Reclaiming the Power of Our Stories: Personal and Collective Narratives
Resources on Storytelling
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An op-ed by Cornell professor Dr. Neil Lewis, (With an accompanying twitter thread here) laying out the historical and contemporary arguments to answer the empirical question of: “What actually happens when we teach students critical lessons about American history?”, partly in relations of the recent wave of politicians banning critical theory in school. Mentioning specific field experiments and multiple case studies on what happens when teachers give students of multiple racial identities/backgrounds critical perspectives on race and racism (Interesting findings on the reaction of white vs. minority children. Overall, the results discusses the reactions by predisposed beliefs and attitudes: the findings illustrate that more challenging lessons about history would help young people to become more civically and politically engaged, and young white people gain greater appreciations to their fellow minority peers. Lewis also mentions how this finding could either be encouraging or “threatening”, depending on predisposed beliefs of multiracial democracy vs. social dominance, etc.. Specifically to IGLI, this well-articulated op-ed would provide a good starting point in thinking about pushing critical perspectives- in other words, reframing the narrative -- as a tactic for social change, and powerful narrative is as a strategy for both repression and resistance.
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This document is published by Reclaiming Native Truth, an initiative to foster cultural, social and policy change by empowering Native Americans to counter discrimination, invisibiliy, and the dominant narratives that create harm and limits to Native American justice, health, and self-determination. The document outlines concrete strategies of organizations that are multi-facteted in practice. Using the Theory of Change, a public health concept to inform methodology for impact-driven planning, the document provides guidance on sustainable goal-setting, structuring community of practice, and illustrate how to use the Narratives Model to reclaim one’s own stories with agency. This particular guide is great in its practicality, with structured activities and strategies that shows how “narrative” is used on the ground as part of organizing and community building/empowerment.
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By Just Labs. Describes narrative elements of advocacy and activism as spices that need to be blended and changed according to the kind of work that is part of the campaign.
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Op-ed from Seeds’ Justice Web series that can serve as a starting point for activists to think about what building narrative means and how narrative power fits into their struggle for justice. The article gives a couple of specific pointers and tips on how to build narrative, like disrupting dominant narratives, building narrative power, and crafting powerful stories.
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Collaborative report/ guide by JustLab, a think tank for creative social change and the Fund for Global Human Rights on workshopping the idea of producing narratives as a response to the antagonist attacks on human rights. The paper consists of results from a series of “lab workshops” with multidisciplinary experts of 12 human rights organizations from various different countries. The lab worlshops focus on finding unconventional but concrete solutions to the populist tides against human rights work, using a process on design-thinking, contemplative practices, popular education, and foresight. The paper details the methodologies of the experimental process, analysis, and and outcomes. Overall, the lab identified a “three-pronged narrative strategy” of controvery, crisis, and conflict used by populists to crack down human rights, and using that to produce three possible responses to said strategy: culture, cooperation, and community.
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Book by Norman Holland. Download LINK
This book explains how our brains convert the imaginary events of stories, poems, plays, and films into real pleasure. It provides a biological analysis of the pleasure and enjoyment we receive from narratives and stories.
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This working paper connects the story of the self with the story of the campaign or the cause that activists decide to take on and inspire others to join them.
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Explain the connection between public narrative and collective action. Public narrative is a leadership practice of translating values into action. It is based on the fact that values are experienced emotionally. Public narrative therefore links the three elements of self, us, and now.
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Transcript from the TEDtalk by Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie on reframing our understanding of narratives. Adichie argues that single stories often originate from simple misunderstandings or one’s lack of knowledge of others, but that these stories can also have a malicious intent to suppress other groups of people due to prejudice.
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A long standing and still central problem in the field of social movements concerns the issue of support for and participation in social movement organizations (SMOs) and their activities and campaigns. There is growing recognition that a thoroughgoing understanding of this issue requires consideration of both social psychological and structural/organizational factors.
This article from the American Sociological Review journal weaves theoretical frameworks of understanding and empirical research on the concept of “frame alignment process” in the context of social movement participation.
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By Frameworks Institute. Speaks about how framing important and urgent issues in too fatalistic a manner can lead to people dismissing them or accepting of them. Instead, framing urgency with efficacy and providing solutions to the audience that they could be a part of is more effective in getting people to act.
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From the Center of Story-based Strategy. Download LINK
The 4th Box is a DEI Story-based strategy tool that builds on the popular cartoon of equality vs. equity. If we want outcomes of equality, equity and liberation in our lives and work, then we need to empower learners to explore, vision and pursue these goals themselves, and THAT’s where #the4thbox comes in. You can also check out other 4th box resources on the Center’s website here.
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Ganz, Marshall. Shows how stories are important at every stage of a social movement. Story telling can develop agency, reformulate identity, and afford access to the motivational resources to form a leadership group, found a new organization, and launch a new social movement.
“The battle of [stories] is based on the recognition that the currency of story is not truth, but meaning.”
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This resource from Beautiful Trouble uses traditional power analysis/ power mapping tool but as a performative strategy. The Battle of the Story worksheet (attached) provides a framework to extend this understanding into narrative space. The “battle of the story” is based the recognition that “the currency of story is not truth, but meaning. The post also includes the Battle of the Story (Narrative Power Analysis) worksheet, which you can download here.
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By Center for Story-Based Strategy. Download LINK
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Resource from Center for Story-based Strategy, using the Five Elements of Story to disrupt dominant narratives put forth by repressive or authoritarian regimes.
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Explores how stories help our brains process the complexity of the world around us.
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Explores how stories keep us engaged by triggering “pattern recognition” in our brains.
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In this feature article in Change Agent, FrameWorks founder Susan Nall Bales explains how explanatory stories “bend the narrative arc toward social justice” .
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By Frameworks Institute. Examines how episodic and thematic stories differ, and emphasizes the importance of telling thematic stories to advance the public conversation about important social issues.
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By We Rise. This activity uses storytelling as a process of empowerment in which participants’ voices and experiences are affirmed and we build community and solidarity. It is also an introduction to listening and documenting skills.
Christine A., 2018 IGLI Participant and 2019 Co-Host