Curated Stories (Book Review)

In my book reviews I ordinarily include my endorsement towards the goal of the review, but Sujatha Fernandes’ Curated Stories-The Uses together with Misuses of Storytelling deserves praise correct from the beginning! Her excellent, critical, theoretically rigid together with empirically rich mass volition hopefully detect its way onto many reading lists for courses on media together with communication studies together with beyond. And fifty-fifty though her illustration studies are rooted inward the U.S. together with its unusual policy it is an of import mass for communication for evolution together with social modify equally well.

Alongside a broader shift to neoliberal together with financialized economies, storytelling is beingness reconfigured on the model of the marketplace to make entrepreneurial, upwardly mobile subjects together with is leveraged toward strategic together with measurable goals driven yesteryear philanthropic foundations. Curated personal stories shift the focus away from structurally defined axes of oppression together with aid to defuse the confrontational politics of social movements (pp.2-3).

We are literally on page 3 straightaway together with I was a fight worried whether the residue of the mass could deliver or whether the introduction was built on polemical excess (within academic reason) together with a simplified ‘blame neoliberalism’ discourse.

The cathartic spectacle of stories 
But Fernandes’ mass actually does deliver! In Charting the Storytelling Turn she opens upward a historical dark box that goes far beyond a viral digital campaign, a United Nations means ‘discovering’ storytelling or the latest developments inward TV beak shows. Relying on her extensive enquiry inward Venezuela together with Republic of Cuba equally good equally amongst immigrants from Latin America inward the U.S. she outlines broader developments to a greater extent than or less therapeutic discourses together with the disciplinary ability of storytelling:

Stories valorized experience inward a higher house structure, falling prey to a relativist dogma that each person’s truth is equally valid equally another. The promoted emotional reply together with feeling over thinking creating a binary that was never introduce inward before situations. And storytelling encouraged the thought that private redress or compensation, such equally courtroom judgements inward favour of battered women, would render the solution to deeply entrenched systems of poverty together with patriarchy. (…) Talk shows emphasized “real people telling existent stories”, together with truth committee officials insisted on the mythic origins of storytelling practices inward traditional cultures. The spectacle of stories equally cathartic for individuals together with for divided nations has been crucial inward giving legitimacy to orders ranging from postapartheid South Africa to post-Bush America (pp.36-37).

This is a lot to withdraw keep in.
Especially for the global evolution community a lot of burning questions emerge correct away: How does the #AidToo fence tally into this discourse? What most volunteering inward the South amongst its emphasis on experiences, learning together with telling stories most it to the populace inward the global North? And, of course, diverse storytelling projects by, amongst together with most refugees inward Europe?

Throughout the book, Fernandes encourages us to intend most together with link the little tools together with projects to bigger projects of how groups together with communities tin survive talked most without threatening powerful frameworks on global aid work, precarious voluntourism of the ‘refugee crisis’.

The ritualization of storytelling practices together with spaces
Fernades analysis of the Afghan Women’s Writing Project, a serial of online creative writing workshops funded yesteryear the U.S. State Department, sheds some interesting calorie-free on the (em)power dynamics of such activities that are aimed at providing women amongst a ‘voice’ equally good equally a platform for their stories:

The writing workshops are component subdivision of a broader network of State Department-funded telephone substitution programs, leadership schools, Fulbright scholarships, together with evolution agencies that aim to cultivate the subjectivity of a layer of leaders from the upwardly mobile urban elite who volition aid to lay the groundwork for a neoliberal marketplace democracy. Those Afghan women who oppose U.S. intervention, travail against US-supported warlords together with seek to promote self-determination together with economical independence for Transitional Islamic State of Afghanistan are farther marginalized politically (p.67).

Those who withdraw keep followed evolution discourses of ‘participation’, ‘empowerment’ or ‘peacebuilding’ volition recognize like dynamics to a greater extent than or less storytelling. The ritualization of approaches equally good equally the globalizing (but also depoliticizing) ability of (digital) tools together with donor-funded spaces ever finds novel subjects to retell the stories of ‘development’.

Another illustration report tackles the DREAM human action together with immigration reform inward the US:

By tying stories to electoral together with legislative campaigns together with yesteryear representing them through the lens of nationalist mythologies, a attain of groups participated inward a procedure of transformismo that absorbed together with defused the discontent beingness expressed globally together with domestically toward American-supported neoliberal together with imperialist policies (p.165).

This is an of import reminder that novel social movements or organizations, oft driven yesteryear powerful storytelling, yet operate inward a social together with political surroundings where traditional processes trump innovative approaches to social change. This reminds me of the World Economic Forum where aid organizations withdraw keep prepare elaborate exhibitions, covert documentaries or part immersive VR experiences to ‘tell the stories’ of refugees, immature girls or other deserving groups of aid recipients.

The long route from communicating social modify to implementing it
Fernandes’ does non outline a comprehensive option vision most moving from storytelling to social change. But inward all fairness, I almost prefer a concise 171-page critique over to a greater extent than chapters that would withdraw keep to address complex enquiry of communication together with change.

Collective, grassroots, together with global social motion organizing is the key for shifting from the terrain of the likely inward which much non-profit together with evolution operate takes house to the terrain of the utopian, where nosotros tin start imagining a primal restructuring of work, reproduction, together with the global economic scheme (p.170-171).

Curated Stories is a remarkable entry indicate for critical discussions that in all likelihood all of us should withdraw keep who ‘do’ communication and/for development. Critical appointment amongst the storytelling discourse goes far beyond an authentic organizational spider web log or the limitations of hashtag activism. Fernandes provokes us to intend beyond the instrumental, oft time-consuming, practices of ‘innovative’ approaches to evolution together with communication that easily acquire ‘stuck’ i time they attain formal social, political or economical spaces. The mass also asks challenging questions most ‘our’ operate from together with inward the global North together with how storytelling tin displace beyond the comfort zone of mediatized evolution work.

As I wrote inward my introduction, this is a concise together with accessible academic mass that should survive on your reading list, discussed inward the purpose together with shared amongst students together with partners to a greater extent than or less the globe!

Fernandes, Sujatha: Curated Stories-The Uses together with Misuses of Storytelling, ISBN 978-0-19061805-6, 212pp, GBP18.99, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.