Abstract
Sociologists have always enjoyed stories, especially in qualitative research. Ken Plummer is perhaps the champion storyteller among us, with his impressive back catalogue of tales about sexuality, illness and documents of life. In this new volume, Narrative Power, he moves from the micro to the macro by examining the role of stories in political and cultural life. Echoing Mills’ famous dictum about relating private troubles to public issues, Plummer argued that social stories form a point of connection between inner and outer worlds.
Building on his theoretical perspective of critical humanism, Plummer suggests that the personal stories told by individuals can be linked to wider value systems, such as humanitarianism, emancipation, compassion and empowerment. In this way, stories have the power to perform social actions and create social change – whether for the better or for the worse. This book is an exploration of the different ways in which people can perform ‘narrative acts’ and the social consequences this brings. Staying true to his symbolic interactionist roots, Plummer argues that these acts are negotiated and contingent upon the social process, nested and networked within relational systems of power.
Throughout the book, Plummer is keen to engage with questions of time and historicity. He emphasises how the rise of the digital age and new social media have changed the ways in which stories are created, formed, retold and spread. A plurality of story forms and styles emerge from different media texts, such as podcasts, blogs, video diaries, tweets and interactive memes. New publics have emerged as audiences through online platforms, creating new possibilities for communicating visions of a global humanity. While many of these digital tales seem optimistic, such as cosmopolitanism, connectedness, diversity, resistance and reform, more sinister threats loom with scaremongering reports of immigration, gender politics and totalitarian narrative states.
The structure of the book is typically Plummerian, with nine thematic chapters organised into three dramatic ‘acts’. The first explores stories of suffering, power and inequality, expanding on the idea headlined in the title, in which narratives compete for recognition and struggle for human value. The second section looks at narrative fragility and vulnerability amidst competing claims to truth. Stories may not get told, or get ignored, or not survive over time. The third section explores normative cultural scripts that promise to rewrite history. Reimagining the past and future, we remember with nostalgia and anticipate with hope. In all these ways, Plummer argues that stories are brought alive through human action: the socially performative acts of telling, hearing and repeating, as well as silencing and deleting. For this reason, he argues, we need a sociological ‘story about stories’ to help explain why narrative holds power.
The first chapter serves as a taster, presenting six contemporary stories of suffering in the 21st century world. Among these is the case of Malala Yousafzai, whom Plummer describes as a ‘narrative icon’ for her fight against global social injustice and advocacy of humanitarian values. A recent comparable example would be Greta Thunberg and her fight for action on climate change. Here, Plummer shows his own performative talent as a thrilling storyteller: he paints vivid pictures of heroic characters whose fate we want to hear.
The middle chapters shift our focus to the micro-social level of analysis, exploring interactional, dynamic and relational processes. Humans are storytelling creatures, and it is our narrative actions that bring tales to life. Plummer examines the grounded, routine practices of writing, representing, displaying and performing through which messages are animated and shared with different audiences. We dwell in storied public worlds, or narrative communities, each of which has its own conventions of communication and rules of tellability. The critical humanist perspective comes out strongly in this chapter, which emphasises power, freedom and constraint. As voices struggle to be heard and given social recognition, Plummer argues that narratives encode the struggle for human value.
Towards the end of the book, we find more political discussions of power. Stories can deliberately or inadvertently reveal structures of inequality, disadvantage, discrimination and oppression. The locational position of the author is important: some tales express a previously subordinated standpoint, allowing a group’s past or future to be reimagined, their silence to be heard. Other tales reinforce dominant versions of reality or try to assert questionable truths. Drawing on feminist, queer and postcolonial theories, Plummer identifies processes of ‘narrative othering’ and ‘narrative resistance’. Narrative power infuses not only the politics of state violence and totalitarian regimes, but also the lived experience of difference, division, rights, knowledge and representation.
Narrative Power is not a happy story, nor a gentle fairy tale. It raises some challenging ideas and tackles difficult material, which demands the critical attention of readers. A cautionary tale in many ways, the book urges against complacency by questioning the way dominant truth claims are represented. Yet there is also a consistent thread of optimism, as we are pointed to untold stories, survivor tales and progress towards freedom. Readers will approach the text with their own personal stories, and each interpretation weaves its own creative tale. Overall, this is an excellent book, whose critical humanistic approach makes a welcome contribution to narrative studies.
