Hammack & Pilecki (2012). Narrative as a root metaphor for Political Psychology - Article summary

The narratory principle states that humans, think, perceive, imagine and make moral choices according to narrative structures. This principle can resolve the analytic problem of linking mind and society.

Narrative refers to the sensible organization of thought through language, internalized or externalized, which serves to create a sense of personal coherence and collective solidarity and to legitimize collective beliefs, emotions and actions.

Narrative provides access to the current structure of identity, revealing the ideological and experiential content of memory and the motivational anchor for a set of social practices. Narrative engagement refers to the fact that members of a society engage with collective stories of what it means to inhabit a particular political entity (e.g. Dutch). This means that identity is rooted in texts that individuals construct to make sense of their lives.

Narrative can be defined at two levels:

1. Proximal level
   Narrative describes a cognitive process of meaning-making and represents an organizing principle for human action. It consists in the mind for the individual.
2. Multilevel definition of narrative (e.g. history of a nation).
   Narrative reveals the relevance of narrative at the collective level. This consists in the material world for the collective and the individual engages with this narrative.

Narrative is anchored in four principles:

1. Language, politics and thought
   The mind is subject to received discourse and the nature of word meanings and storylines affect the way people think about the world.
2. Personal coherence
   The mind seeks order in time and place and seeks for continuity which can be achieved through story-making.
3. Meaning in solidarity
   An individual is not a self-contained psychological entity but the need for continuity also exists within the community of shared practice.
4. Mind in action
   Story-making and narrative engagement are not passive endeavours. Mental processes occur through social practice.

Meaning of words form concepts and categories which are understood through narrative. Language guides thought and behaviour. The form and content of narratives are arbitrarily constructed as the meaning of the narrative is relative and constituent of a particular way of thinking.

The discursive approach states that conversation is a mechanism through which individuals create reality and legitimize their positions within it. There are two relevant research methods that make use of this approach:

1. Political discourse analysis
   This type of research studies the way in which leaders use stories to frame particular political issues and to motivate adherence to a particular political agenda. A weak point of this type of study is that it does not empirically link narrative analyses to individual minds (i.e. the individual responses to these narratives are not known).
2. Social categories as rhetoric
   This type of research studies how social categorization is a narrative process. It involves the discursive aspects of social categories and its impact.

How and what people think is rooted in a particular set of meaning-saturated signs and symbols they inherit in a given political setting.

People tend to construct personal narratives of identity that closely mirror larger national narratives, providing a sense of personal coherence and group solidarity. Politics is linked to the personal through the process of engagement with narratives about the nation and its imagined past.

The meaning provided through the narrative provides the fundamental human need of collective solidarity. There is a need for continuity across minds at a single moment in time and space. The collective narrative provides a sense of group meaning. This meaning derives from a direct engagement with collective memory, stories about historical moments in a group’s existence. The historical, material and political location of individuals accounted for differences in narrative appropriation.

Dangerous memories refers to memories that are disruptive to the status quo. Collective memory serve particular political interests for constructing and maintaining identity as well as establishing clear differentiations among social categories (e.g. Dutch vs. Belgium). There is a process of dynamic engagement with narratives of collective memory as opposed to a static, linear account of the relationship between social memory and individual subjectivity.

Social representations concern the contents of everyday thinking and the stock of ideas that gives coherence to our religious beliefs and political ideas. Social representations provide individuals with a way of making sense of socially significant phenomenon. They involve the elaboration of a social object by the community for the purpose of behaving and communicating. It exists both in the world and in the individual psyche.

Narratives can be viewed as the mediated activity of social practice. There are two research areas which are concerned with how individuals respond to and reflect shifting storylines about politics and intergroup relations:

1. Narratives of political reconciliation
   The role of narratives in political reconciliation can be great as reconciliation at a societal level often involves changing the narrative of historical events in order to account for past injustices. Therefore, narrative plays an important role in apologies and forgiveness.
2. Transformative voice of narrative
   Personal and collective narratives can become resources for empowerment and social change. Narrative can be seen as the mediator between thought and action and holds a transformative power.

Emotions are central to the narrative process. Narratives are intrinsically provocative as they evoke sentiments that correspond to the ideals individuals come to hold about a given social reality. The affective content of narrative is inseparable from its cognitive features.

Narrative theory and methods provide for the possibility of political transformation through their attention to individual voice in relation to sources of political and cultural authority.