“The ways in which humans narratively make sense their lives shape how they navigate the future”
Aristotle — art imitates life, life imitates art
Bruner (1987) — life and stories also imitate each other
Narratives can help make sense of things “with the capacity to produce, challenge and change the identities of individuals as well as collectives”
Methodologically, likely to be research interviews where identities can be constructed.
Example: show a woman suffering from domestic violence that she is a survivor not a victim.
Though these narratives people build their social identities.
In regards to new narratives for social action, traditional research methods (qualitative interviews, ethnographic fieldwork and document analysis) will not suffice.
Narrative “constitutes a meeting point for different disciplines, but also for popular and lay audiences”. E.g. the archive can be seen as a ‘boundary object’ that brings together disciplines who understand and deploy it differently.
Narratives configure pasts and project futures from the perspectives of the present (Mead, 1959)
Significant research shows that humans interpret past events through the lens of present perspectives, however there is little research into imagined futures. Though one could assume a similarity.
Look at prospection science/psychology — (Gilbert & Wilson, 2007) & (Spreng & Levine, 2013)
Narrative criminologists use qualitative interviews, ethnographic fieldwork and visual methods.
Qualitative longitudinal research (QLR) used for the link between narrative and prospective social action, allows zooming in on temporal specifics and zooming out for the bigger picture.
Mustn’t forget that future cannot be separated, it is strongly related to past and present.
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