The Role of Emotional Security,Narrative, and Resilience for Youth and Families in Contexts of Armed Conflict

The far‐reaching devastation created by contemporary armed conflict puts children and families at risk. The goal of this article is to describe current research on the effects of armed conflict and political violence on families and youth with a focus on the roles of emotional insecurity and narratives of conflict that can persist long after the end of conflict. We describe how identity processes that are at the heart of many intergroup conflicts of the 20th and 21st centuries are linked with emotional insecurity and the historical and personal narratives of youth in these contexts. We conclude with general considerations for legal, medical, and mental health practitioners working with families who have experienced armed conflict.     

Policy Stalemate and Policy Change in Israel's Water Sector 1970–2010: Advocacy Coalitions and Policy Narratives

This paper seeks to explain policy stalemates that persist despite recognition of their risks and damages, as well as the factors and processes that enable a breakthrough and lead to policy change. The paper seeks to fill a gap in the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) theory by supplementing it with Narrative Analysis (NA). We claim that NA provides a link missing in the ACF that is required for the transformation of “necessary” conditions—like external and internal shocks to the system—into “sufficient” conditions for policy persistence or change. We use the ACF to delineate coalition members and their belief systems and policy positions, as well as external, internal, and structural shocks to the system. We rely on NA to analyze the narratives employed in the public arena, which turn conditions necessary both for hurting stalemates and for policy change into sufficient conditions. We illustrate the benefits of combining the two approaches through a study of Israel's water policy during four decades (1970s–2000s) based on government records and on information from interviews with key players.     

论《圣经》的叙事结构对《鲁滨逊漂流记》的影响

西方文学神话框架的核心是《圣经》。弗莱对《圣经》有着独特的文学理解,他在狭义和广义的圣经文学下,开出一个新的研究方向——圣经与文学。对比弗莱的"U型结构"理论与《鲁滨逊漂流记》,可以看出,《鲁滨逊漂流记》具有典型的宗教结构形式:它通过阐释鲁滨逊的精神超越过程,探讨了西方圣经文学的精神主脉,是西方文学发展进程中的一次精神突围。     

Du fatalisme en matière de prolifération nucléaire: Retour sur une représentation opiniâtre

Les discours des décideurs politiques mais aussi de la majorité des spécialistes du nucléaire militaire véhiculent l'idée selon laquelle l'augmentation, pas nécessairement linéaire, du nombre d'acteurs dotés de l'arme nucléaire est une tendance lourde, voire une loi de l'histoire. Cet article entend mettre au jour le rôle de la métaphore biologique de la prolifération, transposée aux armes nucléaires, dans la construction de cette vision de l'histoire nucléaire et explorer la sélection qu'elle opère dans la mise en récit qui en découle. Il conclut par la saisie des conséquences politiques de cette vision et une mise en garde contre une alternative fallacieuse au fatalisme proliférant que serait la pédagogie de la catastrophe, avant de proposer plusieurs pistes de recherche sur les autres sources du « fatalisme » que nous avons identifié ainsi que la possibilité d'un changement de paradigme.     

Conduit or contributor? The role of media in policy change theory

The policy change literature is contradictory about the role the media plays in policy change: a conduit for policy participants, with media accounts transmitting multiple policy beliefs of those involved in policy debates or a contributor in the policy process, with media accounts supplying consistent policy beliefs with congruent narrative framing strategies to construct a policy story. The purpose of this study is to empirically test whether the role of the media is that of a conduit or contributor in the policy change process. This study tests whether there are differences in policy beliefs and narrative framing strategies between local and national print media coverage of two contentious policy issues in the Greater Yellowstone Area between 1986 and 2006, that of snowmobile access and wolf reintroduction. In the Greater Yellowstone Area policy arena, local media accounts are believed to be aligned with the Old West Advocacy Coalition, whereas the national media accounts are thought to be part of the New West Advocacy Coalition. With a methodology informed by narrative policy analysis, one hundred seventy five local and national print newspaper accounts were content analyzed to determine whether these media accounts were policy narratives, with embedded policy beliefs and narrative framing strategies. The results indicate that there are statistical differences between local and national media coverage for five of the seven hypotheses. Media accounts are generally policy stories, suggesting that the media’s role is more of a contributor than a conduit in the policy change process.

略论叙事在中国社会研究中的运用及其限制

由于实证主义科学观支配了主流社会学的研究,预设它是惟一客观可靠的知识类型,从而使质性研究越来越被排斥到了边缘地位。叙事作为质性研究的一种,不仅仅是一种文学手法或情感表达,它与逻辑科学话语同样是一种基本的认知方式,对于丰富社会学的想象力有着重要的意义。叙事在中国社会研究中具有独特的地位,这是为中国社会生活的变通性、过程性和模糊性所决定的。叙事是否成功,取决于作者的问题感、材料的复杂性和讲故事的技巧。方法与研究对象是一致的,因此,与其用“叙事的时刻”去颠覆统计社会学的神话,不如为适当的问题选择适当的方法,克服韦伯所谓“方法论的瘟疫”。     

Narrative policy analysis and the integration of public involvement in decision making

Public involvement in environmental policy analysis and planning may be in some cases for the purpose of incorporating public values and preferences in decision making. Narrative policy analysis is put forward as a method, which is particularly useful to the practice of public involvement for maintaining a juxtaposition of views throughout the policy development and planning process. It is argued that this process may facilitate the consideration of public preferences in a decision-making process. This can be achieved through the joint development of a meta-narrative.     

Double Lives, Double Narratives: Tracing the Story of the Family in Rousseau, the Swiss Civil Code and the Fathers’ Rights Debates

A recent parliamentary postulate in Switzerland calling for joint custody as the legal norm argues that fathers are discriminated against in Swiss divorce law. This postulate has incited a debate which circles around issues of equality, the role of fathers and mothers, and the good of the child. Our article, uniting approaches from literature, cultural studies, and science and technology studies, examines the arguments sparked by the debate with a view to different takes on gender and family. In doing so, it traces the roots of contemporary Swiss family law in the Rousseauian narrative of family life in Emile ou de l’education; it explores the manner in which scientific knowledge is marshaled to lend political legitimacy to current debate; and it asks finally how narrative bridges the gap between public discourse and lived experience.

Making sense of terrorism: a narrative approach to the study of violent events

ABSTRACT

How does violence become understood as terrorism? In this article, we show how a narrative approach to the study of violent events offers a conceptually productive way to understand the process of “seeing” an event as a terrorist act, one that explicitly integrates the phenomenology of violence. While the collective practice of defining terrorism in academia and the policy arena has struggled to produce a universal definition, we identify a set of “common sense” characteristics. We argue that if the framing of violent events prominently features these characteristics as discursive anchors, this primes processes of sensemaking toward interpreting violence as terrorism. While terrorism markers are often articulated as being pragmatic and apolitical indicators of terrorist acts, we show that they are indeed at the core of political contests over historical and physical facts about violent events. The narrative approach we develop in this article underscores that intuitive leanings toward interpreting violence as terrorism are a sign of political agency precisely because they are produced through the stories political agents tell.     

Narrative and elucidating the concept of democracy: the case of Myanmar’s activists and democratic leaders

Narrative analysis has been widely employed in the social sciences. Yet there has been no systematic application of narrative theory to the study of how the word “democracy” is given meaning by political actors. Using the empirical example of the Burmese democracy movement in the lead up to the historic 2015 election victory of the National League for Democracy, this article argues that narrative analysis can contribute in unique ways to the interpretive task of “elucidating” the concept of democracy. Tracing plot and character construction within activist and aid worker stories about democracy in Myanmar, this study reveals three prominent and diverging narratives of democracy within and around the movement; a liberal narrative, centring on liberal democratic institutions and values, a benevolence narrative, focussing on the value of moral leadership and selflessness, and an equality narrative, highlighting the importance of cultural reform towards greater relational equality. Attention to these narratives has implications for donor “democracy promotion” strategies raising new questions about the role of formal institutions of democracy, the perceived source of “solutions”, and the impact on internal struggles within democracy movements.