Storytelling in Social Movements

ABSTRACT Activists, like prophets, politicians, and advertising executives, have long recognized the power of a good story to move people to action. But what is it about stories that render them more politically effective than other discursive forms? Just as important, are there political risks to telling stories-especially for groups challenging the status quo? Drawing on cases ranging from nineteenth century abolitionism to twentieth century movements around AIDS, abortion, child molestation, desegregation, and domestic abuse, I make two non-intuitive arguments. One is that stories' power comes not from the clarity of their moral message but from their allusiveness, indeed, their ambiguity. The other is that activists' ability to tell effective stories is shaped as much by the norms of stories' evaluation as by the norms of their content. In this sense, culture may curb challenge less through the canonical limits on what kinds of stories can be imagined than through the social conventions regarding when and how stories should be told. In addition to making a case for storytelling's variable benefits, the chapter shows how an analysis of movement storytelling can shed light on dynamics of cultural constraint that have been difficult to grasp with the conceptual idiom of framing. 1 Activists, like prophets, politicians, and advertising executives, have long recognized the power of a good story to move people to action. The tale of a chosen people's wanderings that end in the promised land becomes a clarion call to revolution. A political official is reimagined as an emperor without clothes and dissent that was only whispered becomes voluble. An ordinary man recounts the moment at which he cast off years of fear and shame to acknowledge publicly his homosexuality and members of his audience resolve that they too will come out. But what is it about stories that render them more politically effective than other discursive forms? Just as important, are there political risks to telling stories-especially for groups challenging the status quo? If you are a feminist charging sex discrimination in hiring, are you better off documenting statistical disparities in the promotion rates for men and women or having a few women testify to their stifled aspirations? If you are an adult survivor of child abuse, does telling your story of pain and humiliation motivate others with the same experience to step forward? Or does it alienate people who are unwilling to see themselves as victims? In this chapter, I draw on cases ranging from nineteenth century abolitionism to twentieth century movements around AIDS, abortion, child molestation, desegregation, and domestic abuse to support two non-intuitive arguments. One is that stories' power comes not from the clarity of their moral message but from their allusiveness, indeed, their ambiguity. The other is that activists' ability to tell effective stories is shaped as much by the norms of stories' use and evaluation as by the norms of their content. In this sense, culture may curb challenge less through the canonical limits on what kinds of stories can be imagined than through the social conventions regarding when and how stories should be told. My aim in this chapter is not only to assess the mixed political benefits of telling stories but to make a case for studying storytelling as a form of movement culture. I argue that 2 analyzing the stories told in and about movements can help us to gain purchase on a question that has been difficult to answer. How are activists constrained in their ability to use culture effectively? Presumably, activists hew to dominant cultural norms where it serves them and challenge those norms where it does not. Yet, that calculus is never transparent. Activists, like the rest of us, are risk-averse. And they struggle to master the norms of cultural expression at the same time as they decide whether to defy them. Paying attention to storytelling, and especially to how activists strategize in their use of stories in different institutional arenas, can shed light on the cultural constraints that activists face and why they only sometimes succeed in overcoming them. Let me begin, then, by defining narrative and making several claims for its virtues as a window onto broader cultural processes. Why Stories? Although scholars have drawn on an array of concepts to capture the role of culture in movements, among them, ideology, discourse, schema, identity, rhetoric, and belief, the concept of collective action "framing" has held pride of place (for a good overview, see Snow 2004). Frames are sets of beliefs that "assign meaning to and interpret relevant events and conditions in ways that are intended to mobilize potential adherent and constituents, to garner bystander support, and to demobilize antagonists" (Snow and Benford 1992: 198; Benford and Snow 2000:614). What makes a frame successful in doing those things? Scholars have drawn attention to features of the frame itself and to features of the group that is targeted. With respect to the first, frames that are clear, coherent, and consistent are more likely to persuade people to join and support the cause. The diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational components of the frame should 3 be richly developed and interconnected (Snow and Benford 1992: 199). There should be a clear "we"-those to whom the injustice is done-and an obvious "they" who are responsible for the injustice (Gamson 1992; One problem centers on framing theorists' contention that effective frames are clear, coherent, and consistent. These claims have been more asserted than empirically tested. We 4 simply do not know whether clear frames are more effective than ambiguous ones; whether frames with consistently related diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational components are more mobilizing than those without; whether effective frames do delineate adversaries sharply. Given the fact that, as framing theorists themselves have pointed out, most ordinary people's beliefs are vague, shifting, diverse, and internally contradictory (see also, Merelman 1998; Billig et al. 1988), why should we expect that people will put a premium on clarity and consistency in the messages they attend to and believe? We need a better understanding of how persuasion works than framing theory has yet provided. We need to grasp how combinations of words (and images) work to garner attention, establish authority, provoke new ways of thinking, and spur action. The second problem in framing theory's calculus of frame effectiveness is a limited understanding of how frames are shaped by their audiences. Certainly, framing theorists have always acknowledged that there are multiple audiences for movements' framing efforts. Although early work concentrated on potential recruits, researchers since then have studied activists' framing to reporters, in court, and on television talk shows. They have drawn attention especially to the conflicts created by the generally moderate messages that are required by the public and the more radical ones that resonate with movement participants The third problem in theorizing about the conditions for frames' effectiveness is an assumption that culture, understood as beliefs, values, myths, and worldviews, is separate from experience. This assumption is evident in the idea that frames' "empirical credibility" and their "experiential commensurability" (Benford and Snow 2000) can be appraised separately from their resonance with cultural myths. Surely, however, people's personal experiences are shaped by their cultural beliefs, values, and perceptions. In this sense, the challenge for activists is not only to frame persuasive claims but also to frame intelligible ones. Activists must challenge not only people's formal beliefs but also their common sense. To give an example that I will take up again later, a judge may believe firmly in women's equality with men. And yet he may hand down rulings that systematically disadvantage women, not because his professed egalitarianism is a lie but because he understands gender equality in the context of a whole cluster of assumptions about men and women and difference and biology and preferences. Activists often find themselves struggling to craft a frame capable of debunking symbolic associations that are difficult to even name. As analysts, we need tools to get at this background common sense with which activists must contend. Moreover, activists themselves are vulnerable to the cultural constructions that pass as common sense. That statement may raise a red flag by suggesting that activists are falsely conscious, somehow blind to their own best interests. Of course, individual activists, like all of us, have blind spots and superstitions. The challenge, however, is to show how those blind spots 6 and superstitions are widespread and powerful enough among activists to systematically foreclose strategic options. What we need then, is a fuller understanding of the mechanisms that make certain claims risky. In sum, theories of collective action framing have been limited by their failure to probe the rhetorical vehicles of framing, the institutional norms that delimit appropriate ways of talking, and the underpinning common sense in terms of which frames are understood. Why should an analysis of narrative help us to do all these things? Define a narrative, uncontroversially, as an account of a sequence of events in the order in which they occurred so as to make a point clauses) ending with one that serves as dénouement, and (c) an evaluation, which can appear at any point in the story, establishing the importance of the events related (Labov and Waletsky 1967). Thanks to a substantial literature on narrative in diverse fields, we know a great deal about how narrative achieves its rhetorical effects. What makes a story believable, persuasive, resonant? First, the fact that narratives integrate description, explanation, and evaluation. Think about how we hear or read a story. We tack back and forth from the events that are described to the larger point that they add up to. We assume that later events in the story will make sense of earlier ones and that details that are irrelevant to the story's point will be omitted. Depending on how dramatic the story is, we experience the events' resolution as a veritable release of psychic energy; we talk about a story's "climax." We also expect that the resolution of the story will be moral. It will project a desirable or undesirable future. Of course, some stories moralize more explicitly than others. But all have what linguists William Labov and Joshua Framing theorists argue that effective frames tightly link diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational elements. Stories do exactly that. However, they do so the basis of a narrative logi

Accretion Rate and the Physical Nature of Unobscured Active Galaxies

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Researchers taking a social constructionist perspective on identity agree that identities are constructed and negotiated in interaction. However, empirical studies in this field are often based on interviewer–interviewee interaction or focus on interactions with members of a socially dominant out-group. How identities are negotiated in interaction with in-group members remains understudied. In this article we use a narrative approach to study identity negotiation among Moroccan-Dutch young adults, who constitute both an ethnic and a religious (Muslim) minority in the Netherlands. Our analysis focuses on the topics that appear in focus group participants’ stories and on participants’ responses to each other’s stories. We find that Moroccan-Dutch young adults collectively narrate their experiences in Dutch society in terms of discrimination and injustice. Firmly grounded in media discourse and popular wisdom, a collective narrative of a disadvantaged minority identity emerges. However, we also find that this identity is not uncontested. We use the concept of second stories to explain how participants negotiate their collective identity by alternating stories in which the collective experience of deprivation is reaffirmed with stories in which challenging or new evaluations of the collective experience are offered. In particular, participants narrate their personal experiences to challenge recurring evaluations of discrimination and injustice. A new collective narrative emerges from this work of joint storytelling

Galaxy Counts at 24 Microns in the SWIRE Fields

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Storytelling in den Vereinten Nationen: Mahbub ul Haq und menschliche Entwicklung

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A quasar-galaxy mixing diagram: quasar spectral energy distribution shapes in the optical to near-infrared

We define a quasar-galaxy mixing diagram using the slopes of their spectral energy distributions (SEDs) from 1 \u3bcm to 3000 \uc5 and from 1 to 3 \u3bcm in the rest frame. The mixing diagram can easily distinguish among quasar-dominated, galaxy-dominated and reddening-dominated SED shapes. By studying the position of the 413 XMM-selected type 1 AGN in the wide-field `Cosmic Evolution Survey' in the mixing diagram, we find that a combination of the Elvis et al. mean quasar SED with various contributions from galaxy emission and some dust reddening is remarkably effective in describing the SED shape from 0.3 to 3 \u3bcm for large ranges of redshift, luminosity, black hole mass and Eddington ratio of type 1 AGN. In particular, the location in the mixing diagram of the highest luminosity AGN is very close (within 1\u3c3) to that of the Elvis et al. SED template. The mixing diagram can also be used to estimate the host galaxy fraction and reddening in quasar. We also show examples of some outliers which might be AGN in different evolutionary stages compared to the majority of AGN in the quasar-host galaxy co-evolution cycle

Just talk: Public deliberation after 9/11

Abstract Critics of public deliberation as conventionally practiced have charged that it is &quot;just talk&quot; in the sense both that it substitutes sociable conversation for practical deliberation and that it substitutes political talk for political action. I argue that both criticisms rest on unnecessarily restrictive models of talk and politics. Drawing on participant observation and interviews with eighty participants in two forums convened to deliberate about the future of the former World Trade Center, I tease out the variety of models on which people styled their discussions, models that included education, negotiation, and advocacy. In ways not often recognized by deliberative theorists, these models helped participants to hone their own opinions and reach agreement across difference. Participants also perceived less of a conflict between deliberation and advocacy than deliberative theorists have tended to do. Insofar as participants&apos; understandings of what made for good deliberation and appropriate modes of political influence differed from those of forum organizers, they point both to practical challenges in organizing deliberation and to possibilities for organizing it more effectively

Characters in Political Storytelling

Much of the literature on narrative in politics focuses on stories that are told explicitly and focuses on the role of genre in shaping stories. But in politics, as in other spheres, stories are often alluded to rather than told explicitly. And the allusions often take the form of a reference to a character: the welfare queen, the anchor baby, the litigious American. Accordingly, this essay centers on characters in politics. I ask: Why do particular characters come to be resonant in political debates? How much power does a resonant character have to shape policies? And how much freedom do contending parties have to invent new characters? Can one style anyone a victim or a hero? Or do group stereotypes limit who can play particular roles? To answer these questions, I draw on research in sociology, political science, communication, and anthropology, as well as on cases from social movements, electoral politics, and policy making