Abstract
Calls for a more radical vision of human–nonhuman interdependence demand a revisioning of models of participation that would take us into less familiar territory and test the boundaries of what we take to be a ‘psychosocial’ perspective. This final chapter is a brief attempt to look forward. It considers what a research agenda informed by the modest contribution of this book might look like. To do so it focuses in on the concept of narrative foreclosure as a starting point, before exploring the potential of participatory research for challenging narrative foreclosure.
it seems easier to imagine ‘the end of the world’ than a far more modest change in the mode of production, as if liberal capitalism is the ‘real’ that will somehow survive even under conditions of a global ecological catastrophe. (Žižek et al. 1999, p. 55)
a properly turned mythology, and its enactment in ritual, will compel sustainability, just as assuredly as it has heretofore impeded it. (Sherry 2013, p. 214)
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
1. See the Lab’s website for more details https://www.utwente.nl/igs/lifestorylab/
- 2.
- 3.
3. It also echoes the calls of Sayer and others for policy makers to engage with people as conscious, concerned citizens, rather than developing ethically and politically questionable sustainability ‘behaviour change’ programmes that are modeled to work ‘behind-the-backs’ of their target populations (Sayer 2013; see also Soron 2010).
- 4.
4. Novels include the aforementioned, Booker prize nominated, novel by Karen Joy Fowler, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves (2013); memoirs include Helen Macdonald’s H Is For Hawk (2014; winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize and the Costa Book of the Year award in 2014); artistic projects include Jo-Anne McArthur’s We Animals photo-documentation work http://weanimals.org and Chris Jordan’s Midway series http://www.chrisjordan.com/gallery/midway/#CF000313%2018x24; documentaries include Blackfish (Director: Cowperthwaite 2013) and Speciesism: The Movie (Director: Devries 2013); popular science tacking species relationships and complexity include Caspar Henderson’s Book of Barely Imagined Beings (2013); Whitehead and Rendell’s meticulously researched argument that whales and dolphins have a collective culture (Whitehead and Rendell 2014); campaigns focussing on advancing the legal rights of nonhuman animals include the Arcus Foundation http://www.arcusfoundation.org and the Nonhuman Rights Project http://www.nonhumanrightsproject.org. There is some interlinking of these phenomena. Campaigns against the treatment of Orca whales in commercial aquariums, for example (e.g. http://www.seaworldofhurt.com/news/) is inspired in part by the documentary Blackfish and has made some impact on policy making and business practices in the US. See http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/09/seaworld-end-orca-whale-shows-san-diego for details.
References
Antelius, E. (2007). The meaning of the present: Hope and foreclosure in narrations about people with severe brain damage. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 21(3), 324–342.
Birke, L. (2003). Who – Or what – Are the rats (and mice) in the laboratory? Society & Animals, 11(3), 207–224.
Birke, L., & Hockenhull, J. (2015). Journeys together: Horses and humans in partnership. Society & Animals, 23(1), 81–100.
Bohlmeijer, E. T., Westerhof, G. J., Randall, W., Tromp, T., & Kenyon, G. (2011). Narrative foreclosure in later life: Preliminary considerations for a new sensitizing concept. Journal of Aging Studies, 25(4), 364–370.
Bohlmeijer, E. T., Westerhof, G. J., & Lamers, S. M. (2014). The development and initial validation of the narrative foreclosure scale. Aging and Mental Health, 18(7), 879–888.
Brown, S. D., & Stenner, P. (2009b). Psychology without foundations: History, philosophy and psychosocial theory. London: Sage.
Cohen, S. (2001). States of denial: Knowing about atrocities and suffering. New York: Wiley.
Curtis, A. (2015). (Director) A bitter lake. London: BBC.
Fivush, R. (2010). Speaking silence: The social construction of silence in autobiographical and cultural narratives. Memory, 18(2), 88–98.
Frank, A. W. (2010). Letting stories breathe: A socio-narratology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Freeman, M. (2000). When the story’s over: Narrative foreclosure and the possibility of self-renewal. In M. Andrews, S. Slater, C. Squire, & A. Treacher (Eds.), Lines of narrative: Psychosocial perspectives (pp. 245–250). Toronto: Captus University Publications.
Freeman, M. (2011). Narrative foreclosure in later life. In G. Kenyon, E. T. Bohlmeijer, & W. R. Randall (Eds.), Storying later life; issues, investigations, and interventions in narrative gerontology (pp. 3–19). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fuentes, A. (2010). Naturalcultural encounters in Bali: Monkeys, temples, tourists, and ethnoprimatology. Cultural Anthropology, 25(4), 600–624.
Fuentes, A. (2012). Ethnoprimatology and the anthropology of the human-primate interface. Annual Review of Anthropology, 41, 101–117.
Griffin, M., & Phoenix, C. (2014). Learning to run from narrative foreclosure: One woman’s story of aging and physical activity. Journal of Aging and Physical Activity, 22(3), 393–404.
Hamilton, L., & Taylor, N. (2012). Ethnography in evolution: Adapting to the animal “other” in organizations. Journal of Organizational Ethnography, 1(1), 43–51.
Hargreaves, D. (2011a). Pro-environmental interaction: Engaging Goffman on pro-environmental behaviour change. Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment Working Papers 11-04. Norwich: University of East Anglia. http://www.cserge.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2011-04.pdf. Accessed 18 Dec 2015.
Hargreaves, T. (2011b). Practice-ing behaviour change: Applying social practice theory to pro-environmental behaviour change. Journal of Consumer Culture, 11(1), 79–99.
Hollander, N. C. (2014). Uprooted minds: Surviving the politics of terror in the Americas. London: Routledge.
ISSC/UNESCO. (2013). Summary: World social science report 2013: Changing global environments. Paris: OECD Publishing and UNESCO Publishing.
Kirksey, S., & Helmreich, S. (2010). The emergence of multispecies ethnography. Cultural Anthropology, 25(4), 545–576.
Klein, N. (2011). On precaution. In P. Kingsnorth & D. Hine (Eds.), Dark Mountain Issue 2 (pp. 20–25). Dark Mountain Project: Ulverston.
Lertzman, R. (2015). Environmental melancholia: Psychoanalytic dimensions of engagement. London: Routledge.
Luke, T. W. (2015). The climate change imaginary. Current Sociology, 63(2), 280–296.
Marshall, G. (2014a). Don’t even think about it: Why our brains are wired to ignore climate change. London: Bloomsbury.
Marshall, G. (2014b). Five. In J. Smith, R. Tyszczuk, & R. Butler (Ed.), Culture and climate change: Narratives (Vol. 2, pp. 96–97). Cambridge: Shed.
Mason, K. (2014). Becoming Citizen Green: Prefigurative politics, autonomous geographies, and hoping against hope. Environmental Politics, 23(1), 140–158.
Maurstad, A., Davis, D., & Cowles, S. (2013). Co‐being and intra‐action in horse–human relationships: A multi‐species ethnography of be (com)ing human and be (com)ing horse. Social Anthropology, 21(3), 322–335.
McAdams, D. P. (1993). The stories we live by: Personal myths and the making of the self. New York: Morrow.
McAdams, D. P. (2006). The redemptive self: Generativity and the stories Americans live by. Research in Human Development, 3(2–3), 81–100.
Paschen, J. A., & Ison, R. (2014). Narrative research in climate change adaptation – Exploring a complementary paradigm for research and governance. Research Policy, 43(6), 1083–1092.
Randall, R. (2009). Loss and climate change: The cost of parallel narratives. Ecopsychology, 3, 118–129.
Randall, W. L. (2013). The importance of being ironic: Narrative openness and personal resilience in later life. The Gerontologist, 53(1), 9–16.
Richards, G. (2010). Psychological use of animals. In Putting psychology in its place: Critical historical perspectives (3rd ed., pp. 233–244). London: Routledge.
Sayer, A. (2013). Power, sustainability and well-being: An outsider’s view. In E. Shove & N. Spurling (Eds.), Sustainable practices: Social theory and climate change (pp. 292–317). London: Routledge.
Sherry, J. F., Jr. (2013). Reflections of a scape artist: Discerning scapus in contemporary worlds. In D. Rinallo, L. M. Scott, & P. Maclaran (Eds.), Consumption and spirituality (pp. 211–230). London: Routledge.
Smart, A. (2014). Critical perspectives on multispecies ethnography. Critique of Anthropology, 34(1), 3–7.
Smith, B., & Sparkes, A. C. (2005). Men, sport, spinal cord injury, and narratives of hope. Social Science and Medicine, 61(5), 1095–1105.
Soron, D. (2010). Sustainability, self-identity and the sociology of consumption. Sustainable Development, 18(3), 172–181.
Squire, C. (2012). Narratives and the gift of the future. Narrative Works: Issues, Investigations and Interventions, 2, 67–82.
Tsing, A. (2012). Unruly edges: Mushrooms as companion species. Environmental Humanities, 1, 141–154.
Uzzell, D., & Räthzel, N. (2009). Transforming environmental psychology. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 29(3), 340–350.
Westerhof, G. J., & Bohlmeijer, E. T. (2012). Life stories and mental health: The role of identification processes in theory and interventions. Narrative Works: Issues, Investigations and Interventions, 2, 107–128.
Whitehead, H., & Rendell, L. (2014). The cultural lives of whales and dolphins. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Zittoun, T., & Gillespie, A. (2015). Imagination in human and cultural development. London: Routledge.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Adams, M. (2016). Narrative Foreclosed? Towards a Psychosocial Research Agenda. In: Ecological Crisis, Sustainability and the Psychosocial Subject. Studies in the Psychosocial. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-35160-9_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-35160-9_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-35159-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-35160-9
eBook Packages: Behavioral Science and PsychologyBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)