214 Nancy T. Ammerman
depend as much on the internal themes and plots of this autobiographical narrative as
on the situation and cultural plots we imagine to be in play. The core self is constantly
being negotiated in the various social contexts of a life, but it retains certain themes
against which new events and episodes are weighed. Persons understand themselves
as certain sorts of characters who are capable of acting in certain ways and incapable
or unwilling to act in others.^12 An autobiographical narrative makes possible the pre-
dictability with which we respond to each other and imparts a certain trustworthiness
and integrity to our action.^13
It is important to note here that individual internal narratives may be at odds
with the story projected to others. Persons are quite capable of acting strategically
and/or without sincerity, creating a narrative more suited to what they think others
will reward than to their own conscious autobiographical narrative. Likewise, those
internal narratives may include characters and episodes that are never recognized by
others as “real.” Whether the voices heard by a schizophrenic or the visions of a mystic
or the body images that tell an anorexic she is fat, autobiographical narratives may
guide behavior in ways that do not include the “rational” assessment and critique of
the larger community.
But much of identityisguided by those community assessments. In addition to
autobiographical narratives, Somers posits the “public narratives” which are attached
to groups and categories, cultures and institutions.^14 Whether it is the court system or
shopping malls, ethnic group or gender, these social institutions and categories provide
recognized “accounts” one can give of one’s behavior, accounts that identify where one
belongs, what one is doing and why (Mills 1940; Scott and Lyman 1968). These are
publicly constructed and shared, existing beyond the agency and consciousness of any
single individual. Some have enormous strength and widespread recognition; others
seem more malleable and/or more narrowly recognized. The strength of an institution
can, in fact, be measured by the degree to which its narratives are available in the
culture, the extent to which its stories are used to emplot actions across many settings.
Finally, Somers lists metanarratives, which are overarching cultural paradigms for
how stories go – a narrative of progress or Enlightenment, for instance – and “conceptual
narratives,” that is, those constructed by scientists for the sake of explanation. In mak-
ing the determination about how to emplot an event, then, we evaluate possible story
lines according to whether they fit with existing themes – both internal and external –
that guide those plots. That process is not utterly free, of course, and is often constrained
by the power of certain actors to keep dominating stories in place.
Narrative theories posit that action proceeds, then, from the specific place and time
in which it is situated, including thereby all of the available culturally constructed sto-
ries in that place. It proceeds, as well, from the relationships embedded in the situation,
(^12) Teske’s (1997) work on the construction of activist identities makes clear that it is possible for
individuals to construct a schema to describe themselves that can then shape the action they
perceive as inevitable and necessary.
(^13) The moral dimensions of the human construction of a self are taken up by Shotter (1984),
Niebuhr (1963), and others. Much of “virtue” or “character” ethics has these issues as a central
concern.
(^14) These public narratives reside in what Bourdieu would call “fields,” the operative arena that
determines which forms of cultural capital and which habitus will come into play. See Swartz
(1998).