Narrative and the politics of meaning

In a renewed call for interpretive psychological science, this paper argues for narrative as an integrative concept to interrogate mental experience and human development in social and political context. Master narrative engagement is defined as the process by which individuals engage with and internalize competing storylines of history and identity perceived as socially compulsory. Narrative science is concerned with individual responses to these master narratives and the extent to which elements of them become integrated into autobiographies. A narrative approach is posited as better able to capture the reality of lives in context and to enable possibilities for social and political transformation than variable-centered experimental science, which continues to dominate psychology.