Community Narratives Research Articles

Unravelling imaginaries of the digital divide among indigenous communities in Taman Negara Malaysia

The digital divide is frequently conceptualized as a disparity between those who possess access to contemporary technologies and those who lack such access. This divide is often defined by factors such as physical access, technological proficiency, and disparate outcomes. However, this perspective frequently neglects its historical origins in the "development" discourse, which has been shaped by global and local telecommunication policies. The recent initiatives to enhance digital access in "remote" regions, such as Malaysia, prompt a reassessment of regional discourses on digital inequality. This study examines the ways in which indigenous groups, particularly the Batek and Semokberi communities in Taman Negara National Park (spanning Pahang, Kelantan, and Terengganu in Malaysia), experience and interpret information and communication technologies (ICTs). For these communities, the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is a relatively recent phenomenon. This paper employs the concept of spatial imaginaries to examine how digital access shapes perceptions of social categories like "connected" and "disconnected." The findings reveal that the digital divide is not merely a matter of access; rather, it is actively constructed through institutional and community narratives about how connectivity reshapes spatial and temporal experiences, influencing broader discussions on digital inclusion.

“Choreographing Empathy” in Walking Miracles, an Original Dance/Theater Work Created from Stories Told by Six Adult Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse

Walking Miracles, a dance/theater project, was created from the stories of six adult survivors of child sexual abuse and completed due to the conscientious work of many collaborators. A psychotherapy group of fourteen sessions was audiotaped and attended by the six survivors, three dancer/choreographers, and one psychotherapist. Our goals were to provide positive psychotherapeutic experiences for the survivors and the foundation for a dance/theater piece that would then be presented to the public at the conclusion of the group sessions. Our hope was that audiences would gain a deeper empathetic understanding of child sexual abuse and would become stronger allies for the survivors and stronger advocates for child abuse prevention. Empathetic abilities were critical for this project—in the psychotherapy process, in the care taken to protect the trust and confidentiality of the survivors, and in the creation of the script, choreography, music, and poetry. I will examine the nature of empathy and the processes for creating specific movements from such dark experiences. How does one approach a work about issues so intensely personal? What care do we need to provide for the participants during the progression of the work? What are the ethical aspects of such projects that use the personal narratives of hidden communities?

Virtual Photovoice and Social Work: Unveiling CRT and LatCrit Insights into Latinx Communities in the Southwest During COVID-19

ABSTRACT The paper explores the intersection of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Latinx Critical Race Theory (LatCrit) within Latinx communities, focusing on Photovoice as a method to understand systemic inequalities and power dynamics. Drawing on Freire’s concept of critical consciousness, CRT and LatCrit frameworks delve into institutional racism and intersecting forms of oppression experienced by Latinx communities. The study adapted the use of Photovoice to a virtual format during the COVID-19 pandemic, aiming to authentically capture community narratives. Through the Your Family, Your Neighborhood (YFYN) intervention, Photovoice sessions engage Latinx families in documenting neighborhood strengths and challenges. Virtual adaptation enabled inclusivity and participation despite geographical barriers. Thematic analysis of participant-generated photos and narratives reveals community strengths in resilience, faith, and recreational spaces in response to challenges such as environmental hazards and inadequate infrastructure. This paper also highlights the role of social work in integrating culturally relevant methodologies to better understand and address Latinx experiences. By leveraging digital technologies, remote Photovoice projects uphold principles of participation and empowerment, contributing to nuanced understandings of Latinx realities within the U.S. socio-cultural landscape and offering valuable insights for social work practice and advocacy.

Ideological Fantasy of Social Harmony (Rukun) in Rural Java, Indonesia, in Ahmad Tohari’s Di Kaki Bukit Cibalak

Ahmad Tohari presents the narrative of a village community under a corrupt village head in the novel Di Kaki Bukit Cibalak (2022). One of the villagers initiates an effort to improve the village's economic state amid hesitation to confront the corrupt village head. This article qualitatively examined the ideological fantasy of social harmony (rukun) in rural Java, Indonesia, as depicted in Ahmad Tohari's Di Kaki Bukit Cibalak. The sociology of literature approach correlated the story's facts with the social realities in Java. Data were collected through documentation techniques. Meanwhile, the analysis was conducted using Slavoj Žižek's theory of ideological fantasy and the concept of social harmony. The findings revealed that the lower-class villagers in rural Java had a symbolic mandate to 'surrender' to maintain social harmony, even though the subject aimed to defy the corrupt village head. The Javanese villagers preferred to avoid open conflict, which led the subject to leave its idealism rather than confront the corrupt leader despite their disgust of the corruption and their aspiration to improve the village. As the representation of reality, it is critical as the ideological fantasy of social harmony causes the lower-class villagers to postpone resisting the corrupt village head to maintain peace, providing chances for any kind of violences thrive in real life.

Unveiling the counternarratives of Ganga: Ganga as goddess in the Sundarbans

ABSTRACT The upper-caste Hindu communities in India portray the river Ganga as a deity associated with death and salvation. These mythical narratives overshadow the less imaginative, more experiential, and ambivalent emotions upheld by the riverine communities living around the Ganga. To understand the interplay between the contextual realities of these communities and the conceptualisation of Ganga, the article analyses select oral narratives of the riverine communities of the Sundarban Delta in West Bengal. It focuses on how the belief of Ganga as a goddess is materialised through ‘memorates’ within the vulnerable riverine ecology of the Sundarbans. The article highlights the intersections between the symbolic and material aspects of the river interacting with the economic and social realities of people thereby creating a counternarrative to the representation of the river in the Vedas and the Puranas.

Future considerations for implementation and impact of community narrative initiatives.

In response to communities where individuals experience both disproportionate numbers of Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and other health inequities, narrative change has emerged as a powerful tool to change how ACEs are viewed and addressed by communities. The special issue presents a set of papers examining efforts to use narrative change to address ACEs. In this commentary, we offer reflections on the introduction and three articles of the special issue and point to future considerations for implementation and impact of community narrative initiatives. For example, we assert that to prevent and address the outcomes of ACEs such as substance use and mental health problems, communities need to include and amplify the voices of those with lived experience during decision-making about policy. We also espouse using research models of resilience in communities as a way to further uptake of narrative change strategies in the literature on ACEs and health disparities in communities. Using trauma-informed outcomes and measures are also critical to measure how narrative change can move the needle to promote health equity.

Subjugation and Survival: Animal and Nature Narratives in the Himalayas

Abstract: This article examines both vernacular and establishment narratives about animals and nature in Tibet and the Himalayas. Close readings of documents from the Tibetan Imperial Period and major works of Tibetan literature will be juxtaposed with community narratives collected during fieldwork in the Spiti region of India’s Northwest Himalayas. This article suggests that the historical tendency to emphasize the subjugation of nature has been challenged by recent vernacular and establishment accounts. We shall see that narratives in Spiti have stressed that the relationship between humans and the natural world is a reciprocal one, rather than one of subjugation.

Collective victimhood narratives in far-right communities on Telegram

ABSTRACT Feelings of collective victimhood have been demonstrated to have a strong effect on ingroup bias, outgroup hostility and support for violence. The use of narratives stirring these feelings in far-right communications is especially concerning given their inclusion in the manifestos of several mass killers across Europe and North America. However, scholars still have little knowledge on the reach of such narratives as well as the extent to which major salient events increase attention to collective victimhood messaging among far-right followers. To address these gaps, we analyze the use of collective victimhood narratives on the popular secure instant messaging service, Telegram, which has exploded in popularity in response to mainstream platforms’ attempts to moderate extremist speech. We develop a supervised machine learning algorithm to predict the presence of these discourses in text from over 18.5 million messages that were extracted from 1,870 far-right Telegram channels. We then use these data to test what impact the George Floyd protests and the storming of the US Capitol had on the frequency of collective narrative discussions on far-right Telegram. Our findings suggest that both events coincided with a significant increase in the use of victimhood narratives, thus providing insight into the radicalization process of far-right communities online.

Community Narratives in Producing Negative Images: Their Implications to Violent Extremism Recruitment

This study explores how narratives within communities affected by the All-Out war of 2000 contribute to the creation and transmission of enemy images against the government. It examines the role of these stories in fostering a social identity that otherizes the government and discusses the mechanisms of vertical transmission of these images from parents to children. The paper also considers the implications of these narratives for recruitment into violent extremist groups and suggests strategies for reframing stories to mitigate their impact on borrowed trauma.

Experiential tourism and community narratives: Non-Tourist Guidebook of Ussita

In recent decades, experiential tourism studies have developed strongly within a transforming tourism development paradigm. The enhancement of the territory is more focused on its intangible resources, and experience becomes a strategic concern within a renewed way of practicing tourism where individuals look primarily for what to experience. Tourism becomes an opportunity to create and exchange experiences by challenging conventional tourism practices and advocating new value references and new forms of tourism including experiential tourism. This article will focus on the relationship between experiential tourism and community narratives: the Non tourism Project, and particularly the Non tourism Guidebook of Ussita, a small Italian municipality in an inland area and an earthquake victim, will be presented. Non tourism is a way of understanding the encounter between a community and those from outside: the non tourist seeks an intimate and authentic relationship with a territory and the community rediscovers its identity through a collective narrative. The paper aims to investigate whether community narratives can help transform tourism into an enriching and meaningful experience, creating deep bonds between tourists and the places they visit, promoting sustainability, and enhancing local cultural heritage. The non-tourist guide, as a result of the local community’s collective storytelling experience, brings tourists closer to experiential ways of visiting and has enabled the local community to rediscover its identity through the use of narrative practices. This article aims to highlight how non-tourist guides can also be a tool for dialogue between tourists and the community through the proposal of experiential itineraries. The experience of non-tourist guides is purely Italian and is at an early but interesting stage of diffusion, with volumes covering both urban contexts and smaller and inland territories. The article is the result of an initial exploratory work (Yin, 2017) that offered a preliminary understanding of the opportunity that non-tourist guides have to promote sustainability, enhancing local resources and offering significant benefits to both tourists and host communities.

The Holy Land of Saints: The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem and the Life Story of St. Marie Alphonsine

Utilizing the lens of new historicism, this study examines how hagiographers Stolz, Duvignau, and Khoury, from the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, have constructed and modified the narrative identity of St. Marie Alphonsine through different periods—1936, 1989, and 2012–2015. This approach illuminates the complex relationship between religious storytelling, cultural identity formation, and perceptions of “otherness”. The chronological dissection of St. Marie Alphonsine’s portrayal uncovers the hagiographers’ efforts to recalibrate her image in response to the changing cultural, spiritual, and communal demands within the Patriarchate’s jurisdiction and among the faithful. Highlighting the hagiographers’ instrumental role on behalf of the Patriarchate in molding religious and cultural discourses, the article explores the profound impact of saintly veneration on shaping the religious identity and cultural narratives of the Catholic community in the Holy Land. It underscores the essential function of the Patriarchate in steering the Catholic community through the complexities of the evolving socio-religious landscape.

The Community Narrative Space of Yim Tin Tsai in Hong Kong: A Study of Multi-Involvement Based on Domain Theory

Traditional villages are typical forms of farming settlements, which concentrate the essence of vernacular civilization. However, with the evolution of urbanization and modernization, the desire of villagers to improve their living standards is increasingly in conflict with the preservation of the authenticity of villages, calling for the innovation of village governance means. Based on this, this study attempts to highlight the role of multiple subjects participating in excavating the plural value of the traditional communities, in the hope of consolidating the sustained intrinsic motivation for the conservation. By using the domain theory, this study takes Yim Tin Tsai Art Village in Sai Kung, Hong Kong, as a case study to focus on the community involvement mode embodied in its revitalization and restoration plan. Through exploring the formation of cultural habitus, the logic, and the influencing factors of subject interaction, intending to provide references for addressing existing situational constraints and achieving overall development.

African American heritage space: The plight to build a home for history

AbstractWith one African American museum in the county, many heritage organizations have attempted to build a museum to house artifacts and present community narratives for years. This commentary describes heritage organizations' efforts to establish a museum in a South Florida city.

Stigma Toward Families With Mental Health Problems in Latino Communities

Stigma toward families with members managing mental health problems remains underresearched in Latino communities. Using community-based surveys on mental health stigma and help-seeking attitudes, this study examined the associations between family-level stigma and participant sociodemographic characteristics. Only education level and spirituality significantly predicted family-level stigma. Individuals with higher education levels exhibited lower stigma scores. High spirituality levels were associated with minimal increases in stigma. The study underscores the influence of education on family-level stigma among Latino individuals. Given the importance of family in Latino culture, reshaping community narratives around mental health to support affected families can promote inclusivity and support, reducing stigmatization.

Raised under bad stars: negotiating a culture of disaster preparedness

PurposeThe ways communities have regarded disasters and natural hazards in the cultural sphere can provide a lens to inform the understanding of their ability to withstand shocks and the factors that led to such conditions. Only by tracing the complexities of creating, transmitting and preserving a culture of preparedness among disaster-vulnerable communities can researchers and practitioners claim to be working toward policy that is informed by the communities’ own experience and design policy or programming on their behalf.Design/methodology/approachIn efforts to prevent, respond to and recover from disasters, what alternatives are available to top-down strategies for imposing expert knowledge on lay publics? How is the context of communities’ socioecological context understood in the development of programs and policy on their behalf? What can be learned from community narratives and cultural practices to inform disaster risk reduction?FindingsI collected examples of how different communities perceive, prevent and respond to disaster through art, music and literature and analyzed how these were embedded into local narratives and how historical context influenced such approaches. My findings show that communities use cultural practices to contextualize experiences of hazards into their collective narrative; that is, storytelling and commemoration make disasters comprehensible. By incorporating such findings into existing policies and programs, institutions may be able to more effectively apply them to affected communities or build new ones around their actual needs and experiences.Originality/valueBy framing disasters as an anthropological inquiry, practitioners can better recognize the influence of a place’s nuance in the disaster management canon–guided by these details, not despite them.

Gendered urban cycling and the ethics of caring: coming to voice in the streets of Tijuana and Oaxaca amidst the patriarcarro

ABSTRACT This article explores grassroots organisations and collectives of women cyclists in the cities of Tijuana and Oaxaca, Mexico. Taking a narrative approach, it delves into the idea of public space that emerges from their life histories, chronicles, and talk groups. It contends that the narratives of their urban practices and interventions, and of their lives as a whole, are a radical resignification of the meaning and purposes of streets and other urban public spaces. Currently sites of different forms of oppression, in these women’s actions and narrative formulations, they become places ‘from which I come to voice’, intersubjective locations of ‘radical openness and possibilities’ developed through an ethics of caring. This collective vision pushes against capitalist ideas of streets as places for the efficient transit of individuals for productivity and consumption, and against oppressive boundaries of gender, sex, and class. Instead, what emerges from their narrated experience is a relational form of mobility, a way through the city that fosters self-affirmation, inclusivity, and community. Our contribution is based on five years of ethnographic fieldwork in Mexico and on ‘disappropriative writing’ exercises with our participants to produce the collaborative public archive of community narratives of urban cycling (www.reciclarseenlaciudad.com) upon which this and other research outcomes of this project are based.

‘Let him die in peace’: understanding caregiver’s refusal of medical oxygen treatment for children in Nigeria

IntroductionEfforts to improve oxygen access have focused mainly on the supply side, but it is important to understand demand barriers, such as oxygen refusal among caregivers. We therefore aimed to...

Who Took the Fall in 1408, and Why? Vienna's Elites in Alliances and Conflicts with Habsburg Dukes

AbstractThis article focuses on the involvement of Viennese elites in wide-reaching political conflicts around 1400. Central European princes often held positions as city lords, which resulted in ambivalent relations between them and urban elites, as well as with their kin residing in the countryside. Setting aside grand categories of institutional history in favor of the interactions and relations of concrete actors, their social networks, and their involvement in shaping politics, the article follows six urban actors through a major conflict that involved the city lords, urban authorities, and individual actors and eventually resulted in the beheading of three of them. The article adopts a prosopographical approach to find out more about patterns of social costs and benefits in these conflicts. It argues that considering polyvalent and relational dimensions of belonging can help us better understand constellations of conflict and alliance and the modes and mechanisms of late medieval politics. It eventually establishes the boundaries of social network approaches when it comes to assessing individual motives and their alleged resonance in contemporary narratives of community.

Archival dignity, colonial records and community narratives

Archival dignity, colonial records and community narratives

Cultural Dissemination of North African Diaspora in Western Europe: From Pasts to Pixels

This study takes stock of the North African diaspora's experiences in Western Europe across four distinct generations. It draws on a tailored theoretical framework to deconstruct the interactions of the historical experiences, societal shifts, and identity negotiations these generations have gone through in the process of cultural dissemination. The central question of the paper revolves around understanding the ways digital platforms and social media influence the negotiation and preservation of cultural heritage, as well as looking into how these technological advancements impact the formation of diasporic identities. The primary objective herein is to shed light on the challenges, resistances, and adaptations experienced by the four generations (Pioneering, Integration, Globalization, and Digital Generations) in the face of cultural differences, discrimination, and the unique opportunities afforded by the digital age. Furthermore, the objective is to contribute to the existing body of literature by adopting a holistic approach that synthesizes various aspects of the diasporic experience, shedding light on the ways in which technology shapes the cultural narratives of North African communities, ultimately offering some insights into the broader discourse on cultural resilience, connectivity, and the evolving nature of diasporic communities in the contemporary world.