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Abstract
It is commonly assumed in the foreign policy literature that narratives are uniquely persuasive and thus integral to obtaining public support for war. Yet, empirical research on “strategic narrative” is often vague on both the concept of narrative and how it persuades. Moreover, the stories publics use to interpret war are rarely examined. This paper offers a novel approach to studying “from the ground up” the war stories of individual British citizens. It examines public interpretations of war through emplotment: the way people select and link events to create a coherent story. Examining the wars people include and those they silence, it illustrates how a diverse range of citizens morally evaluates Britain’s military role, be it as a Force for Good, a Force for Ill or a country Learning from its Mistakes. In doing so, the paper offers an alternative methodological approach to studying how individual citizens understand war.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Peter Busch, Corinne Squire, Philippe Blanchard, Lea Sgier, Emily Heavey, Theo Farrell, Neville Bolt and the anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments on earlier versions of this article.
Notes
1. This definition is strongly influenced by Miskimmon et al. (Citation2013, pp. 5–8).
2. For early examples, see Kaldor et al. (Citation2007) and Porter and Mykleby (Citation2011) [accessed 20 September 2016].
3. Most research arguing this has been based on the US rather than Britain, but for the essence of the debate (see Drury et al. Citation2010, Reifler et al. Citation2012).
4. There is a notable lack of empirical research on the relative persuasiveness of narrative and argument in the foreign policy literature. For useful reviews in the communications literature (see Allen and Preiss Citation1997, Kopfman et al. Citation1998).
5. See for example Khong (Citation1992).
6. The sample was in fact broadly representative of the British population in terms of gender and socio-economic classification according to the National Readership Survey ABC1/C2DE criteria. In terms of age, 18–24-year olds were slightly overrepresented compared to 25–34-year olds, and 55–64-year olds were slightly overrepresented compared to 45–54-year olds.
7. In Spector-Mersel’s original framework, “clarifying” was termed “appropriate meaning attribution.” The adjustment is purely for stylistic purposes.
8. This addition was strongly influenced by Baumeister and Hastings’ work on the different ways social groups distort collective memory to maintain a positive image of themselves (see Baumeister and Hastings Citation2013).
9. Note that for the purposes of brevity, these otherwise complete stories have been abridged slightly with the text “cleaned up,” involving the removal of some pauses, repetitions and hesitations that are not considered to significantly alter their overall meaning.
10. Full transcript available on request.
11. Narratives in which Britain was generally a Force for Good were coded in 37 out of 66 interviews (56%); Britain Learning from its Mistakes was coded in 34 (52%). The overlap is because both were coded in some interviews, reflecting the hybridity in certain participants’ stories. Caution should be used when making generalisations from these figures though, as while the sample was broadly representative of the British population, it is not statistically so.