"Living Narratives"
(from Moral, Believing Animals: Human Personhood and Culture)
Christian Smith is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame. Smith is well known for his research focused on religion, adolescents and emerging adults, and social theory. He received his MA and PhD from Harvard University in 1990 and his BA from Gordon College in 1983.
Smith is a leading American theorist of the philosophy of critical realism and the social theory of personalism . His larger theoretical agenda has been to move personhood, morality, motivated action, culture, and identity to the center of sociological theorizing generally and the sociology of religion specifically. Smith's critical realist personalism require social science to revise its dominant approaches to causation, social ontology, and explanation. Recent personalist works by Smith include "What is a Person? and "To Flourish or Destruct". Earlier in his career, Smith's work on social movements emphasized not only structural political opportunities but also personal moral motivations for participation in social movement activism. In his work on American Evangelicals, Smith developed a subcultural identity theory of religious persistence and strength in the modern world and highlighted the massive cultural complexities within conservative Protestantism.
The readings below are taken from his book, Moral, Believing Animals: Human Personhood and Culture. In it, Smith advances an understanding of anthropology that underscores the morally-oriented, narratological, and epistemically anti-foundationalist condition of human personhood.
- Why We Tell Stories
- An Anatomy of Narratives
- We Cannot Live Without Stories
- Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Meta!
- A Taxonomy of Narratives
Many years ago, our human ancestors huddled around fires listening to shamans and elders telling imaginative stories by which they made sense of their world and their lives in it. They told myths about the world's origins, and about how they as peoples came to be. They told legends about mighty heroes of old, about overcoming great adversity, about visions of the future. They narrated tales of moral struggle, about people good and bad, and about what happens to naughty children. They recounted myths about fairies, spirits, gods, and powerful cosmic forces. By narrating such fictional stories, our ancestors recounted meaningful explanations of a world that was to them mysterious and dangerous - and entertained themselves in the process. As primitives, telling such stories, myths, and legends was the only w ay they knew how to explain the world and contemplate how to live in it. And such was the condition of traditional human societies of all kinds up until a few hundred years ago.
But all of that has c hanged. We moderns no longer have to huddle around fires telling fanciful myths about creations, floods, trials, conquests, and hoped-for paradises. Science, industry, rationality, and technology have dispelled the darkness and ignorance t hat once held the human race captive to its fanciful fables.
Such is the story we moderns - huddled around our televisions and computer work stations - like to tell each other. This is the dominant narrative by which we make sense of our world and the purpose of our lives in it.
The point here is not that modernity's story is false. Narratives, myths, and fables can be true, in their way. The point, rather, is that for all of our science, rationality, and technology, we moderns are no less the makers, tellers, and believers of narrative construals of existence, history, and purpose than were our forebears at any other time in human history. But more than that, we not only continue to be animals who make stories but also animals who are made by our stories. We tell and retell narratives that themselves come fundamentally to constitute and direct our lives. We, every bit as much as the most primitive or traditional of our ancestors, are animals who most fundamentally understand what reality is, who we are, and how we ought to live by locating ourselves within the larger narratives and metanarratives that we hear and tell ,
What then exactly is narrative? Narrative is a form of communication that arranges human actions and events into organized wholes in a way that bestows meaning on the actions and events by specifying their interactive or cause-and-effect relations to the whole. Narratives are much more than chronicles, which merely list discrete events by placing them on timelines. Narratives seek to convey the significance and meaning of events by situating their interaction with or influence on other events and actions in a single, interrelated account. Narratives, thus, always have a point, are always about the explanation and meaning of events and actions in human life, however simple these may be.
All narratives include a handful of essential elements. First, narratives have a set of characters or actors who are the subjects and objects of action. Second, narratives involve plots with typically structured sequences of beginning, middle, and end - although the plot may not necessarily present its story in sequential order. The plot's beginning generally sets story's context and subject, the middle introduces a significant problem or conflict that the characters must address, and the end involves some outcome or resolution of the problem or conflict. Third, narratives convey significant points. They are designed to draw the audience to an explanation, a revelation, and understanding, or an insight about life and the world. For this reason, with even the most elementary of narratives, audiences will press storytellers to complete unfinished narratives, to get to their stories' point. So, if we meet in the hall and I tell you, “I drove downtown today to pick up Billy's prescription, and was looking for a parking space” and then stop, you will probably reply, “Yeah? So? ” You thus oblige me to complete my narrative—“ Well, it took a long time because it was so crowded. But then the nicest man who was waiting in his car outside the store saw that I was having trouble and offered to let me have his space. I was so touched ”—and so get to its point: even in a difficult world there are good people who can brighten one's day and make life so much more enjoyable.
In order to construct a narrative, the storyteller selects specific events from the past that serve as the vehicles of commentary and meaning making. Not all possible past happenings are important to recount, only those that render a particular story by emplotting selected elements in a way that conveys the larger intended moral and meaning. For in a narrative world not all “facts” matter. What matters is the more significant story running through, over, and under “the facts,” the story that itself constitutes what is a fact, what it is that matters.
But just wait a minute. What is this talk of narratives? The “postmodern” condition, we have been instructed of late, has brought with it the suspicion of, perhaps even the end of, coherent narratives, especially “grand narratives.” Postmodern people are the kind who simply cannot believe in the metanarratives offered by, say, Marxism, Christianity, and liberalism. The expansiveness, coherence, and claims to universality of these grand stories have become simply incredible to those who have lived through and beyond modernity.
However fashionable this notion has become in some intellectual circles, the suggestion of this chapter is that it simply is not true. The human animal is a moral, believing animal - inescapably so. And the larger cultural frameworks within which the morally oriented believings of the human animal make sense are most deeply narrative in form. Of course, postmodernism itself is a narrative, hardly providing an escape from story-based knowledge and meaning. But the problem in its claims about the end of metanarratives run still deeper than this self-contradiction. Postmodernism simply underestimates the vitality and appeal of certain narratives - particularly in America, of the modern story of progress and liberal freedom;and, for many, of the Christian story. Those metanarratives and their associated narratives are very much alive and well— however coherent or less than perfectly coherent they are. Progress and liberal freedom, in particular, are still the driving spirit, vision, and energy of contemporary public culture and social institutions. Postmodern claims on this point, therefore, cannot be taken seriously. We have no more dispensed with grand narratives than with the need for lungs to breath with. We cannot live without stories, big stories finally, to tell us what is real and significant, to know who we are, where we are, what we are doing, and why. cannot be taken seriously. We have no more dispensed with grand narratives than with the need for lungs to breath with. We cannot live without stories, big stories finally, to tell us what is real and significant, to know who we are, where we are, what we are doing, and why. cannot be taken seriously. We have no more dispensed with grand narratives than with the need for lungs to breath with. We cannot live without stories, big stories finally, to tell us what is real and significant, to know who we are, where we are, what we are doing, and why.
With this in mind, we can begin to see how narratives are composed and how they work, by examining first a very familiar and often very meaningful story to most United States citizens, what we might call the American Experiment narrative:
Once upon a time, our ancestors lived in an Old World where they were persecuted for religious beliefs and oppressed by established aristocracies. Land was scarce, freedoms denied, and future bleak. But then brave and visionary men like Columbus opened up a New World, and our freedom- loving forefathers crossed the ocean to carve out of a wilderness a new civilization. Through bravery, ingenuity, determination, and goodwill, our forebears forged a way of life where men govern themselves, believers worship in freedom, and where anyone can grow rich and become president. This America is genuinely new, a clean break from the past, a historic experiment in freedom and democracy standing as a city on a hill shining - a beacon of hope to guide a dark world into a future of prosperity and liberty. It deserves our honor, our devotion, and possibly the commitment of our very lives for its defense.
Such is the story many readers of this book have been told from earliest days by parents, teachers, textbooks, civic leaders, and politicians alike. It is a story that provides untold millions a most significant collective identity, sense of place in the world, orientation to the good in life, basis of solidarity with strangers, ordering of time and emotions through national holidays and their ritual celebrations, and more. Without this narrative rendering of reality to tell and retell, very many Americans would confront the world with profound confusion and disorientation. For one thing, it would mean little to think of themselves as “Americans.” But with this national narrative constituting our individual and collective identities and practices, we together begin to know who we are, why we exist, how we should spend our lives,
By comparison, we might examine a very different narrative, perhaps equally powerful in the world today, that I will call the Militant Islamic Resurgence narrative — the story told by radical Muslims who are determined (by violence if necessary) to reorder the existing geopolitical world:
Once upon a time, even while Europe was stumbling through its medieval darkness, a glorious Muslim empire and civilization led the world in all manner of science, art, technology, and culture. Islam prospered for many centuries under faithful submission to Allah. But then, crusading Infidels from the Northwest invaded the land of Islam and over five hundred years have progressively conquered, divided, and subjugated us. Once glorious, Islam has now suffered endless humiliations, infidelities, and corruptions through Western colonialism, secularism, socialism, communism, mass consumerism, feminism, and eroticism. Now arrogant Western infidelity desecrates the sacred lands of Mohamed and Palestine with its armies, and by backing our Jewish enemies. But today the tide is finally turning. Islam has awoken and is now returning to fidelity and glory, with a new vision of devotion to faith. All believers must submit themselves to Allah and devote their lives to a holy war to drive out infidels both at home and abroad.
This story makes complete sense to tens of millions of Muslims throughout the world, although, with few exceptions, it is implausible for most Americans. Indeed, this narrative is a counternarrative that inverts the American Experiment story, renarrating history so that America is a source of evil and not good in the world. Thus the US responses to the attacks of September 11, 2001, were not simply about homeland security, concern for stability in the Middle East, and so on. Most profoundly, the US response from the first day was a campaign to vindicate America's national narrative.
Narratives, however, need not only be the stories of nations and political movements. Larger, more encompassing metanarratives can plot all of reality and its meaning in stories. The Christian metanarrative is one familiar case; it runs something like this:
A personal, loving, holy God created the heavens and earth for his own glory, making humans in his very image, and establishing a relationship of care and friendship with humanity. Tragically, however, humans in pride have chosen to rebel against and reject God, the source of all life and happiness, thus plunging the world into all manner of evil, death, and spiritual blindness. But the love and grace of God is more powerful and determined than the sin of humanity, so through Israel God continued his covenant relationship to redeem the world from its sin. Rather than allowing creation to reap death and utter destruction as the full and just consequence of sin, God himself became human and freely took upon himself those evil consequences. Through the undeserved crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God conquered death, set aright the broken relationship, and opened a way for the redemption of creation. God now calls all people to respond through his Spirit to this divine love and grace by repenting from sin and walking in a new life of friendship with and obedience to God in the church and in the world. Those who persist in their denial of God's love will finally get exactly what they want, the end of which is death. But those who embrace God will enjoy and worship him together as his people forever in a new heaven and earth. Those who persist in their denial of God's love will finally get exactly what they want, the end of which is death. But those who embrace God will enjoy and worship him together as his people forever in a new heaven and earth. Those who persist in their denial of God's love will finally get exactly what they want, the end of which is death. But those who embrace God will enjoy and worship him together as his people forever in a new heaven and earth.
This Christian metanarrative, like those of most religions, tells an all- encompassing story about the origin and purpose of the cosmos, about the nature and destiny of humanity, about fundamental moral order. It offers a master narrative, a metanarrative that seeks to govern all other narratives below and within it.
Human cultures abound with narratives and metanarratives of varying scope and significance. The following are some very brief recountings of a few other major narratives familiar in Western culture:
The Capitalist Prosperity narrative. For most of human history, the world's material production was mired in oppressive and inefficient economic systems such as primitive communalism, slavery, feudalism, mercantilism, and, more recently, socialism and communism. In eighteenth-century Europe and America, however, enterprising men hit upon the keys to real prosperity: private property rights, limited government, the profit motive, capital investment, the free market, rational contracts, technological innovation— in short, economic freedom. The capitalist revolution has produced more wealth, social mobility, and well-being than any other system could possibly imagine or deliver. Nevertheless, capitalism is continually beset by utopian egalitarians, government regulators, and anti-entrepreneurial freeloaders who foolishly seek to fetter its dynamic power with heavy-handed state controls. All who care for a world of freedom and prosperity will remain vigilant in defense of property rights, limited government, and the free market.
The Progressive Socialism narrative. In the most primitive days, before the rise of private property, humans lived in communities of material sharing and equality. But for most of subsequent human history, with the rise of private property, the world's material production has been mired in oppressive and exploitative economic systems, such as slavery, feudalism, mercantilism, and capitalism. The more history has progressed, the more ownership of the means of production have become centralized, and the more humanity has suffered deprivation and injustice. As the calamitous contradictions of capitalism began to intensify in the nineteenth century, however, a revolutionary vanguard emerged who envisioned a society of fraternity, justice, and equality. They proclaimed the abolition of private property, the socialization of production, and the distribution of goods not according to buying power but according to need. Right-wing tycoons and magnates who have everything to lose to the cause of justice fight against the socialist movement with all their power and wealth. But the power of workers in solidarity for justice will eventually achieve the utopia of prosperity and equality. Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!
The Expressive Romantic narrative.Once upon a time, people were free to experience the exhilarating power of nature, to assert their primitive selves, to shout raucously, to dance wildly, to fight hard, to love harder. They were noble, authentic, primal, unrestrained. The encroachments of civilization, however, have gradually domesticated humanity, smothering our authentic, primeval selves under blankets of repressive and artificial manners, refinements, restraints, properties, denials, and formal rationalities. Modern people hardly know any more who they are, what they feel, how to express their will and passions. Only a few free thinkers have broken through the suffocating restraint, and at great cost, but they point the way to authentic life and self-expression. They flaunt convention. They walk the less trod roads. They get in touch with their deepest selves. They beat drums. They splatter paint and scrawl poetry. They run naked through forests. They dance in the rain. They party wildly, altering states of consciousness. They are not bound by the bourgeois mores and manners that extinguish the human spirit. They fear not the Dionysian orgy, nor violent rebellion, nor bohemian isolation. They are troubled souls on wild and lonely quests, yet are society's only hope for authentic and expressive living, perhaps even for redemption itself through pain and art.
The Scientific Enlightenment narrative. For most of human history, people have lived in the darkness of ignorance and tradition, driven by fear, believing in superstitions. Priests and lords preyed on such ignorance, and life was wearisome and short. Ever so gradually, however, and often at great cost, inventive men have endeavored better to understand the natural world around them. Centuries of such inquiry eventually led to a marvelous Scientific Revolution that radically transformed our methods of understanding nature. What we know now as a result is based on objective observation, empirical fact, and rational analysis. With each passing decade, science reveals increasingly more about the earth, our bodies, our minds. We have come to possess the power to transform nature and ourselves. We can fortify health, relieve suffering, and prolong life. Science is close to understanding the secret of life and maybe eternal life itself. Of course, forces of ignorance, fear, irrationality, and blind faith still threaten the progress of science. But they must be resisted at all costs. For unfettered science is our only hope for true enlightenment and happiness.
Much of the social discourse of the West for the last two hundred years and even today finds it roots in the struggles between these major rival narratives. But… the West is only one civilization, and even within the West contrary stories have emerged. Outside of the West, many other narratives have shaped civilizations and cultures. So as not to belabor the point, I will recite only two. The first we may call the Divine Life and Afterlife narrative, different versions of which appear to have undergirded much of the politics, everyday life practices, and funeral rites in ancient Egypt.
Once upon a time, the universe was created by the sun-god, Ra, who appeared out of primeval chaos and created the air god Shu and his wife Tcfnut; to these were born the sky-goddess Nut and the earth-god Geb, who in turn bore Osiris, Isis, and Set. Osiris became king and judge of the dead, and god of the waters of the Nile, the grain harvest, the moon, and the sun — the beloved protector of all, both poor and rich. One day, however, Osiris was murdered by his brother, Set. But he was restored to life by his wife, Isis, and so became the great god of the eternal persistence of life. Osiris was also avenged by his son, Horus, revealing the triumph of good over evil. All creation is thus spiritual in origin. We humans are born mortal, but we contain within ourselves the seed of the divine, which, if we avoid evil, can reach its full potential in us after death. Our purpose in this life is to nourish that seed, and, if successful, we will be rewarded with eternal life in the next world and be reunited with our divine origin. If we worship the gods, live honorable lives, avoid evil, and follow proper procedures in death, our souls — our "ka" and "ba" —will live eternally in the Underworld.
A second significant non-Western narrative, which we may name the Destined Unity with Brahman narrative, associated with Hinduism, has profoundly shaped the dominant culture and society of the Indus valley for millennia:
From the origin of eternal time, the one all-pervasive Supreme Being, the immense, unifying, immanent and transcendent force of Brahman, has created, preserved, and dissolved the universe in endless cycles. All of reality is moving toward an ultimate unity with the cosmic Absolute. However, bad karma, the moral and physical law of cause and effect, works to obstruct the path to salvation and the liberation. Each of us must therefore come to understand the truth and strive, through the way of works, knowledge, and devotion as spiritual paths to God-realization, to resolve, through cycles of reincarnation, our good and bad karmic results. Through rituals, self-reflection, and devotion to one's gods, one will work to reach one's final destiny of unity with Brahman, find morality, and reach nirvana,
