21 tilly 1999 trouble with stories

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1 .

The Trouble with tories

Charles Tilly

Born in England but soon transplanted to

Ontario, Stephen Leacock left Canada to

do a Ph.D. with Tho rstein Veblen at the Univer

sity of Chicago. After four years, Leacock re

turned definitively to Canada, but this time to

Montreal; he eventually chaired McGill Uni-

AUTHORS NOTE: Ronald Aminzade, Mustafa Emirbayer,

Roberto Franzosi, Herbert Gans, Jan Hoem, John Krinsky,

Charles Lemert, John Markoff, Ann Mische, Victor Nee,

Bernice Pescosolido, Francesca Pollerta, Marilynn Rosen

thal, Harrison White, and Viviana Zelizer provided helpful

comments on earlier drafts. I also have benefited from anelectronic discussion of these issues initiated by Pollerta and

then joined energetically by Jeff Broadbent, Marco Giugni,

Jack Goldstone, Jeff Goodwin, Michael Hanagan, Roger

Karapin, Howard Lune, and Heather Williams. t is only

fair to record that (1) Mische, Polletta, and some of the

electronic debaters vigorously dispute my claims that what

I call standard stories are relatively invariant in structure

and domina nt in everyday social analyses and that (2) I have

done no formal collection and analysis of stories to back up

my arguments. I base my assertions about the form and

prevalence of standard stories not only on everyday obser

vation, some experience in life history interviewing, and

long exposure to writ ten accounts (fictional and otherwise)

of social life but also on impressions gained from cataloging

and coding perhaps 150,000 reports concerning different

types of popular contention that my collaborators and I

have abstracted from periodicals, administrative correspon

dence, chronicles, and related sources. Fortunately, thedispute is open to empirical adjudication; it should encour

age readers to bring their own observations and evidence

to bear on the actual structure of everyday storytelling.

However such an empirical inquiry comes out, its results

will clarify the origins, structures, and effects of social

stories and thereby help specify effective ways in which to

teach, learn, investigate, and explain social processes.

versity's Department of Economics and

cal Science. In that vein, his Elements o

cal Science (Leacock 1921) merited • ' a u 'into 17 languages. As Leacock grew older

wiser, however, he turned increasingly

economics and political science to humor

as his droll classic Literary Lapses. He titled

book's final story A, B, and C. The

Element in Mathematics. It concerns

Leacock ([1910] 1957) wrote,

four rules of his art, and successfully strivenmoney sums and fractions, finds himself rnTlrrn,n'

by an unbroken expanse of questions known

problems. These are short stories of adventure

industry with the end omitted, and though

a strong family resemblance, are not without a

tain element of romance.

The characters in the plot of a problem are

people called A, B, and C. The form of the

is generally of this s ort:

''A, B, and C do a certain piece of work. A can

as much work in one hour as B in two or C in

Find how long they work at it. (p. 141)

A, B, and C rowed on rivers, pumped

from cisterns, dug ditches, and otherwise

peted strenuously, always to the disa

of C. Leacock ([1910] 1957) reveals what he

learned from survivor D: C died of exhaustion·

after yet another grueling contest with A andB

A then lost interest in competition as B lan-

guished in his grief until he abjured mathemat-

devoted himself to writing the history

Swiss Family Robinson in words of one

p. 146)

. ; , ; ( ~ 1 p . l l U ~ L Leacock's pen, the abstract relations

o . £ l a t g ~ b r a give way to human interest stories.

H i ~ f t e . a d e r s can c h u ~ k l e because they instantly

r e ~ S p ~ ~ e the conceIt. Alas, the same does not

hQ:ld.:ipf.sociology's readers. The trouble with

reading, writing, and learning sociology is

straightforward but formidable; people ordi

narilycast their accounts of social life as sto

r i e s ~ t . o r i e s , as we shall see, with distinctive

cau.si;l{structures. Such stories do crucial work

in p ~ t c h i n g social life together. But sociology's

strQllgest insights do not take the form of stories

a n ~ t o f t e n undermine the stories people tell.

By stories I do not mean rhetoric, the artful

use Qf language to convince readers that the

writer tells the truth. Nor do I mean the

straightforward chronologies of events that ap

pearin sources such as personnel records, mar

riage registers, and machine inspection logs.

Although reading notes, cour t proceedings, po

litical tracts, and advertisements sometimes in

corporate stories in the narrow sense I am

pursuing here, I am not including all of them

under the heading stories. I mean the sequen

tial, explanatory recounting of connected, self

propelled people and events that we some

times call tales, fables, or narr atives. Let us call

these sequential, explanatory accounts of self

motivated human action standard stories.

tandard tories

To construct a standard story, start with a lim

ited number of interacting characters, individual or collective. Your characters may be per

sons, but they also may be organizations such

as churches and states or even abstract catego

ries such as social classes and regions. Treat your

characters as independent, conscious, and self-

motivated. Make all their

occur as consequences of th

tions or impulses. Limit th

within which your characters

possible exception of externa

dents-you can call them c

God make sure that every

results directly from your ch

Now, supply your chara

motives, capacities, and reso

time and place within whi

acting with objects that you

strue as barriers, openings,

ties, and tools-as facilitie

bearing on their actions. Set

motion. From their starting

that all their actions follow

sibility and produce effects

wise follow your rules of pla

accumulated effects of thei

interesting outcome. Better y

backward from some interes

lowing all the same rules. Co

have just constructed a stand

In writing your standar

crafted a text that resembles

sitcom episode, a fable, a new

But you also have produced

following:

• The account that a ju

the testimony and evi

ing a trial

• A biography or an a

single character

• Explanations that pe

at the scene o f a grisl

• Histories that natiothey say why they ha

given territory

• Speeches of social

who are linking tod

mands to the movem



II

• The selective (and perhaps fanciful) ac

count of his past with which a taxi driver

regales his or her captive passengers dur

ing a long ride to the airport

• How people apologize for, or justify,

their violations of other people's expec

tations: I'm sorry, but

• What victims of a crime or a disaster

demand when authorities say they do

not know how or why it happened

• Conversations people carry on as they

judge other people's sins, good deeds,

successes, and failures

• How bosses and workers reply to the

question Why don't you folks ever hire

any X's?

Standard stories, in short, pop up every

where. The y lend themselves to viviq, compel

ling accounts of what has happened, wha t will

happen, or what should happen. They do essen

tial work in social life, cementing people's com

mitments to common projects, helping people

make sense of what is going on, channelingcollective decisions and judgments, spurring

people to action they would otherwise be reluc

tant to pursue. Telling stories even helps people

to recognize difficulties in their own percep

tions, explanations, or actions, as when I tell a

friend about a recent adventure only to re

mark-or to have my friend point out-a pre

viously unnoticed contradiction among the sup

posed facts I have laid out.

Stories in ction

The sociological technique of interviewing (es

pecially in the forms we call life histories or ora l

histories) benefits from the readiness of humans

to package memory in standard stories. Al-

though all of us have recollections we would

prefer not to share with interviewers, in my

own interviewing I have generally found

delighted to talk about past experiences

adept at placing those experiences in

sequences. Indeed, humans are so good at

ing sense of social processes after the fact .

means of standard stories that skilled

viewers must spend much of their energy

ing, checking, looking for discrepancies,

then reconstructing the accounts their

dents offer them.

In teaching sociology to North

and European students, I have been

by the ingenuity and persistence with

they pack explanations into standard

Whatever else we have learned about·

ity, for example, sociologists have made

that a great deal of social inequality results

indirect, unintended, collective, and

mentally mediated effects that fit very

into standard stories. Yet, students U . · l ~ ' - L I M Iinequality tend to offer two competing

on the same standard story: (1) that·

or categories of individuals who differ

candy in ability and motivation arrive attests, judged by others, on which they

with differential success, whereupon those

ers reward them unequally, r (2) that nm.XTPr· '

gatekeepers follow their own preferences

sorting individuals or whole categories of .

viduals who arrive at certain choice p

thereby allocating them differential rewards.

Both variants respect the rules of

stories-self-motivated actors in delimited

and space and conscious actions that cause most

or all of the significant effects. Such a

story shapes likely disagre ements -over which·

variant is more accurate, over whether and why

categories of people do differ significantly inability and motivation, over whether existing

performance tests measure capacities properly,

over whether gatekeepers operate out of preju-

dice, and so on. Although many people in and

out of sociology explain inequality in these

variant of the story omits or con

major inequality-generating causal se

well established by sociological re

a story conflicts, for example, with

in which inequalityat work forms

, .. ,'lt1 lrr of hiring through existing, so

Omlog:eneOllS personal networks of peo

on the job, which happens to be the

,)lUU form of job recruitment through

the contemporary capitalist world.

of confrontation between preferred

stories and well-documented causal

presents teachers and students of so-

with serious difficulties but also with

to rethink conventional ex

of social life. Later sections of this

examine the difficulties and opportuni-

detail.

no means does trouble with stories oc

pedagogy alone. It bedevils sociological

wherever that analysis takes place-in

in historical reconstruction,

on the editorial page, in everyday

or in classrooms. Even veteranof incremental, interactive, indirect,

uillntl nCled, collective, and environmentally

mediated causal processes in social l ife-I in

clude myself-easily slip into interpreting new

social situations as if standard stories ade

quately represented their causal structures. Al-

though when discussing what we can do about

weaknesses of stories I describe one sort of

teaching that concentrates on the construction

of more adequate stories, I see no yawning gulf

between teaching and research; sophistication

and effectiveness in one promotes sophistica

tion and effectiveness in the other. At a mini

mum, teachers and researchers must learn thepitfalls of assuming that standard stories ade

quately represent causes and effects as they

unfold in social processes.

For specialized purposes, of course, people

often offer other sorts of accounts than the ones

I have called standard st

poets occasionally write d

who engage in inexplicab

hidden forces, or experie

Patients reporting th eir m

monly depart from standa

ate successions of mishaps

cal doctrines often includ

that fulfill some powerfu

principle-progress, dec

retribution. A book titled

may well include standar

Einstein and Niels Bohr, b

is likely to center on exp

principles. Standard storie

of the accounts we some

their combination of un

limited sets of self-motiva

and-effect relations cente

deliberated actions. Such

in everyday description

evaluations of human soc

Why do standard sto

tral places in social life? bilities that are not mutu

standard story structure

closely to the ways in whic

retrieve, and manipulate

cial processes. Brains se

including social objects,

temporal relations to eac

jects attributes that are ava

of their behavior; and t

situations as interactions

jects within delimited sp

then preference for stand

availability of storytellin

social tool could spring the human organism.

Perhaps, however, b

tems do no ~ o r - e than a

ling as one of many possib

social accounts. Perhaps



ture of stories just as they learn maps of cities

and melodies of favorite songs. In that case, we

might reasonably expect different populations

to vary in their emphases on storytelling and

may well discover that Westerners acquired a

preference for standard story packaging of so

cial life through a long, distinctive history.

Through that long history, we might find, peo

ple extended storytelling from an initial narrow

invention to a wide range of applications.

Here, as always, t he. exact inte rplay between nature and nurture, between wired-in

capacity and cultural immersion, and between

genetic determination and historical transfor

mation presents a great challenge to our long

term understanding and explanation of social

life. But in the short run, we need only this

conclusion: for whatever reasons, today's West

erners (and maybe all peoples) have a strong

tendency to organize conversations about social

processes in sta ndard story form.

isciplinary Stories

Each of the academic disciplines that concen

trates on the explanation of some aspect of

human behavior has made its own adjustment

to the dominance of standard stories. Linguists,

geographers, psychologists, historians, paleon

tologists, economists, anthropologists, political

scientists, and sociologists all have charac

teristic ways of dealing with-or keeping their

distance from-standard stories. Many histori

ans, for example, insist that such stories accu

rately represent the causal structure of social

life. They write their histories as tales of con

scious, self-motivated actors. When they get to

the large scales of wars, great transformations,and civilizations, however, historians split be

tween those who refer to collective actors (e.g.,

classes, nations) in standard story form and

those who resort to abstract causal forces such

as mentalities, cultures, technologies, and forms

of power.

Psychologists take other approaches to sto

ries. They divide among a dwindling number of

storytelling analysts who continue to treat

whole individuals as conscious acting entities

and a variety of reductionists who trace observ

able human behavior to the operation of genes,

neurons, hormones, and/or subconscious men

tal processes. Economists divide

many analysts of individual economicadopt a highly stylized version of the

story that centers on deliberate decision U A U J ~ .within well-defined constraints, whereas

lysts of macroeconomic processes .

non-story-mediating mechanisms-imp

markets, technologies, resource

and flows of information, capital, goods, or

labor. For all their differences in other regards,.

political scientists, anthropologists, and socio

logists maintain similar relations to . Lauu uu.

stories. Within each of the three disci

some specialists conduct almost all of their

analyses in standard story form, whereas others

reject stories in favor of explanations based on

non-story structures and processes such as mar

kets, networks, self-sustaining cultures, physi

cal environments, and evolutionary selection.

What place sh ould stories occupy in sociol

ogy? In ordinary circumstances, well-told stan

dard stories convey what is going on far more

forcefully than do the mathematical equations,

lists of concepts, statistical tables, or schematic

diagrams sociologists commonly chalk up on •

their blackboards. Why, then, should socio

logists not turn to fiction and biography as

models for their own efforts? After all, nonSO-

ciologists often reserve their highest praise forsociological work that reads like a novel.

Would a course in story writing not, therefore,

provide the best introduction to sociological

analysis?

C D~ ~lX

A B~ ~la lXl

o ~ o o ~

A B ~ > c O ~~ ~ .

Ib lXl lXo ~ o

Figure 22.1. Changes n Centrality

:\ .No it would not, at least not if the point of

l ~ ; ' i p l o g y is to describe and explai? social pro

c ~ s s e s ; The difficulty lies n the logIcal t r u c ~ r eQX,s,tQrytelling.Remember its elements: 1) l ~ m -i t ~ d n u m e r of interacting characters; 2) hm

i ~ ~ ~ L , t i m e and space; (3) independent, con

~ ~ i . . ~ u s self-motivated actions; and ( 4 ~ with the

t l : ~ s e p t i o n of externally generated ~ c l d e n t s , all

actions resulting from previous actlOns by the

c ~ I r a c t e r s . Standard stories work that way, but

_ 6rithe whole social processes do not.

. , Consider some examples:

• Within a high-fertility populat ion, as im

proved nutrition or prevention of c ~ i l -dren's diseases reduces infant mortalIty,

the population grows more rapidly and

experiences a rise in life expectancy.

• Job seekers who get their information

about employment opportunities from

other people who are already close to

them do less well in the job market, on

average, than do jo

their information fro

quaintances.

• Despite the sometim

ries of athletes, ent

executive officers, t

the ladder of annual

the larger looms in

the smaller the shar

type constitute curr

• In Figure 22.1, la

occupy peripheral l

and D hardly differ

in centrality. In Fi

ever, the addition

tween Band C ha

more central than a

sors, whereas A anin their access to o

• In American cities

income household

down, crowded



mites and coda hTh oac es proliferate

ose pests trigger h .h · h k ast rna attacks

locations h, or ow poor child

s,chools, But these cases differ fr :en

tlOnal matter of storytelling b e ~ thecause-and-effect re ' , aUSe

w IC eep po h ,orer c tIdren OUt f

school or hamper their £ ?school. per ormance In

Each of these cases calls £ . .

and explanations Th . . l.or qualIfIcations. e nse In Ife expect

a consequence of dedinI'ng . £ aney as. In ant mortal'ty~ e g l s t e r s the passage of arger surv' . h 1

Into higher a e IVIng co ortsI g groups and soon reaches a r .

~ ; g ~ S S death rates start dedining for t ~ : ~er age groups as

wellMor .quaintances provide r e l a t i ~ e l e d i ~ t a n t ac

about available . b Y effectIve news

they have b e t t e / ~ : o r : : t i : : a : s ; ~ n d i v i d u a l l Ylective1y they connect b k u ~ c a u s e col-

1 see ers WIth 'd;:nge of opportunities than do dose frie:d

wIer

n. Inhented wealth actuall sandrich Am y places the bulk of

encans In their h h ..means that much f h POSItIOns and

o t elr InCome .returns from I arnves as

capIta rather than al

Connec ting apparent ' as Sarles.

that possess comple y penpheral locationsthe Work of e£ J: ,mentaryreSOurces describes

lectlve entrep band matchmakers. I't £ reneurs, rokers,

, requentl y ch h

organizational con£' , anges w oleIguratlons rapidl M ,school and being sick i h Y ISsIng

children's exposure to 00 1 not only reduce

motel:hildren's confu ~ a t I O n but also pro-SIon, Inattention d di

Couragement, which furth ' an , s-The point of thes er ~ a m a g e s learnIng.

twofold In each e ObVIOUS examples is

, atlOns are Indimental, Interactive u d reCt,

d' , nInten ed

me lated by the nonhum " - ~ < \ ' : I : n r Ath b an envlronm

an eIng direct w ll d ent'd ' I e COnsequ

VI ual actions Th d ences of, e stan ard st '

struct for such ones Weprocesses miss th '

causal connections Most " elrcesses fall ' . slgmf cant

Into a nonstory mod Mdo so because at least some cr ost ofthe ' d UCla causes, m are In Irect, incremental ' ,

Intended, collective andl or d'nonhuman e n v i r o n ~ e n t , e l a t ed ,

Personally, I have nothin 'stories, I re d h g agaInst

, a t em eagerly, makeWIth them, remember thin s 'stories and I dl g by tellIng

, g a y overhear stories Ieach other on the b peop e •

, h su way, I began thisWIt a standard story about Leaco kdent of social processes I h c . s a

my career locating tra'ns ~ v b ~ spent mUchI ' ,cn nga n ~ YZIng, retelling, and ponderi n' h

pie s standard stories Th got eron I ,e ages of my

,popu ar contention overflow h 'whIch ordinary peopl k WIt stonesTh ' e ma e collective

massIve effort to extract evidcernIng , I ence

SocIa processes f 'brou h rom Stones

g t me to appreciate th 'rytelling in human l { b , e centralIty of sto-

h ' I e, ut It also h h

. case stronmechanisms are oper:t i bg, :ecurrent causal

do the crucial causal mecnhg, ,ut In none of them

t e Incompatibility in I as taug tme 'causa structur b

most standard stories d e etweenan SOCIal processes,

h allIsms corres dt e structure of st d d pon to

course, We can tell s t a ~ ~ ; ~ st?rytelling. Of

aspects in each of th ' sto:les about someese sItuatlons-h '

crobe hunters track down ba " ow mI-how indiv idual job k by-kIlltng diseases,

plo ment see ers actually find em-c h i l ~ r e n , u : ~ : : : ~ n t s ~ e q u e a t h wealth to theirat cIrcUmstances

neUfs notice good fits b entrepre-etween unconnected

262Arguments from the Inside

The Search for Causes

Refusal to reco ' h '

rytelling c r e a t e s g : : ; o ~ ; r ~ ~ i t s o ~ standard sto

lysts, In one light h ems Or SOCIal ana

distortion produced pr,oblems stem frominto stories about IfY OrclDg social processes

se -motIvatedopposite light tl1 ' actors, In the

, ey conSIst of fa I 'causal mechanisms th I ures to speCIfy

at actually drive social

clarify what is at issue in the

between standard storytelling

science explanat ion, we can use

, U l ~ . V ' U among the four dominant

explanatory strategies adopted

social life: methodological indi

individualism,

and relational realism. Let us

I individualism treats inde-

I P l \ ~ C : : - J l U d l ~ l 1 l O persons as the funda

and starting po ints of sociological

explanations pivot on mental

or decisions. People make

forward their interests, prefer

within constraints set by per

and environmental settings.

those choices? Other mental

form of calculations concerning

outcomes of different actions.

individualism has the

'ad,ran'tag,es of simplicity and generality-

. U , ; V V l l ~ ' it works. For the moment, it faces

difficulties, tWo of them upstream:ll1il(jl;:;()ne of them downstream; Upstream (i.e

the point of decision that constitutes its

9 ~ l 1 t r a l object of explanation), (1) few actual

human behaviors seem to fit its requirement o f

(,)ptimizing choices among well-defined alterna

tives and (2) supposedly fixed elements such as

preferences and computations of ou tcomes ac

tually wobble and interact in the course of social

action. Downstream (i.e., once a decision sup

posedly is made), we confront difficulty in that

(3) methodological individualism so far lacks a

plausible account of the causal chains by which

decisions produce their effects on individual

action, social interaction, and complex social

processes.

Methodological individualists, however,

can take standard storytelling in their stride,

They already are talking about self-motivated

actors-the fewer, the be

times and places whose

produce all the effects wo

problem results not from

ity of their causal account

rather from the implausi

stories their causal accou

Phenomenological in

move easily on standard

center descriptions and e

processes on human cons

treme of solipsism, inde

dissolves into individual c

tematic explanation of so

insuperable barrier-the

observer's entering into

awareness, much less exp

treme forms, however, ph

vidualists pursue a famili

tion. Through empathy, d

some other means, they r

ings, feelings, ideologies,

sumably motivate social

more easily than method

with collective actors succlasses, or regions, to whi

ties and degrees of shared

point, nevertheless, phe

vidualists confront the sa

cles as do methodologic

stream, accounting for c

of the conscious states tha

social action; downstream

conscious states create th

System realists hav

themselves on escaping

cles by recognizing the i

dividual actions, their co

existing social structure,

into self-regulating

sketched by system realis

friendships to civilizatio

fluid communications to



sals, and in structure from gossamer webs to

iron cages. What unifies system approaches is

their imputation of self-generating properties

to social aggregates and their explanation of

particular social events by connections to the

larger social systems within which they occur.

The great failures of systems theories lie in two

main areas: 1) the absence of sturdy, well

documented causal mechanisms that actually

are observable in operation and 2) the preva

lence of poorly explicated functional explana

tions in which events, relations, institutions, or

social processes exist because they serve some

requir ement o f the system as a whole. Although

they certainly describe their major actors-so

cial systems-as self-propelling and sometimes

describe social systems as having characteristic

life histories, system realists usually avoid stan

dard storytelling.

elational analysis focuses on the trans

action, interaction, information flow, ex

change, mutual influence, or social tie as its

elementary unit. For relational realistS, indi

viduals, groups, and social systems are contingent, changing social products of interaction.

Relational realists vary greatly in the promi

nence they ascribe to culture-to shared under

standings and their representations. At one ex

treme, hard-nosed network theorists treat the

geometry of connections as having a logic that

operates quite independently of the network s

symbolic content. At the other extreme, conver

sational analysts treat the back-and-forth of

social speech as inescapably drenched with

meaning. In between, students of organiza

tional processes who reject the idea that orga

nizations are self-maintaining systems often

trace webs of culturally conditioned interde

pendency among persons and positions within

the organization.

At both extremes and in between, rela

tional analysis maintains a curious connection

with storytelling. t simultaneously denies the

self-propulsion of a story s characters and af

firms the centrality of mutual influences amon

characters that give standard storytelling

continuity. Relational analyses enjoy the advan

tages of providing excellent descriptive tem

plates for social processes and of identifying

robust regularities in social interaction. At least

in principle, they offer the promise of treating

standard stories not as descriptions or explana- .

tions of social processes but as changing, con

tingent products of social interaction. In fact,they could account for the production and use

of nonstandard stories as well.

To be sure, in real life and in sociology, most

attempts at explanation of social processes in

volve syntheses, amalgams, and compromises

among some or all of our four basic approaches:

methodological individualism, phenomeno

logical individualism, system realism, and rela

tional analysis. t is not hard, for example, to

conceive of individuals as making rational

choices within strict limits set by encompassing

and self-regulating social systems, as in the

model of a buyer or seller who enters a competitive market. Similarly, relational analysts

often go on to argue that the structures created

by interaction-hierarchies, paired categories,

industries, and so on-have emergent proper

ties, operate according to powerful laws, and

shape social relations among their participants;

to that extent, relational realists edge toward

systems theories. Still, each of the four explana

tory traditions generates some relatively pure

and exclusive accounts of social life, each (even

in compromised form) presents charac

teristically different difficulties, and at the limit

all four cannot be valid. Furthermore, none of

the four offers an explanatory structure that fits

comfortably with the standard stories in which

people ordinarily cast their social accounts.

In most circumstances, standard story

telling provides an execrable guide to social

explanation. Its directly connected and self-

. t d actors deliberated actions, circum-rnotlvae , . . d '

b d f Ids of action and hmlte mventorycrt e Ie d

badly represent the ontology anof causes h .

altructu re of most social processes. T ere

caUS s b 1 eptions. some games, some att es, somareexce, . f

k tsand some decision making Wit m or-

rnare . h 1 yrnal organizations apprOXimate t e o ~ t o og

d usal structu re of standard stones. But

anh

care extreme cases, notable especially for thete se h khhidden institutional supports. t at rna e t

. bl Most social processes mvolve cause-andpOSSl e. . 1ff t relations that are indirect, mcrementa ,

~ n t : ~ a c t i V e unintended, coll:ctive, and/or me

diated by the nonhuman environment.

HoW to onfro nt Storytelling

Hence, a three-faced problem: ho : to cut

through the limits set by prevalent stones on the

lanation o f social processes, how to convey

e X ~ d explanations of social processes when

: ~ d i e n c e s customarily wrap their own ~ p l a n a -tions in storytelling, and how to

~ e s c [ l b ean:lain the creation, transformatlOn, and e -

exp .fects of existing standard stones. .

The first is, surprisingly, the easle.st.

well-versed practitioners of e t h . o d ~ l ~ g l c a ~ m-

d d l sm phenomenological mdlVlduahsm,lVl ua 1 , . h

system realism, and relational a n a l y s l ~ ave at

mathematics or chemistry S em

story structures to novices hav

tages over sociologists; almos

mathematics or chemistry sho

low the rules of storytelling,

previous training in mathema

as a series of stories to shed

learn more adequate mode

grudgingly or eagerly accept

formal structure of mathema

will give them future benefit

regrettably, applies to socioloOn the contrary. Most

some teachers of sociology, th

actually does conform to thself motivated

storyte mg- -actions and the lot. In addi

, dileast Western people) or n

moral reasoning in a standar

. dge actual or possible ac

~ i o u s motives and their im

able effects; this fact lies b

complaint that sociological

the responsibility, autono

worth of individuals. In ad

1 . . 1) moral J udgmnan YJomof what is possible, 3) idea

within that realm of POSSI

accounts of social life. A

ople should do presume

~ : d the justification for t

includes judgments abo

quences of their doing so.

not readily accept analy

times learned to resist standard story mterpre

tations of their subject matter and to adopt

formalisms that assist them in imposing an

ternative frame-mathematical models, dia-

grams simulations, conceptual schemes, mea

, I . ht besuremen t devices, and more. t mig

. ful and some skilled practitioners abandon

elements of moral thinki

that very reason, young

ning to question the m

which they grew up devepam , If d . l

h . ng but such learned se - lSClP met elr tralm ,comes with apprenticeship to the t r ~ d ~ .

Communication with n o n s p e c l a h ~ t s who

customarily cast their social accounts m stan

dard stories sets a greater challenge. Teachers of

to sociology than do theThat is not all. Befo

d· . l ne stu

ology as a lSClP 1 ,

readers have had years o



ing social explanations by means of storytelling;

they do not cast off that practice easily. Finally,

the benefits of doing so are much harder to

discern than in the case of mathematics or

chemistry; indeed, what most students and

some professionals hope to find in sociology is

the ability to construct more persuasive stan

dard stories. Sociologists do not easily cut

through the veil of resistance.

What can sociologists do abou t it? Here are

some o f the possibilities:

• Study the social processes that condition

how and why similar stories strike one

audience as quite authentic and strike

another as utterly phony

• Teach competing ways of representing

particular social processes, not only as

storytelling and as alternative social sci

entific models but also as metaphor, ma

chine, and political rhetoric; compare

premises, procedures, an d results' of

these competing representations, show

ing what is distinctive and valuable

abou t the social scientific ones

• Dramatize the existence of social pro

cesses, configurations, or outcomes for

which available standard stories offer

implausible explanations, demonstrably

false explanations, contradictory expla

nations, or no explanations at all and for

which coherent sociological explana

tions exist

• More precisely and aggressively, create

and use simulations of social processes

(whether simple games or complex sym

bolic representations) that challenge

available standard stories, embodysociologically plausible causes and ef

fects, p roduce empirically verifiable out

comes, and allow participants to

investigate the consequences of altering

inputs or causal structures

• Trace standard story shadows of non

story processes, as by following a series

of interdependent life histories, each it

self in coherent standard story form,

before examining the intersection and

variation of those lives; how, for exam

ple, do variable relations to the same

school system, firm, or labor market

create contrasting trajectories and soli

darities?

• Go even farther in the same directionand subvert storytelling; embed non

story explanations in ostensibly storytel

ling form, for example, by recounting

the same social process a military bat

tie, flow of information through a hos

pital, or racial integration of a school

system from multiple perspectives,

one standard story per participant, until

the problem shifts to accounting for dif

ferences and connecti ons among the ex

periences of participants

• Observe how the relationship and con

versation between interviewer and re

spondent shape the responses that survey analysts later interpret as evidence

of respondents' individual traits, prefer

ences, intentions, and/or propensities

• Simulate and investigate what happens

when participants in standard stories be

come aware of and respond deliberately

to cause-and-effect relations that are in

direct, incremental, interactive, unin

tended, collective, and/or mediated by

the nonhuman environment, thus ap

proximating what many theorists have

advocated as reflexive sociology

• Tunnel under standard stories themselves by creating compelling explana

tions for both 1) the stories that

participants in social processes tell about

what is happening to them or others and

2) the stories that analysts, critics, ob-

servers, and even other sociologists tell

about particular social processes, situ

ations, and outcomes; using systematic

knowledge of the social processes in

volved, for example, explain how and

why police, criminals, judges, prosecu

tors, priests, social workers, and crimi

nologists come to tell different stories

about crime

.From the last alternative unfolds a huge,promising program of sociological work. Ana

lysts of social construction have generally con

tented themselves with demonstrating that en

tities that earlier interpreters have taken to be

~ t e d u c i b l y real-id entiti es, nations, states, gen

d ~ ~ s and more consist of or depend on elabo

; ~ t e contingent, but compelling cultural webs.

. have not offered verifiable descriptions or

;:.,t::1W , L U U l I J U i l of the processes by which the

social construction takes place. They

taken social construction to be a blank

an opaque screen, or an impenetrable

impossible to tunnel under. Because

stories constitute one of the majorof social construction, however, any sys-

account of the processes by which peo

transform, respond to, and deploy

stories will serve as a model for tun

under constructionist analyses in gen

them seriously but identifying the

constructions involved as objects of ex-

is a challenge to social science worthy

I l T PT l 1 , . . P S effort. To explain how, why, and

effects people fashion standard sto

require a commodious, sophisticated

t will entail mapping the various con

. forms, and contexts of stories; tracing

change; pinpointing the social work

do with them; and saying how some of

,Qe :OlIle fixed in laws, national traditions,

rituals, others form and flow like

jazz, and still others circulat

potted biographies, excuses,

ments, and a d hoc explanatio

neutic and text-analytic met

fice; attention will shift to th

that precipitate standard st

enjoy the irony that a major

explanation should become t

explanation.

We have some models fo

sis. In the study of language

well-articulated ideologies, o

ertoires, of kinship systems,

nomena where change i

standings clearly occurs an d s

participants' interactions,

other social scientists already

experience in tunneling und

tion. Not that they have reac

or manufactured models tha

to the explanation of standa

equally complex phenome

evaluate the models currentl

fields, the ir existence establi

in principle of taking the pand power of standard storie

challenge.

An even greater challeng

the same road. Sociologist

reconcile three apparently

tures of social life:

• The recurrence of a l

mechanisms in a wi

ations

• The incessant improv

in social interaction

• The great weight of

congealed as particul

rations, on social int

Each is so compelling that

own advocates-ad vocates o



laws for human behavior, advocates of social

life as nothing but piecemeal improvisation,

and advocates of deep historical and cultural

determinism cum particularism. In fact, all

three operate and interact. The three features

combine in producing path-dependent social

processes that never quite repeat themselves,

ceaseless flux in relations a mong participants,

and strong but partial causal analogies from one

iteration of a social process to the next.

We see the trio in the field of inequality,where similar processes of exploitation, resis

tance, and control recur in disparate circum

stances, yet actual participants in anyone of

those circumstances negotiate, innovate, cheat,

resist, a nd ad apt without cessation, and all this

improvisation occurs within strong limits, par

ticular to the time a nd place, set by accumulated

culture, so much so th at within the same setting

inequalities by gender, race, and citizenship

operate as if they belonged to distinct idioms

within a common language. We see the trio

again in contentious politics, where an n ~ l y s tof mobilization notices similar causal connec

tions in a vast array of situations, where on theground improvisation is not only prevalent but

also essential, and where the forms of inter

action themselves occur within or at the pe

rimeters of previously established forms.

Although the production of standard sto

ries surely conforms to causal principles and

permits variation in storytelling style, storytel

ling lodges especially in the third category, in

the social arrangements by which the accumu

lated collective past weighs on the present and

the future. Social interaction generates stories

that justify and facilitate further social inter

action, but it does so within limits set by thestories people already share as a consequence

of previous interactions. t would be a triumph

of social analysis to tell the true story of how

storytelling arises and how it affects our con

duct of social life.

nlightenment and xplanation

The prevalence of standard stories poses tw

significant problems for teachers and studen;

of sociology. First, both teachers and student:

make choices, implicit and explicit, betwee

conceiving of sociology as enlightenment onb r

SCIence ut for most people the paths to en-

l i ~ h t ~ n m e n t pass through standard stories, sub

stltutmg one standard story for another rather

than complementing standard stories by means

of science. Second, the actual causal structure

of social processes, the indispensable core of

any sociological explanation, usuaUy contra

dicts the logical and causal structur e of standard

stories. As a consequence, teachers of sociology

choose, however unconsciously, how to con

nect their presentation of the subject with stan

dard stories.

Figure 22.2 schematizes the choice. At one

ext:eme, teachers can emphasize sociology as

e ~ l I g h t e n m e n t by formulating and telling supe

nor stones. In what way superior? From a

sociological viewpoint, superior stories have

these qualities:

• They include all the major actors (in

cluding collective and nonhuman ac

tors) that a valid causal account of the

events in question would identify and

relate.

• Within the social interacti ons they de

scribe, they accurately represent cause

and-effect relations among actions of

participants in the story, even if they

neglect indirect, incremental, and other

effects that are not visible in the partici

pants interactions.

• They provide effective means of connecting the story with times, places, ac

tors, and actions outside its purview.

• They offer means of relating causes ex

plicitly invoked by the story with other

causes that are indirect, incremental,

E

N

L

I

G

H

T

E

N

M

E

N

T

Superior Stories

Contextualized Stories

Generated Stories

Non-Story Processes

E

X

P

L

A

N

A

T

I

oN

consequence of their relation

ple who have already experi

otherwise become aware o

experience with injustice. N

quately represents the signif

connections in recruitment

ments, but within the social i

represent, the second story c

to social processes actually

movement activism. Thus,

makes a contribution to the

ogy as enlightenment.At the other extreme, n

Figure 22.2. Ways of Presenting and Pursuing

Sociology

we can decide to teach, learn

as a deliberate integration

into causal chains, significa

indirect, incremental, inter

collective, and/or mediate

environment. Thus, we ca

and communicate models

in which intentions, aware

action take place in tight i

social processes that are no

to social movement parti

teaching, learning, and us

discovery of new explanatcism of prevalent stories

to the education of profes

is essential because caus

within social processes do

interactive, unintended, collective,

and/or mediated by the nonhum an envi-

ronment.

Superior stories, that is, do not identify all the

relevant cause-and-effect relations, but they remain consistent with fuller, more adequate

causal accounts.In the case of social movements, for exam-

ple, an inferior but commonly credited story

says that people who have failed in fair, n o r r ~ a lcompetition vent their frustration in collective

complaints, to which right-thinking people re

spond by pointing to established channels for

the expression of political preferences. The

story is inferior because solid evidence o n c ~ r n -ing social movement recruitment and partiCIpa

tion regularly contradicts its empirical implica

tions and because the causal connections it

alleges-notably the chain from failure, to frus

tration, to collective action-do not hold up to

close observation.A superior sociologically validated story

to standard stories.In between the twO

choose to pursue sociolo

textualize existing storie

ontextualizing stories i

social situations in which

arise and tracing the con

those stories rather th

principle, available. Thu

conditions under whic

viously unmobilized po

about its distinctive n

claims for political recsays that people join social movements as a



t h a ~ story, and then lives the consequences of

havmg adopted that particular story rather th an

some other that may have been available.

;The e v ~ n more ambitious program of gen-

eratmg stones consists of analyzing the pro

cesses. by which people actually create, adopt,

n e g ~ t l a t e ~ n d ~ t e r the stories they employ in

routme soclalltfe. Here, in principle, the ana

lyst should be able to simulate and predict both

f o r ~ ~ n d content of stories as they enter the

S O ~ l ~ mteractions of juries, social movement

actIvIsts, newscasters, coworkers, a nd people ingeneral. Storytelling is such a fundamental

. . ,per-vaSIve socIal process that it is hard to . .

. lmagmeeffectIve generation of stories without deep

understanding of nonstory processes. Thus,

eac? rung in the ladder from explanation to

e n l t g ~ t e n m e n t depends on those below it; con

~ t r u c t l o n of superior stories rests on some abil

Ity. to contextualize them, contextualization re

qUlres some awareness of processes that

g e n e ~ a t e stories, and the analysis of generationreqUires partial knowledge of th

e nonstorycausal processes at work in social life.

To teach s ~ ~ e ~ i o r . stories and the capacity

to detect and cntlclze mferior stories howevI er,y serves enlightenment. Sociology as en-

hghtenment can profitably concentrate on criti-

cal examination and reconstruction of widel

employed standard stories Because m Yd f . Ost Stu-

ents 0 SOCIOlogygo off into other walks of ifeand because nearly all of them . ,

dcontmue to

con uct their lives by means of st .ones ndr e s ~ o n s e s to other people's stories, sociolo as

e n l t g ~ t e n m e n t should enrich and clarify S ~ i a 1e x ~ e n e n c e An enlightenment-oriented so .log I d . ClO,

lca e ucatton can equip those nonsp . I i; . . . eCla 1St·,~ I t i z e n s to IdentIfy, compare, classify, criticize

Improve, or even deploy standard stories0

the presumption that knOWing how p o w ~ r f ~everyday processes actually work prepares thknowers for m ff e

. ore e ective encounters withSOCIal hfe, sociological teaching can serve U

by concentrating on standard stories I fth twe

f d . . a sort? u c a ~ I O n then sensitizes nonspecialists to

I n d I r e ~ t Incremental, interactive, unintended

collectI:e, and/or environmentally mediated

causal hnks to the stories people tell, then somuch the better.

References

Leacock, Stephen B. [1910J 1957. LiteraryLapses. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.

- . 921. Elements o Political Science.Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Challenging ssumptions oHuman Diversity The TeachiImagination in Anthropolog

arole E ill

A s we move into the 21st century and at

tempt, in some measure, to unlearn the

20th century, the expanding global knowledge

produced by the interconnectedness of the

world system certainly challenges essentialist

thinking. Curricula are being internation al

ized and culturali zed. The garnering aca

demic supp ort for multiculturalism unques

tionably promotes the addition of non-Western

courses or course content across the curricu

lum, implying deletions or adjustments to tra

ditional Western knowledge. Supporters of the

Western approa ch to education view these

changes as threats to the very foundations of he

social arrangement between the middle class

and universities. Viewed within the context of

societal changes and rel ated university changes,

their informal social connections reflect the

tensions, conflicts, and negotiations that are

laying the foundations for the new formulations

in anthropological teaching imaginations in the

21st century.

The current debate over the place of cultural diversity in higher education goes beyond

the narrow parameters of political correctness

to questioning definitions of knowledge,

authority in knowledge transfer, and the basis

for knowledge creation. Th

who produces, reproduces,

canon. At stake in this debat

ity of the people who writ

(and other) ethnic/racial gr

of those who select the t

universities; (3) the authori

ments, administrators, and

the university to define t

content of what is taught a

sity; and 4) the nature of

partments that teach about

key issues for all the stake

relationship between the W

within society and within

power relationships amon

teach about human divers

the anthropological imag

ogy's traditional knowledg

ways has been, controversia

the key anthropological c

heart of the culture wars.

gues that anthropology haadvance the multicultural

theoretical framework, and

difficult for anthropologists

extreme positions on eithe

21 tilly 1999 trouble with stories

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