Culture, Theory, and Narrative: The Intersection of Meanings in Practice

Author(s): Dennis Saleebey

Source: Social Work, Vol. 39, No. 4 (July 1994), pp. 351-359
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23717045
Accessed: 23-05-2018 00:46 UTC

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms

Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access
to Social Work

This content downloaded from 83.46.237.13 on Wed, 23 May 2018 00:46:50 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 Culture, Theory, and Narrative:
The Intersection of Meanings in Practice
Dennis Saleebey

Two essential characteristics of the human condition important for

social work practitioners to remember are (I) human beings build
themselves into the world by creating meaning, and (2) culture gives
meaning to action by situating underlying states in an interpretive
system. Practice is an intersection where the meanings of the worker
(theories), the client (stories and narratives), and culture (myths,
rituals, and themes) meet. Social workers must open themselves up to
clients' constructions of their individual and collective worlds. The
major vehicles for this are stories, narratives, and myths.
Acknowledging and helping to refurbish them does not doom social
workers to psychologizing what are, in part, social and political
problems. Social workers can assist in the "insurrection" of
subjugated meanings and help get them into the agency, school,
hospital, commission, institution, community, and profession through
externalization. Such an approach to practice helps clients edge into
the larger and often oppressive world, strengthens the self, and
emboldens the folklore of the group.

Key Words: clinical practice; cuitare; meaning; narrative; theory

how any theory of practice is also a symbolic con

enriched by incorporating constructivist ap
Professional social work can be substantially
preciations and perspectives into its theory
and practice. To do so may require a shift in our
understanding of the nature of reality and our
stance toward what is "true." There are many
ways to construe and construct a world of mean
ing, and we will benefit as practitioners if we come
to understand more clearly how people and cul
tures create a world of meaning and what implica
tions such meanings have for how we approach
our work. Until now, much of the thinking and
work of constructivist practitioners has failed to
do two things: (1) establish a link between indi
vidual constructions and the larger environment
of social institutions and culture and (2) examine
struction or "story." This article offers some pre
liminary thoughts on the intersection of culture,
theory, and individual narratives.
Culture and Meaning
Bruner (1990), in his usual astute and direct way,
draws our attention to two characteristics of the
human condition that we sometimes forget. First,
human beings can only build themselves into the
world by creating meaning, by fashioning out of
symbols a sense of what the world is all about.
Unlike other species, we cannot rely on biology
for instruction. Biology does constrain, but it does
not shape who we think we are, what we think we
are doing, and where we think we are going.

CCG Code: 0037-8046/94 $3.00 © 1994

National Association of Social Workers, Inc.

351

This content downloaded from 83.46.237.13 on Wed, 23 May 2018 00:46:50 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Without some plausible and poignant interpretive mism of the human-made and natural worlds.
devices and images we are lost, swarmed by a rush Whatever meanings a culture sustains are mostly
of stimuli on our nervous systems. Second, we get expressed in two ways: ( 1 ) stories, narratives, and
the raw material for our meanings, however pro myths (individual and collective versions) and (2)
visional, from culture. Culture is nothing if it is nonverbal communication (the expressions of the
not a system where meaning is given to action by body in context) (Hall, 1981).
"situating its underlying intentional states in So the truths that practitioners, researchers,
[this] interpretive system" (Bruner, 1990, p. 24). and educators traffic in often ultimately turn out
Culture insinuates its patterns on us, and they be to be the implements—discourse styles, language,
come embedded deeply within us. and tropes—that make up the culture's stories.
Culture is the means by which we receive, or This fact, says Bruner (1990), makes folk psychol
ganize, rationalize, and understand our particular ogy and folk science enormously important; un
experiences in the world. Central elements of this derstanding a group's interpretive system is a
cultural patterning are story and narrative. That matter of delicate sensitivities. Because most folk
is, we find or impart meaning largely through tell science is "narrative rather than conceptual" (p.
ing stories and weaving narratives, the plots often 35), we must hear the stories. In a similar vein,
laid out by culture. But individuals do not simply anthropologist Michelle Rosaldo (1984) wrote
and passively receive meaning. There is always, as that the self "grows not from 'inner' essence rela
Rosaldo (1989) noted, an interplay between struc tively independent of the social world, but from
ture (culture) and agency (selfhood). We may, as experiences in a world of meanings, images, and
individuals and families, alter the plots of story social bonds, in which all people are inevitably
lines and the motives of actors to suit ourselves involved" (p. 139). These cultural truths and the
and to more comfortably situate us in our own narrative core of folk psychology are based on
world. Much of what culture tells us, the learning of "human agents doing things on the basis of their
it, occurs early: "Once learned these behavior pat beliefs and desires, striving for goals, meeting ob
terns, these habitual responses, these ways of inter stacles they best or which best them, all of this
acting gradually sink below the surface of the mind extended over time" (Bruner, 1990, pp. 42-43).
and, like the admiral of a submerged submarine The dream of discovering truth or reality apart
fleet, control from the depths" (Hall, 1981, p. 42). from a people's and a culture's interpretations
Thus, we frequently mistake what is in fact cultural may be just that—a dream. But social workers are
for something innate and immutable. We only come not doomed to a limp relativism. Rather, we refer
to realize our mistake when we become immersed in to a universal human capacity and interest—mak
another culture or when someone or some event ing meaning, telling stories, and institutionalizing
calls our meaning into question. Egregious errors of myths. Some research suggests that children are
interpretation of what others' behavior means are, disposed to receive and offer stories from the very
according to Hall, attributable to this "hidden" as earliest months that they can communicate (Miller,
pect of culture. To transcend it, we must know that 1982). We can examine stories and myths and imag
it is there, and then we must summon up the mean ine their consequences for individuals and groups in
ings and patterns that make it up. Without that exer terms of our own interpretive canons, values, and
cise we are doomed to misinterpret the lifeworld of morals. Nevertheless, until we begin to ground our
people of cultures or subcultures that differ from our professional understanding and actions in the sto
own (Hall, 1981). ries, in the meaning systems of those we help, we will
Another lesson learned from those who have continue to make the same errors that Rosaldo
come to understand other systems of meaning (1989) claimed have been made by objectivist eth
besides their own: No culture has a monopoly on nographers: "In cross-cultural studies, the gaps be
truth. Truth may be an irrelevant standard by tween the analyst's narratives and those of the pro
which to judge a culture or microculture such as a tagonists often rival the clashes of incongruous
group, family, or gang (Rosaldo, 1989). Truth by epistemologies in Javanese shadow theater" (p. 142).
one culture's standards is fantasy or folly by
another's. Even the truths of a particular culture Narrative and Story
change and shift with the passage of time, the in Borrowing from others, I have claimed that the
termingling with other peoples, and the dyna interpretive slants taken in cultures often come in

Social Work / Volume 39, Number 4 / July 1994

352

This content downloaded from 83.46.237.13 on Wed, 23 May 2018 00:46:50 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
the form of stories and narratives. Although the
differences among narrative, story, and myth are
difficult to aptly describe, we may assume that
narratives are grounded in the culture, are wide
spread, are more attentive to form and style, and
often relate to matters that are prototypical and
essential to the culture (Laird, 1989). Stories, al
though they might be derivative of narrative, may
be more restrained, more loosely organized, and
more idiosyncratic. Myths, on the other hand, are
epic and epochal. They contain the big truths
about culture, family, and individuals, past and
present. They are preserved because they in some
way underwrite a considerable fund of meaning,
and they provide a rich interpretive lode (Laird,
1989). Therefore, there is a considerable politics
of storytelling, narrative construction, and
mythmaking: How is it decided which stories are
credible and institutionalized? Consider, for ex
ample, groups who are oppressed within a culture.
We rarely hear their stories, and they are not al
lowed to tell them except in certain tightly en
closed circles (Laird, 1989; Rosaldo, 1989).
Bruner (1990) pointed out that narratives and
stories generally take two forms—the canonical
and the exceptional. On the one hand, some nar
ratives celebrate the normative structure of cul
ture; they instruct, chasten, and lend rhetorical
weight to norms and conventions. (In this instance
the politics of narrative instruction are prominent.)
Other narratives, however, have the purpose not
of distributing canon, but of accounting for ex
ception, novelty, and anomaly. When we encoun
ter novelty or the bizarre, we do our level best to
fit it into a canonical guise. Often we cannot, so
we "make up" a new story. But, most important
of all, stories and narratives "dabble in the sub
junctive" (Bruner, 1990, p. 53), exploring the ten
sions between the possible and impermissible, ex
horting alternative possibilities, explaining or
explaining away falls from grace, and exalting
achievement. For example, Alcoholics Anony
mous (AA) has been both praised and damned for
being based in the "disease" model, but those who
know it well know that disease is merely a meta
phor of mythic proportion and that the method is
founded on what drinkers excel at, the telling of sto
ries—endlessly. AA's method is subjunctive art:
Drinking, all we did was tell stories, if only to
ourselves. Drinking, we built ourselves a drunk's
ladder of words, one end propped on the clouds,
Saleebey / Culture, Theory, and Narrative: The Intersection of Meanings in Practice
This content downloaded from 83.46.237.13 on Wed, 23 May 2018 00:46:50 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
the other floating on water. The whole ladder is
important if you would understand drunkards,
but fluid footing is where you begin to under
stand AA. The fellowship exists to ground the
drunk's ladder on solid earth, on common
ground, and whether we extend one end of it
back up into the heavens or simply lay it down to
bridge the chasms between ourselves and others, it
is still made of words. ("Elpenor," 1986, p. 43)
Interpretation and Reality
There is hot debate now in the field of family
therapy. The structuralists or constructivists con
ceive of family therapy as correcting a script or
helping the family rewrite a better text for their
life. It matters not if it is "true," as long as it is help
ful, plausible, interesting, and positive. Reframing is
one species of this therapeutic genus (de Shazer,
1991; Watzlawick, 1978; White 8c Epston, 1990).
But serious criticism has been leveled at this kind
of meaning construction, and social workers should
take it seriously. Minuchin (1991), certainly a
partiarch in the field, decries the exclusive con
structivist reliance on stories because they ignore
"the social context that may actually dictate the
'plot' of [clients'] lives—the institutions and so
cioeconomic conditions that determine what they
do and how they live" (p. 49). We must respect
the forces of circumstance and context and of
politics, social institutions, and economy, but
there are other ways to look at this criticism.
Interpretation and story are the essence of cul
ture. They are not trivialities unrelated to circum
stances. Rather, they are serious and essential cre
ations that grow out of the experiences people have
in particular environments. Stories may instruct
individuals on how to survive or how to accept—
even how to overcome—difficult situations. And
at the least stories reveal to individuals consider
able information and perspective about the nature
of their circumstances. The stories created out of
the experience of slavery in this country were no at
tempt to shut one's eyes to the horrors and furies of
slavery. Although they foretold a time of grace to
come, they also directed people to look squarely
and bravely at their predicament (Gwaltney,
1980). Consider the opposite: Individuals and cul
tures whose stories have been appropriated or
suppressed forcibly are in dire straits because they
cannot reliably and safely construe circumstances
to their advantage. People can surmount the most
distressing of conditions given the uplift and
guidance of stories and narratives. When we bellion. In a democracy that professes justice and
robbed Native Americans of their stories by pro equality, social resources must be made broadly
pagandizing and punishing their children in available to underwrite the blossoming of self,
schools, we stole from them some of their cultural family, group, and culture. But all resources are
sinew, their collective memories, their hopes (de not external; many are internal to self or group
Loria, 1969). and need to be explored, to become valued, and to
Without a story, meaning, conviction, and pos be rendered employable. More often than not,
sibility fail. Only when we endow a circumstance, such resources are preserved or discovered in an
event, or situation with words and a plot line does individual's or group's narratives, myths, and
it become relevant. Women, as many have writ other songs of the subjunctive.
ten, have suffered from having many of their ex Stories are not money or housing or food, to be
periences unstoried and others told merely pri sure. But neither are they idiosyncratic creations
vately or when made public, belittled. But there is not tied to real life. Often they are what binds us
an upsurge in the publicizing of woman's stories to that outer world. Rosaldo (1984) asserted that
and in feminist mythmaking that is clearly em the self only grows from "experience in a world of
powering. Laird (1989) said it well: "As more and meanings, images and social bonds" (p. 139). As
more women tell their own stories and as stories Bruner (1990) argued, "Interpretive meanings are
are told about women in biography, novel, play, metaphoric, allusive, very sensitive to context...
and poem and in music, film, television, and ra .They are often the coin of culture" [italics added]
dio, women's choices for self-construction are (p. 61). So stories and myths and narratives can be
enriched and expanded. Women not only begin to the instruments of empowerment—individual
connect themselves with other women and to dis and collective.
cover new possibilities for their lives, but also
Social Work Practice: The Intersection
have new opportunities to tell the stories of their
oppression and of their poverty" (p. 440). The of Meanings
subjugation of other peoples typically begins with One version of the helper myth has him armed
two basic violations of human nature: suppression with theory and technique, heroically maintaining
of the body and its passions and degradation or interpersonal distance and dispassionate concern
suppression of the native word or story. Peoples as he blandishes a variety of esoteric techniques
becoming free often begin by rediscovering their and a precious lexicon to bring her out of her mis
past and its stories, myths, and rituals and by re ery. In this myth it is usually a him helping a her.
covering their sensuality. To do so successfully he first must figure out what
Another thread ties narrative to social context the problem is, and he has theory to help him do
in an important way. People have always been in just that. Without theory and proven technique,
spired by visions, images, and symbols held up to our hero is as impotent as Samson. The education
their eyes by inspirational leaders, leaders who and research enterprise, in this saga, is to provide
could weave tales of imminent possibility and tri armament for our helper. Cynicism aside, the in
umph grounded in the real circumstances of their terpretive slant on this myth is that any theory or
followers. Tales of the quest for respect, relief, or any technique is as much a symbolic and linguis
redemption or the creation and reviving of sym tic construction as the next guy's story. As
bols that unite hopes with action have moved Goldstein (1991), with his usual wit, contended,
people and have encouraged them to alter or defy "As it turns out, the apparent 'facts' [he refers
their circumstances. Thanks to the word, whether here to the building blocks of theory for prac
spoken by Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Cesartice—scientifically derived facts] are really human
Chavez, Betty Friedan, Alice Walker, Elie Weisel, inventions, not scientific discoveries such as a new
or Black Elk, people have been empowered and virus, atomic particle or galaxy. Concepts such as
restored. These kinds of stories and visions also 'ecosystems' or 'codependency' are authored as
may insulate individuals and groups from the op arbitrarily, selectively, and rhetorically as are the
pressors' stories about them. themes and impressions of an autobiography or
Finally, stories and narratives link people to novel" (p. 5). What may be happening in the usual
context and institution. They can provide the helper-client interaction is that the helper, clumsily
building blocks of critique, reaction, and even re or deftly, imposes his version of the situation or

Social Work / Volume 39, Number 4 / July 1994

This content downloaded from 83.46.237.13 on Wed, 23 May 2018 00:46:50 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
recasts the client's version into professional cant
and canonical, not common, sense. That is theory.
Clients surrender their own narratives (or sup
press them) and accept the professionals' theory,
thus becoming more receptive to technique and
more compliant with regimen. The Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Disorders, Third Edition—
Revised (DSM-III-R) can be understood as a text
for the translation of an enormous variety of hu
man predicaments, follies, emotional and cogni
tive states, and social conditions into a standard
"accounting" and, eventually, numbers (Cutler,
1991). There is an inherent dualistic tension in the
DSM-III-R. On the one hand lies the subjective
and narrative presentation of the client, on the
other, the "objective" and numerical pronounce
ments of the professional using the diction of
DSM-III-R (Cutler, 1991). In this way, however
benignly, the client's story is subjugated, made
fugitive (Foucault, 1980; Weick, 1983).
Critique of the value-free version of the work
of a discipline or profession is occurring on many
fronts. Perhaps one of the more useful in helping
us contextualize practice comes from anthropol
ogy. In likening anthropologists to the social crit
ics envisioned by Walzer (1987), Rosaldo (1989)
said this: "Rather than work downward from ab
stract principles, social critics work outward from
an in-depth knowledge of a specific form of life.
Informed by such conceptions as social justice,
human dignity, and equality, they use their moral
imagination to move from the world as it actually
is to a locally persuasive vision of how it ought to
be" (p. 194). There is a heavy load of imperative
in that quote for social work. The initiatory act of
the helping would seem to be the suspension of
canon or theory (not much different, it would
seem, than the old saw about "beginning where
the client is"). The orientation of the worker
clearly has to be informed, insofar as possible, by
an appreciation of the context and meaning sys
tem wherein the client dwells. It would seem req
uisite to encourage and give free reign to the
client's hopes, aspirations, possibilities, and im
manent meanings and actions. And certainly we
may have to understand and illuminate the
client's storied situation in the gleam not so much
of theory, but of our own moral imagination and
the values of the profession.
Nevertheless, it is extraordinarily difficult to
hear and respect the accounts of clients, particu
larly if they are in a socially subordinate position
Saleebey / Culture, Theory, and Narrative: The Intersection of Meanings in Practice
355
This content downloaded from 83.46.237.13 on Wed, 23 May 2018 00:46:50 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
(it is possible that the very definition of "client"
implies subordination) (Holmes 8c Saleebey,
1991). The static of our own theories and pre
sumptions, agency canon, and the informal stories
about clients and client groups that permeate the
atmosphere of many agencies make it difficult to
hear with clarity and to manage the suspension of
disbelief. Goldstein (1991) quoted Fibush in this
regard:
If one truly listens to what a client is saying—not
for the purpose of pigeonholing him into a diag
nostic category or pinning a sociological label on
him—one begins to know some of the basic re
curring questions arising out of the human di
lemma. ... My understanding... comes in the
interchange between me and the client.... A
diagnosis can be as stereotyping as a racist slur
and even more dangerously prone to becoming a
self-fulfilling prophecy, (pp. 4-5)
A first-year social work student, with no previ
ous social work experience, begins work with a
young man, a heavy drug user in the past, who is
ostensibly in the throes of the last stages of ac
quired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). In
the hospital, all but isolated if not morally quaran
tined by staff, he is, in effect, a pariah. One doctor,
answering the student's question about involving
the family, suggests that people "like this" typi
cally do not have families who care. (This is the
doctor's story, by the way.) Innocent, unnerved,
but dedicated, the student does not know what to
do—but she does the most human thing; she so
licits and really listens to the young man's story.
He rallies for a few days, days made passable
(maybe even possible) by his storytelling. At a
point at which death seems near, he says to the
student, "I love you." She, against her learning,
replies in kind. Through her encouragement of
the story and, thus, the self, she and the young
man had trafficked in the possible, acknowledged
the past, and laid some ghosts to rest. But for the
student, there is a political lesson here. Her
client's story and others like it must get out, and
she will assist in that project.
Meaning and Troubles
Practitioners need to know how meaning,
whether manifested in story, narrative, vision, or
language, affects intention and action, feeling and
mood, relationships, interactions with the sur
rounding world, well-being, and possibility. They
also need to know how meaning can get people obsessively on drugs, danger, and disorganiza
into trouble, get them stuck, or embroil them in tion—"even the police are afraid to go there." We
crisis. There are many ways in which meaning is have encouraged social work students placed in
implicated in human dilemmas: the housing development to find and help spread
■ Stories, narratives, and meaning configura counter stories: tales of survival under difficult
tions sometimes are not one's own or even conditions; stories about compassion, about
those of one's culture. Rather, they are com"grace under pressure"; tales of accomplishment;
posed by and imposed from the outside. and word pictures of people acting effectively with
The individual and the collectivity have no dignity and aplomb. These stories exist, but they
ownership of these meanings. Thus, reso tend to be brushed aside or suppressed by the
nance and vitality of action are subverted. force of "alien" and dominative stories. Both story
■ There is an "impoverishment of narrative lines are "true," and both should inform and di
resources" (Bruner, 1990, p. 96)—that is, rect the residents. But the stories of survival and
the stories that come from lived experience, accomplishment need to be restored as well.
individual and collective, are few or are not There is an inevitable connection between what
compelling; they lack symbolic power or people do and what they think they can do and
subjunctive intensity. the interpretive frameworks available to them
■ The stories that people tell, the construc (Bruner, 1990). So the importance of stories of
tions they devise about their lives, some hope and survival is paramount.
times propel them down dead ends or dan As an example of the divergence between myth
gerous paths. Occasionally such stories and reality, consider the U.S. government's long
assume the status of myth (Laird, 1989). Forheld view of the Soviet Union as the enemy, the
example, "All the men in this family are "evil empire"; we constructed narratives of mythic
hell-raisers. You can't tame them, you've proportion that fueled defense policy, depleted
just got to accept what they do or get out." social policy, and crafted intelligence and diplo
■ The meanings through which people try to matic strategies. But in a matter of months, that
construe their situations and their lives do story was subverted by an exceptional and sudden
not account for the exceptional, only the series of events. Because we still cannot account
expectable. When the ordinary does not pan comfortably for it, we remain suspended some
out and the unique or unbidden occurs, it where between hope and suspicion.
cannot be made comprehensible or given
coherence. As a result, it is ignored, or it Meaning and Practice
causes fear and maybe the paralysis of will Meaning and interpretations are socially consti
or action. tuted, a product of interaction and exchange.
■ The stories that some people tell have no They are also born of the fact that individuals are
currency in the larger world of people and almost always in some degree of disequilibrium
events, particularly the stories of individuals and seek to organize their world in a way that is
from cultures and subcultures outside the more predictable, satisfying, resonant, or interest
dominant institutions. To traverse and traf ing. Cultures may actually survive because they
fic in the dominant world they have to sur provide schemes for accounting for the novel or
render to other interpretations of their lives, for confronting change. But no matter how well
often adulterated and corrupt (White & cultures do that, individuals are frequently in the
Epston, 1990). position of becoming authors, agents of construc
As an example of narrative adversities, consider tion. Sometimes, however, for the reasons out
a public housing development in a midwestern lined above, the agency of individuals weakens or
city. Some residents are clearly discouraged, becomes disreputable, and they need help in deal
dispirited, even depressed. Some of the stories ing with crisis and challenge and in refurbishing
they tell about their lives, the meaning they attach meaning. Help can come in many guises, only one
to events in some subtle ways, spring from or are of which is professional. But when people are in
at least reinforced from the outside. The world of crisis, one of the avenues for change is the "devel
public housing is seen by outsiders through tales opment, overthrow and redevelopment" of mean
presented in the media and elsewhere that turn ing (Steenbarger, 1991, p. 291).

Social Work / Volume 39, Number 4 / July 1994

^sT

This content downloaded from 83.46.237.13 on Wed, 23 May 2018 00:46:50 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 Thus, a social worker can help serve as a cata
lyst in the reconstruction or reconstrual of mean
ing as it affects some part of a client's world. The
idea is not necessarily the restoration of equilib
rium or even the boosting of adaptive capacity,
although those might be a result. Helping the resi
dents in the public housing project construct or
enliven alternative stories has, among other
things, begun, for some, the process of viewing
the "housing project" as a "community" or
"neighborhood," where individuals begin to take
ownership and transform it, rather than hide be
hind their doors and wait for the police to come
or for the Housing Authority to come up with a
new security plan. Seeing that other people have
different and more positive constructions about
the public housing experience is important. One
woman, for example, has lived there 35 years and
successfully raised eight children. As these stories
become available to other people, they allow the
formation of some new meaning and the recap
turing of some old meaning about the experience
and—this is so important—encourage people to
begin to create a vision about what might be and
to take some steps to achieve it. Drugs and danger
are still there, but they may be confronted differ
ently as people slowly open up the story that this
can be a community.
Because meaning making in people's lives is
reciprocal, we usually do it in league with others,
and many of our constructions derive from our
relationships with others, are about our relation
ships, or affect them (Steenbarger, 1991). So with
clients, we act as collaborators, cofacilitators, and
codirectors as we work to resurrect, confirm, or
disconfirm old meanings; establish "better texts";
and, most importantly, discover how different
meanings differently influence people's lives. The
ultimate purpose of collaborative construction
and reconstruction is to help clients transform part
of their lives and get on which it, whatever if is.
One element of practice that seems to flow from
the idea of meaning making, though not logically, is
the diminishing of the influence of the idea of
"problem" and the focus on "solution" (de Shazer,
1991). The idea of problem presupposes a cause, and
much of the interest and work in the helping profes
sions has been defining or discovering both the
problem and its cause. But if individuals live in a
world of constructed meaning, a world of symbols
and signs, tales and sagas, myths and rituals by
which they define and promote themselves, then
Saleebey / Culture, Theory, and Narrative: The Intersection of Meanings in Practice
"Us?"
This content downloaded from 83.46.237.13 on Wed, 23 May 2018 00:46:50 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
what we are doing together is finding or producing
narratives that promote a difference in the way
people experience and act in their situations (de
Shazer, 1991). Only when people start creating sce
narios of possibility do they move in directions more
satisfying to them, and the problems become lost or
much less influential. In working with people with
chronic mental illness, Rapp and his associates
(Modrcin, Rapp, & Poertner, 1988) began with the
belief that there is no predictable limit on client
growth. Given that, they worked with clients, many
of whom had had multiple hospitalizations and who,
from a problem or pathology perspective, were se
verely debilitated, to achieve goals that clients
wanted—to help make possible different stories that
clients would tell about themselves. The result?
These individuals, almost without exception, began
to construct a life—collaboratively—that no one
would have predicted. The interesting thing is that
they did this "in spite of their illness." In fact, their
symptoms may have occurred at the same level, but
the other parts of them became part of their unfold
ing story; "me as employee," "me as piano player,"
"me as driver," "me as spouse and parent." The
symptoms move into the background of a much
richer symbolic ecology.
So meaning, depending on its context, symbolic
nature, and origin, can inspire or oppress. If so, why
not take the time to work with individuals to articu
late those meanings, those stories, those possible
narratives that elevate spirit and promote action?
A Final Word: Community and Morality
The enduring debate about psychotherapy and
social work is relevant here (Barker, 1991; Specht,
1991). It might seem that what is being advocated
is a version of constructivist family therapy where
one blithely reframes individual and family miser
ies and real pain into more positive and "moving"
language. Perhaps, but that is not all. Earlier in
this essay I referred to the idea that meaning con
struction has political and social elements. Let us
now take this a step further.
Social work, in a unique way, is a value-driven
profession. We cannot ignore, though we might
not know how to invoke, our commitments to
social and distributive justice, equality, develop
mental socialization, the uniqueness and value of
each individual and culture, and compassion and
caring. Neither can we ignore the fact that we work
at the intersection of self and social environment and
the reality that somehow we have to work both sides
of that street. So how can our emphasis on meaning and (2) to promote the resurrection to conscious
making preserve this sense of the profession? ness of local knowledge so that it can be acted on
We can begin with Foucault's (1980) notion of and used to confront those who would oppress.
the relationship between knowledge and power. But we do not stop at the elevation of subju
Power is constitutive of our lives; it is through the gated meaning or its revision; we work with client
institutions of power that truth is delivered to us, groups to "externalize" it (White 8c Epston, 1990)—
and it is usually a truth that specifies a form of iden that is, to bring it to bear on the circumstances of
tity or being. In most social contexts, current and their lives. Whether through the devices of advocacy
historical, this dominative truth normalizes diverse or brokerage, consultation or education, we at
experiences for the purpose of maintaining control, tempt to make some part of the client's external
sustaining preferred social arrangements, and mak world receptive and accountable to formerly subju
ing "docile" the bodies and minds of those who gated knowledge. In public housing, we want the
would beg to differ. The "global truth" claims of the Department of Housing and Urban Development to
proponents of "objective reality" (the dominative be aware of the stories and lore of residents, not just
truth in the Western world) subjugate other the schemes and brainchildren of Henry Cisneros
knowledges or, in our terms, other systems of mean and his operatives. We want to help the local hous
ing (Foucault, 1980). Knowledge and power are in ing authority develop relationships with and policies
separable, and any power domain is also a domain of about the public housing units that affirm and ex
constitutive knowledge, the symbolic casting of per press clients' knowledge, resources, and stories.
sonal identity and experience: "There can be no pos B has lived in a public housing community for
sible exercise of power without a certain economy of 20 years. The night before I talked to her, she had
discourses of truth which operates through and on just driven back from the state capital (several
the basis of this association. We are subjected to the hours) with other residents to protest a proposed
production of truth through power and we cannot statute that would extend public authority over
exercise power except through the production of each individual housing unit. B is about 60 and
truth" (Foucault, 1980, p. 93). beset with many physical difficulties, and when
One set of knowledges subjugated and dis she got home she was tired. After falling asleep,
placed by the dominative truth are some local she was awakened by loud banging on her door. It
knowledges. They exist but are denied credibility was the police, and they were after two young
and the possibility of performance and presenta men who had shot another young man in an
tion in a larger social arena whether it be a school apartment above. B cooperated with the police
system, social agency, the media, or the polity. and spent the rest of the night worrying if she had
Given that social workers often work with vulner endangered herself and her family. As she told the
able or subjugated populations, what could be story, I asked how and why she went on. (She
more important work than to help individuals works hard for the community.) Nobody had
and collectivities restore and "restory" (Laird, asked her that before. She thought and finally said
1989) themselves? To use Foucault's word, we as that she had to; somebody had to preserve the
sist in the "insurrection" of these subjugated community, to do the work, to set an example.
knowledges in the lives of our clients and let it She cannot rely on others—so she does it herself
inform our agencies, our communities, and our or with a few others whom she trusts. Sometimes
own professional theories. Such action has obvi she gets discouraged or enraged, but "I'd die if I
ous implications for the curriculum by which we didn't do what has to be done." B is no saint, but
educate social work professionals, how we think her story (and there are many others) is not heard
about and do research, and of course the charac in the surrounding community and in the halls of
ter of practice. In a sense, we are only doing what government and is not portrayed in the images of
many have called on us to do. For years the most the media. For real change and hope, it must be.
lucid and compelling of these voices may have The argument then is that relying on a more
been Freire's (1973). The charge to social workers contextual or constructivist view of the world
for, and educators of, the vulnerable, he argued, is does not doom social work to a lame imitation of
basically twofold: (1) to promote "conscient family therapy, but rather can help us not only
ization" or full awareness of the oppressive effects fire our moral imagination but also continue the
of the dominative knowledge-power institutions work, however halting, incomplete, and modest,

Social Work / Volume 39, Number 4 / July 1994

358

This content downloaded from 83.46.237.13 on Wed, 23 May 2018 00:46:50 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
toward the liberation of the dispossessed and vul
nerable. We have to politicize constructivist ap
preciations or, in our terms, "externalize" them.
In work with any vulnerable or dispossessed
population, assisting in the recapturing and re
constructing of "generative themes" (Freire, 1973)
is but the first step. From that we must collaborate
in the projection of these themes outward to the
institutions that have subjugated or ignored them. In
this way, as these "acts of meaning" (Bruner, 1990)
edge into the larger world, the self is strengthened,
and the folklore of the group is emboldened. ■
References
Barker, R. L. (1991). Should training for private practice
be a central component of social work education? Yes!
Journal of Social Work Education, 27(2), 108-111.
Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Cutler, C. E. (1991). Deconstructing the DSM-III. So
cial Work, 36, 154-157.
chronically mentally ill. Evaluation and Program
Planning, 11, 307-314.
Rosaldo, M. Z. (1984). Toward an anthropology of self
and feeling. In R. A. Schweder 8c R. A. LeVine
(Eds.), Culture theory: Essays on mind, self and edu
cation (pp. 137-157). Cambridge, England: Cam
bridge University Press.
Rosaldo, R. (1989). Culture and truth: The remaking of
social analysis. Boston: Beacon Press.
Specht, H. (1991). Should training for private practice
be a central component of social work education? No!
Journal of Social Work Education, 27(2), 102-107.
Steenbarger, B. N. (1991). All the world is not a stage:
Emergent contextualist themes in counseling and
development. Journal of Counseling and Develop
ment, 70, 288-296.
Walzer, M. (1987). Interpretation and social criticism.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Watzlawick, P. (1978). The language of change: Elements
of therapeutic communication. New York: Basic
Books.

de Loria, V., Jr. (1969). Custer died for your sins: An Weick, A. (1983). Issues in overturning a medical model
Indian manifesto. New York: Macmillan. of social work practice. Social Work, 28,467-471.
de Shazer, S. (1991). Putting difference to work. New White, M., 8c Epston, D. (1990). Narrative means to
York: W. W. Norton. therapeutic ends. New York: W. W. Norton.
"Elpenor." (1986, October). A drunkard's progress: AA
and the sobering strength of myth. Harpers, 265,
42-48. Dennis Saleebey, DSW, is professor and chair, PhD
Program in Social Welfare, School of Social Welfare,
Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews
and other writings, 1972-1977. New York: Pantheon.University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045.
Freire, P. (1973). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York:
Seabury Press.
Accepted December 17, 1992
Goldstein, H. (1991). If it hasn't made progress as a science
might social work he an art? Unpublished manuscript.
Gwaltney, J. L. (1980). Drylongso: A self-portrait of
Black Americans. New York: Random House.

Hall, E. T. (1981). Beyond culture. New York: Anchor

Doubleday.
Holmes, G. E., 8t Saleebey, D. (1991). Empowerment
and the politics of clienthood: Autonomy, community,
and the medical model. Unpublished manuscript.
Laird, J. (1989). Women and stories. In M.
McGoldrick, C. Anderson, & F. Walsh (Eds.),
Women in families: A framework for family therapy
(pp. 428-449). New York: W. W. Norton.
Miller, P. J. (1982). Amy, Wendy and Beth: Learning
language in South Baltimore. Austin: University of
Texas Press.

Minuchin, S. (1991, September-October). The seduc

tions of constructivism. Networker, pp. 47-50.
Modrcin, M., Rapp, C. A., 8t Poertner, J. (1988). The
evaluation of case management services with the

Saleebey / Cw/twre, Theory, and Narrative: The Intersection of Meanings in Practice

This content downloaded from 83.46.237.13 on Wed, 23 May 2018 00:46:50 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms