The introduction of the essay:
Narratives are the stories people construct to make sense of their reality. Narratives help usunderstand who we are, where we come from, and the implications of that for our current lives. At acollective level, narratives provide cohesion to and transmit shared beliefs of common origins andidentity. They are ontologically interrelated in a network of ideas embedded within a specific culturaland historical context. Some narratives become dominant in a specific context through processes ofstruggle over political meaning and selective appropriation of certain elements, while others areomitted because they are considered less appropriate. Experience-centered readings of narrativesstress the significance of stories for expressing and building personal identity and agency. Proceedingfrom available discourses and narratives, we routinely reproduce, critique, justify, or negate socialrelations through our utterances and writings. Thus, careful attention to narratives facilitates anunderstanding of how both the political mind and the political society come to be interwoven andmutually constitutive.
Links:
Narratives of (In)Security: Nationhood, Culture, Religion, and Gender
Catarina Kinnvall