Narrative resistance in social work research and practice: Counter-storying in the pursuit of social justice

Abstract

In this article, we propose ‘narrative resistance’ as a potent and useful concept for both social work research and practice. A concept that attends to power and oppression, narrative resistance provides a platform for tangible applications to support people’s efforts to resist harmful storyings of their lives. The aim of this article is to provide practical guidance for how social workers can attend to and support people’s acts of narrative resistance. This is achieved by introducing the functions of narrative in people’s lives and its inextricable links to power; discussing ‘master narratives’ and their potential for harm; and exploring narrative resistance by articulating the role of ‘counter narratives’ as a means to ‘talk back’ to injurious master narratives. The remainder of the article outlines considerations, skills and tools required to enhance counter-storying efforts in the service of emancipatory change. We spotlight examples of narrative resistance in the literature to illustrate the pragmatic mobilization of this work.

Keywords

Narrative resistance counter stories narrative practice and research master narratives social work

In their influential article, ‘Narrative in Social Work: A critical review’, Kohler Riessman and Quinney (2005) compellingly argued that narrative inquiry is perfectly suited to ‘the daily stuff of social work’ (392). Despite the striking compatibility of narrative and social work highlighted by the authors, their extensive search for narrative research conducted by social workers yielded few examples and they speculated on possible reasons for this. They noted challenges such as the emphasis in academia on ‘objective’ and quantitative methods of research (as dictated by funding bodies, journals and many graduate training programs), and the fact that narrative is inherently cross-disciplinary, involving ‘a great deal to read [that] typically lies outside the professional canon’ and a resulting tendency to be ‘blinkered by our disciplines’ (Kohler Riessman and Quinney, 2005: 406).

In this article, we seek to underscore and extend Kohler Riessman and Quinney’s argument for a focus on narrative in social work by proposing ‘narrative resistance’ as a potent and useful concept for both social work research and practice. We see the development of this concept as offering a viable and exciting means forward for the profession. Specifically, narrative resistance is a concept that attends to power and oppression, and provides a platform for tangible applications to support people’s efforts to resist harmful storyings of their lives. Moreover, the skills required for attending to and supporting people’s acts of narrative resistance are equally applicable to our work in research and professional practice. We argue, therefore, for the relevance of narrative across the scope of social work endeavours, and the particular value of narrative resistance for this work.

Given that much of the work on narrative resistance has been developed outside of the discipline of social work, our aim in this article is to provide practical guidance for how social workers can utilize this concept in their work. We begin by introducing the functions of narrative in people’s lives and its inextricable links to power. We will define the concept of ‘master narratives’ and discuss their potential for harm. We will then explore narrative resistance by articulating the role of ‘counter narratives’ (or ‘counter stories’) as a means of ‘talking back’ to injurious master narratives. The remainder of the article will outline the considerations, skills and tools required to enhance counter-storying efforts in the service of emancipatory change. These include (a) attending critically to the language we use as we co-construct meaning (e.g. in calls for research participation, when framing interview questions); (b) enhancing skills to listen for moments of resistance; (c) developing strategies to nurture emerging counter narratives articulated by those with whom we work; and (d) mobilizing counter narratives for emancipatory change.¹ Our exploration of these four areas will spotlight examples of narrative resistance in the literature to illustrate the practical utility of this work.

What narratives do?

The study of narrative requires that we consider not only what stories describe (e.g. ‘I went there and did that’) but also what they accomplish or what they do (e.g. defending one’s action, constructing one’s identity) (Frank, 2010). For instance, they provide a framework for categorizing people, phenomena or events and infer how these should be understood and treated. In their text exploring narrative studies of life transitions, McAdams et al. (2001) highlight various accomplishments of narrative:

The stories we make and tell about the major transitions in our own lives contribute to our identities, help us cope with challenges and stress, shape how we see the future, and help to determine the nature of our interpersonal relationships and unique positionings in the social and cultural world. (15)

A particularly important function of narrative for social work is its ability to construct understandings of persons and groups. The stories we tell of ourselves and that are told of us construct our sense of self. In contrast to mainstream formulations of personality in terms of stable and singular traits, a narrative perspective conceptualizes identity as fluid, plural and co-created in context. When we talk, we are created: linguistic practices continually construct our social identities, which in turn direct and constrain our actions (Bamberg, 2004). Consistent with labelling theory (Becker, 1973), when a boy is identified as ‘deviant’ (the school bully, for example), this label can influence that boy’s self-concept and in turn his actions (for instance, aggressive behaviour and truancy). In short, stories shape who we are and what we can do.

Defining ‘master narratives’ and their potential for harm

While stories are social and cultural products, not all stories are equal in their influence. In any given context, some stories wield more power than others. When circulating widely in a culture (e.g. through the media, policy documents and everyday talk), such stories can achieve a type of ‘master status’ (Frank, 2010).² They ‘accumulate familiarity and clarity while blurring and erasing plot elements that don’t fit’ (Romero and Stewart, 1999: 14), and come to embody that culture’s shared understandings thereby cultivating and maintaining behavioural norms (Nelson, 2001). Central to their power is their invisibility as they become taken-for-granted as ‘Truth’. For example, in the West, the mental illness narrative is the dominant way of understanding personal suffering, which goes largely uncontested in public discourse. This master narrative is shorn up by the pharmaceutical industry, and has implications for people’s identities (e.g. ‘psychiatric patient’) and the solutions that come into view (e.g. psychotropic medication, hospitalization). This is not to suggest that the mental illness narrative is necessarily ‘false’, but that it is only one of numerous ways of understanding. From a social constructionist view of narrative, the debate is not a matter of what is true but rather what is most useful for those concerned (Gergen, 2009).

Narrative resistance: The role of ‘counter narratives’

A social work perspective directs us to attend to the effects of narrative in people’s lives, specifically the potential for liberation or harm. When narratives are oppressive in their consequences, they warrant contestation, and in such circumstances counter narratives support people in telling new and more helpful stories for their lives. They are ‘the stories which people tell and live which offer resistance, either implicitly or explicitly, to dominant cultural narratives’ (Andrews, 2004: 1). They provide another account, which is rooted in the material consequences of persons’ lives and attends to how power is exercised. ‘The work of the counter story is political in both its disruption of the “taken-for-granted” of the dominant paradigm and its insistence that other, more complex versions of reality, get a hearing’ (Harris et al., 2001: 14). Indeed, counter stories have been depicted as ‘narrative acts of insubordination’ (Nelson, 2001: 8).

To anchor our discussion of master and counter stories, here we offer two examples. Continuing with the ‘mental illness’ master narrative referenced above, Ussher (e.g. 2006, 2013) has highlighted women’s accounts of the dangers of a psychiatrized framing of premenstrual change (including the new diagnosis of ‘premenstrual dysphoric disorder’ in the DSM5), which pathologizes women’s anger and situates them within a ‘menstrual monster’ identity. As another case in point, Lafrance (2014) explored the ways in which some women who had been depressed resisted having their distress framed as individual pathology. In particular, several participants situated their suffering as a function of the political and interpersonal context of their lives: a consequence of experiences such as violence, abuse and poverty, and their strivings to meet the impossible standards of the ‘good’ woman. For these participants, recovery from depression involved ‘breaking free’ from oppressive conditions and re-authoring themselves in ways that felt more authentic and liberating. Whereas women’s accounts of depression were typified by descriptions of being silenced and controlled, accounts of recovery were often marked by stories of getting angry and taking action. Thus, their counter stories supported their identities and agency in useful ways.

Having highlighted here the potential value of narrative resistance efforts, we must also recognize cautions in this work.³ Carney (2001) warns against overly simplistic views of master and counter narratives:

[P]articularly for those of us who are interested in issues of social justice, it is easy to get swept away in our enthusiasm for narratives of resistance. Counter stories have by their nature both an emotional as well as political power, and perhaps it is tempting to see them as the next great psychological method – the next weapon for social liberation, or at least the best rock to throw to chink the armour of what essentially continues to be an oppressive social system. This is the lure and it is a strong one. But engaging in this type of thinking would also be romanticising. (69)

Not all master narratives support oppressive systems nor do all counter narratives work toward liberating goals (McKenzie-Mohr and Lafrance, 2014). Indeed, the opposite can be true (Andrews, 2004; Carney, 2001). Neither is stable nor fixed (Plummer, 1995) and thus, master and counter narratives may overlap and bleed into each other, their consequences always dependent upon context (Andrews, 2004).

For instance, in 1970s Western society, the ‘coming out’ narrative was heralded as an important means of resisting heterosexism and heteronormativity; it was a crucial counter narrative that over time has become itself a new master narrative. Gibson and Macleod’s (2014) research highlights, however, that the imperative of self-disclosure that the ‘coming out’ narrative invites is not always useful or safe. Based on their study in which they interviewed lesbian women in a post-apartheid South Africa, they reported that this construction may be problematic in framing sexuality as necessarily central to identity. Further, it is understandable that an individual may not ‘unquestioningly draw on a narrative of triumphantly “coming out” of the closet, amidst shifting levels of (non)acceptance across South Africa and the threat of violence frequently encountered’ (Gibson and Macleod, 2014: 33). As this example illustrates, the meanings of stories are bound by time and place.

Further, because narratives of master status are repeatedly reproduced and therefore become taken for granted, counter stories are not easily told or heard (Plummer, 1995), and thus require extensive discursive labour (Throsby, 2004). Moreover, we cannot enter into this counter-storying endeavour without careful considerations of power: ‘What constitutes a “good” counter story, and for whom? What does a good counter story achieve, and how does its “goodness” depend on the context in which it is mobilized?’ (Lafrance and McKenzie-Mohr, 2014: 10). Carney’s (2001) work on constructions of motherhood in the courtroom highlights the dangers of unreflexively encouraging narrative resistance, even in the context of toxic master narratives:

Poor, working-class, or minority mothers may live and embody counter-narratives but they must at the same time recognise that their best bet (and their best chance for legal assistance) is to tell culturally acceptable and understandable courtroom narratives rather than fight with the dominant culture over social constructions of motherhood (or violence, etc). A non-repentant mother, an angry mother, a rebellious mother, a confused mother – a mother who questions her personal responsibility or, worse, implicates the social system – is more likely to be seen as criminal, and thus to be more severely punished than the woman who assumes personal responsibility and admits she ‘did wrong’. (Carney, 2001: 70–71)

Despite the cautions and complexities surrounding the counter-storying process, we share Carney’s enthusiasm for narrative resistance and its capacity to support social justice efforts. ‘[C]omplications and sticky issues aside, counter stories are the voices of the underground and they do have a compelling power – perhaps even a revolutionary one. These stories can alter our societal/collective focus’ (Carney, 2001: 75). In the remainder of this article, we outline considerations and tools to advance narrative resistance efforts in social work, focusing specifically on enhancing the ‘hear-ability’ and ‘tell-ability’ of counter narratives.

Opening spaces for narrative resistance

One of the first considerations in entering into explorations of narrative resistance relates to the language we use when we invite people to tell about their lives. Being mindful of the performative role of language (what language does) necessitates that we carefully consider the meanings and power behind the words we use. Words have the capacity to open up or shut down ways of accounting, bringing some stories into view as obvious and common sense, while rendering others invisible and untellable. When conducting research, for example, creating space for counter narratives requires that invitations for participation and interview questions are framed to allow people to talk in new and potentially transgressive ways.

Sue McKenzie-Mohr’s research of women’s accounts about their experiences of sexual violence is one case in point. A common thread woven through her 15 years of social work practice involved working with women who were addressing the effects of violence in their lives. Her work was informed by dominant narratives that frame this issue – particularly the trauma narrative. The trauma narrative incorporates a feminist ‘recovery’ narrative, focusing on the change from ‘victim’ to ‘survivor’ and at least some elements of the biomedical framing of post-traumatic stress disorder. However, for some women, this dominant framing seemed inadequate, or only partially useful, in their efforts to move beyond the negative effects of violence. For some women, the languaging of ‘trauma’, ‘recovery’, ‘healing’ and ‘victim’ did not resonate. Further, the term ‘survivor’ was sometimes experienced as limiting women’s sense of moving beyond the hold of violence. McKenzie-Mohr’s struggle to find means to more adequately assist women in their desired change efforts instigated her desire to conduct this research.

In approaching this area of inquiry, McKenzie-Mohr was intentional about creating a particular discursive space through the languaging of her study’s focus; she invited women who had been ‘raped’ but considered themselves to be ‘living well’ to participate in research interviews. Both of these terms had significant implications for the accounts shared by women. First, the language of ‘rape’ is recognized as a more politicized frame than the more sanitized (albeit more broadly encompassing) language of ‘sexual assault’ that has been taken up in federal legislation in Canada where the study was conducted. However, only women who had named their experience ‘rape’ would have considered participating in the study. While this may seem to be an insignificant point, it is important to consider that given the highly rigid and narrow master narratives of rape only about half of women whose experiences meet the definition of rape label it as such (Bondurant, 2001; Gavey, 2005; Koss, 1985). Specifically, in spite of significant efforts and some progress by feminist activists and scholars, a highly narrow narrative for a ‘legitimate’ rape remains dominant in Western society. This master narrative articulates a violent attack, most often by a stranger against a woman whose behaviour is deemed ‘beyond reproach’ (e.g. sober, wearing ‘modest’ attire) and whose efforts to fight back are unmistakable (see McKenzie-Mohr, 2014, for a more full discussion). And thus, McKenzie-Mohr’s call to participate would solicit a potential response from only those women who had come to understand their experiences as ‘rape’.

Second, while interested in learning about how women achieve positive outcomes following the experience of sexual violence, McKenzie-Mohr struggled with how to hail women for this purpose. Available terms such as ‘post-traumatic growth’ (Tedeschi and Calhoun, 1996), ‘thriving’ and ‘resilience’ (O’Leary and Ickovics, 1995), have been articulated in the literature to reflect the achievement of positive outcomes after significant hardship, but are also associated with particular understandings of what ‘counts’ as a positive outcome. In an effort to transcend these predefined concepts and create space to allow participants to story their experiences in potentially new ways, she chose the more open term of ‘living well’. The use of a ‘fresh’ term left this conceptual area as ‘terra incognita’ (Tutty et al., 1996) and supported participants to define its significance and relevance to their own experience. While this invitation held no guarantees that it would produce counter stories in women’s accounts, it opened up more fertile space for possibilities than if she had invited women, for instance, to tell about their ‘recovery’ or ‘healing’ from rape.

To extend this point, a call for participation in another study on women’s experiences of sexual violence may use other terms, depending upon its focus and purpose. For example, in a subsequent project on women’s use of services after sexual violence, McKenzie-Mohr and colleagues invited individuals to participate if they had had ‘unwanted sexual experiences’. In comparison with the term ‘rape’ used in the previous study, this framing broadened the scope of inquiry. Participants described their experiences in various ways (although, again, all of these met the definition of sexual assault); it was ‘confusing’‘upsetting’‘sex that made me feel sick’or simply ‘bad sex’ (McKenzie-Mohr and Whitmore, 2015). ‘Rape’, ‘sexual assault’ and ‘sexual violence’ were not terms they initially applied to their experiences. As a consequence, they described not knowing that they could turn to professional services (such as the Sexual Assault Crisis Centre, the Sexual Assault Response Team, Victim Services or the Police). Despite women’s clearly articulated needs for support and safety, they experienced themselves as disqualified from the very services they desired. The language of ‘unwanted sexual experiences’ (rather than ‘rape’) used in this call for participation invited women who did not necessarily frame their experiences in terms of the ‘trauma of rape’ master narrative, which allowed the research team to learn about barriers to relevant services.

While the discussion above points to the varied narrative spaces invited through language, it is important to also consider the materiality of space including the power operating within it (e.g. very different stories may be tell-able and hear-able in pubs and prisons). Returning to an earlier example, resistance to the ‘good mother’ master narrative is a risky and indeed potentially disastrous move in a courtroom. In contrast, Smith (2001) draws on her work regarding tribunals in working with Maori youth to highlight the consideration of not only speakers and stories but also space: ‘The youth tribunals provided a new and important space within which the testimonies and counter stories of youth from around New Zealand were voiced’ (181–182).

She found that by ‘transforming narrow official spaces’ (Smith, 2001: 182), a tribunal gave a platform for Maori youth, whose rich testimony of their complex lives offered new narratives of growing up rural. Social workers regularly practice in varied ‘official spaces’ (governmental departments, youth detention centres, hospitals, etc.), and this example highlights the value in contemplating how to open spaces for potential counter-storying efforts.

In summary, opening up spaces for narratives of resistance requires a deep consideration of the meanings and power inherent in our invitations, including (but not limited to) the words we mobilize and the spaces we inhabit.⁴ Doing so requires that we:

Understand the master narratives operating and their potential consequences:

How do these master narratives position various actors?

What are their implications for identity and agency?

What do these narratives render invisible or un-tellable?

Critically choose language to open up, rather than foreclose, narrative possibilities; and

Consider the context within which stories are invited:

What narratives are invited by the physical space (e.g. in the hospital room, the dorm room, the court room)? What ways of telling are opened or foreclosed?

How does power circulate in a particular space?

What rules, expectations, and roles are at play for various actors within this space? (e.g. in the classroom, the Family & Community Services office, the family home?)

Who holds the most power to speak and frame experience here?

How can power be differently distributed?

Listening for moments of narrative resistance

Having opened space for narrative resistance, a next step is necessarily to attune our ears to resistance when it occurs. This, too, requires careful attention:

Just as it’s a mistake to conceptualize master narratives as single, unified stories, so is it mistaken to think of counterstories as full-blown stories that pre-exist their encounter with any given master narrative. Counterstories come into being through a process of ongoing engagement with the narratives they resist. Many of them start small, like a seed in the crack of a sidewalk, but they are capable of displacing surprising chunks of concrete as they grow. (Nelson, 2001: 169)

Because counter stories are likely to emerge tentatively and in fragments, attending to such hesitant and often fleeting moments of resistance is of critical importance. If we are unable to hear these saplings of counter narratives, we will be unable to support individuals in developing them. How then do we hone our ability to hear beyond the master narrative?

‘Linguistic incongruence’ and ‘narrative debris’

DeVault’s (1990) concept of ‘linguistic incongruence’ is useful as it highlights how dominant framings, which serve the ruling class, can mute the articulation of those facing marginalization or oppression. She points to how people try to make meaning of their experiences when dominant narratives fail; they ‘must translate, either saying things that are not quite right, or working at using the language in non-standard ways’ (DeVault, 1990: 97). As social workers, we are directed to pay attention to such halting, atypical and even awkward expressions of meaning, as they may signal moments of resistance. A powerful example of the significance of fragmentary attempts at narrative resistance comes from research with men in prison who were serving extended sentences for violent crimes. McKendy (2006) argued that the context of the prison enjoined the men he interviewed to speak of themselves (exclusively) within the master narrative of the responsibilized, self-possessed individual. In the face of this dominant imperative and the potentially serious repercussions of any transgression (e.g. outcomes of parole hearings), it was difficult for them to speak of their own victimization, suffering and powerlessness. For instance, talking about one’s own experiences of childhood abuse can be heard by those in authority as an excuse for, and a dismissal of, one’s own responsibility for violent acts. McKendy (2006) noted that these attempts were punctuated by what he coined ‘narrative debris’: ‘fragments, false starts, pauses, gaps, inconsistencies, disfluencies, self-interruptions, repetition, non-lexicalized sounds, and various kinds of verbal stumbling’ (473–474). He explains the significance and the implications of such fragmentary moments of narrative resistance:

This 'narrative debris' is evidence of the way the prison experience, and the language associated with it, make it difficult for these men to talk in direct ways about their situation. Not being able to talk directly about this means they are less likely to be able to think about it, which in turn means that they are less likely to see it as their responsibility. What is paradoxical, of course, is that it is the official discourse of the prison – which explicitly desires them to take such responsibility – that makes it so difficult for them to do so. (McKendy, 2006: 473)

Without space within the institutional context to hear the complexity of their experiences (acknowledging both their past victimization and responsibility for their own violence), these sapling forms of counter narratives are unlikely to develop and assist men to more fully understand and claim their responsibility. The lesson here is the importance of listening beyond master narratives to early signals of counter-storying.

The literature offers some strategies that may be useful to social workers in their efforts to better listen for early signs of narrative resistance. We provide two examples of means to do so in the remainder of this section, including double listening and attending to the use of metaphor.

Double listening

The practice of ‘double listening’, first articulated by White (2000) in the context of narrative therapy, may assist social workers in paying attention to early indicators of counter-storying efforts. This practice involves paying attention not only to what individuals are telling us but also to what is ‘absent but implicit’: what is absent in the telling but implicit in its meaning (White, 2000). Put another way, what are the subjugated meanings that the expressed story, often founded upon a master narrative, relies upon for its existence? How do these subjugated meanings connect with alternative preferred stories, and how do we bring them from the background to the foreground? In their clinical work with those who have experienced trauma, Carey et al. (2009) describe listening both to a person’s story of trauma but also for any expressions that might provide some hint of that person's response to the trauma. In this listening for the ‘absent but implicit’, they attend to signs of what the individual has continued to value in life despite their distressing experiences. Their listening for both the explicit trauma story and the implicit ‘out-of-focus background’ (Carey et al., 2009: 321) assists an individual not only to acknowledge the power of having been victimized but also to begin to create a space for another story – one about what this person holds precious and values in life (Carey et al., 2009).

Metaphor

Metaphors can be used to prop up dominant framings of social interactions and maintain power relations (see, for example, the works of Adams et al., 1995; Anderson and Doherty, 2008). However, metaphors can also be used to play with meanings and create new ones (Chadwick, 2014). They can be read as ‘signs of breakdown within stories when normative narrative modalities fail [… and thus] can signal attempts to narrate outside of conventional frames and formulate possible counter-stories’ (Chadwick, 2014: 49).

For instance, in her work described earlier on women’s narratives of recovery from depression, Lafrance (2014) found that many participants described their emergence from depression through the use of ‘voice’ and ‘vision’ metaphors. These metaphors were mobilized to highlight women’s emerging sense of themselves and their own values in ways that often clashed with societal expectations of their (often subservient) roles as mothers, wives and daughters. In this way, voice and vision metaphors were used to resist the master narrative of the ‘good’ woman. Whereas they described having their voice and vision stifled or ignored when depressed, strengthening these on their own terms became central to their recovery processes.

To summarize this section, listening for tentative, fleeting moments of narrative resistance is central to counter work. This ‘tricky’ work can be assisted by:

Attending to linguistic incongruence and narrative debris (e.g. in relation to research, interview transcriptions should retain non-speech sounds [such as laughter], pauses and verbal stumblings to assist in paying attention to narrative debris and other indicators of fledgling resistance);

Listening for the ‘absent but implicit’ in people’s accounts; and

Noting the use of discursive features such as metaphor as potential signals of counter work.

Nurturing early forms of narrative resistance

‘Unpacking’ and externalizing

A third central process in the development of counter stories is the unpacking and deconstruction of master narratives. Again, we often fail to directly consider the meanings, power and identity positionings inherent in the language and stories we draw upon. Unpacking and deconstructing serve to ‘make the invisible visible’, such that we can make more intentional choices about how we story our lives. This work is informed by narrative practice in general, and the concept of ‘externalizing’ in particular (White and Epston, 1990).⁵ ‘“Externalizing” is an approach to therapy that encourages persons to objectify and, at times, to personify the problems that they experience as oppressive’ (White and Epston, 1990: 38). Doing so disrupts the notion that ‘the person is the problem’ and instead allows a closer examination of the problem (including the cultural assumptions and values it supports). This form of ‘counter-practice’ can work in the service of narrative resistance, ‘open[ing] space for persons to re-author or constitute themselves, each other, and their relationships, according to alternative stories or knowledges’ (White and Epston, 1990: 75). In the context of a women’s support group, for example, the common problem of ‘mother-blaming’ might be interrogated: ‘What can women do to resist you [mother blaming] getting into their lives? […] What sorts of places are hardest for you to be around?’ (Russell and Carey, 2003: 76). In turn, this may undermine the work of mother-blaming, and open space for counter stories. Such externalizing questions facilitate the ‘counterviewing’ of oppressive dominant narratives (Madigan, 2003), a process of deconstructive questioning that was developed for therapeutic practice, but has also been applied to research (Brown, 2014).

Use of audience

Another key means to destabilize a harmful master narrative and co-construct a more helpful alternative is through supportive audience. Social workers are well positioned to make use of this strategy given the profession’s emphasis on collaboration, group work and community. In order for new stories to thicken and become hardy, they must be heard and validated. Thus, the intentional use of audience in social work offers the opportunity for ‘co-conspiratorial resistance’ (Korobov, 2004).

The following example highlights the use of audience to thicken valuable counter narratives. Long-term care facilities are spaces in which the master narratives regarding aging and disability, specifically the ‘narrative of decline’ (Gullette, 2004), may be particularly challenging to shake. The dominance of this story of decline is often pronounced in these locations, as is the risk of ‘narrative foreclosure’, or ‘the conviction that the stories of one’s life are essentially over, […] that it is simply too late to live meaningfully’ (Freeman, 2011: 3). Working to limit or avoid this narrative damage must be a central aspect of care; alongside washing, feeding and giving medication in residential facilities, ‘narrative care’ must also be a priority.⁶ The York Care Centre, a large residential facility in Fredericton, Canada, launched the Resident Biography Program in 2007. Interested members of the community are trained as ‘biographers’ and work interactively with residents and their loved ones over several months to explore and record their life stories. Focusing on supporting individuals as biographically active agents in their lives, the program highlights their ongoing desires, interests and plans. As such, it works to advance counter-storying by resisting oppressive narratives of aging. Questions such as, ‘What do you value?’ ‘What is a good day like for you?’ and ‘What activities do you enjoy?’ frequently evoke rich descriptions of what individuals find meaningful in their lives, and assumes biographical growth and generativity. Once the recording is completed, they create a storied slide show, which is presented at a public ceremony, to which staff, volunteers, family and community members are invited. This community acts as audience, whose role it is to support the thickening of the ongoing story, thereby resisting the master narrative of decline and its harmful effects (Noonan and McKenzie-Mohr, 2012).

In summary, it is insufficient to open space for counter stories and detect their early eruptions. To ensure that they become viable resources in people’s lives, we must nurture them, allowing them to take root and thrive. Activities toward this end include:

Externalizing people’s problem stories;

Interrogating the dominant assumptions inherent in these stories;

Supporting people’s intentional choices for re-storying their lives; and

Facilitating the shared hearing and validation of people’s narrative resistance.

Mobilizing narrative resistance for emancipatory change

Finally, in order for emergent counter stories to gain influence, they must be circulated beyond individuals and taken up more broadly in social discourse. Only then, can they have the potential to disrupt oppressive master narratives, opening new possibilities. As bell hooks (1989) has so aptly argued, people resist oppression ‘by identifying themselves as subjects, by defining their reality, shaping their new identity, naming their history, telling their story’ (43). To hold greater sway in advancing liberating social change, these subversive stories must not only be told but also heard. For, as Plummer (1995) cautions, ‘[S]tories that are not involved in community-building do not [typically] become strong stories’ (174). And thus expanding the audience to bear witness and support new narrative framings is critical to the emancipatory agenda, and ‘may indeed be reconceptualized as a new form of politics’ (Harris et al., 2001: 9). Such a robust performance of resistance involves repudiating a dominant cultural storyline by contesting it through systematic and politicized efforts (Nelson, 2001) (e.g. public education campaigns, community development programming and political lobbying for legislative change). As counter narratives are more broadly embraced, they are strengthened in their power. And with greater circulation, stories have the capacity to ‘mobilize social movements’ (Frank, 2010: 3) and ultimately create a ‘counterreality’ (Delgado, 1989). Indeed, the study of counter narratives ‘opens up the possibility of using narrative research in the service of liberating and emancipating agenda’ (Bamberg, 2004: 351), a focus clearly aligned with the intent of social work.

A participatory action research project (The Polling for Justice (PFJ) project) conducted with youth in New York City highlights the value of narrative resistance toward emancipatory goals. This study, designed to assess the impact of neo-liberal public policies on young people, aimed to create a counter story to the mainstream formulation that situates ‘urban youth’ within a discourse of ‘risk’. In particular, the project was ‘designed to document structures and ideologies of oppression while challenging the dominant construction of urban youth as the problem to be explained’ (Fox and Fine, 2013: 323). This dominant framing has justified the move away from investment in low-income communities and youth development, and toward criminalization in disenfranchised communities (e.g. the NYPD advancing its stop-and-frisk policy). Rather than assuming youth to be ‘the problem’, the researchers ask instead, ‘What if neoliberalism were held accountable?’ (Fox and Fine, 2013: 322). And thus by externalizing neoliberalism, they make it visible for interrogation.

The research team’s data included extensive survey responses and life stories that, when analyzed, ‘made structural causes visible; private experiences public; acquiescence unthinkable; resistance imperative’ (Fox and Fine, 2013: 329). Analyses and dissemination of findings were taken up as acts of subversion – ‘performing radical evidence, provoking collective accountability and inviting new solidarities’ (Fox and Fine, 2013: 330), all means to provoke action:

[I]t was vital to our research goals that the PFJ data circulate outside the performance space as policy, organizing and public education. We made efforts to ensure that key PFJ findings were used in youth friendly media (Cushman, 2010), public hearings (for instance on school discipline reform), policy reports, community speak-outs (on community and school safety), and academic papers on education, safety reforms, and social critique. In particular, the PFJ data on youth experiences of aggressive policing fed organising efforts across New York City. (Fox and Fine, 2013: 332)

This ongoing research project, which is focusing on community-based police reform, mobilizes counter-storying as a central means toward systemic and political change, and illustrates its creative potential and value for social work.

When emerging counter narratives are shared in community, they can bring people together in solidarity to mobilize for change. Advancing this work may involve:

Considering how emergent counter stories can build communities of action;

Exploring the capacity of narrative resistance to inform policy change; and

Drawing on narrative ideas in participatory action research projects to address issues of oppression.

Conclusion

In this article, we have argued that narrative resistance is a compelling concept, poised to be taken up more broadly in social work research and practice. Consistent with the mission and values of the profession, it offers potent means to understand and address people’s experiences of harm, suffering and injustice. We have articulated four key areas for consideration in counter work, highlighting possible means to advance the ‘hear-ability’, ‘tell-ability’ and circulation of counter narratives. The examples drawn upon to highlight these efforts underscore the promise of narrative resistance ‘on the streets’.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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