Paper short abstract:

I am concerned here with the valency of narrative as motive and motif in any rapprochement between individuality and sociality.

Paper long abstract:

Binary oppositions are licentious - they flirt with our tendency towards analytical and interpretive closure. In this paper my aim is to explore the ways in which a narrative approach might facilitate an understanding of social life which need not rely on static oppositions such as inner/outer, self/other, micro/macro, reason/emotion. Narrative is the means by which we deal with the inchoate. If we are suspended in webs of significance then those webs are moved and motivated, plotted and plundered -- they are stories, told to, by and about ourselves and others. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork undertaken in various places (in the North of England) and at various times (since 1990) I intend to illustrate, without recourse to sleight of hand, the ways in which narrative binds or bonds 'inner' and 'outer' lives in complex and infinitely subtle ways resulting in both process and product: the narrativus.