Notable Narratives: Can you come up with five meaningful quotes on narratives that nobody has read?
“[narratives] prove more powerful than billions of dollars in aid or bombs and bullets — at least in opening up opportunities for practical solutions.”
Atran, S. (2010). Talking to the Enemy: Faith, Brotherhood, and the (Un)Making of Terrorists. Ecco Press / HarperCollins, 401.
narrative braiding introduces “…better-formed stories [that] provide a more complex description of the history, which in turn, opens up new ways of describing present problems and future solutions.”
A narrative approach to conflict resolution seeks to increase complexity with “…new character roles, moral values, and episodic components [constituting] a new narrative structure that is better formed across several dimensions.”
Cobb, S. (2013). “Narrative “Braiding” and the Role of Public Officials in Transforming the Public’s Conflicts.” Conflict and Narrative: Explorations in Theory and Practice, 1(1), 21.
“Narratives are central to representing identity, particularly the collective identity of religious sects, ethnic groupings, and tribal elements. They provide a basis for interpreting information, experiences, and the behavior and intentions of other individuals and communities. Stories about a community’s history provide models of how actions and consequences are linked. Thus, narratives shape decision making in two ways: they provide an interpretive framework for a complicated and uncertain environment and offer idealized historical analogies that can serve as the basis for strategies.”
Department of Defense (November 2013). Joint Publication (JP) 3–24: Counterinsurgency. Washington, D.C.: Joint Chiefs of Staff, p. II-9.
narratives “…provide a black and white picture, which enables parsimonious, fast, unequivocal, and simple understanding of the history of the conflict.”
Bar-Tal, D. (2007). “Sociopsychological Foundations of Intractable Conflicts,” American Behavioral Scientist 50:11, 1436.
narratives must “…operate within the boundaries of existing fundamental discourses —boundaries patrolled by attentive elites capable of mobilizing mass publics with the capacity to impose meaningful costs for violation.”
Krebs, R. (2015). Narrative and the Making of US National Security. Cambridge University Press, 14.
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