Beyond Deconstruction: The Before-The Narrative "Ante"-Narratives of Globalization and Deglobalization
Event Date: 17 April 2018
Time: 4.00-5.30pm (followed by refreshments)
Location: Strathclyde Business School, Stenhouse Wing, SW204
Speaker: David M. Boje, Regents Professor of Management, New Mexico State University
Abstract:
Antenarrative as a storytelling research method includes the system complexity aspects of storytelling. A key to this approach is identifying what is a “living story.” A living story is never alone, cannot stand by itself, and is always part of a webwork of other living stories. Each living story is part of a whole multiplicity webwork of others’ living stories. I call this the qualitative-multiplicity of living story webwork. I use the example of globalization-deglobalization narratives to demonstrate the kinds of insights available through use of storytelling multiplicities as research method.
The globalization narrative of progress and prosperity through free trade and technology is being increasingly opposed by deglobalization-counternarratives of the widening gap between rich and poor nations, and corporate exploitation of the planet’s natural resources. Storytelling deconstruction reveals critiques of these narrative-counternarrative dualities, but may be limited to the surface of the entire storytelling iceberg (narrative above the waterline, living story midway beneath, and antenarrative making the iceberg in the first place).
Meanwhile with the anti-globalization movement, the general public and the activists have moved G8 into G20, with increasing distrust of corporations and politicians. This will make it more difficult to launch the next wave of globalist expansion of trade, technology transfer, and environmental resource depletion. The reason: The inequity gap is grown to be a Grand Canyon. The richest 10 percent produce 50% the carbon emissions, while the poorest 3.5 billion (of the 7.5 billion total) produce one-tenth. The richest 1 percent now owns more wealth than the bottom-90 percent. Just eight billionaires have more wealth than 50 percent of the world’s population.
Biography:
David Boje is an international scholar with over 22 books and 140 journal articles focused primarily on organizational storytelling research methods. His work has applications to strategy-as-process, ensemble leadership, socio-economic interventions, and organizational systems. He has always applied his theoretical insights to practical activism in local communities. In the 1990’s he worked with the Los Angeles Nickerson Gardens public housing community and he helped to initiate the first-ever partnership between the Gardens, the Peace Corps, and Loyola Marymount University. After moving to his current home at New Mexico State University, he established a university-wide minor in Sustainability. Boje has worked with homeless veterans and post-deployment veterans using his “Re-storying” methods, sand tray props, and equine-assisted re-storying techniques. His latest work is with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), agricultural workers who have experienced abuses to the point of enslavement.
Published: 15 February 2018
