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Reflections on the Role of Social Narratives in Working-Class Formation: Narrative Theory in the Social Sciences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

George Steinmetz ,
Terkel’s ,
Institut für Zeitgeschichte ,
Personal Narratives Group ,
Popular Memory Group  and
Projekt Ideologie-Theorie
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Extract

This article explores the role of social narratives in working-class formation. The primary goal of this exercise is to generate concepts for the comparative analysis of working-class identities and practices. My thesis is that more successful cases of working-class formation involve the elaboration of coherent narratives about individual and collective history, stories that are coordinated with one another and that are organized around the category of social class. In such narratives, events are selected for inclusion due to their relevance to social class, or they are excluded or deemphasized because of their irrelevance to class, and events are interpreted, emplotted, and evaluated in a way that emphasizes class rather than other possible constructs. By contrast, working-class formation is less pronounced where individual and collective narratives are based on alternative, nonclass forms of identity, such as nationality, gender, ethnicity, and race. Working-class formation is also weaker where individual narratives are asynchronous, where the individual and collective levels are not coordinated with one another, or where identities fail to attain narrative coherence.

Type
Special Section: Narrative Analysis in Social Science
Information
Social Science History , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , Fall 1992 , pp. 489 - 516
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1992 

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