Zoekresultaten

Semiotic structuring in (movie narrative generation).

Multimodal narrative as an instrument for social change

This article provides a description of the emergence of the Spanish ‘Occupy’ movement, Democracia real ya. The aim is to analyse the innovative discursive features of this movement and to connect this analysis to what we consider the innovative potential of the critical sciences. The movement is the result of a spontaneous uprising that appeared on the main squares of Madrid and Barcelona on 15 May 2011 and then spread to other Spanish cities. This date gave it its name: 15M. While the struggle for democracy in Spain is certainly not new, the 15M group shows a series of innovative features. These include the emphasis on peaceful struggle and the imaginary of a new democracy or worldview, transmitted through innovative placards and slogans designed by Spanish citizens. We consider these innovative not only due to their creativity, but also because of their use as a form of civil action. Our argument is that these placards both functioned as a sign of protest and, in combination with the demonstrations and the general dynamics of 15M, helped to reframe the population’s understanding of the crisis and rearticulate the identity of the citizens from victims to agents. In order to analyse the multimodal character of this struggle, we developed an interdisciplinary methodology, which combines socio-cognitive approaches that consider ideological proposals as socio-cognitive constructs (i.e. the notion of narrative or cognitive frame), and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in the analysis of discourses related to processes of social imagination and transformation. The socio-constructivist perspective is used to consider these discourses in relation to their actors, particular contexts and actions. The use of CDA, which included a careful rhetoric analysis, helped to analyse the process of deconstruction, transformation and reconstruction that 15M uses to maintain its struggle. The narrative analysis and the discursive theoretical concept of articulation helped to methodologically show aspects of the process of change alluded to above. This change was both in terms of cognition and in the modification of identity that turned a large part of the Spanish population from victims to indignados and to the neologism indignadanos, which is a composition of indignado and ciudadano (citizen).

Narrative identity

We propose that writing can be employed to foster the kind of career learning required in the twenty-first century. The article offers insights into how writing exercises and approaches can be applied to help students construct their career stories in a way that allows them to engage in a dialogical learning process and work in a self-directed way. Creative, expressive and reflective writing practices are described and parallels are drawn between these and existing practices and theories in narrative career counselling. Key exercises in graduate courses for writing for personal development are discussed and a theoretical explanation is given as to why a particular order of approaches and exercises works best to promote career learning.

Developing fourth-generation sustainability-oriented business models: Towards naïve, native, and narrative intelligence

Our world is dealing with several pressing sustainability problems. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives seem to have failed: despite the actions firms have taken over the years to contribute to a better world in an ecological and social sense through directing their resources and competencies towards this goal, the world has been degrading on many important sustainability-related indicators. By implication, firms need to resort to other ways of integrating societal goals into their strategies, organizational architecture, and decision-making processes. Sustainability-oriented business models (SOBMs) may present a way to turn the tides. Adding to the developing discourse on this topic, this chapter identifies three generations of SOBMs and their limitations in realizing sustainable development as well as by presenting an interpretation of fourth generation SBOMs. In doing so, it integrates insights from evolutionary psychology and identifies three types of ‘sustainability intelligence’ firms need to develop in order to be successful in developing SOBMs.

U and I: Synthesizing Life Design and Self Narrative

This paper explores the construction of self-narratives through a synthesis of two frameworks: Designing Your Life (DYL) and Theory U. Using close reading methodology, it analyzes how these approaches inform personal and professional development. The study highlights three key dimensions: doing (prototyping life choices), believing (leveraging intuition), and empowering (considering broader impacts). While DYL emphasizes rapid experimentation in career design, Theory U focuses on systemic change through "presencing." The integration of these perspectives reveals that self-narratives are intricately linked with social systems and future generations. This synthesis advances the discourse on life design by encouraging researchers to consider the role of the Self in historical and future-oriented contexts and by prompting exploration of intuition and narrative co-creation in fields like education and organizational change. The paper concludes that conscious narrative shaping, informed by both action and reflection, is crucial for meaningful personal development in an interconnected world.

Narrative accounts of Origins: a blind spot in the intersectional approach?

This article uses a study of the life-story narratives of former classmates of Dutch and Moluccan descent to argue that the constructionist approach to intersectionality, with its account of identity as a narrative construction rather than a practice of naming, offers better tools for answering questions concerning intersectional identity formation than a more systemic intersectional approach. The case study also highlights the importance of the quest for origins in narratives. It demonstrates that theories of intersectionality are not justified in subsuming the issue of belonging under the identity marker of ethnicity, when all identities are performatively produced in and through narrative enactments that include the precarious achievement of belonging. The case study demonstrates that if narrative accounts of a (singular or collective) life fail to achieve narrative closure regarding roots, attempts to trace routes are seriously hampered.