This article discusses an epistemological problem faced by causal explanations of action and a proposed solution. The problem is to justify why one particular reason rather than another is specified as causally efficacious. It is argued that the problem arises independently of one’s preferred conception of singular causal claims, psychological and psychophysical generalizations, and our folk-psychological competence. The proposed fallibilist solution involves the supplementation of the reason given by narratives that contextualize it and provide additional criteria for justifying the causal (...) claim. It is argued that narratives have a distinctive structure that can afford the justification of causal attributions without sui generis powers of narrative explanation having to be invoked. (shrink)

This paper explores how the diagnosis of mental disorder may affect the diagnosed subject’s self-concept by supplying an account that emphasizes the influence of autobiographical and social narratives on self-understanding. It focuses primarily on the diagnoses made according to the criteria provided by the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), and suggests that the DSM diagnosis may function as a source of narrative that affects the subject’s self-concept. Engaging in this analysis by appealing to autobiographies and memoirs written by (...) people diagnosed with mental disorder, the paper concludes that a DSM diagnosis is a double-edged sword for self- concept. On the one hand, it sets the subject’s experience in an established classificatory system which can facilitate self-understanding by providing insight into subject’s condition and guiding her personal growth, as well as treatment and recovery. In this sense, the DSM diagnosis may have positive repercussions on self-development. On the other hand, however, given the DSM’s symptom-based approach and its adoption of the Biomedical Disease model, a diagnosis may force the subject to make sense of her condition divorced from other elements in her life that may be affecting her mental- health. It may lead her frame her experience only as an irreversible imbalance. This form of self-understanding may set limits on the subject’s hopes of recovery and may create impediments to her flourishing. (shrink)

Is the self narratively constructed? There are many who would answer yes to the question. Dennett (1991) is, perhaps, the most famous proponent of the view that the self is narratively constructed, but there are others, such as Velleman (2006), who have followed his lead and developed the view much further. Indeed, the importance of narrative to understanding the mind and the self is currently being lavished with attention across the cognitive sciences (Dautenhahn, 2001; Hutto, 2007; Nelson, 2003). Emerging from (...) this work, there appear to be a variety of ways in which we can think of the narrative construction of the self and the relationship between the narrative self and the embodied agent. I wish to examine two such ways in this paper. The first I shall call the abstract narrative account, this is because its proponents take the narrative self to be an abstraction (Dennett, 1991; Velleman, 2006). Dennett, for example, refers to the self as a centre of narrative gravity, to be thought of as analogous to a mathematical conception of the centre of gravity of an object. The second I shall call the embodied narrative account and this is the view that the self is constituted both by an embodied consciousness whose experiences are available for narration and narratives themselves, which can play a variety of roles in the agent’s psychological life. (shrink)

Narrative views of the self argue that we constitute our self in self-narratives. Embodied views hold that our self is shaped through embodied experiences. In that case, what is the relation between embodiment and narrativity in the process of self-constitution? The question demands a clear definition of embodiment, but existing studies remains unclear on this point (section 2). We offer a correction to this situation by drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of the body that highlights its habituality. On this account, the (...) body has an inherent tendency to cultivate an organization of habits through its history of engagement with the world (section 3). Next, we explore its role in narrative self-constitution by distinguishing between two aspects of the narrative self, the narrated I and the narrating I (section 4). We argue on phenomenological grounds that self-narratives are informed by bodily perspectives in both respects. Furthermore, a focus on the habituality of the body allows for a better explanation of self-constitution than those based on implicit self-narratives (section 5). For these phenomenological and theoretical reasons, we conclude that narrative self-constitution is an embodied and embedded practice (section 6). (shrink)

This research explores the incorporation of narrative perspectives in economics as a social science and its implications for rethinking epistemology. By examining the role of narratives in economic analysis, the study highlights the advantages of narratives in providing contextualized accounts of human experiences, connecting economic concepts to real-world phenomena, and exploring diverse perspectives. It emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration between philosophers, economists, and social scientists to gain a comprehensive understanding of narratives' influence on economic decision-making, market dynamics, and consumer (...) behaviour. The research suggests that narratives offer a means to challenge the notion of a single, objective truth and contribute to a more inclusive and robust framework for analyzing economic phenomena. The implications extend beyond economics, urging a broader perspective on epistemology by embracing narrative perspectives and engaging in interdisciplinary collaboration across disciplines. Overall, this research calls for a rethinking of epistemology, recognising the significance of narratives and their role in knowledge production. (shrink)

Digital technology has prompted philosophers to rethink some of the fundamental categories we use to make sense of the world and ourselves. Particularly, the concept of ‘identity’ and its reconfiguration in the digital age has sparked much debate in this regard. While many studies have addressed the impact of the digital on personal and social identities, the concept of ‘collective identity’ has been remarkably absent in such inquiries. In this article, I take the context of social movements as an entry (...) point to discuss the reconfiguration of collective identity in social media environments. I do so by introducing a narrative approach to collective identity. I argue that Twitter’s affordances invite new ways of constructing collective identities and imply a shifting relationship between the individual and the collective. (shrink)

In “Of Personal Identity”, Hume attempts to understand why we ordinarily believe in persistent selves. He proposes that this ontological commitment depends on illusions and fictions: the imagination tricks us into supposing that an unchanging core self remains static through the flux and change of experience. Recent work in cognitive science provides a good deal of support for Hume’s hypothesis that common beliefs about the self are founded on psychological biases rather than rational insight or evidence. We naturally believe in (...) personal persistence, according to this emerging research, because we are prone to categorize the world in terms of hidden essences and structure our lives in terms of whole life stories. (shrink)

Across various fields it is argued that the self in part consists of an autobiographical self-narrative and that the self-narrative has an impact on agential behavior. Similarly, within action theory, it is claimed that the intentional structure of coherent long-term action is divided into a hierarchy of distal, proximal, and motor intentions. However, the concrete mechanisms for how narratives and distal intentions are generated and impact action is rarely fleshed out concretely. We here demonstrate how narratives and distal intentions can (...) be generated within cognitive agents and how they can impact agential behavior over long time scales. We integrate narratives and distal intentions into the LIDA model,and demonstrate how they can guide agential action in a manner that is consistent with the Global Workspace Theory of consciousness. This paper serves both as an addition to the LIDA cognitive architecture and an elucidation of how narratives and distal intention emerge and play their role in cognition and action. (shrink)

The article suggests a new framework for the structural analysis of political narratives using the concept of ‘concise narrative’. These are segments of a speech that contain its entire temporal range in a few paragraphs. Based on the analysis of Israeli ministerial discourse during the early years of the state, the article argues that these ‘concise narratives’ can shed light on the infrastructure of political narratives. A study of ‘concise narratives’ can also illuminate how political values, identities and ideologies are (...) combined with day-to-day politics while being transferred from the speaker to his audience. The epilogue examines the intertextual relations between different political narratives, focusing on the transition of ‘concise narratives’ from the early days of Israeli politics to contemporary political discourse. (shrink)

This article sets out to critically examine the accounts of well-being produced by a middle-aged Swiss woman living in precarious prosperity. By taking on a feminist reading of the narrative on well-being, the article challenges the taken for granted assumption of the powerful agent in thriving societies. Insights from literature on happiness in nations and gender beliefs enabled addressing the woman’s capability to exert agency, while acknowledging the influence of the context in which narratives are embedded. In addition, the presence (...) of a non-national interviewer appears to be an incentive for the interviewee’s compliance with cultural meta-narratives. The approach of well-being as ‘agential flourishing’ proved helpful in assessing the woman’s capability on a gendered career path in atypical employment to deal with precariousness. (shrink)

Jordan Peterson has attracted a high level of attention. Controversies may bring people into contact with Peterson's work, but ideas are arguably what keep them there. Focusing on those ideas, this book explores Peterson’s answers to perennial questions. What is common to all humans, regardless of their background? Is complete knowledge ever possible? What would constitute a meaningful life? Why have humans evolved the capacity for intelligence? Should one treat others as individuals or as members of a group? Is a (...) single person powerless in the face of evil? What is the relation between speech, thought, and action? Why have religious myths and narratives figured so prominently in human history? Are the hierarchies we find in society good or bad? After devoting a chapter to each of these questions, Champagne unites the different strands of Peterson’s thinking in a handy summary. Champagne then spends the remaining third of the book articulating his main critical concerns. He argues that while building on tradition is inevitable and indeed desirable, Peterson’s individualist project is hindered by the non-revisable character and self-sacrificial content of religious belief. This engaging multidisciplinary study is ideal for those who know little about Peterson’s views, or for those who are familiar but want to see more clearly how Peterson’s views hang together. The debates spearheaded by Peterson are in full swing, so Myth, Meaning, and Antifragile Individualism should become a reference point for any serious engagement with Peterson’s ideas. (shrink)

Psychotherapy is commonly described as a “talking cure,” a treatment method that operates through linguistic action and interaction. The operative specifics of therapeutic language use, however, are insufficiently understood, mainly due to a multitude of disparate approaches that advance different notions of what “talking” means and what “cure” implies in the respective context. Accordingly, a clarification of the basic theoretical structure of “talking cure models,” i.e., models that describe therapeutic processes with a focus on language use, is a desideratum of (...) language-oriented psychotherapy research. Against this background the present paper suggests a theoretical framework of analysis which distinguishes four basic components of “talking cure models”: (1) a foundational theory (which suggests how linguistic activity can affect and transform human experience), (2) an experiential problem state (which defines the problem or pathology of the patient), (3) a curative linguistic activity (which defines linguistic activities that are supposed to effectuate a curative transformation of the experiential problem state), and (4) a change mechanism (which defines the processes and effects involved in such transformations). The purpose of the framework is to establish a terminological foundation that allows for systematically reconstructing basic properties and operative mechanisms of “talking cure models.” To demonstrate the applicability and utility of the framework, five distinct “talking cure models” which spell out the details of curative “talking” processes in terms of (1) catharsis, (2) symbolization, (3) narrative, (4) metaphor, and (5) neurocognitive inhibition are introduced and discussed in terms of the framework components. In summary, we hope that our framework will prove useful for the objective of clarifying the theoretical underpinnings of language-oriented psychotherapy research and help to establish a more comprehensive understanding of how curative language use contributes to the process of ther-apeutic change. (shrink)

Narrative theories currently dominate our understanding of how selfhood is constituted and concretely individuated throughout personal history. Despite this success, the narrative perspective has recently been exposed to a range of critiques. Whilst these critiques have been effective in pointing out the shortcomings of narrative theories of selfhood, they have been less willing and able to suggest alternative ways of understanding personal history. In this article, I assess the criticisms and argue that an adequate phenomenology of personal history must also (...) go beyond narrative. Drawing on a distinction between history and narrative, I outline an account of historical becoming through a process of sedimentation and a rich notion of what I call historical selfhood on an embodied level. Five embodied existentials are suggested, sketching a preliminary understanding of how selves are concretely individuated on a pre-narrative level. (shrink)

In 1997, David Foster Wallace published “The Depressed Person,” a short story about a privileged, deeply unhappy woman dedicated to exploring and recounting the texture and etiology of her chronic depression. This essay argues that “The Depressed Person” challenges the long-standing assumption that narrativizing the pain of depression is crucial to overcoming it, and the contemporary view that empathic responses from others promote recovery of the depressed. Taken together, these two critiques inform Wallace’s portrayal of chronic depression as an interactive (...) phenomenon that is articulated, sustained, and regenerated through problematic contexts of interaction. Written at a time when public knowledge of and talk about depression was surging, “The Depressed Person” holds an important, if presently under-recognized place, in the expansive corpus of depression texts that emerged in the 1990s. (shrink)

I argue against two popular claims. The first is a descriptive, empirical thesis about the nature of ordinary human experience: ‘each of us constructs and lives a “narrative” . . . this narrative is us, our identities’ (Oliver Sacks); ‘self is a perpetually rewritten story . . . in the end, we become the autobiographical narratives by which we “tell about” our lives’ (Jerry Bruner); ‘we are all virtuoso novelists. . . . We try to make all of our material (...) cohere into a single good story. And that story is our autobiography. The chief fictional char- acter . . . of that autobiography is one’s self’ (Dan Dennett). The second is a normative, ethical claim: we ought to live our lives narratively, or as a story; a ‘basic condition of making sense of ourselves is that we grasp our lives in a narrative’ and have an understanding of our lives ‘as an unfolding story’ (Charles Taylor). A person ‘creates his identity [only] by forming an autobiographical narrative – a story of his life’, and must be in possession of a full and ‘explicit narrative [of his life] to develop fully as a person’ (Marya Schechtman). (shrink)

The article conceptualizes the term Pedagogy of Fear as the master narrative of educational systems around the world. Pedagogy of Fear stunts the active and vital educational growth of the young person, making him/her passive and dependent upon external disciplinary sources. It is motivated by fear that prevents young students—as well as teachers—from dealing with the great existential questions that relate to the essence of human beings. One of the techniques of the Pedagogy of Fear is the internalization of the (...) view that without evaluation and assessment we cannot know a child’s level or “worth”—and therefore are unable to help him/her if he is “slow in learning.” In contrast, Philosophy for/with Children offers a space for addressing existential questions, some of which deal with urgent social issues. The willingness to make philosophy inquiry an alternative already from an early age seeks to allow the child to challenge him/herself with new and fresh questions. Philosophy for/with Children does not regard children as a “space of lack” (experience, knowledge, values, etc.) The new and fresh philosophical perspective of children demands the presence of a willingness to engage in dialogue and rejection of the fear of the innocent and deep questions of philosophy. Shaking free of the Pedagogy of Fear and restoring honor to children’s questions demands a fundamental conceptual change within education. The replacement of existential certainty as it is depicted by adults in the existing education system with an existential question is a heavy intellectual task that in most cases is viewed as subversive—primarily on the part of the adult. It demands a return to starting points and a willingness to allow children a free and safe educational space in which to ground preliminary and fertile questions about themselves, their lives, their environment, and, most of all, the changing world they discover with the form of originality that is right for them. (shrink)

Instruction in the arts of life is something other than conveying information about them. It is a matter of communication and participation in values of life by means of imagination, and works of art are the most intimate and energetic means of aiding individuals to share in the arts of living. In teaching for aesthetic experience, I ask my students, most of whom are classroom teachers, to bring their lived experiences to each encounter with a work of art to determine (...) the meaning and value for their lives. Central to this engagement is the development of the skills of aesthetic perception and response through the analysis of form and content in dance, drama, music, and the visual arts.2 To provide a.. (shrink)

In this condensed survey, I look to recent perspectives on evolution suggesting that cultural change likely alters the genome. Since theories of development are nested within assumptions about evolution (evo-devo), I next review some oft-cited developmental theories and other psychological theories of the 20th century to see if any match the emerging perspectives in evolutionary theory. I seek theories based neither in nature (genetics) nor nurture (the environment) but in the creative play of human communication responding to necessity. This survey (...) finally looks to more recent work to do with the appearance of independent self-consciousness in the individual following empathic group awareness. The result of such self-created group awareness and symbolic communication is seen to be cultural consciousness, unique to humanity, from which individual consciousness and personhood derive. I conclude by noting the general implications for these approaches in our schools, politics, and in ultimate ontological questions. (shrink)

This paper attempts to reconcile two apparently opposed ways of thinking about the imagination and its relationship to literature, one which casts it as essentially concerned with fiction-making and the other with culture-making. The literary imagination’s power to create fictions is what gives it its most obvious claim to “autonomy”, as Kant would have it: its freedom to venture out in often wild and spectacular excess of reality. The argument of this paper is that we can locate the literary imagination’s (...) complementary power of cultural articulation in this fictional activity. The suggestion is that we should conceive of the literary imagination as expressing its interests in culture not mimetically but by producing a certain kind of meaning. This meaning is irreducibly narratological, and understanding it helps us to see the role of narrative in bringing into harmony the literary imagination’s interests in both the imaginary and the real. (shrink)

All over the Internet, many websites operate dealing with collective and personal memory. The sites relevant to collective memory deal with structuring the memory of social groups and they comprise part of “civil religion”. The sites that deal with personal memory memorialize people who have died and whose family members or friends or other members of their community have an interest in preserving their memory. This article offers an analysis of an expanded philosophical discourse that took place over a two-year (...) period with three groups of young people who had experienced loss in their families or their communities and who were partners in writing texts on memorial sites or had established websites as part of coping with the loss. This article seeks to offer a narrative analysis of the philosophical discourse and to contribute to an expansion of the discussion regarding the connection between Philosophy with Children and its methods and the social networks where entire lives involving philosophical dimensions are conducted. (shrink)

This article presents an analysis of how a male convert to Islam incorporates events from his life history into a narrative structure in order to construct and maintain a Muslim identity. The study focuses on how the individual and in particular a person's life history becomes social and universal, and how the social and universal becomes particularized and individualized, in the narration of life. The results of the analysis showed that the valued endpoint determines the selection and ordering of different (...) episodes, and the causal connections that are made between them. Many episodes in this convert's life story is similar to other converts' narratives, for example, descriptions of absent significant others during childhood, an inclusion of a Christian phase in life, and the importance attributed to the Qur'an in the process of conversion. The incorporation of these episodes in one's life story and the way the narratives are structured are interpreted as influences from collective narratives. Moreover, the analysis revealed that the selected episodes have important social, individualizing and sedative functions in the flux of discourses in postmodern society. Thus, the individual's Muslim identity is an amalgamation of the particular and the universal and the importance of the narratives lies in the fact that they can integrate particular experiences into a universal structure that gives them a meaning. (shrink)

This paper explores how self-identity can be impacted upon by the use of digital and social media. In particular, drawing on a narrative account of selfhood, it argues that some forms of activity and interaction on the internet can support the capacity to be oneself, and foster transformative processes that are self-enhancing. I start by introducing different positions in the philosophical exploration of identity online, critically outlining the arguments of those who hold a “pessimistic” and an “optimistic” stance respectively. I (...) then expand on the narrative identity framework that has been used to support the optimists’ view, arguing that digital and social media use can foster forms of self-understanding that enable us to preserve or develop our identity. More precisely, exploring these dynamics also in relation to the lived experience of mental ill-health, I maintain that internet-enabled technology can support narrative self-constitution in three main ways: (1) by facilitating the processes through which we remember self-defining life-stories; (2) by enabling us to give salience to the stories that we decide should matter the most; and (3) by providing us with opportunities to obtain social uptake for our narratives. I then conclude by dispelling some possible objections to the use of a narrative approach to account for selfhood online. (shrink)

In a response to critiques of his On the Postcolony in a 2006 African Identities article, Achille Mbembe declared that the book was written at a time when the study of Africa was caught in a dramatic analytical gridlock. Traditional critical frameworks and discourses on the condition of postcolonial Africa seemed inadequate and ineffectual. Marxian analysis of colonization and its consequences is specifically isolated as one such impotent tool of critical analysis. As an alternative to these “failed” traditional paradigms, Mbembe (...) launches into a deconstructive experimental hermeneutic that leads him to the explication of colonial alterity in libidinal, representational and semiotically analogous language, as exhibited in On the Postcolony. This article challenges the efficacy of this post-structuralist semiotics and phenomenological extrapolations as the proposed way out of his perceived “cul-de-sac” in African postcolonial self-imagination. In particular, his dismissal of Marxian theory is turned... (shrink)

Does the self exist? If so, what is its nature? How long do selves last? Galen Strawson draws on literature and psychology as well as philosophy to discuss various ways we experience having or being a self. He argues that it is legitimate to say that there is such a thing as the self, distinct from the human being.

Explores the interplay between artistic values and social, political, and moral concerns in writings by African American and Native American women.

As a doctor and practitioner researcher, I use comics as a research method. This graphic article is an attempt to convince you, the academy and perhaps myself, that comics are research.

Over the last few decades there has been a strong narrative turn within the humanities and social sciences in general and educational studies in particular. Especially Jerome Bruner’s theory of narrative as a specific ‘mode of knowing’ was very important for this growing body of work. To understand how the narrative mode works Bruner proposes to study narratives ‘at their far reach’—as an art form—and on several occasions he refers to the dramatistic pentad as an important method for ‘unpacking’ narratives. (...) The pentad proposed by Bruner to study narratives was developed by the American philosopher and rhetorician Kenneth Burke and is embedded in his general linguistic theory of dramatism. From an educational perspective Bruner’s reference to the work of Burke has not been elaborated upon thus far. In this paper we aim to take Bruner’s suggestion at hand and explore how his educational theory of narrative as a mode of knowing can indeed be enriched by Kenneth Burke’s theory and method of dramatism. We claim that specifically the rhetorical framework that is developed by dramatism offers an important perspective about perspectives for education in a context that is increasingly confronted with a plurality of interpretive frameworks. (shrink)

In recent years, researchers within science education have started to consider the impact of narrative upon teaching and learning in science. This article investigates the possibilities of interactive fiction as a means by which students can be provided with feedback on their understanding in science, and explores the mechanisms which might allow learning from this. Through a review of literature around the use of narrative in science education, we have produced a list of recommendations that might guide the development of (...) interactive fiction within science education. These recommendations are tested through a small-scale study in which an interactive fiction book was written around Newton’s laws, and then tested with 27, 16- and 17-year-old chemistry students, eight of whom also study post-compulsory physics. The interactive fiction developed is based upon the well-established Force Concept Inventory and this allowed the analysis of the progression of student understanding. We found that, upon reading the book, there was a significant positive effect size on the understanding of students who do not study advanced physics. The gains for those who do study post-compulsory physics were not statistically significant. The participants’ report of enjoyment is also discussed. (shrink)

The aim of this research was to explore the elements that configure the quality of care among three Mexican same-sex planned families: two female-parented families (through donor insemination) and a male-parented one (through adoption). The first family consisted of two mothers and a 3-year-old daughter; the second one had two mothers and a 1.5-year-old set of boy twins and the third family consisted of two fathers and a 2-year-old girl. It was assumed that Ainsworth’s notions of quality of care organization (...) are useful in order to understand caregiver-child attachment relationships, regardless of the parents’ sexual orientation. A collective case study was selected due to the fact that these families shared their “unconventionality” (i.e. parents were not heterosexual) and the fact that they were planned, but each one constituted a particular case with a unique configuration. Four trained independent observers used the q-sort methodology (Maternal Behavior Q-Sort and Attachment Q-Sort) to describe parents’ and children’s behavior, respectively. The findings showed that parents were highly sensitive and all children used them as a secure base. To provide an in-depth examination of which elements configure the quality of care, a semi-structured interview with each parent was carried out. Through a thematic analysis, an over-arching theme named Affections and Emotions was identified, together with six subthemes: 1) Creating an affective environment; 2) Being available; 3) Acknowledging and expressing emotions; 4) Perceiving, interpreting and responding adequately to the child’s real self; 5) Taking the child’s perspective into account; and 6) Agreeing on roles and dividing the tasks. In order to showcase the particular configuration of gay parenting, the male-headed family narrative is reported in detail, because gay parents have been perceived as violating traditional gender roles as well as the hegemonic model of masculinity. The findings were consistent with the notion of quality of care as proposed by Ainsworth and her collaborators. The implications of the methodological device and research regarding same-sex planned families are discussed so as to understand the organization of the caregiving environment. (shrink)

Modernity seems to bring a type of relationship with life whereby life appears to be distant. Individuals may mitigate this distance by attaining a meaningful life, but this requires time, decisions and a purpose. In the late modern context, these dimensions – time, decisions and vital purposes – appear to be shaped in a way that further increases this remoteness. This paper analyses how the narratives associated with these three dimensions foster a way of understanding them that restricts the relationship (...) which individuals build with their own lives. The late-modern remoteness from life may stem from experiencing a lifetime without significant time, decisions without real choice and particular forms of self-fulfilment that misappropriate the relationship with life. (shrink)

Every year, thousands of undocumented Mexican workers enter the United States. Their presence, together with the settlement of undocumented and legal immigrants from many other countries, constitutes the source of one of the most persistent ideological conflicts in American history: the conflict over immigrants' rights. Official discourses in many cases identify being Hispanic with poor performance at school, drug abuse, poverty and violence. However, aside from mainstream images of who immigrants are, little research has been done on the identity that (...) immigrants themselves build and project, and on the processes that affect the formation of such identity. In this article I investigate identity through discourse analysis, looking specifically at linguistic strategies used by a group of undocumented Mexican immigrants to identify characters in storytelling. I argue that immigrants use ethnic identity as a central identification category for self and others in their stories, showing that ethnic mentions are widespread in story orientations, and that they exhibit different degrees and types of relevance depending on their relationship with the interactional context and/or the story world. Ethnic mentions are used in stories to affirm certain characteristics of one's own identity and of the identity of others via the presentation and evaluation of behaviors. In argumentative stories disputable behaviors are openly attributed to out groups, and so these stories help speakers to build images of who they are and how they stand in relation to others. In stories of personal experience, the connections between identities and behaviors are implicit, but they still respond to socially established expectations. Thus, individual stories also contribute to build those expectations about how belonging to certain ethnic groups may affect action in particular domains of life. The pervasiveness of ethnic identification in immigrant stories cannot be understood without resorting to wider social processes that frame the immigration experience of undocumented Mexican workers. In this case, I stress the importance of the pressure that the ideology of race and ethnicity, enacted through public discourse at all levels, exerts on every individual in American society. (shrink)

In our research and teaching we explore the value and the place of rhetoric in education. From a theoretical perspective we situate our work in different disciplines, inspired by major ‘turns’: linguistic, cultural, anthropological/ethnographic, interpretive, semiotic, narrative, literary, rhetorical etc. In this article we engage in the discussion about what all these turns might entail for education by elaborating on what it implies to read the world as a ‘text'—as is central in a semiotic approach—and by introducing new rhetoric in (...) general, and the work of the literary critic and rhetorician Kenneth Burke in particular, as a possible theoretical and methodological resource. We illustrate its application in the analysis of a fictional narrative. Our aim is to explore how an understanding of education as rhetoric can be integrated into the teacher education curriculum. (shrink)

This paper has three aims. The first is to subject to critical analysis the intractable debate between realists and anti-realists about the status of the so-called self, a debate that traverses various academic disciplines and discursive fields. Realism about selves has fallen on hard times of late, and the second aim of this paper is to get it back on track. Traditional substantive conceptions of the self contain ontological baggage that many moderns will be loath to carry. This paper settles (...) for a more moderate aim, a “softer” kind of self-realism derived from an unlikely source—Hume—and outlines the Humean moral self and its possible advantages. The third and subsidiary aim is to challenge the view that recent “narrative” conceptions of selfhood have made the old realism versus anti-realism debate redundant. “Narrativism” about selves turns out to do little more than recycle old arguments in fancy new packages. (shrink)

Psychologists investigating dreams in non-Western cultures have generally not considered the meanings of dreams within the unique meaning-structure of the person in his or her societal context. The study was concerned with explicating the indigenous system of dream interpretation of the Xhosa-speaking people, as revealed by acknowledged dream experts, and elaborating upon the life-world of the participants. Fifty dreams and their interpretations were collected from participants, who were traditional healers and their clients. A phenomenological methodology was adopted in explicating the (...) data. Themes explicated included : the physiognomy of the dreamer's life-world as revealed by significant dreams, the interpretation of significant dreams as revealed through action, and human bodiliness as revealed in dream interpretations. The participants' approach to dreams is not based upon an explicit theory, but upon an immediate and pathic understanding of the dream phenomenon. The understanding is based upon the interpreter's concrete understanding of the life-world, which includes the possibility of cosmic integration and continuity between personal and trans-personal realms of being. (shrink)

Generative AI has captured the public imagination as a tool that promises access to expertise beyond the technical jargon and expense that traditionally characterize such infospheres as those of medicine and law. Largely absent from the current literature, however, are interrogations of generative AI’s abilities to deal in culturally responsive communication, or the expertise interwoven with culturally aware, socially responsible, and personally sensitive communication best practices. To interrogate the possibilities of cultural responsiveness in generative AI, we examine the patterns of (...) response that characterize ChatGPT-3.5’s advice for coming out. Specifically, we submitted 100 prompts soliciting coming out advice to GPT-3.5, variegating each of those prompts slightly to account for intersectional identities. From the analysis, we find that, while the responses are largely in-line with best practices, there are also instances that might represent problematics concerning the interpellation of the user or the persons to whom one is coming out. (shrink)

The topic of this book is the thinking in which we engage when we reflectively decide what to do, and when we reflectively reach conclusions as to the correct answers to questions. The main objective is to identify a way of looking at ourselves and at our deliberations that is adequate to our lives. It must accommodate both our conception of ourselves as free, rational and self-directed subjects, and our feeling that we deliberate freely. It must also identify a place (...) for us that will feel like home, doing justice to our status as subjects, within the world as we relate to it when we practise the natural sciences. The central claims are not about how we are, but about how we should look at ourselves. A key task is to show that this limited ambition, which is forced on us by the need to avoid metaphysical implausibility, nonetheless allows us to develop a position that has sufficient strength to do its work. The aim is to show something that is all too easily taken for granted. This is that we can limit ourselves to a strictly naturalistic ontology, while still having access to a generous idiom that allows us to speak of ourselves as free in the exercise of our rationality. (shrink)

Violence in sexual-affective relationships among teens and young people is recognized as a social, educational, and health problem that has increased worldwide in recent years. Educational institutions, as central developmental contexts in adolescence, are key in preventing and responding to gender violence through implementing successful actions. In order to scientifically support that task, the research reported in this article presents and discusses a psycho-educational intervention focused on autobiographical memory reconstruction that proved to be successful in raising young women’s critical consciousness (...) about the force of the coercive dominant discourse upon sexual-affective experiences and memories. We examined among a sample of young women (n = 32, age range 17-30) whether reading a scientific text about love, the Radical Love book, modified autobiographical memories of violent sexual-affective relationships in line with preventing future victimization. This group was compared with a control group (n = 31, age range 17-30). Memory reports were collected before and after the reading and coded to analyze their content, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Memory quality features were assessed with the Memory Quality Questionnaire. A focus group was also conducted to examine the personal impact of the intervention on participants. Compared with controls, the experimental group had stronger critical memories (of episodes involving violence), an average decrease in positive emotions induced by recall, and an average increase in negative emotions. The results show the effectiveness of the reading intervention designed in relation to gender violence prevention, as they indicate the ability of the psycho-educational action to debilitate the force of the coercive dominant discourse in young women’s memories. The findings both advance knowledge on the reconstructive nature of autobiographical memories of violent sexual-affective relationships in female youth and indicate the potential of memory-based interventions as an instrument to prevent and reduce gender violence in school contexts. Teachers and teaching staff, and educational psychologists, among others, can benefit from these results by expanding the tools they have to address gender violence among female adolescents and youth. (shrink)

Folk stories featuring prosocial content are ubiquitous across cultures. One explanation for the ubiquity of such stories is that stories teach people about the local socioecology, including norms of prosociality, and stories featuring prosocial content may increase generosity in listeners. We tested this hypothesis in a sample of 185 Hadza hunter-gatherers. We read participants a story in which the main character either swims with another person (control story) or rescues him from drowning (prosocial story). After hearing the story, participants played (...) a dictator game with dried meat sticks and then were given a recall test of facts presented in the story. There was moderate evidence for a small effect of the prosocial story: participants who heard the prosocial story gave an estimated 0.22 [90% HDI: −0.12–0.57] more meat sticks than those who heard the control story. However, the association between generosity and sex, marital status, and region of residence was stronger; men gave more than women, unmarried participants gave more than married participants, and participants living in a region with more exposure to markets gave more than participants living further from markets. There was no evidence that the prosocial story was more easily recalled than the control story. These results provide some support for the hypothesis that prosocial stories can increase prosociality in listeners, though the effect of hearing a single story is small. (shrink)

The move in moral theory toward listening to and accommodating “experience” requires that we hear its diversity, take a closer look at its nature, and ask how it should function in moral deliberation.

In this dissertation I address the question, how does power operate in day-today consuming in a consumer society? My theoretical framework has two bases. One base is Foucault's theories of power, including but not limited to his work on normalization, surveillance, examination, confession, and identity. The other base is narrative theory, including the relevance of narratives to personal and social identities, the role of narratives in creating social order, the impact of narratives on such things as the organization of space (...) and time, and the effect of narratives in creating coherence and directionality across operants of power. I suggest that many of the mechanisms of power identified by Foucault have unmistakable narrative features, and that by combining narrative and Foucauldian perspectives a more comprehensive understanding of the operation of power in day-to-day life is attainable. I apply my theoretical framework to data collected using autoethnographic methods. Specifically, I spent one year keeping a detailed journal of my and my family's experiences relating in the broadest sense to consuming. During this period we lived in a middle-sized Canadian city. To heighten my awareness of the taken-for-granted aspects of power and consuming we alternated lifestyles each month, living months 1,3,5,7,9, and 11 as conventional Canadian consumers, and months 2,4,6,8,10, and 12 as committed environmentally-mindful consumers. In addition, I conducted - interviews of small samples of conventional and environmentally-committed consumers; I undertook a content analysis of print advertising delivered to our house; and I conducted background research on various issues relating to consumerism. My research indicates that Foucauldian operants of power are used extensively to support consuming, and that; in addition, many narrative structures are also employed as operants of power, including charms and stories. These operants of power are aligned with one another to form coherent patterns through the effects of metanarratives. I argue that, despite claims by Lyotard (1984) and others, modern consumer societies are highly narrative, and have defining metanarratives. In addition, environmentally-based opposition to the dominant metanarrative of consuming has a metanarrative of its own, but is distinctly lacking in operants of power. (shrink)

With slogans such as ‘Tell the stories hidden in your data’ and ‘From data to clear, insightful content – Wordsmith automatically generates narratives on a massive scale that sound like a person crafted each one’, a series of companies currently market themselves on the ability to turn data into stories through Natural Language Generation techniques. The data interpretation and knowledge production process is here automated, while at the same time hailing narrativity as a fundamental human ability of meaning-making. Reading both (...) the marketing rhetoric and the functionality of the automated narrative services through narrative theory allows for a contextualization of the rhetoric flourishing in Big Data discourse. Building upon case material obtained from companies such as Arria NLG, Automated Insights, Narrativa, Narrative Science, and Yseop, this article argues that what might be seen as a ‘re-turn’ of narrative as a form of knowledge production that can make sense of large data sets inscribes itself in – but also rearticulates – an ongoing debate about what narrative entails. Methodological considerations are thus raised on the one hand about the insights to be gained for critical data studies by turning to literary theory, and on the other hand about how automated technologies may inform our understanding of narrative as a faculty of human meaning-making. (shrink)

The successful delivery of patient-centered care hinges on clinical affiliation for patients' personal needs and experiences. Narrative competence is a mode of thinking and set of actions that widens the clinical gaze beyond logico-scientific cognition. In this article, we investigate a tool that enables clinicians to rehearse their skills in narrative competence. We apply the narrative competence framework developed by the founding practitioners of narrative medicine to personal accounts of illness and patienthood published on the Internet. We describe our use (...) of the five-point framework in the close reading of 214 accounts by people with the life-threatening skin cancer melanoma. (shrink)

This article presents and discusses how theories inform social work practice and what impact this has on the professional-client relation, specifically how social work professionals perceive children and interpret their possibilities. Data for the analysis to come are drawn from a qualitative study of child welfare services in Norway. The aim of the article is to bring to light how theoretical knowledge as well as social workers´ personal experiences influence the professional work, and consequently parents´ and children’s opportunities to participate. (...) A main finding is that social workers´ interpretations are informed by underlying theoretical frameworks that engender a narrative reasoning, that is, the plots of the parents’ and the children’s past histories, as well as the current situation, provide sense and coherence to professional work and understanding. The analysis focuses on how the social workers perceive the children they deal with, particularly how they acknowledge children´s voices and participation in professional interaction. The empirical examples contribute to expand the horizon of professional practice, in terms of how theoretical perspectives influence and inform everyday practice with service users. (shrink)

This article identifies the dominant public narrative of AIDS in Malawi through an analysis of qualitative interview data and policy and intervention materials. The public narrative creates distinctions between “risky” and “healthy” sex that organize HIV prevention efforts around moral categories, rather than relative risk. These distinctions oppose images of backward, ignorant villagers to the protective power of “love matches”. The analysis demonstrates that the public narrative and corresponding prevention efforts only make sense in connection with the patently false assumption (...) that love, heterosexuality, and modernity effectively protect individuals from HIV. This research brings to light the unspoken assumptions of modernity in the “charmed circle” of heteronormativity, as well as the need to consider the workings of heteronormativity in studies of modernization and globalization. Furthermore, it highlights individualistic and oversimplified analytic models currently directing HIV prevention efforts and points to potentially more effective strategies. (shrink)

The article presents the object and results of a study which combines the psychology of religion and folkloristics in the form of a qualitative analysis of empirical ethnographic material compiled from sources in a local neo-charismatic congregation called the ‘Word of Life’. Personal narrative is discussed as a genre which represents the collective tradition of a religious community. It is a socially-learned speech act and a means of interpreting and sharing religious experience, thus constructing and confirming the faith of the (...) community, both individually and collectively. In the neo-charismatic tradition, everyday speech draws on a literal tradition as well as on socially-shared narrative genres such as ritual testimonies, prophecies, sermons and casual, personal narratives of co-believers. The faith-creative power of these stories can be found in their performative utterances and evaluative structures as well as in non-communication. (shrink)