Loseke - Study of Identity as Cultural, Institutional, Organizational & Personal Narratives

THE STUDY OF IDENTITY AS CULTURAL,INSTITUTIONAL, ORGANIZATIONAL, ANDPERSONAL NARRATIVES: Theoretical andEmpirical Integrations

Donileen R. Loseke*University of South Florida

I argue that the study of narrative identity would benefit from more sustained and explicit

attention to relationships among cultural, institutional, organizational, and personal narratives of

identity. I review what is known about these different types of narrative identity and argue that

these narratives are created for different purposes, do different types of work, and are evaluated by

different criteria. After exploring the inherently reflexive relationships between and among these

various narratives of identity, I conclude with demonstrating how examining these relationships

would allow a more complete understanding of the mutual relevance of social problem construc-

tion and culture, of the work of social service organizations attempting to change clients personal

narratives, and the possibilities of social change. Exploring relationships between and among

different types of narrative identity would yield a better understanding of how narratives work

and the work narratives do.

A human is essentially a story-telling animal (MacIntyre 1984:216), and storytellingmay be theway through which human beings make sense of their own lives and the livesof others (McAdams 1995:207, emphasis in original). Although we live in a culture ofstorytelling (Weeks 1998:46), social researchers until recently shunned the study ofnarratives, evaluated and berated as an ambiguous, particularistic, idiosyncratic andimprecise way of representing the world (Ewick and Silbey 1995:198). Yet the past twodecades have witnessed remarkable change as a variety of scholars became dissatisfiedwith reigning theoretical or methodological frameworks driving their research. Whilesuch changes are a routine part of intellectual history, it is notable that changes acrosssocial science disciplines as well as across myriad substantive topics were similar in thatthey led to a narrative turn (Mishler 1995; Denzin and Lincoln 2000). The formerlycriticized subjective and contextualized nature of the narrative form became praised asits precise strengths in examining multiple questions about how humans create andsustain meaning (Ewick and Silbey 1995), including the meaning of identity.

Narratives create identity at all levels of human social life. At the macro-level, thereare stories producing cultural identities, the imagined characteristics of disembodiedtypes of people that simplify a complex world (DiMaggio 1997) and construct symbolicboundaries around types of social actors (Lamont and Virag 2002). At the meso-level,the policymaking process produces narratives of institutional identities, the imagined

*Direct all correspondence to Donileen R. Loseke, Department of SociologyCPR 107, University of South

Florida, 4202 East Fowler Avenue, Tampa, FL 33620; e-mail: [email protected]

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The Sociological Quarterly 48 (2007) 661688 2007 Midwest Sociological Society 661

characteristics of the targets of policy or law which justify policy decisions (Schneiderand Ingram 1993) and therefore legitimize institutional arrangements promotingfreedom or constraint (Alexander 1992). Also at the meso-level, there are organizationalidentities, produced by the increasingly common organizations and groups explicitly inthe business of structuring and reconfiguring personal identity (Gubrium and Holstein2001:2). These narratives inform service provision for the unique people who use agencyservices. Finally, at the micro-level, there are stories producing personal identities, theself-understandings of unique, embodied selves about their selves. These narrativesserve as vehicles for rendering ourselves intelligible (K. Gergen 1994:186).

Narratives of identity therefore are produced at cultural, institutional, organiza-tional, and individual levels of social life. While scholars often note how these forms ofnarrative identity are reflexively related, it is most common for questions to focus ononly one type of narrative identity and bracket, or simply ignore, reflexive relationshipsamong different types of identities. My argument is that much could be learned bybringing an examination of these reflexive relationships into the forefront of analysis.Such an integration would lead to a better understanding of how narratives work and ofthe work narratives do.

I proceed by first locating the study of narrative in social research. Then, I willexamine the major questions about, and understandings of, cultural, institutional, orga-nizational, and personal narrative identity. After arguing that these types of narrativeidentity are inextricably interrelated, I conclude by exploring the potential usefulness ofempirically exploring these relationships.

LOCATING THE FIELD OF NARRATIVE INQUIRY

Scholarly interest in narratives has a long history in literary analysis that traditionallyexamines narrative content and form in carefully crafted stories such as those in fairytales, Greek myths, the Christian Bible, the plays of Shakespeare, or other drama evalu-ated as classic (see, e.g., Frye 1957; Polkinghorne 1991). Social researchers have greatlyextended this object of inquiry. First, the texts deemed worthwhile to explore haveexpanded from classic works of fiction to narratives offered as true stories in placessuch as court documents (Ewick and Silbey 1995; Nolan 2002), texts of public policyhearings (Stein 2001; Asen 2003), mass media newspapers (Clawson and Trice 2000),and social advocacy documents (Berbrier 1998). Second, while literary critics tend tofocus on written stories, social researchers also examine the narrative form in speechesof politicians (Coles 2002; Johnson 2002), television news (Barnett 2005), and talk insupport groups and counseling sessions (Irvine 1999; Maines 1991). Third, socialresearchers have expanded the notion of narrative genres to include a range of moderngenres such as the fictional genre of romance novels (Radway 1984), as well as genresoffered as nonfictional such as autobiographies (M. Gergen 1994), social problemsadvocacy (Loseke 2003), daytime talk shows (Squire 2002), and the horror stories,war stories, and happy ending stories told by social movement activists (Fine 1995).Given the types of texts deemed worthy of study, social research on narrative obviously

The Study of Narrative Identity Donileen R. Loseke

662 The Sociological Quarterly 48 (2007) 661688 2007 Midwest Sociological Society

is a far more politicized endeavor than is the study of classic works of fiction. Narrativeshave psychological, social, and cultural functions (Mishler 1995), so it is not surprisingthat many social movements now are characterized as identity movements, the goals ofwhich are to construct new narratives or to change moral evaluations of existingnarratives at all levels of social life (Bernstein 1997).

Whether told as fiction or as fact, a narrative is a recognizable story, and a goodstory is one evaluated as believable and important (for general reviews see Frye 1957;Linde 1986, 2001; Polkinghorne 1988, 1991; Maines 1991; K. Gergen 1994; Ewick andSilbey 1995; Mishler 1995). This means that narrative is distinctly social because storiesare constructed, told, heard, and evaluated within particular historical, institutional, andinteractional contexts, which include the background assumptions of storytellers andstoryhearers as well as the prevailing norms of storytelling (Maines 1991; K. Gergen1994; Ewick and Silbey 1995; Holstein and Gubrium 2000). These contexts influencewhat stories and characters likely will be evaluated as believable and important and whatmoral evaluations likely will be attached to those stories and characters. For example,observers note that stories of individual lives in the United States typically have theirbeginnings in families (Denzin 1987) and promote individual cause of life experiencesand the morality of individual responsibility (Loseke 2003). Furthermore, standardnarratives in the United States typically contrast logic and reason with emotion andpassion (DAndrade 1995), display gender differences in narrative construction andevaluation (M. Gergen 1994), and reflect the characteristics of the surrounding socialenvironment characterized by multiple forms of inequalities (Etter-Lewis 1991).

The core of my argument is that understanding how narrative identity works and thework narrative identities do require examining reflexive relationships among stories ofcultural, institutional, organizational, and personal identity. Yet for presentation pur-poses, I will begin by erecting boundaries between these types of stories. Such bound-aries, for the most part, reflect the fragmented literature and, more importantly, theyallow me to explore how different types of narrative identities are constructed fordifferent purposes and do different kinds of work. My call for examining reflexivity alsoraises questions about where to start. I will start with cultural narrative identity andend with personal narrative identity, but then I will demonstrate how a fully reflexivemodel of narrative identity could mean that there is no necessary start or end ofrelationships.

CULTURAL NARRATIVE IDENTITY

Cultural narrative identity is a social classification (Lamont and Fournier 1992;DiMaggio 1997), or a collective representation (Durkheim 1961) of disembodied typesof actors. In our current world, stories producing such categorical identities associatedwith families, gender, age, religion, and citizenship remain from the past; story themesand identities of nationality and race/ethnicity have arisen as major areas of storyconstruction, challenge, and negotiation. New categories of sexual identities have

Donileen R. Loseke The Study of Narrative Identity


proliferated (Weeks 1998), as have the multiple categories of victims (Best 1997), andothers produced as troubled and in need of repair (Edelman 1974).

While I will use the term formula story (Berger 1997) to label narratives producingsuch cultural identities, these stories go by many other names including public narra-tives (Somers 1994), cultural narratives (Singer 2004), cultural stories (Richardson1990), master narratives (Mishler 1995), or schematas (DAndrade 1995; DiMaggio1997). Although each of these terms is located within broader sets of theoretical under-standings, all refer to narratives of typical actors engaging in typical behaviors withintypical plots leading to expectable moral evaluations. Our world is riddled with formulastories constructing cultural identities and this leads to questions: Who authors suchstories? What characterizes a good story? What work do these stories do?

Socially circulating formula stories are continually created, modified, challenged,and discarded. Some stories, such as the Standard North American Family with itscategorical identities of husband/wife, mother/father, son/daughter, and so forth(Smith 1999), or citizenship with its identities of citizen/noncitizen (Alexander1992), were authored long ago and observers examine how such stories are continuallyreproduced through the work of social institutions and practical reasoning in dailylife. There also is considerable attention given to the stories created by politicians,media, and social activists, who, in theory and in common sense, are expectableformula story authors. For example, observers have examined how Presidents of theUnited States regularly tell stories creating the categorical identities of Americans,citizens, and enemies (Coles 2002; Johnson 2002); how television talk shows createnarratives of cultural outsiders such as sexual minorities (Gamson 1998), whitetrash (Squire 2002), or immoral sinners (Lowney 1999); how newspapers constructcharacters such as the poor (Clawson and Trice 2000), the deserving poor (Losekeand Fawcett 1995), the crack baby (Lyons and Rittner 1998), and the she-devil crackmother (Meyers 2004). There also has been considerable attention given to the workof social movement activists who are characterized as deliberative, utilitarian andgoal-directed in creating new stories and new identities (Snow and Benford 2000),such as gays and lesbians (Bernstein 1997) and the battered woman (Rothenberg2002).

While it is common for observers to examine how politicians, media, and socialactivists create narratives of cultural identities, empirically examining narrative author-ship can be difficult. For example, stories authored by social activists often are changedwhen they are transmitted through the media (Gamson andWolsfeld 1993). Stories alsocan have multiple, as well as unexpected, authors. Socially circulating stories of ethnicityand ethnic identities, for example, have been authored by the sometimes organized, andsometimes independent, work of researchers, professional heritage preservers, ethnicleaders, benevolent elites, ethnic organizations, heritage schools, media targeted togeneral audiences, and media targeted to particular ethnic audiences (Berbrier 2000).Likewise, a new type of troubled identity, the drowsy person,who is the main characterin narratives about accidents of many types, has been produced through the distinctlynoncoordinated work of medical researchers, popular magazines, the National Sleep



Foundation, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and advertising formattress companies (Kroll-Smith 2000).

Formula story creation is a pervasive activity in our postindustrial world. Newstories are created and age-old stories and their characters are reproduced, modified, ordiscarded. It is not surprising that our world contains so many storieshumans aredrawn to stories so narratives evaluated as believable and important will tend to beeffective in gaining supportfor a social cause, a social policy, or a consumer product.

Many stories are told, yet only some are evaluated as believable and important.What, then, distinguishes a good story? To begin with generalities, the stories told byprofessionals or scientists often are given a more generous welcome (Gamson andWolsfeld 1993:119) than those told by others. Conversely, narratives told by disadvan-taged people, such as African-American women (Collins 1989; Etter-Lewis 1991) orsurvivors of rape, incest, and sexual assault (Alcoff and Gray 1993), often are ignored.Also, while this might change with the seemingly increasing power of internet commu-nications, narratives in the recent past enjoying widespread appeal were those transmit-ted through mass media outlets which tend to privilege stories reflecting prevailingpolitical biases (Hilgartner and Bosk 1988), as well as those characterized by vividness,drama, and splash (Schudson 1989). Finally, narratives that might make sense of recentor dramatic events tend to be evaluated as more important than those that seemperipheral to immediate concerns (Schudson 1989). This was clearly demonstrated inthe United States by the events of September 11, 2001, which quickly produced a widelycirculating formula story titled terrorism with its terrorist primary character con-structed as a man who appears Middle Eastern, Arab, or Muslim (Folpp 2002).

Formula stories evaluated as believable and important therefore tend to have par-ticular authors, plot lines, and story forms. Furthermore, and critically, a good narrativeis one that makes sense given what audiences think they know, what they value, whatthey regard as appropriate and promising (Davis 2002:1718). Appealing culturalnarratives reflect widely circulating symbolic codes (Alexander 1992), which go by othernames such as cultural codes (Alexander and Smith 1993), semiotic codes (Swidler1995), interpretive codes (Cerulo 2000), cultural coherence systems (Linde 1993), cul-tural themes (Gamson 1988), symbolic repertoires (Williams 2002), ideological codes(Smith 1999), ideological frames (Polletta 1997), cognitive and representationalmeaning systems (Deaux and Marti 2003), or discursive formations (Foucault 1980).Again, while each of these terms is located within distinct and often complex theoreticalframeworks, all reference densely packed, complex, and interlocking visions of how theworld works, and of how the world should work. Symbolic codes are an aspect ofcollective conscious (Durkheim 1961); they are about the impersonal archipelagos ofmeaning . . . share[d] in common (Zerubavel 1996:428).

Some such codes, such as Christmas gift giving (Caplow 1984) are widely sharedbut superficial and discrete. Others are constantly debated, challenged, and modified yetremain deeply held, inescapable relationships of meaning that define the possibilities ofutterance in a cultural universe (Swidler 1995:32). Gender, race, ethnicity, family, andcapitalism are among such symbolic codes woven throughout social life. So, too, are



democracy (Alexander and Smith 1993), individualism (Bellah et al. 1985), family values(Williams 2002), love (Swidler 2001), romance (Kirkman, Rosenthal, and Smith 1998);(Wood 2001), aging as decline (Tretheway 2001), sympathy (Clark 1997), violence(Cerulo 1998), and victim (Holstein and Miller 1990; Best 1997; Lamb 1999).

Symbolic codes surround cultural narratives of identities because they containimages of the rights, responsibilities, and normative expectations of people in the world,and of the expected affective responses to these people. Symbolic codes in the Westernworld typically construct one identity in contrast to another (Coles 2002), often asbinary opposites (Alexander 1992; Lamont and Fournier 1992; Smith 1998) such asdeserving poor/undeserving poor (Loseke and Fawcett 1995), victim/agent (Picart2003), victim/victimizer (Holstein and Miller 1990), good mother/bad mother (Barnett2005), heterosexual/homosexual (Quinlivan 2002), citizen/enemy (Alexander 1992),and so on.

While narratives evaluated as believable and important will therefore have narrativefidelity (Benford and Snow 2000) or cultural resonance (Gamson and Modigliani1989; Schudson 1989), it most certainly is the case that the plural and differentiatedcharacteristics of postindustrial social orders lead to predictions that there often aregreat variations in what is interpreted as an appropriate, reasonable, or persuasivenarrative (Ewick and Silbey 1995). Culture is not a singular, overarching meaningsystem. On the contrary, there are multiple thought communities (Zerubavel 1996),rival interpretive communities (Smith and Windes 1997), local cultures (Holsteinand Gubrium 2000), or idiocultures (Fine 1995).Within a social order where consen-sus is a rarity, if not an impossibility (Jacobs 2001), formula stories are evaluated amida flow of contending cultural discourses (Calhoun 1994:11).

This summary of what is known about cultural identities shaped through formulastories leads to a series of expectations. First, we would expect many variations in howunique social actors evaluate the believability and importance of any particular narra-tive. Even the most widely shared symbolic codes are not shared by all and must beinterpreted through individual sensemaking. Second, we would expect that formulastories and their characters would not offer adequate descriptions of the practicalexperiences or the unique characteristics of embodied people. Most obviously, widelycirculating narratives tend to exclude the experiences and views of some sectors ofsociety while including and privileging others(Mishler 1995:109). Also as obvious,broadly circulating formula stories tend to involve high drama and contain one-dimensional characters who are somewhat easily evaluated as good or bad, whileexperiences in daily life most typically are not so dramatic and embodied people are notso easily morally classifiable. In brief, ongoing life is heterogeneous (Schutz 1970;Zerubavel 1996). Effective stories at the cultural level of social life ignorebut do noterasereal life complexities.

Nonetheless, widely circulating narratives of cultural identity can become codesthat organize information (Melucci 1995:41) and can construct symbolic boundariesaround types of social actors (Lamont and Virag 2002). Cultural narratives of identitydescribe types of people, and they prescribe particular social relationships among types



of people (Alexander 1992).As these narratives can shape the symbolic universe, it is notsurprising that some social movement activists believe that altering cultural codings isone of the most powerful ways social movements actually bring about change (Swidler1995:33).

Broadly circulating cultural narratives of identity also can shape the social world.Regardless of theoretical and commonsense predictions that these narratives will beinsufficient images of real people, stories can become social structure through theinstitutionalization process (Alexander and Smith 1993). In these cases, culture, asuperstructure of mental life, becomes sewn into the fabric of the economy, society,and the state (Starr 1992:264). Cultural understandings become the structural catego-ries by which we organize our actions (Lamont and Fournier 1992). Narratives creatingsymbolic distinctions can be tied down (Schudson 1989) and become narratives ofinstitutional identities in public policy.

INSTITUTIONAL NARRATIVE IDENTITY

Narratives constructing institutional identities in public policy, including law, are similarto those constructing cultural identities in that both are formula stories creating cat-egorical identities of types of actors engaged in types of acts with expectable moralevaluations. There is, however, an important difference: While cultural narratives ofidentity mightor might notbe evaluated as believable and important by a signifi-cant number of people and therefore mightor might notshape the symbolic world,narratives of institutional identities are, by definition, consequential. Social policysorts unique people into identity categories. Real people enjoy the benefits, and sufferthe burdens, of policy targeted to types of people. For better or for worse, narratives ofinstitutional identity shape the social world and its inhabitants life chances.

Scholars interested in institutional narratives of identity have examined threeprimary questions: How do narratives enter the policymaking process? What are thecharacteristics of effective stories in the policymaking process? What work do suchstories do?

While observers of public policy traditionally examined how elite self-interest shapespolicy, attention expanded in the 1990s to the interplay between these self-interests andideas circulating in the surrounding culture (Rochefort and Cobb 1994; Mazzeo, Rab,and Eachus 2003). Clearly, no one claims that the construction of policy . . . is the resultof some free-floating discursive struggle that is independent of structural or materialfactors (Jacobs, Kemeny, and Manzi 2003). However, ideas do matter because thepolicymaking process most typically involves the construction of causal stories, whichdefine the problem, the cause of the problem, and the need for policy of particular types(Stone 1997). These causal stories have characters, here called the policys target popu-lation (Schneider and Ingram 1993).

The proceedings of policy hearings as well as the texts of the policy itself thereforecan be read as constructing institutional narratives of identities such as welfare queen(Asen 2002; Hancock 2004), poor woman (Mazzeo et al. 2003), wives and mothers



(Burnstein and Bricher 1997), women victims (Picart 2003), or lone mothers, refu-gees and asylum seekers (Jacobs et al. 2003). As with all narratives, these charactersreside within moral universes (Mohr 1994) in that some target populations are con-structed as moral people deserving sympathy and help, while others are constructed asimmoral people deserving condemnation and punishment (Schneider and Ingram1993).

Narratives enter the policymaking process and policy itself through causal stories,and only some are effective in informing policy. Persuasive narratives in policy aresimilar to those at the cultural level in that they will have cultural resonance (Gamsonand Modigliani 1989) with what I have been calling symbolic codes, and with whatpolicy observers call normative beliefs or cognitive paradigms (Campbell 2002),interpretive packages (Burnstein and Bricher 1997), or collective imaginations (Asen2002). In this way, policies concerning women, work, and welfare were justified byconstructing their value as supporting the symbolic codes of traditional family andgender (Burnstein and Bricher 1997; Asen 2003). The symbolic code of maternalismjustified the 1935 legislation on welfare (Mazzeo et al. 2003); justifications for theViolence against Womens Civil Rights Clause were accomplished through construct-ing a story of the monolithic woman as a pure victim (Picart 2003:97), and thesymbolic code of family values weaves through debates over appropriate policies forteen pregnancy (Asen 2002).

Effective narratives of institutional identity in policy also reflect culture in a secondway because [p]olitical willingness to make [policy]commitments is generally condi-tioned by societal perceptions of the people who are going to benefit (Rochefort andCobb 1994:23). In other words, effective narratives of institutional identities are sensi-tive to socially circulating symbolic codes and formula stories. In practice, positivelyevaluated target populations tend to receive more than their fair share of policy bene-fits; negatively evaluated targets tend to receive more than their fair share of policyburdens (Schneider and Ingram 1993). Hence, members of Congress who constructwelfare policy recipients as deserving types of people are considerably more supportiveof assistance to poor people than those members constructing recipients as undeserv-ing (Asen 2003); states with the most negative constructions of the criminal andpotential criminal cultural identities spend dramatically less on inmate health relativeto other states (Nicholson-Crotty and Meier 2003).

The work done by institutional identity narratives can be visible in the policymakingprocess. The identity of Vietnam veteran, for example, was important in the policy-making process surrounding the Vietnam War where veterans were disqualified aswitnesses because the Vietnam veteran as a type of person was constructed as dys-functional (Ewick and Silbey 1995). Consequences of institutional identities becomedurable when they are located in the policies. A vivid example is the Tolen Commissionhearings, which led to the policy of interning Japanese Americans (but not GermanAmericans or Italian Americans) in the United States during World War II. Texts ofthese hearings can be read as constructing a narrative titled A Nation at War. Thecentral character in this narrative was the Japanese, a type of character constructed as



disloyal to the United States, not American, and therefore not to be trusted (Petonito1992). The narrative identity of Japanese therefore justified the internment policy.Likewise, welfare reform debate in the mid-1990s revolved around the story of thewelfare queen, a woman constructed as African American, lazy, and overly fertile. Asread within widely circulating cultural codes of both racism and individualism, thisnarrative identity justified a punitive policy promoting individual responsibility andemployment (Hancock 2004).

As with cultural narratives of identity, we again would expect that narratives leadingto institutional identities in policies would not always or even usually be good descrip-tions of the unique people who will experience the benefits and burdens of policies.First, and most simply, stories in policy hearings can be told but not heard. This was thecase in the Tolen Commission hearings where many individual Japanese Americans toldstories constructing themselves as loyal citizens. Policymakers heard these stories butevaluated the America at War story with its disloyal Japanese character as more believ-able and important (Petonito 1992). Second, policy hearings do not always includetestimony from people who will become the targets of policy. This was the case inpolicies surrounding the Vietnam War, where veteransthe policy targetswereexcluded because they were a priori evaluated as not capable of telling true storiesbecause of their war traumas (Ewick and Silbey 1995). Likewise, exceedingly few womenwho were targets of welfare policy were allowed to tell their personal stories during thewelfare reform hearings in the mid-1990s (Hancock 2004). Third, even when policytargets are allowed to tell their personal stories and hence inform policy, only some areallowed to do so. We can assume that policy proponents and opponents do not ask arepresentative sample of policy targets to tell their personal stories in policy debates.Rather, we should expect that people asked to tell their personal stories would be selectedprecisely because they would tell a story supporting the agenda of whomever asked themto participate. Fourth and finally, even if the playing field in policy debates were fair anda representative sample of personal narratives entered these debates, the ensuingnarrative of institutional identity would not be complex enough to encompass practicalexperience: Policy targets can include thousandsif not millionsof individuals whoeach have their own unique circumstances. In brief, as with cultural narratives ofidentity, narratives leading to and embedded in social policy are categorical and onlymore or less reflective of individual experience and understandings.

Nonetheless, these narratives of institutional identities have powerful social func-tions: They serve as justifications for policy and they categorize all people into twogroups: those who are, and those who are not, included in policy target populations.Narratives of institutional identities in public policy therefore construct social bound-aries, objectified forms of social differences creating unequal access to and unequaldistribution of social resources and opportunities (Lamont and Virag 2002). Some typesof people are constructed as morally good and deserving of sympathy and help whileother types of people are constructed as morally deficient and deserving of condemna-tion and punishment. Narratives of institutional identity justify social inequality(Alexander 1992).



Categorical identities also are incorporated into social services (Starr 1992). Orga-nizational narratives of identity are created by, and in the service of, the specific orga-nizations, programs, and groups designed to repair identities defined as troubled and inneed of repair. It is in these places that categorical narratives of identity directly confrontthe personal narratives of embodied people.

ORGANIZATIONAL NARRATIVE IDENTITY

Organizational narratives of identity are created by the organizers and workers inongoing organizations, programs, and groups designed for people who evaluate them-selves, or who have been evaluated by others, as having troubled identities in need ofrepair. Such places include schools, counseling centers,12-step programs,prisons, rapecrisis centers, programs for at risk youth, and so on.While such places differ in myriadand important ways, each is in the business of repairing identities defined as troubled.

Several questions can be asked about organizational narrative identity: What are therelationships between narratives of institutional identities in public policy and thoseinforming the specific organizations or groups designed to repair troubled identities?What is the work of organizational narratives? What are the relationships betweenorganizational narratives of identity and the personal narratives of unique peoplereceiving social services?

At times in such places, the narratives embedded in social policy are rather deter-ministic in that they define possible client classifications. Schools receiving money fromTitle 1 legislation, for example, must classify their individual students in terms of theirdeficiencies (Stein 2001); workers in programs receiving money from Work IncentiveProgram(WIN) legislation were required to classify their clients into a limited numberof predetermined categories (Miller 1991). The narratives informing policy also canshape organizational services such as programs for gay and lesbian youths, which beganwith social policy constructing such youths as at risk for emotional, social, and psy-chological problems. The services spawned from these policies reflect that image of theseyouths as gravely troubled (Mayberry 2006). Whether organizational workers agree ornot, institutional identities contained in public policy narratives can become a part oforganizational principles and logics (Friedland and Alford 1991).

While it sometimes is possible to trace influences of institutional narrative identityon narratives of organizational identity, narratives of organizational identity do notalwaysor perhaps even usuallystem from social policy. Some places rather begintheir work with the formula stories and cultural identities constructed by social activists.Informing early shelters for battered women, for example, was the formula story of wifeabuse and the cultural identities of battered woman and abusive man. These storiesand identities were constructed by social activists attempting to convince a disbelievingpublic that wife abuse was a problem and that the battered woman type of persondeserved sympathy and help (Loseke 1992). Organizational identities also can be appro-priated from places other than policy or social advocacy. Books, such as Co-Dependent



No More and Beyond Codependency, are important resources in self-help groups forco-dependents (Irvine 1999), and the Big Book repeatedly is referenced in AlcoholicsAnonymous groups (Denzin 1986).

Regardless of the origin of organizational narratives of identity, ongoing servicesmust have images of their typical client because these images justify organizationalprocedures and services by offering stock answers to important practical questions:Whois our client? What are our clients problems? What does our client need? How shouldour client be morally evaluated? Hence, observers have found the particular servicesoffered to people who are blind depend on the agencys image of the characteristics ofa type of narrative character called the blind (Scott 1985); agencies organized arounddifferent types of stories about dysfunctional families (Gubrium 1992),teenmothers(Rains et al. 2004), or poor people (Allahyari 2000) likewise offer very different typesof services in very different ways.

Narratives of organizational identity therefore shape social services. They also can bea day-to-day resource for workers in that they offer a tool kit of symbols, stories, rituals,and world-views which people may use in varying configurations to solve different kindsof problems (Swidler 1986:273). In practice, narratives of organizational identities canbe a members resource (Garfinkel 1967), interpretive structure (Miller and Holstein1989), or membership categorization device (Sacks 1972).

The use of organizational narratives of identity as a members resource is nowheremore obvious than in places explicitly seeking to change clients stories so that theyconform to organizationally sponsored stories defined as those the clients shouldembrace as their own. For example, advocates for battered women in courts (Emerson1997), shelters (Loseke 1992), or support groups (Loseke 2001) explicitly work tomodifythe unique stories of individual women so that they will be more or less similar to thebattered women type of character. In the same way, self-help groups encouragemembers to identify as types of characters such as the gambler (Rossol 2001), thebattering man (McKendy 1992), the diabetic (Maines 1991), the transgendered(Gagne, Tewksbury, andMcGaughey 1997), or the transsexual (Mason-Schrock 1996).Mental health workers in psychiatric programs for Latinos also attempt to encouragetheir clients to see themselves as similar to the organizational image of the Latino(Santiago-Irizarry 2001), and workers in welfare-to-work programs attempt to changetheir clients self-stories to reflect organizationally preferred stories (Miller 1991).

Narratives of organizational identity can be powerful. To achieve desired services, orto avoid undesired punishment, clients must tell the right story, and clients refusals todo so can have dire consequences: Women wishing the services of shelters for batteredwomen must tell a story hearable as that of a battered woman if they are to achieveentry (Loseke 1992); court-mandated drug treatment programs will not release a clientfrom court monitoring until the right story is told (Nolan 2002); prison counselorsrequire that the right story be told, and be told convincingly, before parole is possible(Fox 1999). Yet because such organizationally promoted narratives can more or lessmimic socially circulating formula stories, it is not surprising that clients or potentialclients can be well aware of how to tell the right story. Hence, workers in a battered



womans shelter complain that some women know just what to say to get in here(Loseke 1992); women wishing to be evaluated as victims of sexual harassment knowthat they must tell a story dramatizing their weakness and fearfulness to have their courtcases taken seriously (Dunn 2001); and men requesting services from an agency for thehomeless know that in order to achieve desired services they must account for theirproblems in ways constructing them to be down on their luck and hence worthy ofservices (Spencer 1994).

While there is evidence that social actors often know what type of story they shouldtell to achieve their goals, there is ample evidence that clients can strongly resist workersattempts to change their stories. Be these boys in a home for juvenile delinquents(Kivett and Warren 2002), violent men in prison (Fox 1999), members of supportgroups for women (Tretheway 1997), residents of a battered womans shelter (Loseke1992), or residents in a chronic care clinic (Paterniti 2000), social actors enter organi-zations, programs, and groups with their own narratives of their lives and selves. Eventhough organizational workers might try to change clients stories, social actors willrefuse to embrace a new story about their selves unless the story makes sense. This, ofcourse, leads to questions about personal narrative identity.

PERSONAL NARRATIVE IDENTITY

Many scholars have noted that characteristics of modern industrial or postindustrialsocieties make it difficult for social actors to achieve a sense of personal identity. Thereare many practical reasons why experiencing a sense of continuous and individualself-hood in this era is challenging (McAdams 1996:297): Identities no longer arenecessarily or securely rooted in religion, community, and family (Calhoun 1994);modernity partitions human life into a variety of segments (MacIntyre 1984); immi-grants find themselves in new surroundings not supporting previous identities (Duany1998), and so on. Nonetheless, it remains that social actors want a sense of coherentidentity and that most social actors do experience a more or less coherent sense ofpersonal identity over time (Holstein and Gubrium 2000). The question therefore is howa sense of identity consistency can be constructed within a world that can be nonsup-portive of, or even antagonistic to, such coherence.

Making sense of the buzzing confusion of practical experience requires constructingcoherent connections among life events, and this is what narratives of the self can do.Rather than seeing a life as simply one damned thing after another, personal narrativesallow the creation of coherence (K. Gergen 1994:187), the possibility of linking diverselife events into unified and meaningful wholes (Polkinghorne 1991:136), the ability tointegrate a reconstructed past, perceived present and anticipated futures in terms ofbeginnings, middles, and endings (McAdams 1996:298).

There aremany questions about personal narratives.Observers of social movements,for example, have examined the conditions under which social actors tell stories locatingthe self within broader categorical identity communities (Polletta and Jasper 2001;Davis 2002). This is an important issue in a culture privileging the symbolic code of



individualism, which isolates selves and hinders mobilization for social change. Yetquestions about collective identity beg two other questions: What kinds of stories cansocial actors tell about their selves? What are the relationships between the stories actorstell and characteristics of the surrounding social order? Both questions can be examinedonly by returning to the level of culture.

What is true about all types of narrative identity is that narrative can not be under-stood apart from history and cultureboth local and writ largebecause the multiplecontexts of storytelling define what is, and what is not, evaluated as an acceptable or agood story (Maines 1991; Riessman 1992). To be evaluated as believable, stories craftedby individuals must at least partially reflect the kinds of stories that prevail in . . . cul-ture (McAdams 1996:301). Stories that seem too different from culturally sanctionednarratives might be evaluated as untrue or incredible, tellers of such stories might beevaluated as mad (Alcoff and Gray 1993). The implication is that people must usesocially circulating stories as a members resource in crafting their own narratives ofpersonal identity. Whether called formula stories, or cultural stories (Polkinghorne1991; Singer 2004), canonical stories (Hausendorf 2002), or canonical life stories(Bruner 1987), socially circulating narratives offer a model for making sense of the self.

There is considerable evidence that broadly circulating formula stories function in thebackgroundof thinking,providehypotheses,and sometimesfilter perceptions indaily life(DAndrade 1995). White employers, for example, sometimes filter their perceptions ofAfrican-American women workers through that single mother element formula story(Kennelly 1999). Social actors also might use their understandings of socially circulatingformula stories as yardsticks with which to evaluate their own experiences: Women whoare raped can categorize their own experiences and selves based on their understandingsof somestandard episode in theclassic rape story (Wood and Rennie 1994). Likewise,women experiencing violence know how they should respond to this violence becauseof their awareness of the cultural script of wife abuse (Baker 1996), and womensunderstandings of the formula story of wife abuse can help shape their understandings oftheir own experiences (Riessman 1989,1992).Blackwomen also talk about the changes intheir personal stories and identities made possible by the new stories created by the civilrights and womens movements (Brush 1999). Social actors also perceive others as usingtheir understandings of formula stories as resources for understanding unique individu-als. Women relying on welfare (Seccombe, James, and Battle Walters 1998; Hancock2004),mothers who are teens (Kirkman et al. 2001), and people who eat at soup kitchens(Cohen 1997) talk passionately about how unknown others automatically respond tothem as individual instances of morally deficient narrative characters.

For the good and the bad, social actors can use their understandings of sociallycirculating formula stories as resources to make sense of their selves and unique others.Indeed, there are indications that people experiencing grave illness or other identitydilemmas consciously seek out stories to make sense of their troubles (Frank 1995;Plummer 1995).At the same time, it is wrong to assume that social actors simply look outinto the horizon and appropriate an existing formula story as their own. Relationshipsbetween personal and cultural narratives of identity are anything but straightforward.



First and most simply, a consequence of our mass-mediated world is that socialactors are exposed to a milieu of multiple narratives (Gergen and Gergen 1983:263),an ever proliferating catalog of new stories (Weeks 1998:46). A social actor activelyseeking a story likely will find many from which to choose. Second, and related, socialactors cannot simply appropriate a formula story because, while self-identities involvethe establishment of some sort of moral stance (McAdams 1996:308), there is littleagreement about what types of stories and what types of identities are socially valued.The gay as deviant story competes with the glad to be gay story (Plummer 1995); theneglectful mother character in the narrative of child neglect sometimes is con-structed as willfully evil, sometimes as negligent only because of the privations ofpoverty (Swift 1995). There also can be vast changes in moral evaluations over time.When the behavior of spanking children was located within a narrative of necessarydiscipline, good parents spanked their children. Increasingly, though, spanking isincluded in the narrative of child abuse, and parents who do this are morally devaluedchild abusers (Davis 1994). As another example, the single mother in Great Britainwas a sympathetic character in the 1970s when she was in a story about the structuralproblems of welfare policies. This same character now is in the formula story of theurban underclass and is condemned (Jacobs et al. 2003). In brief, while a sense ofpersonal identity requires assigning morality, our storied world contains multiple andoften competing narratives of which few have anything near unanimous and historicallyconsistent moral evaluations.

Still further, an image of social actors scanning the environment for stories to claim astheir own ismisleading because cultural and personal narratives have different purposes,do different kinds of work, and are evaluated by different standards. Cultural narrativesare constructed by a wide variety of social actors because stories are effective in gainingaudience support for one or another cause.At the cultural level, an effective narrative willbe a simple story with stock characters and clear moral evaluations as read throughexisting symbolic codes appealing to target audiences. Socially circulating formula storiesare useful precisely because they simplify the complex world (DiMaggio 1997).

This same simplicity and clarity makes such formula stories of less than obvious useas individual sensemaking resources. Effective formula stories achieve their clarity bybracketing indeterminacy and complexity, while effective narratives of personal identityare those integrating the disparate roles and values in an individual life (McAdams1996:306). Furthermore, while the stock characters in socially circulating formulastorieswelfare mother, citizen, deserving poor, and so onare known only as thesetypes of people, individuals do not experience themselves as one-dimensional charac-ters. Still further, the binary characteristics of narratives of cultural identity divide theworld into the morally pure and morally impure while moral evaluation in daily lifetypically is anything but clear. In brief, the characteristics of good stories change whenthey are evaluated as narratives of cultural or personal identity. Indeed, the melodra-matic extreme case formula stories that are so effective in mobilizing public supportactually decrease the possibilities that social actors will appropriate the story as their own(Wood and Rennie 1994; Gamson 1995; Loseke 2001).



Finally, but critically, the authors of both cultural and institutional narratives ofidentity face a far easier task than do those constructing personal stories. The authors offormula stories can choose which individual stories to use in order to exemplify storycharacters that are categorical types of people. Indeed, if the real world offers no trulycompelling personal story, a composite character can be constructed. Formula storyauthors also can decide where to start and end their narratives; they can construct a storywith one plotline or one where various subplots are obviously related in ways supportingthe desired moral lesson. In stark contrast, social actors . . . enter a stage which we didnot design and we find ourselves part of an action that was not of our making(MacIntyre 1984:213). Characters in personal narrativesfamily, coworkers, and soonare not always freely chosen, they often cannot simply be written out if theydisturb a preferred plotline; human experience often does not have a clear beginning orend, and each person plays subordinate parts in the dramas of others and each dramaconstrains the others (MacIntyre 1984:213). Finally, but critically, the characteristics ofa good story depend on the audience.Who a person was, is, should be, or wishes to be,depends on why the story is told and on the audience to whom it is told. Modern socialactors in plural and heterogeneous social environments often tell their stories to verydifferent audiences for very different reasons.

In summary, socially circulating formula stories with their categorical identities canbe conceptualized as members resources for crafting narratives of personal identity. Yetsocial actors are not mere message receivers. They better are understood as selfappointed members of the story telling team [who take] the narrative baton and carrythat baton, aggressively forging their own communication route(Cerulo 2000:43). Thisrequires the complex, situated process of sensemaking within the complexity and con-fusion of practical experiences. Social members do craft their own stories of personalidentities, and they do use formula stories as a resource to do this. However, creatingstories of the self is difficult, often a struggle, and success is a real accomplishment(Polkinghorne 1991).

THE REFLEXIVITY OF NARRATIVE IDENTITY

Although my goal is to argue for the importance of examining relationships betweenand among cultural, institutional, organizational, and personal narratives of identity, Iconstructed my presentation in a way both distinguishing among types of narrativeidentity as well as privileging culture over institution, institution over organization, andorganization over person. That format allowed me to review what is known about thesevarious types of narrative identity. Now I will explore both the direction of influencesand the difficulty of empirically distinguishing between types of narrative identity.

First, by beginning with cultural narratives of identity and ending with narratives ofpersonal identity, my presentation implied, and sometimes explicitly asserted, theprimacy of the cultural identity.While there is much evidence supporting this argument,it is just as clear that narratives of personal identity inform narratives of organizational,institutional, and cultural identity. Indeed, there are good reasons why it would be



sensible to begin with narratives of personal identity and trace how these influence othertypes of narratives. This would be in keeping with modern, Western sensibilities privi-leging the importance of the individual. Clearly, personal identity narratives are anomnipresent feature in public life. From the ever popular Oprah show to People Maga-zine, stories of individual people are a staple of popular culture. So, too, social problemsformula stories of all types with their stock characters of pure victims and evil villainsare characterized by the prevalence of personal stories (Loseke 2003). American mediaalso tend to rely on the narrative convention of personalization which draws onindividual profiles and anecdotes (Mishler 1995; Meyers 2004). Personal stories likewiseare an important part of the policymaking process (Nolan 2002), and politicians oftenpepper their speeches with unique narrative characters such as the 22-year old I spokewith who is worried about the future of social security.

Hence, while I pursued the story of how organizational narratives of clients informservice provision in places seeking to repair identities defined as troubled, it is just assensible to explore how organizational narratives of identity are informed by the per-sonal stories told by program clients.Workers hear clients unique stories and these canspawn local cultures, which are systems of understandings based on, and thereforesensitive to, unique personal stories (see Holstein and Gubrium 2000 for a review).Organizational narratives of identity therefore can be continually challenged and modi-fied by the unique stories of individual clients.What requires examination is where, how,and under what circumstances organizational narratives of identity continue to beembraced by workers; where, how, and under what circumstances personal narrativestold by individual clients challenge and modify organizational narratives; and where,how, and under what circumstances organizational narratives areor are notembraced by clients.

In addition, while individual social actors can use their understandings of culturalnarratives as resources to craft their own stories of the self, these personal identitynarratives are critical in shaping institutional and cultural narratives. After all, beforethere were socially circulating formula stories of rape or wife abuse, there were indi-vidual women telling their unique stories of hardship and pain. Some of these uniquestories coalesced into well-known formula stories; some of these unique stories informedsocial policy; some of these unique stories are embedded in organizational narrativesinforming service provision in rape crisis centers, shelters, programs of victim advocacy,and so on. This raises questions such as:What types of personal stories inform the publicpolicy process? What types of personal stories become exemplar stories in culturalnarratives of identity? Furthermore, our heterogeneous social order is composed ofcountless thought communities (Zerubavel 1996) or local cultures (Holstein andGubrium 2000), so there can be large variations in how particular stories are evaluated:Which audience members evaluate which personal narratives as believable and impor-tant? What types of personal narratives appeal to what types of audiences? Such studiesmight do more than confirm the general understanding that stories told by powerfulpeople are privileged, while stories told by disadvantaged people are silenced (Collins1989). The study of how particular audiences evaluate narratives of personal identity



could yield rich data about the meanings and values held by particular segments of thegeneral population. This always is an important question given social inequalities; it isan increasingly important question given debates about immigration and assimilation.

My first point is that it is important to empirically examine how different types ofnarrative identity influence one another in the ongoing social world. My second point,though, is that any questions about directions of influence at least implicitly assumethat the cultural, institutional, organizational, and personal sites of narrative construc-tion are relatively distinct. This distinctness is far more analytical than practical. That is,cultural narratives of identity are created and promoted by policymakers, organizationalworkers, and individuals; organizational workers testify in public policy hearings; indi-viduals develop communities, and those communities compose new narratives that maybecome widely known; organizational narratives reflect policy as well as practical expe-rience with unique clients, and so on. This leads to questions such as how, under whatcircumstances, and in what ways do particular narratives migrate from one realm ofsocial life to another? How, under what circumstances, and in what ways are particularnarratives transported relatively unchanged from one realm of social life to another ormodified from one realm of social life to another?

In brief, analytic clarity can be achieved by distinguishing among cultural, institu-tional, organizational, and personal sites of narrative production as well as by bracketingquestions about relationships between and among various types of identity narratives.The resulting analytic clarity, however, is achieved by ignoring the difficult and complexquestions about what, at times, might be fully reflexive relationships among thesenarratives.

SOME THOUGHTS ON EXPLORING NARRATIVE IDENTITY

My interest in relationships among different types of narrative identity led me toexamine a literature characterized by its fragmentation. Actually, it is a misnomer tocharacterize this as a literature: I pieced together my comments from several literaturesthat most often are unconnected. This fragmentation is to be expected because the studyof narrative identity has been embraced by scholars in several disciplines and becausescholars tend to define their topics narrowly and therefore be uninformed by, or perhapseven uninterested in, understandings generated by those pursuing even slightly differenttheoretical or empirical agendas (Benford 1997; Best 2003).While insularity and narrowtheoretical and empirical agendas tend to be a characteristic of academic scholarship ingeneral, there are costs. In the case at hand, ignoring or minimizing the importance ofcultural, institutional, and organizational narrative identity yields an erroneous image ofsocial actors as free agents who can construct any story of their selves that they wish.Conversely, ignoring or minimizing the importance of personal experience and indi-vidual sensemaking incorrectly portrays actors as cultural robots who blindly applyformula stories to their own lives (Schudson 1989; Peacock and Holland 1993). Rela-tionships among different types of narrative identity should be assumed; the character-istics of these relationships are empirical questions.



Further research on relationships among cultural, institutional, organizational andpersonal narrative identities could produce specific benefits. I will consider only three ofthese in my concluding comments. First, many stories and identities in our world areconstructed through social problems discourse (Loseke 2003), which often is composedof narratives created by a wide variety of authors for the purpose of convincing publicsthat morally intolerable conditions exist and must be eliminated. While observers havenoted that effective stories resonate with widely shared symbolic codes (Berbrier 1998;Spencer 2000; Williams 2002), too little explicit attention has been given to examiningthis cultural dimension of effective social problem narratives. Theory about the con-struction of social problems could be enriched by attending more explicitly to howeffective social problem narratives use, challenge and/or modify socially circulatingsymbolic codes. Simultaneously, social problems discourse creates culture when it leadsto social policy and/or when it changes the publics understandings of symbolic codes.Consequently, the sites and activities of social problem construction offer rich empiricaldata for students of culture interested in how symbolic codes are constructed, elabo-rated, modified, or discarded. It would be mutually beneficial if observers of the con-struction of social problems and observers of culture would talk more to one another.

Second, studies of the myriad organizations, programs, and groups designed torepair identities defined as troubled would benefit by more explicit attention to what isknown about personal narrative identity. A common empirical finding about suchplaces is that workers, try as they might, are not always successful in transforming theirclients stories so that they are more or less similar to those promoted by the organiza-tion. Such organizational failures typically are accounted for by referencing clientsfailures: Because they are troubled, clients do not recognize that organizationallysponsored narratives are better than the stories clients currently embrace. Researchmight rather begin with what is known about the characteristics of stories social actorsfind useful in making sense of the self. This would lead to examining the characteristicsof organizational narratives, in general and in specific cases, to explore how they areorare notadequate sensemaking resources.

This leads to my final and somewhat complicated example of insights gainedthrough exploring relationships among various types of narrative identities: How thesenarratives are implicated in the process of social change. Durable social change requireslegislation passed and policies changed, as well as transformations in culture andconsciousness, in collective self-definitions, and in the meanings that shape everydaylife (Polletta 1997:431). In other words, effective social change must be cultural andinstitutional and organizational and personal. My claim is that to the extent that differ-ent types of narratives are created for different purposes, do different kinds of work, andare evaluated by different standards, it should be expected that any particular narrativeevaluated as a good story to accomplish one objective might not be so good to accom-plish another. I will use the extended example of woman-as-victim narratives to dem-onstrate this complexity.

The narratives of wife abuse, sexual harassment, and rape are examples of a commongenre of story, victim narratives. Melodramatic in form, such stories feature plots of



extreme harm and victim characters constructed as morally pure and most clearly andcertainly not responsible for the harm they experience (Best 1997; Loseke 2003). Whilethese stories have been effective in changing aspects of the symbolic and social worlds,they have not benefited all women experiencing violence. There are indications thatsome individual women experiencing violence refuse to embrace these stories as theirown because they do not evaluate the harm they experienced as the extreme harmcontained in the formula story and/or they do not evaluate themselves as instances ofpure victims (Wood and Rennie 1994; Loseke 2001). Likewise, at the organizationallevel, woman-as-victim formula stories have become a standard by which to evaluate thestories told by unique women (Schuller and Vidmar 1992; Mildorf 2002). Not surpris-ingly, women victims of sexual harassment (Dunn 2001) and wife abuse (Rothenberg2002, 2003; Picart 2003) sometimes find their unique stories and selves evaluated byphysicians, police, court workers, or social service providers as not meeting the stan-dards of extreme harm and absolute moral purity set in the formula story.

These unanticipated practical consequences of woman-as-victim narratives aretroublesome to advocates who want to change the formula story plots and characters.Achieving such change will be very difficult given commonly held symbolic codes ofboth violence and victims. That is, countless advocates for women have authored nar-ratives condemning all forms of violence. While such stories do exist, Americans ingeneral remain concerned primarily with extreme violence (see Cerulo 1998 for anelaboration). Furthermore, many advocates have authored narratives featuring womenas victims although they are not obviously morally pure.However, because the sociallycirculating symbolic code of victim requires evaluations of moral purity and lack ofresponsibility in creating harm (Lamb 1999), advocates have found that public supportis lost if women seem other than absolutely pure victims (Bible, Dasgupta, and Osthoff2002). In brief, stories featuring graphic violence and pure victims remain the mostpopular in the public realm (Rothenberg 2002). These prototypical woman-as-victimstories can be read through the symbolic codes of violence and victims, which encourageaudience members to evaluate these types of stories as important. Constructing violenceas less than horrible or constructing women as less than pure victims seem to reduceperceived story importance.

Woman-as-victim narratives have led to another unintended consequence: Indi-vidual women experiencing violence sometimes refuse to identify themselves as avictim because they perceive that victim characters are not socially respected. Thismakes sense given the symbolic code of victim, which is a binary opposite to agent(Picart 2003), a type of character most prized within the symbolic code of individual-ism. Therefore, there are calls to replace woman-as-victim narratives with stories ofwomen-as-survivors (Dunn 2005). Yet such a change might not be all positive. Whenread through the symbolic code of individualism, the victim code does create a disem-powering identity, yet this very weakness is a mandate for offering assistance (Clark1997). Conversely, when read through the symbolic code of individualism, the survivorcharacter is very respectable, yet such a strong character is not a justification for offeringassistance. What would happen if the woman-as-survivor story replaced the woman-



as-victim story at the levels of culture, institutions, organizations, and personal life?Would individual women experiencing violence, rape, or harassment be more likely toidentify with this strong survivor character than with the weak victim character? Wouldstories dramatizing womens strength lead to personal and public respect but no socialresources? Is it possible to dramatize the strengths of narrative characters while justify-ing their need for social assistance? These are empirical questions.

While there has been considerable attention to the unintended consequences ofwoman-as-victim narratives, the complexities and perplexities of social change are notlimited to these particular narratives. Consider the similarities between woman-as-victim narratives and those of gay youths as at risk. The formula story of gay andlesbian youths as troubled people struggling with their socially stigmatized identity hasbeen effective in that it has justified social services to assist these youths. Yet here too,observers are questioning the unintended consequences of the at risk narrative thatframes such youths overwhelmingly in terms of oppression and victimization(Talburt, Rofes, and Louise 2004). This deficit model frames sexuality as a personalproblem (Quinlivan 2002), it frames nonheterosexual youth as other than normal, andit ignores how social activism to change the environment can be empowering (Mayberry2006). Here, too, these complaints have led to calls to replace this story with a differentone, in this case, a story condemning the normative constructions of heterosexualitywoven throughout the social order (Quinlivan 2002). Such a new narrative could havevery positive consequences because it would normalize gay youths and focus attentionon changing the heterosexist environment that creates the trouble these youths mightexperience. Yet however good-intentioned such calls for narrative change might be, itremains that heterosexuality is one of themost widely circulating, and widely supported,symbolic codes in the United States today. The gay youths as at risk narrative does notdirectly challenge this code. Indeed, that narrative could be read as an implicit supportfor the heterosexual code because it is a story of problems experienced when theheterosexual code is defied. Would members of the dominant (heterosexual) publiccontinue to support agendas and programs justified by narratives forcefully challengingthe heterosexual symbolic code? This is an empirical question.

These examples of woman-as-victim and gay youth as troubled narratives illustratethe complexities and perplexities of achieving social change. Effective social changeoccurs at all levels of social life and narratives are implicated at each level. Yet thesenarratives are authored for different purposes, do different kinds of work, and areevaluated by different criteria. Narratives beneficial in encouraging change at one levelmight not be so beneficial at another level. This is a very practical reason to be sensitiveto, and to empirically explore, relationships between and among different forms ofidentity narratives.

In conclusion, observers complain that culture often is conceptualized as free-floating, with too little attention paid to the interplay between the analytic and concreteforms of society (Jacobs 1996), and that explorations of personal identities devote toolittle attention to cultural and historical processes of constructing identity categories(Callero 2003). I reiterate those complaints and extend them. Observers of many types



now argue that the narrative form is persuasive and pervasive throughout social life.Narratives of identity are about self-understandings, the policies and practices of orga-nizations, social policy, and culture. Exploring relationships among narratives of iden-tity is the examination of theoretical and empirical links among cultural and personalmeaning, power, and social structure. All are inextricably related.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Spencer Cahill, Maralee Mayberry and especially Bryce Merrill fortheir comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this manuscript.

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Loseke - Study of Identity as Cultural, Institutional, Organizational & Personal Narratives

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