In Harmonium

Posted By Marc on February 17, 2008

I just finished presenting a paper at the Stability Operations and State Building conference at APSU. The paper was focused on State Building as a form of communications and about a third of it centered on the concept of “narratives”. I was fascinated by how the concept has been presented in FM 3-24 – poorly, although it seems to not be the fault of the authors but, rather, the redactors. In the paper, I was trying to expand upon the concept as presented in FM 3-24 and make it active and processual rather than passive and historical.

What are “naratives” anyway? The simplest answer is that they are the stories we tell ourselves about reality and the scripts that we use to interact with both reality and each other. Pretty simple, really but, because the concept covers so much ground, they can be deucedly difficult to describe so that they can be understood and used. If I was being poetic, I would describe them as the components we use to improvise (and control) our lives in “reality”.

After chatting with a number of people at the conference, I have come to the conclusion that I need to write a paper that explains what they are, how they are put together, how they operate and how they can be used. By “used”, I don’t mean in the sense of propaganda but, rather, used in the sense of a) being aware of them and b) using that awareness to increase the chance of communicating the sense of meaning you are actually trying to send.

Category: Anthropology, COIN
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