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The Storied Life: The Role of Storytelling in the Construction of Individual and Collective Identity
Type
conference paper
Date Issued
2013-08-29
Author(s)
Abstract
Based on a 2012 study of white Afrikaans speaking South Africans, this paper explores the role of storytelling in the construction of individual and collective identity. This study showed the impact of elements of storytelling, including the plots, genres and character types constituting stories, their sources and circulation, and the normative effects of shared stories on the construction of individual and collective identity, on the construction and dispersion of intersubjective meaning among socially related individuals. Every person has access to a biographically informed narrative repertoire, which consists of the various stories available to that person’s construction of identity at a specific point in time. This repertoire consists of both actual and collectively prescribed ideal perceptions of the life-world and exercises an under-appreciated influence on the social construction of reality and the consequent internalisation of this reality into identity, both individually and collectively. These insights are explored through examples that highlight the process of collective identity formation among white Afrikaans speakers, whose collective representations were delegitimised after the end of Apartheid in 1994. Drawing from shared stories, white Afrikaans speakers have constructed at least three salient and differentiated types of collective selfunderstanding, distinguished by the structure and content of the stories told between their members. These provide individuals with the symbolic resources to connect to those that share the same stories. This paper explores the processes through which these collectively storied identity prescriptions are assimilated and contested by individuals.
Language
English
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
HSG Profile Area
SHSS - Kulturen, Institutionen, Maerkte (KIM)
Refereed
No
Event Title
11th Conference of the European Sociological Association (ESA)
Event Location
Turino, Italy
Event Date
28.-31.08.2013
Subject(s)
Division(s)
Eprints ID
232805