Original title: Community Organising and Narrative Positioning: Building Sustainable Relationships in Diverse Contexts
People use stories to explain who they are and where they belong. The article looks at interviews about religious identity and uses language analysis to examine how people place themselves within wider social stories. Organisers can use these clues in one-to-one conversations to learn what people care about. That can help them build relationships and coalitions around shared goals.
Imagine talking with a neighbour while deciding how to improve your street. It is hard to work together if you do not know what each person cares about or where your concerns overlap. In this paper, the neighbour’s story helps an organiser understand their priorities, and the shared concerns point toward a group goal.
Community organisers need to build trust across differences before people can act together. This article shows how close attention to personal stories can help organisers understand what matters to someone and find common ground for collective action.
The abstract describes examples from interviews about religious identity, but does not say how many interviews were examined or whether the approach was tested across other settings. It does not report measured outcomes showing how often this analysis leads to stronger relationships or collective action.
Ask anything about this paper. Answers come from its abstract, and say so when the abstract doesn't cover your question.
Community Organising and Narrative Positioning: Building Sustainable Relationships in Diverse Contexts — Stephen Pihlaja — English Studies — doi:10.1080/0013838x.2026.2736516
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.