Grand narratives
Key ideas:
- The sociological concept of narratives;
- The connection between narratives and world view.
A good story!
Everyone loves a good story and generally everyone has a good story to tell. Telling stories is an important part of socialization. Stories generally have messages for us far beyond our immediate, literal interpretation. The stories we tell and the 'narratives' we are exposed to and participate in are the key things which shape and mould culture.
Stop and think for a minute! Why do you like that favourite yarn you often recall to your friends? Why did you always like to hear a particular story when you were a child? When we recall a story, we are telling our listeners something at a number of levels. Of course there is the story itself. It might be funny or sad. Irregardless we pass the information on to others because we see value in the story, as a good story and/or more often than not because stories act as a metaphorical way of passing meaning on to each other at a deeper level.
Stories generally have morals. There's a lesson to learn from the story that can help or hinder us in our daily lives. Many stories are about learning how to behave in our society and the consequences of not behaving properly. Others tell of how to subvert the structures of society – reflecting how in many cases, the morals of society are not as strict and as rigid as we may like to think. Recall any movie you have seen lately and you will probably be able to pull out some kind of moral to the story line. Often a moral might be able to be read into the story even though the author didn't necessarily mean for it to exist.
Additionally, we tell stories because they help ourselves and others develop an understanding of who we are and what we think is important. You might tell a funny story: 1. because its funny; 2. because it has a cute moral attached to it and; 3. because you think its funny and perhaps want to be seen as a comedian or a funny and likeable person.
Reflection
Think about a story you appreciate, a TV show (like the Simpsons) or a movie and see if you can define what it is about that story that resonates with you at a number of levels. Take your musings to the Discussion Board and jot them down. Have a look at what others are saying about their stories.
Often we choose a certain social circle because we like and agree with the stories that the people in our group tell to each other.
Narratives
So we arrive at this idea of 'narratives'. Narrative is just another word for story and the narrator is a story-teller. As mentioned in the Introduction, sociologists use this term in a very specific sense, that is, that narratives are the stories we tell ourselves about how the world works and how we fit into that. It is a story, not so much in the fictional sense of stories, but more in the sense that it is something we construct from our own experience as well as the stories or narratives of others.
Our narratives are the products of our history in relation to our environment. They draw heavily on the narratives of our parents or guardians, though often as our experience of our environment grows, we draw on those experiences and the narratives of a broader range of people to annotate, shape and develop our own. The narratives we have tell us who we are and what we believe – what we think is true. Our narratives are the knowledge we garner from our experience of interrogating the sense data we receive from the world around us.
A story shared is culture
As you can imagine if we depend upon the narratives of others to develop our own, our narratives tend to fall into groups. People have collective narratives – stories that social or cultural groups tell each other – that help to maintain cohesion and therefore probably the security of the group. These collective narratives are sometimes referred to as 'grand narratives' because we often use them in a grand or overarching way. Sometimes they gain a level of acceptance that means we perhaps forget they are just stories based on certain people's view of reality and accept them as the truth. They have some sort of agreed universal application that the members of that group subscribe to and they end up being presented as facts or absolute truth rather then recognized as narratives.
There are many grand narratives around — you can probably think of some right away. When people talk about things in an authoritative way, when the ideas discussed are treated as fact rather than the story or narrative that has been agreed to by a group of people, you have a grand narrative in operation. These types of narratives tend to operate in an exclusive way, removing the possibility of alternative ways of seeing things.
Modernity
Modernity is a term used for the philosophical period that takes up the early part of the 20th Century. It is characterised by a number of these 'big ideas' known for the extent of their explanatory power. Some of the more important and persuasive of these are Marx's theories of economic materialism, Darwin's theories of evolution and Freud's theories on the operation of the unconscious mind.
While many of these theories have since been challenged or discredited, they have dramatically shaped the way we think. The collective consciousness of western culture has incorporated their ideas and we tend to operate with them even if we don't really know what it is these theorists talked about and proposed. Many of us assume the principles to be fact because they are so deeply entrenched in the psychology of how we do things and think about things. When this happens, it is very easy for us to operate as though they are truth.
The western scientific tradition
The 'western scientific tradition' is another good example of a grand narrative of the twentieth century. By and large people have adopted western scientific styles of thinking or allowed it to infiltrate their culture and in many cases dominate the general mode of operation within that culture.
Reading
You'll already be familiar with Michael Christie's article Aboriginal Science for the ecologically sustainable future from earlier in this unit. Take a look at it again and see if you can identify some of the key things he suggests characterise a western scientific grand narrative?
E- Reserve Readings:
Christie MJ (1991) Aboriginal Science for the Ecologically Sustainable Future , Australian Science Teachers Journal. 37(1), pp 26 - 31.
Normalisation
What's wrong with grand narratives?
Nothing, in as much as grand narratives provide us with the framework for operating effectively in the world where we have to get on with people. They are probably inevitable and usually productive in one way or another. We need these broad stories to ensure some form of cultural cohesion. The problems exist, however when grand narratives are used as instruments of colonisation and oppression.
Grand narratives are only a problem when we forget that the narratives we adopt for ourselves are only narratives or stories, things that are agreed upon by the group or by our culture, and we start to run the risk of beginning to think that our stories have some universal application … all encompassing stories that ought to be the same for me as for you.
Normalisation
This is the process of normalisation. What were once stories, become universalised facts and we begin to expect others to conform to what we consider to be normality. We can be so blinkered by being immersed in our own culture and ways of doing things that we think things could be done no other way. You can imagine that normalization is something we all do. We've all had times when the actions of someone else have seemed incongruous and incomprehensible. Problems exist when we start to think that the incongruity equates with abnormality and begin to insist that people conform.
Reflection
In Reflections and General Discussion, try and identify what you think are likely to be some of the consequences of normalisation. What happens when society starts operating as if others are abnormal or even stupid?