Narrative theory for complexity scientists
pp. 11-25
in: Richard Walsh, Susan Stepney (eds), Narrating complexity, Berlin, Springer, 2018Abstract
The aim of this chapter is to outline some of the key ideas and concepts in narrative theory, in order to make the field more accessible to those who have only a passing acquaintance with it (complexity scientists in particular). The chapter first gives an account of what narrative is, and then goes on to draw out some of the implications of that account for the way we think and understand in narrative terms. My discussion of these implications draws attention, as opportunity arises, to respects in which the form of narrative bears upon our ability to understand and communicate the way complex systems behave. The chapter does not survey the many facets of the problematic relation between narrative sensemaking and complex systems (that is really the work of the book as a whole), but it does provide a reasonably solid theoretical underpinning for the narrative problems, questions and possibilities taken up in subsequent chapters.