Concerning Mold Narratives; Or, the Lost Cause in Chechnya

• In Event: 078 - Section on Sociology of Culture Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 12. Narratives and Politics

Abstract

We interpret the world in the form of story (Bruner 1986, 1987, 1991; MacIntyre 1984; Somers 1994), though, as the framing perspective has articulated, there is a near-infinite number of stories we might tell about any event in the social world (e.g. Edelman 1993). This paper questions further how we might utilize stories about our cultural pasts to shape the stories we tell about the present. Building from theories of cultural trauma (e.g. Alexander 2004) and especially from Wertsch’s theory of “schematic narrative templates” (2002; 2008a; 2008b), I introduce the idea of “mold narratives”—culturally ingrained stories about specific events in the past that serve as subconscious frameworks for making sense of current events. I then present an illustration by way of case-study. Drawing from texts written for newspapers in the American South, I suggest that the Lost Cause narrative of the Civil War served as a mold narrative by which Southerners interpreted the First Russo-Chechen War (1994-1996).

Author

• Christine Bucior, Pennsylvania State University