Narrative Weaving: How Organizations Facilitate Narrative Adoption and Shape Inequalities

• In Event: Culture and Inequality

Abstract

Narratives are an important cultural tool for how people make sense of their interactions and construct social identities. They are also valuable tools for social movements in disseminating shared meanings. But how organizations play a role in shaping narratives is less understood, particularly in how organizations foster interpersonal interaction that shapes narrative adoption. To understand the role of organizations in narrative development, I use interview and participant observation data from 31 food pantries over six years. Through the process of narrative weaving, individuals attach meaning of their shared activities to their personal narratives. Narrative weaving is an organizationally-embedded process that integrates mirco-level outcomes in the context of meso-level interactions. By tying this process to repetitive, shared interactions in organizational contexts, I show how meso-level contexts are vital to the development of narratives and in shifting and reaffirming symbolic boundaries as well. The interactive and self-oriented nature of narrative weaving lends itself well as justification for the treatment of others, which can further bolster unequal participation and outcomes for individuals, reaffirm discrimination, and reinforce durable inequalities. is often dependent on interpersonal interaction, which dictates how people relate to one another, bolstering durable inequalities, while providing a justification for potentially unequal outcomes for participants. The process of narrative weaving elucidates the role of shared activities in personal and shared narrative take-up for individuals, and highlights how narrative adoption, particularly in social movement spaces, could benefit from centering coordinated and shared tasks.

Author

• Leah Gose, University of Southern California