Working the Past: Narrative and Institutional Memory

by Charlotte Linde

Overview

Stories told within institutions play a powerful role, helping to define not only the institution itself, but also its individual members. How do institutions use stories? How do those stories both preserve the past and shape the future? To what extent does narrative construct both collective and individual identity? Charlotte Linde's unique and far-reaching study addresses these questions by looking at the interplay of narratives, memory, and identity in a large insurance company. Her detailed ethnography looks at the role of stories within the institution and how they are employed by its members in both private and group settings. Analyzing the re-telling of certain key stories, she shows how the formation of "core" stories and their multiple re-tellings and modifications provide a means of formulating and promoting a cohesive group identity -- which in turn shapes the stories and identities of the individuals within the collective. Linde also looks at silences, and how stories not told also convey their version of the past. Working the Past shows how stories that might otherwise be seen as part of mundane daily life are in fact utterly essential to the formation and maintenance of individual and group identity. Her original research will appeal to those interested in narrative studies, linguistics, anthropology, sociology, and institutional memory.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199722686
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	12/01/2008
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	622 KB

About the Author

Charlotte Linde is a Research Scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center, and has also taught at Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, and the City University of New York. She is the author of Life Stories: The Creation of Coherence.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction: How Institutions Remember 3

2 Data for the Study: The MidWest Insurance Company 15

3 Occasions for Institutional Remembering 44

4 Retold Tales: Repeated Narratives as a Resource for Institutional Remembering 72

5 Multiple Versions of MidWest's History 89

6 Three Versions of One Story: A Comparison 123

7 Paradigmatic Narratives: Exemplary Narratives of Everyman 141

8 Narrative and Intertextuality: Telling One's Own Story within a Textual Community 167

9 Noisy Silences: Stories Not Told 196

10 Working the Past: Identity and Memory 221

Notes 225

References 227

Index 235