Narrative Engagement Across Difference Project (NEAD)

Narrative Engagement Across Difference Project (NEAD)

The NEAD project focused on narratives as meaning-making systems: stories that construct how we make sense of the world. For example, authoritarian, illiberal governments—and even liberal democracies—have often used the deep narrative of “security” to concentrate state and corporate power at the cost of freedoms and rights. A rhetoric of dehumanization, fear, and scarcity shapes a sense of threat that is leveraged to justify enhanced state and corporate power as a “common sense” response, such as in these states’ responses to migration and people on the move to justify investing in the expanding surveillance and security industry and measures to criminalize migrant solidarity and justice organizers. An accepting public acquiesces to or endorses state actions that flow from the security narrative. Strengthening our narrative competencies allows us to interrogate how such deep narratives (or meaning-making systems) may operate on us differently from others.

Research shows that successful pro-democracy movements include broad participation across identities, sectors, geographies, and ideologies. Building that level of diversity within a “big tent” pro-democracy effort requires identifying and engaging many different deep narratives. The project started with a crossdisciplinary literature review of all the ways narrative practices might strengthen or impede collaboration across difference. Then, we dug into three core competencies that underpin successful narrative engagement: Narrative Legitimacy (how narratives regulate and determine interactions among people), Narrative Power (the dynamics of decision-making in the narrative landscape), and Narrative Complexity (the capacity of any narrative to evolve and change).

Read more: The story of NEAD by Julia Roig & James Savage

NEAD resources

• Thinking Narratively: Practice Guide – Exploring How Narratives Shape The World We See
• Narrative Landscape Mapping: Toolkit & Podcast
• Countering through Narrative Engagement: Learn more