Outsider/Insider

I finished this recently:

Because that's just how much fun I am. In it, Ms. Lipsitz-Bem (she of An Unconventional Family, one of my favourite parenting books of all time) proposes a psychological theory of how the culture imposes its lenses (or ways of seeing and structuring reality) on the individual, and how the individual then learns to become an active participant in seeing and structuring reality the same way; she also tries to account for how some people fail to become what she terms "cultural natives." She calls this learning to see the lens, instead of seeing through it.

Her description of how this happens is fuzzy. She proposes a biohistorical model of human difference--that while most people are born malleable enough into societies that demand something of them which is in enough accordance with their inborn temperaments that rebellion is unnecessary, some are born stubborn and different enough into societies that demand things of them that they are incapable of providing, and rebelling becomes the only way to maintain psychological integrity, or a sense of self. Beyond this she provides few details for what the mechanism specifically is: her one convincing example in the book is a description of the maturation process for non-heterosexual people. They try to conform; when it becomes apparent that conformance is impossible, that they are incapable of living happily in heterosexual relationships, they rebel; the rebellion is at first intensely distressful and upsetting, but as a community of like-minded souls is found, a new sense of self develops, and the person learns how to see the presumption of heterosexuality as a norm is false, is a lens, and not reality.

In my post about Collaborative Narratives, I concluded by saying that the problem arises when you can't fit yourself into the stories your society tells.

And now I'm going to suggest that combining these two theories--Lipsitz-Bem's about cultural lens transference and Bruner's about the narrative construction of reality--both highlights important flaws in each and constructs a tidy little theory of social change. (I'm so excited! You can go ahead and say it, BubandPie: I'm such an intj.)

Bruner's theory about how stories create social reality fills in the gap about how cultural lenses are created and transferred to the individual. The cultural reality we live in is, in Bruner's view, essentially a collection of stories, the weight of centuries or millennia of narrative accrual. I'm going to suggest that one of the ways, and perhaps the most important way, that cultural lenses are transferred to the individual is when the individual becomes aware of all the stories in the culture and attempts to locate themselves in those stories. According to Bruner, children at very young ages (3 or even 2) use narrative in this way innately, reflexively; use stories to talk about their lives, yes, but also to come to an agreement with someone else about what has just happened, to negotiate reality with other people. So at a very young age children must become aware of all of the relevant stories they hear about social and personal reality: This Is What Good Children Are Like. This is What Good Girls are Like. This is What Good Boys are Like. This is What Good Students Are Like. This is What Good Friends are Like. All composed of stories upon stories. And then children try to locate themselves within these stories, identify the most important components of Goodness as revealed in the stories we tell, and make themselves fit.

So Bruner's theory slots very neatly into the hole in Lipsitz-Bem's. But Bruner's theory itself has a hole, in that it presupposes that the social reality thus created by narrative is actually real instead of ideal or preferred. Lipsitz-Bem's arguments about cultural lenses makes clear that the stories so created are still just that, stories, and that there is actual objective biological reality outside of those social stories. The social reality so created is less of a social reality than a socially-negotiated agreement. We all agree to agree, for instance, on what constitutes a Good Friend. We do this by telling stories about particular friendships that, over time, add up to an image of the ideal.

I think that social change happens when a person or a group of people realizes that their inner stories about themselves and their own lives are fundamentally incompatible and irreconciliable with the dominant cultural stories about who they are supposed to be or what their lives are supposed to be like.

Take The Good Mother. Over millennia, we have told stories about mothers both good and bad that, glued together, present an idealized image of the Good Mother. She is self-sacrificing. She puts her children before herself. She does not want to be separated from her children. She loves her children more than her male partner. She puts her personal ambitions aside to serve her children's needs and desires. She is warm, physically affectionate, playful, and never bored. She revels in tiny hands and squeaky voices. She will not accept less than the best for her children, and will tirelessly work to provide it (within the home). She maintains a spotless environment for her children, provides her children with nutritious foods and somehow coaxes them down the gullet, and encourages them to reach their full potential. All of this gathered together from the stories told in religious texts, novels, stories, TV shows, movies, hallmark cards, magazines, newspaper articles, published studies, gossip, and even jokes.

Only a group of people (mothers) are vocally protesting that they cannot locate themselves within the social reality (The Good Mother) constructed by these narratives. Result: social change. Slow, but still. One of the ways in which that social change is happening is through the accrual of new narratives about what Good Mothers are actually like. A new vision of the Good Mother is being actively constructed through the exchange of stories told by the women who cannot locate themselves within the traditional narrative.

It also explains the insider/outsider phenomenon in a much more satisfying way (to me) than simply claiming that some people are biologically or inherently incapable of conforming with expectations. Those expectations are transmitted through the stories we tell (even when they don't look like stories--gossip, jokes, slurs, greeting cards and advertisements are also narratives in this sense). Some of us realize one day that we cannot fit ourselves into the socially constructed reality we live in, that the stories we hear reflect nothing about the lives we are living. At first (following Lipsitz-Bem's model) we probably reject our own stories, our own reality. Then we reject the culture's instead.

On a personal level, one becomes an outsider when one cannot live out the narrative script of a member of one's demographic group. When one is incapable of conforming to the expectations laid out in the social reality constructed by narrative, and constructs a new personal narrative to explain the gap between one's own actually lived life and the supposed or ideal life proposed by society.

On a societal level, when one person or a group of people creates a new narrative to explain the gap between perceived reality and the socially-agreed-upon narrative reality, and then tries to transpose that new narrative on to or over top of the existing cultural narrative, they become activists.

Posted by Andrea at October 30, 2007 8:43 AM under Books

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