Shared narratives are commonly understood stories, metaphors, or myths of a social group or society. They give order to human experience and solidify meaning for those who live, create, or interpret them. Shared narratives allow social groupings to construct shared understandings such as shared values, attitudes, beliefs, and shared goals, purpose, and vision. These create a sense of belonging and solidarity linked to trust and facilitate collective action. Shared narratives allow people to develop a common perspective that enables them to perceive and interpret events in similar ways. These shared perspectives allow people to anticipate and predict the actions of others, which is essential for collective action.
Narratives are symbolic actions such as words and/or deeds. Shared narratives are co-created through social interaction in the pursuit of meaning. Narratives are an important part of our everyday experience. They give meaning to our experiences and reinforce our chosen interpretation of events and observations. Narratives are logically consistent and justified explanations of what happened, why it happened, and what it means.
They are an essential feature of human nature that allows us to “experience and comprehend life as a series of ongoing narratives, as conflicts, characters, beginnings, middles, and ends”. Events do not carry inherent meaning; meaning is derived from communication that (re)produces social order. The “narrative impulse” is a natural process of socialization that allows us to understand each other and has allowed us to work together cooperatively, which has been, and for many continues to be, essential for survival.
“Narrative is a way of understanding one’s own and others’ actions, of organizing events and objects into a meaningful whole, and of connecting and seeing the consequences of actions and events”. As such, narratives function to frame the experiences of the group and to allow members to interpret and understand their experiences in a common way. The norms, values, and practices of a social grouping are not based on objective, a priori foundations, but are socially constructed through communication.
Narratives are not fictions; they are interpretations of reality that situate truth within the context of socially constructed reality. Their propositions may be valid or invalid, or true or false. They are ‘versions’ or ‘interpretations’ of reality that are socially constituted in the personal or shared reality of a social grouping. Narratives can involve different presumptions of villainy and senses of falseness. For example, when a small company is acquired by a larger company it could be described as being ‘absorbed’ but this could be described as a ‘merger’ which creates a different narrative that has significant meaning for actors. The ‘absorbed’ narrative (which is clearly far richer than one word but abbreviated here for convenience) implies the loss of identity, whereas the ‘merger’ narrative suggests the reconstruction of a shared identity. This simple example illustrates how subtle differences in narrative can illicit vastly different thoughts, feeling, and actions from the people involved.
For narratives to be effective they must have fidelity and coherence. Fidelity is the degree of connection to reality and is closely linked to the observer’s prior values and understanding. The fidelity of a narrative can be evaluated by asking “does the story ring true”? Coherence is whether important details are omitted, facts are made up, or where other plausible interpretations are ignored.
Returning to the earlier merger example, the storyteller can paint events as fair, justified, appropriate, and necessary, or frame it in a vastly different light. This does not change the truth, logic, or accuracy of the narrative, but the resulting values, feelings, and judgements can be vastly different.
Narratives are both intra- and well as inter-personal, and therefore both subjective and intersubjective. Shared narratives are interpersonal narratives that are known, understood, or believed by multiple people and are therefore intersubjective. Individuals use narratives to explain and to interpret their personal experiences, and where these narratives are shared with others they tend to be co-created into shared narratives. In general, public narratives structure individual narratives. Shared narratives allow social groupings to construct shared understandings such as shared values, attitudes, and beliefs, as well as shared goals, purpose, and vision. These create a sense of belonging and solidarity that is linked to trust and that facilitates collective action. Shared narratives allow people to develop a common perspective that enables them to perceive and interpret events in similar ways. This allows people to anticipate and predict the actions of others, which is essential for collective action. The shared understandings resulting from shared narratives can deter unexpected or opportunistic actions. Shared narratives also tend to create and enhance the sense of social identity within a social grouping which is associated with solidarity, belonging, and trust.
Shared narratives tend to be constituted within, or based on, meta-narratives. A metanarrative “is a global or totalizing cultural narrative schema which orders and explains knowledge and experience”. They relate to assumptions or rules that are often tacit and unspoken and lie behind day-to-day discussions or narratives. Since they are presuppositional they reflect the nature of the shared lifeworld and have a strong influence on the cocreation of shared narratives. Narratives can reveal actor’s lifeworld and aspects of shared lifeworld. The cocreation of narratives creates overlap and congruence between the otherwise distinct lifeworlds of individuals. It creates intersubjectivity that is essential for interaction, exchange, and collective action.
Shared narratives, like some other aspects of social capital, can have downsides. Narratives, especially meta-narratives, can dominate explanation and understanding leaving little room for other interpretations. This can lead to the devaluing of anything and anyone seen as different and to discrimination. This is strongly associated with concepts such as cognitive lock-in and groupthink that can have negative consequences for decision making, innovation and creativity, and the this can result in exclusion and discrimination. Many aspects of social capital have non-linear relationships with outcomes, so it is important to understand both the potential benefits and downsides of each aspect of social capital.
Shared narratives can contribute towards the maintenance of privilege by defining what constitutes the acceptable ‘in group‘ and its behaviour, to the detriment of outsiders. Those with power have more opportunity to influence the shared narrative, however, those who communicate the most can establish counter-narratives that can take hold. The development and influence of shared narratives depend on various factors and are highly context specific.
