Cracking the Code: Narrative and Political Mobilization in the Greek Resistance

Abstract

That narrative can be more than a mechanical recitation of events is epitomized in Thucydides’ challenge to historiographical paradigms current during the fifth century B.C. In his definitive history of the war between Athens and Sparta, the Athenian general in effect tells a “story” with a beginning, middle, and end. Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian War is anything but a neutral description of events. Instead, the collection interprets the conflict for the reader. The tale contains a discussion of the role of alternative military strategies and of the war’s wider political implications. According to Thucydides, the fractionization and polarization engendered by war as a mode of resolving political conflicts is too high a price to pay for victors and losers alike. Thucydides warns of psychic as well as material costs. Thus, the ancient political scientist tells the story of the Peloponnesian War to assert that the “sequences of real events be assessed as to their significance as elements of a moral drama” (White 1987: 21).

Culture, Cohorts, and Social Organization Theory: Understanding Local Participation in a Latino Housing Project

“…Thus, researchers have refrained from examining culture seriously, rather than reconsidering whether "shared norms and values" is its most appropriate definition (see also Wilson 1996). 5 The recent sociology of culture has produced dozens of more sophisticated conceptions of culture -Swidler's (1986) "tool kit" or "repertoires," Bourdieu's (1977) "habitus," and the use of "narrative" (Taylor 1989;Somers 1992;Hart 1992) and "frames" (Goffman 1974). Indeed, the notion that people's actions are directed primarily by their norms and values is rather dated and simplistic.…”

My Wartime Self: Meaning Construction in Narratives of World War II

“…A story has a distinct beginning, middle, and end, and within the story, a plot is established, characters are introduced, complications arise and are resolved, and some message is transmitted. These features of a story are widely recognized and likewise acknowledged as essential elements in narratives (Griffin, 1993;Hart, 1992;Maines, 1993;Maines & Ulmer, 1993;Nelson, 2003;Peterson & Langellier, 2006). Because of the centrality of stories and time in modern life, the use of the narrative form is an appealing way to recount our personal past experiences (Stanley, 1993).…”

“…Third, the events must be somehow linked to one another and arranged in chronological order "so that questions of how and why events happened can be established and the narrative elements can acquire features of tempo, duration, and pace" (Maines, 1993, p. 21). Of these three elements of narrative, the second, or "emplotment" element, is the most important (Maines, 1993;Maines, 2000;Hart, 1992), for this is where meaning is created.…”

Narrative, Ontological Security, and Foreign Policy Change

“…Political actors always manipulate stories to convince their followers of a specific policy, in the process making political resources out of narratives (Hart 1992). They seize on collectively remembered history to make specific political points of the present (Roediger and Wertsch 2008).…”

“…Explanatory power of narratives, therefore, is best understood as providing cultural cognitive boundaries which sanction or constrain activities of political actors (Hart 1992). It is not in providing linear causality of political action, but instead of making action possible, allowing for some practices and policies, while foreclosing possibility for others.…”