Narrating Possibility

Abstract

The chapter highlights the dynamic nature of narrative to mediate individuals’ and groups’ interactions in physical and symbolic environments. I draw on recent practice-based research to illustrate how people with much at stake in public practices narrate experience, values, and intentions in challenging circumstances. I discuss narrating as a potential process of possibility—imagining and enacting social change with narrative—a lifelike yet creative symbolic system. And, I point out that possibilities differ across life circumstances, and, thus, we must examine the contexts and practices of using narrative to imagine and enact possibilities. The foundation of this argument is “relational narrating”—an everyday process that can, with support in practice, foster the development of individual-society interactions. I discuss how relational narrating is embedded in everyday discourse, heightened during times of public crisis and developed in certain kinds of narrating contexts. Consistent with the theme of this book, “cultivating possibilities,” I argue that research with narrative should occur in the context of practices to support developmental uses of narrating so it can be a tool for social change in circumstances that challenge child and youth development. Motivation for this discussion of narrating possibilities comes from recent international research and practice with participants across the life span, addressing, in particular, contemporary problems of inequality and instability. I build this discussion of narrating possibility with concepts including narrative time, relational narrating, narrative systems, individual and societal values, and cultivating possibilities. The contribution of this chapter is to nudge our definition of narrative possibility in terms of issues and communities involved in social change characteristic of this global era. This formulation draws on the enormous gift by Jerome Bruner in his first 100 years.