through which we know the world are shared. I will contemplate the collective rememberings and forgettings through which stories resonate.
Story-making and storytelling are processes, of course. Styles of storytelling shape the “involvement” of interlocutors and audiences (Tannen 1989). Compelling cadence, use of repetition, alliteration and parataxis, posing rhetorical questions, and the like make speech, not merely stories, affecting and persuasive. Of particular sociological relevance: contexts for telling stories, as Polletta (2006) demonstrates, “determine what kind of a hearing particular stories secure” (p. 167). We are more apt to listen to individuals with power, those who stand on the so-called bully pulpit. Whether one’s story is accepted, and thus whether it has social influence, also depends on whether one has abided by setting-specific norms of storytelling: for example, in criminal courts “true stories remain identical in their retelling” (Polletta 2006, p. 167), a convention relaxed elsewhere. In addition, in real-time communication interlocutors shape the narrative that “one” tells and the impact that the narrative has on the interlocutors in turn (Presser 2009). Whether a story “speaks” to us and whether we make a popular story “our own” depends on all of these factors.
Reading theorists’ take on active participant involvement pertains here. Broadly, they stress that we bring our own storied experiences and positions, both attitudinal and structural, to the cultural encounter that is reading (e.g., Iser 1978). McDonnell, Bail, and Tavory’s (2017) theory of resonance also points to interpretation as actively undertaken. They state: “It is thus only through the effect of signs that meaning-making is completed, and such effect cannot be encapsulated by an analysis of cultural objects but must also take into account the habits of thought and action through which an interpreter experiences such an object” (p. 3).
Recognizing that narrative, like other cultural forms, is a product of social processes, my analysis of narrative influence nonetheless brackets process. I want to say something about the stuff and the structure of narrative that animate action as well as inaction. I want to address why narrative, among cultural forms, is exceptional at propulsion and to determine “the sensible properties” of some narrative that make it especially propulsive (Matravers 1991, p. 329). However, I can only sideline narrative exchange for so long. I consider both what is said and what is not said as exerting an aesthetic impact, and the “not said” especially obviously requires an interpreting agent for impact. The stories we tell ourselves draw on both novel/situated and prefabricated understandings.
Preparing to make sense of narrative arousal, this introductory chapter summarizes the narrative criminological view of stories as grounds for action, explores the question of narrative truth within the context of narrative impact, and outlines the book.
THE STORIED GROUNDS OF ACTION
Narrative criminologists are mostly concerned with the nefarious effects of stories, or how they condition patterns of criminal and criminalized action.2 Narrative criminology is broadly framed by the symbolic interactionist and social constructionist perspectives within sociology, that we act based on meanings assigned to things. We respond to some version of the world and not to the world per se. Berger and Luckmann (1966, p. 37), key architects of that perspective, observe that social construction work is discursive by nature: “The common objectivations of everyday life are maintained primarily by linguistic signification. Everyday life is, above all, life with and by means of the language I share with my fellowmen. An understanding of language is thus essential for any understanding of the reality of everyday life.” Heeding the call for linguistic proficiency, social researchers have highlighted the reality-producing effects of pragmatics such as implied or presupposed meanings, mechanics of communication such as grammar, and structures, including figurative devices and narrative. Discourse analysis is one name for the family of approaches these efforts take.3 The basic premise of discourse analysis is that discourse matters to action. Whereas that assumption is often unstated and unexamined, in various corners of the social sciences it has undergone empirical demonstration.
Within criminology, narrative criminologists have pioneered this work. They take two approaches to the narrative-action relationship. They either view narratives as suggesting how people should act or guiding action, or they view action as a performance of a particular self-narrative. Or they adopt both views, for though distinguishable, these approaches are not mutually exclusive within a particular research project. Both the guiding and the identity-performative perspectives on narrative give an indication of how meanings packaged as stories influence our behavior in ways that other discursive forms do not.
Framing and Guiding
Narratives help us interpret circumstances and events, and those interpretations guide how we respond. One of the principal functions of narratives is to make moral meaning of situations and events. Therefore, it is not surprising that so much research fleshing out the idea of narratives as guides has been done in the areas of social (e.g., protest) movements and criminology. Research on the role of narratives in social movements follows important work on frames, which “function to organize experience and guide action” (Snow et al. 1986, p. 464). This body of work advances a view of frames as shared mental schemes, of what people “are alive to” (Goffman 1974, p. 8) in a situation. Framing scholars always did make reference to discourse and are increasingly devoting even more attention to narrative discourse in particular. Collective constructions of grievances, their causes, responsible parties, and victims evidently take the form of narratives (J. E. Davis 2002; Fine 2002; R. N. Jacobs 2002; Loseke 2003; Polletta 2006). For example, movement organizers present claims in narrative form in order to mobilize participation. Narratives play a decisive role in representing actions whose rightness is questionable (Scott and Lyman 1968). Philip Smith’s (2005) insistence on the fundamentally storied signification of designs to wage war showcases that role:
The image of an objectively identifiable “enemy” who is subsequently “demonized” by a post facto cultural process or “interests” that need “explanation” to the public is fundamentally mistaken. The “enemy” and “interests” require cultural patterns for their very recognition. In a sense they are talked into relevance—but not existence—through the storytelling, genre guessing dialogical activities of the public sphere. Likewise, any “threats” that need to be dealt with require identification, prioritizing, and evaluation. Here too we have seen that cultural resources are needed: frameworks that allow clues to be assembled and efforts made to guess likely costs and benefits to military action or inaction. (p. 209)
Smith’s approach may be contrasted with one centered on propaganda or spin, with which dubious policies are sold to the masses. The concept of propaganda does not go far enough to depict the fundamental shaping role of discourse in preparing a group to inflict harm by constructing values, goals, and “truths” about experience and parties to it. In addition, narratives characterize actors, patients, and action, whereas propaganda is more generic as to focus.
War and other mass harms that we call violent are typically promoted by stories of a virtuous protagonist facing off against a malevolent other whose forceful overcoming is necessary for salvation. For example, war enemies are “encoded as polluted,” whereas “we” are “encoded as pure” (P. Smith 2005, p. 27). But this is just one manifestation of the general harm logic of reduction of targets, according to which they are cast as having few interests or we project our own interests onto them (Presser 2013). How we construct targets is imperative because the most murderous among us is not generically aggressive but rather aggressive toward particular beings, under some conditions and not others. In the case of mass “violence” we reduce the target to an enemy bent on persecuting or otherwise hurting us. In cases of mass negligence or legal, institutionalized destruction, the target is a simplified and marginalized group or species. We also construct ourselves in terms of capacities, rights, duties, and so forth.
Performativity
The symbolic interactionist
