approaches were to find expression in various kinds of instrumental projects and campaigns designed by governments, strategists, and foundations. Storytelling as a Resource Social movement storytelling was retooled in the context of post-conflict societies and emergent neoliberal orders. But in a contemporary era of accelerated and contested neoliberalism, this revised model of storytelling comes to play a different kind of function, one that, drawing on George Yúdice (2003), I call, “storytelling as a resource.” Yúdice (2003:1) makes the argument that in a global era, “culture-as-resource is much more than commodity; it is the lynchpin of a new epistemic framework in which ideology and much of what Foucault called disciplinary society…are absorbed into an economic or ecological rationality.” Investment in culture is seen as a way of strengthening civil society, building capacity, and enhancing social capital, serving as a host for economic and political development. Culture is recruited to improve social conditions, spur economic growth, enhance education, resolve racial strife, and reverse urban blight (Yúdice 2003:1-13). Applying Yúdice’s argument, I suggest that storytelling strategies employed by NGOs, development agencies and non-profits also function in this utilitarian way. It is the case that earlier forms of social movement storytelling such as Menchú’s testimonio or women’s narratives in feminist rallies also served an instrumental role, that is, they attempted to use stories as a way to attract supporters and build their movement. The difference is that the concept of “storytelling as a resource” is linked to the 1990s and beyond when social and political life are increasingly oriented to the market, and culture is conceived of in terms of the direct and indirect returns it provides.
changes to reverse climate change, the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, the genocide in Darfur, or the role of transnational mining corporations in the Congo. Rather, it is assumed that the market can be harnessed to resolve people’s problems. As Gledhill (2004:341) argues, “in a world in which the triumph of the market economy is taken for granted, it seems increasingly difficult to specify ‘realistic’ strategies for those at the bottom of global society that do not entail enhancing their capacity to function in market society.” The UNDP report emphasizes investment in social capital as one means to end poverty. The buzzword “social capital” borrows from political scientist Robert Putnam’s work on the networks within society that provide a basis for coordination and governance. Efforts to govern through community are premised on building social capital, as a way to develop the kinds of local-level networks that can promote economic growth and alleviate poverty. Social capital was seen as a resource that communities lacked, and that required some intervention to restore it (Murray Li 2007:244). Development agencies commonly invoke this idea of social capital, along with notions of “empowering women,” “participation,” and “self-reliance.” A story entitled “Empowering Women to Fight Poverty” in Bangladesh has the following pull quote from the country director: “Investing in women yields dividends for the entire family, specifically for children’s education and nutrition.” The language of financial markets is applied to the social problem of poverty alleviation. More generally, storytelling strategies have come to play a key role in campaigns by development agencies to promote MDGs, with UN agencies sponsoring writing workshops, using “micronarratives” or brief personal narratives in their campaigns, and featuring stories on their websites. NGOs have also taken up this strategy of using storytelling to advance the MDGs. The organization Story Workshop in Malawi uses stories to address issues of HIV-AIDS, food
not necessary for the campaign. In all of his materials, Ganz emphasizes the idea of the “two minute story.” Volunteers should practice telling their story in two minutes or less. The story crafting sessions actually began with an extended discussion and sharing of personal experiences. One participant in the August 2007 Camp Obama training in Atlanta recounts how the seven volunteers in his group shared meaningful and rich stories: Ben, who grew up on an Alabama farm as one of fifteen children, lost his father at age ten. Lavell lost his mother to breast cancer as a child growing up in a poor neighborhood of Queens, and Tryshanda came from a failing school system and was told that black girls couldn’t enter the field of astrophysics where she wanted to study (Exley 2007). But having shared these intensely personal stories, the volunteers were asked to rewrite their stories to emphasize how they made the decision to work for the election of Obama. One of these stories was that of volunteer Susan Christopher, from the Camp Obama training session held in Burbank, California in July 2007. The story was uploaded to youtube where it has over 5,000 views. In two minutes and twenty seconds, Christopher relates how she felt when she hesitantly attended a training session and she heard Ganz talking about how Obama was a return of the hope embodied by the Mississippi marches and Cesar Chavez. She describes her reaction in emotive terms: “I felt my heart softening again, I felt myself able to give a little bit more of me to this process.” Christopher doesn’t talk about her intellectual reaction to Obama’s policies but her visceral and bodily reaction to hearing the public narrative of Obama as framed by Ganz. There is an evangelical sense of rebirth that drives these kinds of narratives, which is not surprising given the religious underpinnings of Ganz’s approach. Despite references to Mississippi marches and civil rights during the training sessions, the use of emotion in the Obama campaign was vastly different to its use in earlier campaigns. In
in the process of writing and performing a play called Los Illegals. The Ford Foundation program officer Roberta Uno herself spoke of the need for patronizing art for arts sake – a subversive idea in the current climate: “It can be unnerving for grantmakers to experiment with funding socially engaged art, especially if they don’t have specific impact measures. But we should also be investing in these artists for what they do – and that is the experiment.” The play was not intended to influence lawmakers, or build the capacity of immigrant workers, or any other outcome that could be showcased in a foundation report. Rather, its end goal was creating art, while providing a forum for day laborers to share their stories. It is the tension between the guided processes of storytelling and the stories themselves, between a global phenomenon and its local iterations, that lies at the heart of this book. On this point I diverge from Yúdice’s theory of culture-as-a-resource, in that it ends up being too reductive for understanding stories. For Yúdice, achieving some degree of agency within culture must be done from within the confines of state and market that seek to control it. But I think that this formulation gives short shrift to storytellers, who sometimes, even if briefly, manage to break out of the utilitarian binds of state and market to create alternative spaces of collective imagining that offer a path toward transformative futures. This book raise crucial questions for those interested in social justice movements today. Does the problem lie with the way that storytelling strategies are being applied or rather with the movements themselves, in their exchange of confrontation on the streets for a more transactional and foundation-driven politics of consensus in the courtrooms and legislatures? Could more radical contemporary movements like Occupy Wall Street and the Oaxaca teachers’ strikes (Stephen 2013) provide models for a different kind of storytelling, ones that may even go beyond the dependency on intermediaries or charismatic leaders as in earlier movements? Do individual