Stories of Change

Joseph E. Davis is Research Assistant Professor of Sociology and Program Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. He is the editor of Identity and Social Change.

"This book treats a topic that reflects issues that are currently on the cutting edge of the field of social movements and moves it forward. It is quite interesting to read, especially since some of the movements have not had much written about them and are generally less contentious than the movements that received center stage." — William A. Gamson, author of Talking Politics"A contribution to the growing 'cultural turn' in the study of social movements, this book's major strength is its focus on a particular aspect of culture—narrative—and its uses in movements. The topic is significant in that the dominant approaches to social movements and culture have been cognitive, strategic, and other forms of ideological analysis. Attention to affect, stories, and narrative forms a coming wave." — Rhys H. Williams, editor of Promise Keepers and the New Masculinity: Private Lives and Public Morality

• Acknowledgments Part One: Narrative and the Sociology of Social Movements 1. Narrative and Social Movements: The Power of StoriesJoseph E. Davis 2. Plotting Protest: Mobilizing Stories in the 1960 Student Sit-InsFrancesca Polletta 3. Controlling Narratives and Narratives as Control within Social MovementsRobert D. Benford Part Two: Analysis of Narrative in Social Movements 4. "Getting Our Histories Straight": Culture, Narrative, and Identity in the Self-Help MovementJohn Steadman Rice 5. Moving Toward the Light: Self, Other, and the Politics of Experience in New Age NarrativesMichael F. Brown 6. Fundamentalism: When History Goes AwryJoshua J. Yates and James Davison Hunter 7. Drug Court Stories: Transforming American JurisprudenceJames L. Nolan Jr. 8. Compassion on Trial: Movement Narrative in a Court Conflict over Physician Assisted SuicideJeffery D. Tatum 9. Movement Advocates as Battered Women's Storytellers: From Varied Experiences, One MessageBess Rothenberg Part Three: Conclusion 10. The Storied Group: Social Movements as "Bundles of Narratives"Gary Alan Fine Bibliography Contributors