Cultural narratives & counter narratives
By exploring the theories that underpin our participants’ experiences, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of how these frameworks apply in practical settings.
Summary
- Our identities are shaped by the stories and beliefs about the social groups we feel connected to, making these stories an important part of who we are.
- Some cultural stories are more powerful than others, and these ‘master narratives’ strongly influence what people expect, value, and believe.
- When these dominant stories include negative stereotypes about certain groups, they can limit and oppress the people in those groups.
- The main cultural story about older people often focuses on weakness, declining health, and dependence, which are not highly valued. This can lead to discrimination from institutions or (healthcare) professionals, making older people feel invisible and unheard.
- A new, more positive story can challenge these stereotypes by highlighting older people’s strength, wisdom, and ability to mentor and contribute to society.
Any given culture holds sets of stories, imaginaries, meanings, representations, archetypes, views and stock images about different social groups, such as ‘older people’, ‘mothers’, ‘transsexuals’, or ‘lawyers’ for instance. These sets are cultural carriers of meaning we call cultural narratives, and they evolve over time and can differ between cultures. Our individual identities take shape against the background of the cultural narratives about the social group(s) we feel we belong to. Thereby, they are an indispensable resource of our identities. We cannot avoid being confronted with cultural narratives, rather, we internalise the cultural stories and images we encounter from a very early age. Cultural narratives give direction to our views and perceptions, inform our choices and judgments, influence the social roles that are or are not available to us and have impact on how we think and act.
Some cultural narratives are more dominant than others, and the values, expectations and attitudes expressed by these so-called ‘master narratives’ are very pervasive. Cultural master narratives about certain social groups that hold damaging stereotypes can thereby be very limiting and oppressive for the members of such a social group. For example, the dominant cultural narrative about older people tends to lay strong emphasis on stereotypes of frailty, deterioration of health and cognition or dependency, which are not highly valued in this culture. This often confronts older people with biases against them from institutions or (healthcare) professionals that they feel robs them of their individuality and voice. The effects can be very damaging: negative stereotypes infiltrate people’s consciousness so that they start believing and acting upon the views that diminish their potential, and people are deprived of opportunities that are not considered viable for members of their group according to the cultural master narrative.
Although dominant cultural narratives can be very hard to transform, there is always the possibility to resist the damaging stereotypes and (re)claim your voice. In this case, we speak about the creation of a cultural counter narrative that challenges existing views and aims to provide a more empowering alternative. In the case of older people, cultural counter narratives could stress their resilience and life experience, their wisdom and potential for social mentoring and spiritual development, for example.