Why stories matter

What do we do about that? Our goal is to meet this challenge, to seize this hope, and turn it into concrete action. After developing our stories of self, then we work on building relationships, which forms the story of us. All the inequalities between blacks and whites were driven by a deeper inequality—the inequality of power. Paul Tillich taught us that the work of justice requires power, and for power to become justice requires love.

All three are intimately related. We cannot turn our love into justice without engaging power. Justice is not achieved without struggle. Organizing is about mobilizing power. The Montgomery bus boycott in and was an example of turning individual resources into collective power. To resist the segregated buses, the black bus riders refused to pay the fare to the bus company, and they refused not as individuals but as a community.

By withdrawing that financial resource from the city of Montgomery, they turned an individual resource into collective power. Gandhi taught us that most systems of power are based on interdependence and require some degree of cooperation between those who are exploited by them as well as those who benefit from them.

Communities get organized because there are people among them who are skilled organizers, who are skilled leaders. Leadership is about enabling others to achieve purpose in the face of uncertainty. It matters even more in enabling others to work together to achieve a common purpose in the face of uncertainty.

We start with the skill of relationship-building, the story of self. Then we develop the skill of motivation or the story of us. Third, the skill of strategizing, the story of now. And fourth, the skill of action. You can read 10 books about it or listen to someone lecture about it all day, but how do you really start learning to ride a bicycle? You get on. And you fall. By Marshall Ganz Marshall Ganz, key community organising theorist and educator, outlines the importance of story in social change.

How do we recapture that power of public narrative and learn the art of leadership storytelling? Sojourners Magazine, March Vol. Search for:. Pin It on Pinterest. Why do stories matter? A college professor asked our class this once. Why do we need them? Why do we keep writing, reading and watching stories, sometimes the same story over and over again?

These questions have lingered with me for some time now. My basic reaction was to think stories allow us to escape from reality, for a brief moment at least. Stories also help us explain the inexpiable. I still make up stories as I try to fall asleep, and it helps. There is something comforting in a story. But the importance of stories goes deeper than that.

What I settled on back in that poorly lit, dingy college classroom, and what I still believe today, is that we need stories because we learn from them. Starting from an evolutionary standpoint, storytelling is even an advantage in some ways. An early human goes out in the forest, eats a poisonous berry, gets sick, returns to the tribe and tells them what happened.

Now no one eats those berries. They have learned by listening to a story, a very basic story, but a story nonetheless. The book has the potential truly to in? We suggest it as reading material for feminist colloquia and post- graduate training in both Europe and the US. Leader, Storytelling, Self, Society. Clare Hemmings contributes to radical new understandings of feminist theory by brilliantly synthesizing the debates that currently animate the field, and then intervening in ways that force the rethinking of accepted wisdom.

This extraordinary book identifies the revolutionary elements of a truly global feminist sensibility so urgently required in the present: accountability, reflexivity, and an ability to grasp the intersections between different forms of inequality and power.

Bk Cover Image Full. Sign In. Search Cart. Search for:. Book Pages: Illustrations: Published: January Clare Hemmings examines the narratives that make up feminist accounts of recent feminist history, highlights the ethical and political dilemmas raised by these narratives, and offers innovative strategies for transforming them.

Drawing on her in-depth analysis of feminist journals, such as Signs , Feminist Review , and Feminist Theory , Hemmings argues that feminists portray the development of Western feminism through narratives of progress, loss, and return. Hemmings insists that it is not enough for feminist theorists to lament what is most often perceived as the co-optation of feminism in global arenas.

They must pay attention to the amenability of their own stories, narrative constructs, and grammatical forms to broader discursive uses of gender and feminism if history is not simply to repeat itself.

Paperback Cloth. Availability: In stock. Add to cart. Open Access. Request a desk or exam copy. Table of Contents Back to Top. Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Part One 1.