Formula Stories Research Articles

The Racializing Work of Cultural Narratives: An Analysis of Colorblind Frames of Puerto Rican Climate Migrants

Using narrative analysis, this article examines the relationship between coloniality and racializing characterizations of Puerto Ricans, on the one hand, and taken-for-granted formula stories about U.S. national identity and morality, on the other. Our analysis draws from two data sets: 21 newspaper articles published in a Florida newspaper in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria about the needs and conditions of climate migrants from Puerto Rico and 54 interviews with Puerto Rican climate migrants who relocated to Florida after the hurricane struck the archipelago in 2017. This multilevel analysis explores prevailing colorblind racism frames that circulate across levels of social life embedded in stories that appeal to cultural ways of thinking and feeling about the world. Our findings show how colorblind frames in broadly shared narratives can reinforce racial scripts and perpetuate ethnoracial inequality. They also show that the broad circulation of such narratives at cultural, institutional, and interpersonal levels renders the racialization process less discernible.

How are interpretive methods feminist and queer? Four discursive methods for studying marginality

ABSTRACT What is a queer feminist method? Both feminists and queer scholars attend to the issue of power, but in somewhat divergent ways. Feminist scholars focus social justice concerns on modernist notions of experience and agency within systems of inequalities, while queer theorists shun a modernist notion of rational actors and focus on the poststructuralist goal of demonstrating the organizing power of discourse. (How) Can social scientists translate these two epistemologies into empirical methods? We consider how traditional social science methods have not been conducive to studying power as everyday discursive marginalization and how interpretive methods can attend to feminist and queer analytical and activist goals. We identify four analytic methods (queer feminist discourse analysis, Loseke’s formula stories, queer feminist ethnography, and interpretive materialism) as potentially feminist and queer. In doing so, we find resonances between feminist and queer epistemologies, which, unlike some of our forebearers, we see as entirely compatible.

Organizational narratives in rehabilitation-focused dementia care - Negotiating identities, interventions and personhood.

Rehabilitation is increasingly being introduced in dementia care but studies highlight extensive heterogeneity in practices, conceptual confusion and divergent perceptions of its relevance across care organizations and national contexts. As this have implications for development of dementia care as well as for people with dementia's access to care it is important to study the organizational narratives and practices in rehabilitation-oriented dementia care organizations. The study build on qualitative interviews (individual and group interviews) with health professionals (N = 26) engaged with dementia care and rehabilitation in two Danish municipalities. The interviews were conducted in 2018-2019. The empirical data was analyzed using abductive analysis and theory-based narrative analysis, using Loseke's conceptualizations of and approach to analyzing formula stories. Four dominant organizational narratives were constructed from the data. Each narrative produced a specific organizational narrative of client identity: the active participant in individualized rehabilitation, the inactive individual benefitting from enhanced social environments, the disengaging self and the vulnerable self. Introducing rehabilitation in dementia care may amplify the organizational polyphonic and provide a plurality of organizational identities each expressing different perceptions of personhood and agency for people with dementia. The organizational narratives were negotiated within a specific structural context where national regulation and dominant discourses on economic challenges and ageing gave precedence to some narratives more than others. In Danish elder care, the first narrative is the most influential but risks excluding people with dementia. Instead, rehabilitation in dementia care is positioned within a social and relational perspective, which may silence important discussion of agency and resistance.

Perverts or Heroes in the Post‐Socialist “Cold War”: Formula Stories of Lesbian/Bisexual/Queer Women and Transgender People in Ukrainian Media

Subjectivities such as (what would be termed in English) lesbians, bisexual, and queer (LBQ) women and transgender people are contested topics in Ukraine. Linking Laclau and Mouffe's discourse analysis with Loseke's narrative approach, we reviewed eight national, text‐based, journalistic media sources to read equivalence chains within the data as publicly available formula stories about LGBTQ+ people. Formula stories are not about actual people or typically told by LBQ women and transgender people themselves, but rather exist as publicly circulating stories for consumption by non‐LGBTQ+ people. Our findings shore up previous evidence that homophobia and transphobia (including criminalization and pathologization) are commonly articulated in media outlets in Ukraine. Importantly, media outlets owned by Russia and the United States and stories about events outside of Ukraine contribute most to the formula stories circulating in Ukraine, demonstrating the continuing position of Ukraine as a fulcrum of geopolitical contestations in the post‐socialist “cold war.” Analyzing sexual politics through formula stories illuminates ongoing transnational connections of imperialism and Europeanization to racialization, colonialism, and contestations of power. A video abstract is available at https://youtu.be/v3dCj0yYm_g.

Cannabis users and Homo Sovieticus. Stigma, culture, and delegitimization in Riga, Latvia

Cannabis ‘formula stories’ are disproportionately conceptualized from the gaze of a few mostly high-income Anglo-American nations that not only shape their own narratives and policies of cannabis but are also influential abroad. Lack of research in other mostly non-English-speaking countries has translated into a gap in knowledge about what cannabis formula stories are adopted, and how stigma is conceptualized by cannabis users. Using semi-structured interviews with cannabis users, this paper gives the first insight into how cannabis stigma is constructed in the post-Soviet European Riga, Latvia. Analysis corroborates previous findings of the delegitimization strategies that cannabis users adopt to resist stigma. However, people who stigmatize cannabis use are constructed as Soviet-born and agency-stripped Homo Sovieticus, who perceives all cannabis users as physically discriminable ‘potheads.’ To avoid sanctions, cannabis users, as members of the generation that does possess agency, avoid appearing as potheads. Thus, the knowledge and considered evasion of symbols that adhere to societal discriminatory ideas about ‘pothead’ cannabis users represent users’ ‘secret knowledge’ and their functional relationship with a cannabis-disdaining society. The study demonstrates how exaggerated stories shift user attention away from reflections about consumption patterns and toward a concern for the critical capacity of exaggerated cannabis story disseminators.

Narratives of Change: Identity and Recognition Dynamics in the Process of Moving Away From a Life Dominated by Drug Use

The concepts of identity and recovery capital are recognized as being an embedded part of moving away from a life dominated by drug use. However, the link between these two concepts and the effect of broader social structures, and the normative assumptions underpinning the condition of recovery, is less explored. This article focuses on the social practices of everyday life in the foreground of identity formation, meaning that “who I am” is an inseparable part of “what I do.” A narrative approach was employed to analyze qualitative follow-up data extracted from 48 in-depth interviews with 17 males and females with drug-using experience that were conducted posttreatment on three separate occasions over a period of 2.5 years. Theories of identity formation were employed to analyze the interdependent dynamic between social structure, persona and social resources, and way of life and identity. The analyses identified four narratives related to how people present themselves through the process of changing practices. Following the work of Honneth, we argue that the positive identity formation revealed in these narratives is best understood as a struggle for recognition via the principle of achievement. However, the participants’ self-narratives reflected cultural stories—specified as formula stories—of “normality,” “addiction,” and the “addict,” which work into the concepts of self and confine options of storying experiences during the recovery process. This study demonstrate that the process of recovery is culturally embedded and constitutes a process of adaption to conventional social positions and roles. We suggest challenging dominant discourses related to “addiction as a disease” and “normality” in order to prevent stigma related to drug use and recovery. In so doing, it may contribute to broaden conditions for identity (trans)formation for people in recovery.

“Something a bit more personal”: Digital storytelling and intimacy among queer Black women

Coming-out stories are important cultural texts wherein individuals articulate and interpret experiences of identifying as sexual minorities. Yet, much of the extant literature on coming-out stories examines narratives by white, middle-class gay men and lesbians. Critical inquiry into coming-out stories told by privileged queer subjects points to the formulaic and normative characteristics of their narratives, where sexual difference is downplayed or challenged. The goal of this article, then, is to ask whether and how coming-out narratives told by queer Black women conform to or depart from the “coming-out formula story.” Using an intersectional approach to narrative analysis, this article investigates the performative and discursive strategies that 50 women use in telling their coming-out stories on YouTube. Findings show that queer Black women’s use of intimate candor—the performative and discursive strategy of publicly revealing interior, often sexually explicit, aspects of the self—is a means through which women center desire and queerness; articulate a vision of queer Black womanhood; and complicate the coming-out formula.

From EFL classroom language to classroom lexicon: Importing formulaic story language into teacher talk

This paper reports on a language activity carried out in an Italian University with student teachers attending a primary education course. The activity was designed to train them to use authentic children’s picturebooks as a source for EFL language learning. It consisted of identifying and ‘noticing’ (Mackey 2006) multiword expressions and ready-made utterances in a number of authentic picturebooks and simulating instances of weaving the picturebook language into the fabric of daily classroom talk. Following the activity, the students wrote individual pieces of reflective writing describing their experience. Comments by student teachers assessed the use of picturebook-derived formulaic language on both their learning and perceived ability to teach English, and revealed much about their pedagogical perspectives on teacher talk. Results suggest that promoting the use of authentic and meaningful language in context can help student teachers conceive of classroom communication as lexicon (a shared communicative practice the rules of which are fully known only by a restricted community of speakers) rather than mere language-based interaction

"Deserving Patients" or "Potential Addicts?": Narrative Analysis of an FDA Hearing on Prescription Opioid Labeling.

This study explores how stories told at a United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) public hearing justify a label change intended to reduce the prescribing of opioids to people with chronic noncancer pain (CNCP). Drawing on a social constructionist framework, which holds that narratives play an essential role in influencing public policy, I employ Loseke's method for the empirical analysis of formula stories to examine the institutional narratives told at the hearing. I find that the stories serve to construct moral boundaries around different groups of patients with pain. Patients with cancer and life-limiting illness are constructed as unquestionably deserving of treatment with opioids, while patients with CNCP are constructed as potential "addicts" needing protection from opioid-related harm. I argue that the stories serve as moral justification for the outcome of the hearing while simultaneously marginalizing the voices of CNCP patients who rely on opioids for pain relief.

“Everything that I’ve Done Has Always Been Multiethnic”: Biographical Work among Leaders of Multiracial Churches

AbstractBiographical work is the process of shaping a cohesive life story by selectively giving meaning to past events. The resulting biographies are not simple recitations of life events but narratives that illuminate what is valued in a person’s social context and how the person makes sense of life events and experiences over time. Drawing on 121 interviews from the Religious Leadership and Diversity Project (RLDP), this article investigates biographical work among head clergy of multiracial churches. I find that pastors of multiracial churches pattern their biographies after two predominant formula stories, laying claim to being people who are experienced with diversity and/or experienced with racial injustice. These formula stories reveal institutionalized understandings of biographies acceptable for pastors of multiracial churches that cut across denominational lines. The biographies of these leaders also reveal a shift toward diversity and away from recognition of racial injustice that has implications for the racial structure.

Rebranding the Farmer: Formula Story Revision and Masculine Symbolic Boundaries in US Agriculture

This study identifies the gendered discourses used to construct symbolic masculinities embedded within a specific context, that of contemporary US agriculture. These gendered discourses rebrand the cultural narratives of the farmer in an effort to increase dependence upon and dominance of productivist agricultural resources. Three central questions guide our study: (1) How are masculinities discursively embedded throughout the formula story of the farmer in contemporary US agriculture? (2) What discursive mechanisms construct and maintain masculinities within these narratives? And (3) to what extent do these discourses contribute to the maintenance of social inequalities? Using a grounded theory analysis of popular farm magazines, we identify a central discursive mechanism—myth management—used to maintain idealized or nostalgic symbolic representations of farming while simultaneously promoting symbolic boundaries about how to be a successful contemporary man farmer. Through myth management, agribusiness revises the formula story to prioritize improved and advanced technology adoption, expert knowledge acquisition, and the increased on-farm consumption of both. Our study provides insight into the critical role myth management plays in the (re)production of inequitable cultural processes embedded within the US agricultural system. A case is made for examining rebranding projects more generally as industry-specific discursive strategies that bolster intersectional inequalities.

Theoretical foundations of narrative care: Turning towards relational ethics.

In the past decades, narrative practices have been developed, and care has been conceptualized as being narrative in nature. More recently, narrative care has been developing both as a practice and a field of study. It is necessary to make the theoretical foundations of narrative care visible to avoid the risk of narrowly defining narrative care as a matter of storytelling and listening. In this article, we develop an understanding of narrative care grounded in early feminist pragmatist philosophy, with a focus on social and political activism and experience. Pragmatism holds the possibilities to open spaces for realities that are constantly in flux and for emergent situations that must be considered across time, diverse places and social contexts. With the aid of Vera's stories about her relationship with Tammy, we demonstrate the importance of recognizing that realities are multiple, complex and uncertain. Furthermore, we discuss how the stronghold of formula stories and issues of power, positioning and inequities, restrict people's possibilities to be, become and co-author their stories. We also argue that the playfulness, imagination and world travelling of narrative care are in line with early feminist pragmatism, which draws on a wide and diverse range of experiences. Jane Addams linked democracy to dialogue, joint experiences and social equality. This calls for the development of ethical frameworks grounded in care that are more specifically focused on relational ethics and a commitment to dialogical and relational democracy and the prioritization of community.

“Once again, a meth lab exploded and somebody died”: Narratives of volatility and risk in the rural drug war

Methamphetamine (“meth”) has received a massive amount of media attention in the United States over the last decade. In reporting, journalists, politicians, and police commonly link meth to widespread risk, violence, criminality, and rural decay. Although the rise in meth use, addiction, and crime has been largely overstated, such imagery legitimizes an expansion of surveillance and policing to rural landscapes. In this research, I examine the way meth and meth makers are represented in case coverage of a meth lab fire sited in upstate New York. I find that reporters narrate a more general meth lab “social problem formula story” with caricature villains (meth makers), victims (community members), and heroes (law enforcement and legislators). Significantly, this model of storytelling conveys a distorted and exaggerated understanding of meth as a social problem, turning the atypical meth lab case into the “typical,” while legitimizing law and order solutions. In contributing to the contemporary “methamphetamine imaginary,” this formula story forgoes a structural analysis that considers the prevailing global drug war, rural poverty, or broader capital inequality.

The Curious Transformation of Boy to Computer

The Curious Transformation of Boy to Computer

Place-Based Elicitation: Interviewing Graffiti Writers at the Scene of the Crime

Interviews conducted in situ—literally at “the scene of the crime”1—can elicit more nuanced data than interviews conducted in locations removed from where the activity in question occurred. This is particularly true when conducting research on and with members of spatially conscious, “deviant,” and vulnerable communities who may for the sake of social and existential survival defer to rehearsed narratives and formula stories about their actions and perspectives when interviewed in “safe” spaces. In this article, which is based on participant observation and structured, semi-structured, and unstructured interviews with 108 graffiti writers, I contend that place-based elicitation can provide researchers with greater exposure to extradiscursive expression, reflection, and affective narratives about transgressive and illicit subcultural activity. The method of place-based elicitation has implications for where and how ethnographers and other qualitative researchers conduct interviews and seek to extract nuanced data from respondents.

Deconstruction of destruction stories: narrative, inequality, and disasters.

A commonly-held belief is that natural disasters do not discriminate. This paper, though, poses the following theoretical question: what does the elision of race, class, and gender in the news media say about disasters in the neoliberal era? It draws on the author's analysis of two prominent newspapers-The New York Times and USA Today-and their coverage of the recovery process after devastating tornadoes in two towns in the United States (Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and Joplin, Missouri) in 2011. The study asserts that the narrative of the news media is one with which people are familiar and that it fits into larger 'formula stories'. It utilises theoretical treatments of narrative to demonstrate how differences are erased and how they lead to complicity in hegemonic representations. Critical theory is used to elucidate why this occurs, and the paper sources Goldberg (2002) in suggesting that the news media employs 'fantasies of homogenisation' when representing post-disaster communities.

More than Native American narratives

The goal of this research is to understand how Native American storytellers challenge stereotypes and reclaim ‘authentic identities’ for themselves and their listeners with the stories that they tell. Employing qualitative methodology — thematic analysis, grounded theory, and narrative analysis — I examine one hundred and three stories featured on two affiliated websites that have recorded stories told by Native American elders, historians, storytellers, and song carriers. I find that the storytellers construct subversive narratives that challenge “the Native American” stereotypes, mythologies, and formula stories that circulate through the dominant culture. Temporal shifting, a new concept I develop in this paper, facilitates in the construction of what the storytellers believe to be an “authentic” identity. Temporal shifting, as I define it, is the past/present division in the double-consciousness of a marginalized person — it is a tool used to construct subversive stories. This research expands sociological understanding of Native Americans in general and Native American storytellers, in particular. I also introduce a new concept, temporal shifting, to the fields of critical race theory, cognitive sociology, and symbolic interactionism as an analytical device to use when looking at marginalized peoples’ narrative identities.

Narrative Diversity and Sympathetic Abortion: What Online Storytelling Reveals About the Prescribed Norms of the Mainstream Movements

Social movement scholarship demonstrates the importance of formula stories in raising awareness for social causes. The stories put forth by the opposing sides of the abortion rights issue in the United States utilize sympathetic narratives in furthering their arguments for and against abortion rights respectively, but differences in each side's narrative strategies are instructive in understanding current reproductive debate discourse. This article is a qualitative examination of abortion narratives published on two websites, one pro‐life and one pro‐choice. Chief among my findings are that narratives for each cause support opposed views of women's appropriate contemporary social roles and that authors' reported approaches to pregnancy and abortion are instrumental in constructing these broader understandings. Narratives posted by pro‐choice authors are confined by circumstantial norms surrounding unintended pregnancy (such as young age, student status, and first‐time pregnancy) as well as by a requirement to attribute empowering outcomes to the abortion decision. Pro‐life authors discuss a broader array of circumstances surrounding their pregnancies with narratives ultimately unified by themes of intense regret followed by atonement.

A Kiss for Three Decades: Comparative Researches on Film Language and Tourism Destination Image between two versions of “Romance on Lushan Mountain”

Expression of visual image via brochures, billboards, TV commercials, newspapers, movies, etc. has been widely applied into promotion of tourism products, urban landscape, natural scenery, tourist destinations, and even changed communication way between tourist information and potential visitors. Many scholars have made substantial and valuable researches on still images, however, moving images are very critical to tourism industry, and should be further researched and attended academically. It has been verified and proven from researches of some scholars that movie makes important influence on tourism experience, travel motivations, destination marketing and other aspects as one of dynamic image expressions; however, under different cultural backgrounds, a movie conveys different connotations, but orientalism reason is rarely considered by scholars. In addition, many scholars only consider movie as an influential factor, and few pay attentions to the language and meaning or cultural connotation conveyed by a movie itself. Therefore, the paper interprets two versions of the Chinese movie “Romance on Lushan Mountain”, which production time was separated by three decades, and competitively studies difference in expression and image establishment of the tourist destination Lushan between two versions. Visual analysis method is applied to textual interpretation of the movie; it is shown from results the visual image of Lushan, the tourist destination in the movie, is both adhered and also carried forward through such two versions. The first version focuses on local natural beauty, and integrates values ??of love and historical background into the tourist attractions closely, thus making wide and lasting impact on tourists; the second version highlights to establish an emotional connection with the previous version, and enriches other images of the destination in addition to natural scenery, where modern city life and truelove are combined in the image promotion of tourist destination; however, from the point of expression method, the second version is excessively commercialized, and criticized as a formulaic and conventional story, which influence is poorer than the previous versions.

A Taste for Murder: The Curious Case of Crime Fiction

A Taste for Murder: The Curious Case of Crime Fiction