Análisis e interpretación de los resultados de la encuesta

Most of the scholars committed to narrative analysis agree that defining “narrative” could be cumbersome for its polysemy and for the disputes surrounding its meaning. The sociologists Kohler Riessman and Quinney remarked that, as narrative inquiry is marked by realist, postmodern and constructionist diverging views and strands, a final and inclusive definition of “narrative” cannot be articulated.¹⁷⁴

As Polkinghorne illustrated, the word “narrative” can be used in a general way to refer to

“any spoken or written presentation”,¹⁷⁵ such as the answers to a questionnaire in the form of sentences or paragraphs. However, “narrative” is mostly referred to, in narrative analysis, as

“the kind of organizational scheme expressed in a story form”.¹⁷⁶ In this case, it can indicate the process of making a story, the cognitive scheme of the story or the result of the process.¹⁷⁷

“Narrative” is mostly considered a synonym of “story”,¹⁷⁸ which is a special mode of organizing human experience, linking action and events in a chronological way, in order to make sense of them. Griffin and May pointed out “that a narrative is an account of a non-random sequence of events that conveys some kind of action and movement through time”.¹⁷⁹ Moreover, they explain that the sequence of events is made non-random by the articulation of a plot which provides “a logical and meaningful connection between events so that prior events seem inevitably to lead to later ones, providing a sense of causality”.¹⁸⁰ The plot revolves around a particular point or meaning which the narrator wants to communicate to his audience. The plot of a narrative is considered “the organizing theme that identifies the

174 ibid 393.

175 Polkinghorne (n 39) 13.

176 ibid.

177 ibid.

178 ibid; Hayden V White, The Content of the Form. Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (1^st edn 1987, The Johns Hopkins University Press 1990) ix, 1-25.

179 Ann Griffin and Vanessa May, ‘Narrative Analysis and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis’ in Clive Seale (ed), Researching Society and Culture (1^st edn 1998, Sage Publications 2012) 441, 443.

180 ibid.

46 significance and the role of the individual events”,¹⁸¹ that “waives together a complex of events to make a single story”.¹⁸²

The cognitive psychologist Bruner showed that narrative is a mode of knowing and cognitive functioning which is complementary to the logic-scientific mode, follows its own criteria of well-formedness and verification and has its own operating principles.¹⁸³ These two modes of knowing rely on different kinds of causality to connect events, as the logic-scientific or paradigmatic mode pursues universal truth, while the narrative mode searches for “particular connections between events”.¹⁸⁴ Referring to Bruner’s work, Polkinghorne explained that the narrative mode provides a different kind of explanation in comparison to the logic-scientific mode. In the logic-mathematical reasoning “the power of explanation by laws comes from its capacity to abstract events from particular contexts and discover relationships that hold among all the instances belonging to a category, irrespective of the spatial and temporal context”.¹⁸⁵

Conversely, explanation by narrative is contextually related:

“When a human event is said not to make sense, it is usually not because a person is unable to place it in the proper category. The difficulty stems, instead, from a person’s inability to integrate the event into a plot whereby it becomes understandable in the context of what happened (…). Thus, narratives exhibit an explanation instead of demonstrating it.

In narrative organization, the symmetry between explanation and prediction, characteristic of logic-mathematical reasoning, is broken. Narrative explanation does not subsume events under laws. Instead, it explains by clarifying the significance of events that have occurred on the basis of the outcome that has followed. In this sense, narrative explanation is retroactive”.¹⁸⁶

Although narratives can concern individual personal stories, they are inevitably social, as they are the most common form of communication among people. It has been noted that narrative frameworks provide a fundamental resource to structure the events in order to make them more understandable to other people.¹⁸⁷ Narrative frameworks “do not originate from the individual but are shared cultural tools that offer us a repertoire of possible stories and set

181 Polkinghorne (n 39) 18.

182 ibid 19.

183 Jerome Seymour Bruner, Actual Minds, Possible Worlds (Harvard University Press 1986) ix, 11.

184 Polkinghorne (n 39) 17.

185 ibid 21.

186 ibid.

187 Griffin and May (n 179) 443.

47 limits on what can be told”.¹⁸⁸ However, nations, governments, institutions and groups also use frames to make narratives. These narratives build up and reinforce identities and also establish the horizon of possible human action. They tell “who collectivities and individuals are”,¹⁸⁹ “where they come from”¹⁹⁰ and settle roles and boundaries of action. Since narratives which are produced by groups who are vested of social authority gain stability easily, marginal groups have to elaborate counter narratives in order to challenge and oppose the dominant ones.¹⁹¹

In S&TS, scholars have frequently drawn upon narrative analysis as a theoretical approach that offers insights to explain how individuals and collectivities make sense of their experience. Narrative analysis constitute a valuable means of inquiry, as narratives provide a contingent and much more inclusive kind of explanation, which accounts for how identities, action, reality are contextually construed.

Moreover, narratives are at the forefront of emerging orders and new identities. When something new, for example a new technology and its related products such as modern biotechnology, destabilizes and challenges well-established ideas of nature, narrative frames are relied upon in order to make sense and order of it.

Narratives are powerful practices of knowledge-making especially when they are deployed by institutions which are conferred authority. This can result in the normalization of the new technology or in the elaboration of a counter narrative.

The French philosopher Lyotard portrayed the postmodern condition as marked by the decline of master narratives¹⁹² or metanarratives on progress and emancipation of mankind, that modernity¹⁹³endorsed and relied upon in order to legitimize power in society. The fading of master narratives in his analysis entails that culture, in postmodernity, is a “patchwork of little narratives”,¹⁹⁴ too fragmentary and discontinuous to allow a universal point of view.

Notwithstanding this philosophical perspective on human postmodern condition and the breakdown of narratives, S&TS’ scholarship shows that master narratives, as much as narratives, are still lively and constitute influential rhetoric resources in order to legitimize power and action within society as far as science, technology and law are concerned. The

188 ibid.

189 Dawne Moon, ‘Who I Am and Who Are We? Conflicting Narratives of Collective Selfhood in Stigmatized Groups’ (2012) 5 American Journal of Sociology 1336.

190 ibid.

191 ibid 1337.

192 Bill Reading, Introduction to Lyotard. Art and Politics (Routledge 1991) v, 63.

193 ibid 65.

194 ibid.

48 Report entitled “Taking the European Knowledge Society Seriously”¹⁹⁵ by the Expert Group on Science and Governance to the Science, Economy and Society Directorate of the European Commission, mostly formed by S&TS scholars, illustrated that master narratives are institutionally and socially very influential for what they entail, as “They reflect prevailing institutional structures and reinforce collective aspirations. In worlds of policy practice, narratives (…) tacitly define the horizon of possible and acceptable action, project and impose classifications, distinguish issues from issues, and actors from non-actors”.¹⁹⁶

In master narratives of policy, descriptive and prescriptive dimensions are deeply intertwined, so that the description of situations entails how they should be dealt with and regulated. It has been observed¹⁹⁷ that dominant master narratives could be considered “performative”,¹⁹⁸ as their issuing consists in the performing of an action: telling a narrative on something can make it so.

Policy narratives on science and law are centered on frames which exhibit these normative and performative dimensions. In the next section, it will be explained what “frames” are, which is their relevance within narrative analysis and how they have been applied to biotechnology in order to sustain its normalization or to challenge it.