaptations of refugee children to loss and trauma. However, to understand the multivalent meanings of these adaptations, there was a need to situate child-parent attachment relationships within the wider sociocultural reconfigurations arising from contexts of political violence.

Narrative Inquiry on the Teaching of STEM to Blind High School Students

This study aimed to elevate the experiences and voices of teachers who led the STEM informal education program summer series: National Federation of the Blind Engineering Quotient (NFB EQ). Through its integration with science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), NFB EQ opened opportunities from 2013–2016 in Baltimore, Maryland, for 60 blind students (Grades 9–12) to learn about engineering. The purpose of this narrative inquiry study was to understand how teachers foster interest towards STEM among blind students. The participants were two sighted teachers, one blind teacher, one sighted teacher–researcher, and one sighted researcher participant. We collected data in the form of field notes, semi-structured interviews, personal narratives, collective narratives, a focus group discussion, and teaching artifacts. We engaged in conversation analysis and used MAXQDA 12 software for data analysis. Guided by the principles of community of practices and universal design for learning, our results identified the importance of teacher awareness and positionalities in guiding blind students’ inclusion and identity in the STEM classroom. Findings also suggest teachers are in a unique position to allow or prevent inclusive opportunities from occurring in their classrooms.

The production of the war criminal cult: Radovan Karadžić and Vojislav Šešelj at The Hague

This article examines how defendants on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) appropriate the tribunal as a platform for national myth and group making. Specifically, the article analyzes Radovan Karadžic and Vojislav Seselj’s “performances” at The Hague in order to highlight the particular ways in which the defendants craft and mobilize the nationalist narrative. The article introduces the phenomenon of “the war criminal cult” and traces three stages of its production, including the defendants’ collectivization of guilt, epitomization of The Hague as the ultimate enemy of the nation, and construction of “Serbs” as the biggest victims of international justice and of themselves as martyrs befallen with the task of defending the dignity of the nation. The “war criminal cult” is thus “made” in conversation with the “imperial West” in a collective narrative that contests the legitimacy and the intention of The Hague while disguising individual responsibility.

Can we empathize with the narrative of our enemy? A personal odyssey in studying peace education

The reader is taken on a journey spanning some 30 years devoted to the author’s involvement in practicing, teaching and studying peace education. The core concept in this journey is active bystandership, which implies the capacity to disengage from our ethnocentric narratives and perceptions and to face the emotional challenges of acknowledging narratives that contradict our collective assumptions about the conflict and accept the moral obligation to address our contribution to violence. The author describes her non-professional as well as her professional activity in academia of participating, initiating, teaching and facilitating peace education projects. She describes inter and intra-group encounters and attempts to identify the limitations and opportunities of each type. Finally, some research methods and results of recent studies in peace education, especially regarding perceptions of collective narratives, are presented and discussed.

Collective narratives, false memories, and the origins of autobiographical memory

Building on Dor’s theory of language as a social technology for the instruction of imagination, I suggest that autobiographical memory evolved culturally as a response to the problems of false memory and deliberate deceit that were introduced by that technology. I propose that sapiens’ linguistic communication about past and future events initially occurred in small groups, and this helped to correct individual memory defects. However, when human groups grew in size and became more socially differentiated, and movement between groups prevented story-verification, misattributions of events became more common. In such conditions individuals with better autobiographical memory had an advantage because they could evaluate their own contents and sources of information, as well as that of others, more accurately; this not only benefitted them directly, but also improved their reliability as social partners. Autobiographical memory thus evolved in the context of human linguistic communication through selection for communicative reliability. However, the advantages of imagination, which enables forward-planning and decision-Making, meant that memory distortions, although controlled and moderated by autobiographical memory, could not be totally eradicated. This may have driven the evolution of additional forms of memory control involving social and linguistic norms. I interpret the language and the social norms of the Piraha as the outcome of the cultural-evolutionary control of memory distortions. Some ways of testing aspects of this proposal are outlined.

The “Medicinal Cannabis Question”: How Actors Legitimate Vote Choice on Medical Marijuana Policy

ABSTRACTWhile there has been much analysis of how policymakers shape criminal justice policy in the United States, the role of voters in legitimating such policy has been largely overlooked. This is important because of the growing use of ballot measures by states to determine criminal justice policy, such as the legal status of medical cannabis. What are the collective narratives that voters draw upon to legitimate their vote choices on these measures and how does their usage vary? Patterns of individual-level legitimation that use collective narratives matter because they provide evidence of actors’ internalization of such narratives, which suggests the presence and activation of corresponding automatic processes that have been linked to judgment and decision-making. For this study I analyzed respondent legitimations of vote choice on a 2010 ballot measure that sought to legalize medicinal cannabis for a case set of 91 white male voters. Surprisingly, I found the use of a liberal political narrative that spanned party lines for those who voted to approve the measure. Furthermore, I found evidence of a neoliberal narrative of individual responsibility for patient care that reaffirms scholarship on the intersection of neoliberalism and consumerism in healthcare.

Applying the robust adaptation planning (RAP) framework to Ghana\u2019s agricultural climate change adaptation regime

This paper introduces a five-step framework, namely the Robust Adaptation Planning (RAP) framework, to plan and respond to the ‘grand challenge’ of climate change. RAP combines, under a unified framework, elements from robust action, participatory planning and network theory to capture the different motives, perception, and roles of actors that are important for climate change adaptation. RAP leverages existing structures and networks and involves diverse actors to plan, sequence and time strategies across multiple levels (i.e. from local to national). Actors identify adaptation interventions and important actor relations to develop wide networks, highlighting potential pathways for connecting action from central policy to local implementation (and vice versa). Comparing these proposed participatory structures with existing structures reveals actors deemed important for delivering adaptation, as well as gaps and overlaps in their relations. The end result is a robust plan covering many perspectives and local realities for both relieving immediate and adapting to longer-term consequences of climate change. We applied the RAP framework in Ghana’s agricultural climate change adaptation regime to demonstrate its usefulness as a means of planning adaptation interventions in a climate-vulnerable, multi-actor and multi-level setting. The application of the RAP framework in this paper highlights how it can: (1) visualise the adaptation space (and its different components), and reduce the complexity of implementing adaptation responses; (2) offer a shared space to actors from all administrative levels to think and create collective narratives for adaptation without demanding explicit consensus and; (3) identify key actors and actions through a collaborative planning process, and allocate responsibility for the smooth delivery of adaptation interventions.

Narrating Violence, Narrating Self: Exodus and Collective Identity in Early Rabbinic Literature

Narrating Violence, Narrating Self: Exodus and Collective Identity in Early Rabbinic Literature

Exploring ourselves within intergroup conflict: The role of intragroup dialogue in promoting acceptance of collective narratives and willingness toward reconciliation.

Exploring ourselves within intergroup conflict: The role of intragroup dialogue in promoting acceptance of collective narratives and willingness toward reconciliation.

Harnessing emotions to deliberative argumentation in classroom discussions on historical issues in multi-cultural contexts

Abstract This theoretical paper is about the role of emotions in historical reasoning in the context of classroom discussions. Peer deliberations around texts have become important practices in history education according to progressive pedagogies. However, in the context of issues involving emotions, such approaches may result in an obstacle for historical clairvoyance. The expression of strong emotions may bias the use of sources, compromise historical reasoning, and impede argumentative dialogue. Coping with emotions in the history classrooms is a new challenge in history education. In this paper, we suggest that rather than attempting to foster positive emotion only or to avoid emotions all together, we should look at ways of engaging with emotion in history teaching. We present examples of peer deliberations on charged historical topics according to three pedagogical approaches that address emotions in different ways. The protocols we present open numerous questions: (a) whether facilitating engagement with own and the other's emotions may lead to better processing of information and better deliberation of a historical question; (b) whether promoting national pride boosts reliance on collective narratives; and (c) whether adopting a critical teaching approach eliminates emotions and biases. Based on these examples and findings in social psychology, we bring forward working hypotheses according to which we suggest that instead of dodging emotional issues, teachers should harness emotions – not only positive but also negative ones, to critical and productive engagement in classroom activities.

Narrating the Monarch Butterfly: Managing Knowledge Complexity and Uncertainty in Coproduction of a Collective Narrative and Public Discourse

In January 2014, the monarch butterfly reached North American political agendas due to reports of a long-term population decline. Requests were made for reliable descriptions of what was known about the butterfly, its population and migration, and the actions needed to protect it. This article studies the construction of the collective narrative that has come to dominate the public discourse on the butterfly. The analysis demonstrates how complexity and uncertainty in monarch knowledge have been managed through a process of coproduction, where focus has been on emphasizing knowledge certainty by portraying science and conservation as two separate but dependent social spheres.

Empowering the Marginalized: The Challenges and Opportunities of Teaching Communication in a Women’s Detention Facility

Social justice can often be measured by how a society treats its incarcerated citizens. In a promising development, public opinion has evolved recently away from a punitive attitude toward criminal justice to one of rehabilitation and recovery. In turn, communication scholars are uniquely equipped to contribute to the process of reconstructing just discourses related to inmate rehabilitation. This pedological exploration takes a narrative approach to how instructors communicatively construct their experiences behind bars. Through the perspective of six volunteer instructors, we offer a unique glimpse into the complexities that can arise from teaching in incarceration settings. Our collective narratives revealed three primary themes: pedagogical paradox, connection seeking, and forward focus. Â

The administration of feminism in education: revisiting and remembering narratives of gender equity and identity

ABSTRACTThis article examines challenges in writing histories of feminist reforms in schooling and educational administration. The focus is gender equity reforms in Australian schools since the 1970s, looking at how those earlier interventions are now remembered, represented and forgotten, in policy memory and collective narratives. Such feminist endeavours were part of the policy landscape and the administration of schools during the 1970s and 80s. I argue that feminist agendas can also be examined as themselves sites for managing the conduct of teachers and students and for regulating new forms of identity and social relations. These paradoxical aspects of feminist reform are analysed through a Foucauldian lens. The discussion identifies contextual themes in JEAH before considering debates within gender and feminist history. A revisiting mood has initiated a stocktake of the stories told not only about feminism but also the accounts feminism gives of itself. Extending this, I propose that critical attention to memory and the movement of received and revised historical narratives is vital for analysing the legacies of feminist reforms and how they might be (re)animated in the present. More broadly, it is suggested that attention to policy memory offers fruitful directions for historical studies of educational administration.

The useful past in negotiation: Adolescents' use of history in negotiation of inter-group conflict

Much of the concern with young people's historical knowledge centres on factual attainment or disciplinary skills. However, relatively little attention is paid to the relevance that young people attribute to history and how they use the past, and various social representations of history, to relate to the present. Research in this realm tends to emphasize the impact of collective memory narratives on individuals, rather than individuals' agency in using them. In this article, I will examine the ways 155 Jewish and Arab Israeli adolescents related the past to the present as they discussed the Jewish–Arab conflict and its resolution. Discussants made diverse references to the past: from family history, via biblical allusions and collective memories, to formal, schooling-based historical documents. Individuals used these references to the past to negotiate the present and future of inter-group relations. Furthermore, they made strategic use of references to others' narratives. Thus historical knowledge and collective narratives, which are usually perceived as constraining and structuring learners' perceptions, can be seen as repositories of resources and affordances.

Borders and Spatial Imaginaries in the Kuwaiti Identity

ABSTRACTThe Iraqi claims on and invasion of Kuwait have focused most of the scholarly attention on the drawing and defining of the Kuwaiti border. Issues of material delineation between the two countries have mattered a great deal for asserting sovereignty, but also for the exploration of oil and access to Gulf deep waters. Yet, the identity dimensions of the Kuwaiti border have often been overlooked. Building on the literature that sees more to the border than just a dividing line but seeks to include individual and collective narrative and experiences of borders, this article proposes to investigate the social–cultural perception of the Kuwaiti border and explores the complex connection between border and identities in the Kuwaiti case. Borders, it has been argued, have often played a significant role in identity building processes. Yet in the case of Kuwait where the border, contested by powerful neighbours, cuts across empty desert and tribal territories, the border seems to have played a limited one in shaping the national identity. This article investigates the interplay between the bordering process asserting sovereignty, on the one hand and the notions of identity and sense of belonging, on the other, resulting from a complex mix of socio-cultural legacies inherited from the pre-national period (the hadhar/badû dichotomy) and processes of ordering and othering enacted by the state and its welfare policies. Based on the analysis of the spatial imaginary as constructed by the Nationality Law of 1959, it argues that the urban core of the port-city or the interaction with it have remained the main benchmark of Kuwaiti identity, while the desert periphery has been imagined as culturally distinct and economically backward in the oil era – a representation that nevertheless provides a reservoir of symbols and narratives ready to be reimagined or appropriated.

Water, Roads, and Mapping Diaspora Through Biomythography

Reading Paule Marshall’s 2009 memoir Triangular Road as a biomythography illumines the ways in which the African diaspora is imagined in and through personal and collective narrative. African diaspora studies has sought to map the historical moments, cultural practices, political considerations, and geographical and conceptual spaces that constitute the African diaspora. This article explores how biomythography can possibly map African diaspora discourse beyond the temporal and the spatial. Triangular Road connects diasporic movement and misunderstanding. It uses the concept of bodies of water to map Marshall’s life path. It crosses the lines of official nation-state representations, social gatherings, and international cultural exchange. As biomythography it uses the memoir form to both refute the singularity of an autobiography, rooting Marshall’s story in the communities she has moved through and existed within, and meld the realities of what she can know of those communities with the fantasies she produces in place of absent histories. Marshall’s text crosses generations of literary artistry, nation-building, and diasporic longing. In conversation with other Caribbean women’s biomythographies such as Audre Lorde’s Zami, Triangular Road helps us to navigate the intentionally fuzzy lines between fiction and history, between the personal and the communal, between the rootedness of lands we know and the fluid possibilities of the waters that both separate and join them.

Telling the Right Story: Narrative as a Mechanism for Japanese American Ethnic Boundary Maintenance

This study conceptualizes ethnic grand narrative, a comprehensive story of a people, as a mechanism for maintaining and policing ethnic community boundaries. Such symbolic boundaries are shaped through relational processes of negotiation and contestation: boundary work. Taking the case of Japanese Americans, I demonstrate that legitimate claim on community membership relies on more than common ancestry, as ethnicity usually implies. Through an examination of the newspaper discourse surrounding two Japanese American men, Scott Fujita and Lt. Ehren Watada, I find that the collective ethnic narrative serves to define ethnic community boundaries and is used as a reference point for individual narratives. Depending on the alignment between personal narratives and collective ethnic narratives, in terms of content and structure, determines an individual's legitimate claim on ethnic membership. Notwithstanding the continued value placed on perceived shared biological heritage, ethnic membership is better conceived of as a combination of both common ancestry and strong fit between personal and community narratives.

The Storytelling Quilt: Ethnic Narratives in Zakes Mda’s Cion

This essay aims to analyze the quilt in Zakes Mda`s novel Cion as a Benjaminian storytelling. As a communal heritage from the time of slav ery, the quilt bridges two stories, the one of the Quigley family in the present time and the other of their ancestors from the nineteenth-century Virginia slavery plantation. The slaves stitch their memories, escape accounts, and folktales on their quilts to assist with their fellow slaves` journey to freedom. Rather than merely communicating cartographic information, however, the quilt affects its carriers/readers as a spiritual guide and facilitates further interpretation and addition, thereby exempli fying a storyteller according to Walter Benjamin`s theorization. According to him, the storytelling does not transmit verifiable information or an indi vidual author`s consciousness but combines collective myths, undocu mented voices, and talks of spiritual wisdom. The quilt also helps to ren der the residents` ethnic identity as a storytelling. For the Quigley family and neighbors of a mixed racial background, the ethnic identity that the quilt represents is not one that is determined from the beginning by an essential origin or a particular author but one that new generations reinter pret and rewrite to cope with their present concerns. The quilt-like open, collective, and mnemonic narrative of ethnic identity is of the nature to be constantly reinvented through collective efforts so that it allows encoun ters between different times and between different spaces, and thus invokes new forms of intimacy, belonging, and solidarity.

‘For God’s sake, cover yourself’: sexual violence, disrupted histories, and the gendered politics of patriotism in Watchmen

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the representation of sexual violence in Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen. The comic book was published between 1986 and 1987 by DC Comics – and later collected into one volume in 1987 – and is set in an alternative reality, conceptually converging with points in history spanning from the 1930s to the 1980s. Watchmen hinges, on a number of levels, on the (alleged) rape of Silk Spectre by the Comedian in the early 1940s, an event shown as a flashback within the narrative. Although forming a short part of the comic book, and taking up a minimal number of frames, the episode of sexual violence is proposed in Watchmen as the conceptual fulcrum on which much of the narrative pivots, as well as the conceptual dynamics between the vigilante characters and their identification with the ‘United States’ as an entity. In my analysis, I connect sexual violence to notions of disrupted memory, collective historical narrative, (un)patriotism, and the ‘nation’ as a gendered entity. Ultimately, this paper uncovers how Watchmen exposes the well-known dichotomous metaphor of ‘women/nation’ as conflicted and warped. The politics of nationalism and patriotism are conflated with the aesthetics of gender representation, and the violated body as a contested social, cultural, and historical space.

The occupational wellbeing of people experiencing homelessness

ABSTRACTThis paper reports findings of a study that utilised an occupational perspective to explore how well-being was achieved and sustained by the occupations of people experiencing homelessness in Australia. Thirty three in-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with homeless individuals in a regional city in Australia. Data from the interviews were thematically analysed to understand the relationship between well-being, as defined by the individual, and the occupations engaged in by people experiencing homelessness. The findings are reported here as three collective narratives that illustrate the experiences of diverse groups within the homelessness population explored in this study. The study demonstrates how occupations go beyond individual experience and choice to explore the social and cultural value of occupations as a means to well-being. The findings are discussed in relation to three key themes that emerged from the study: survival, self-identity and social connectedness. These interconnected concepts complement the existing occupational science literature, and offer a preliminary framework for understanding and improving well-being for disadvantaged and marginalised people where occupations are restricted by societal forces. The findings support the urgent need to redirect services to support occupational opportunities that are socially and culturally valued and enhance survival, self-identity and connectedness of homeless people.