
Storytelling Has Proliferated Today, From Ted Talks And Humans Of New York To A Plethora Of Story-coaching Agencies And Consultants. Heartbreaking Accounts Of Poverty, Mistreatment, And Struggle May Move Us Deeply. But What Do They Move Us To Do? And What Are The Stakes In The Crafting And Use Of Storytelling? In Curated Stories, Sujatha Fernandes Considers The Rise Of Storytelling Alongside The Broader Shift To Neoliberal, Free-market Economies. She Argues That Stories Have Been Reconfigured To Promote Entrepreneurial Self-making And Restructured As Easily Digestible Soundbites Mobilized Toward Utilitarian Ends. Fernandes Roams The Globe And Returns With Stories From The Afghan Women's Writing Project, The Domestic Workers Movement And The Undocumented Student Dreamer Movement In The United States, And The Misión Cultura Project In Venezuela. She Shows How The Conditions Under Which Certain Stories Are Told, The Tropes Through Which They Are Narrated, And The Ways In Which They Are Responded To May Actually Disguise The Deeper Contexts Of Global Inequality. Curated Stories Shift The Focus Away From Structural Problems And Defuse The Confrontational Politics Of Social Movements. Not Just A Critical Examination Of The Contemporary Use Of Narrative And Its Wider Impact On Our Collective Understanding Of Pressing Social Issues, Curated Stories Also Explores How Storytelling Might Be Reclaimed To Allow For The Complexity Of Experience To Be Expressed In Pursuit Of Transformative Social Change.
This book investigates the sociopolitical implications of the contemporary rise of storytelling as a tool for neoliberal self-making and utilitarian mobilization. Sujatha Fernandes, a sociologist and scholar, examines how personal narratives are increasingly curated to fit market-friendly frameworks. She argues that while these stories often elicit emotional responses, they frequently obscure structural inequalities and neutralize the radical potential of social movements by reducing complex human experiences into digestible soundbites.
What You Will Find
Scope Limits
Scholars and critics frequently cite this work as a significant contribution to the critique of narrative politics in the digital age. Readers often note the academic rigor of the prose and the author's ability to connect micro-level storytelling practices to macro-level economic structures.
Page Count:
256
Publication Date:
2017-01-01
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
ISBN-10:
019061806X
ISBN-13:
9780190618063
No comments yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!