Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Institutional Memory
According to Slavenka Drakulic, author of The Balkan Express, war is a simple matter. No politics, no dilemmas, nothing but struggle.
Prior to this state of affairs, though, comes a process of getting used to the idea of war, making the idea a part of everyday life. “Then,” she observes, “rules can change, rules of behavior, of language, of expectations…no room for dialogue anymore, but only for opposing sides to issue warnings, threats, conditions…”
The social conflict that precedes war or political violence is replete with abnormal conduct and rhetoric. References to fears and grievances—real or imagined—proliferate. It is during these times, in particular, that other narratives function as community safeguards against organized aggression, xenophobia, vigilantes.
Barbara Gray and Pat Lauderdale, in their paper The Great Circle of Justice, http://www.cwis.org/fwj/61/great_circle_of_justice.htm refer to narratives and stories as
“basic life forces needed to establish and to preserve communities and develop a common culture of shared understandings, and deeper, more vital ethics…how humans are to live with each other…a blueprint that provides the communities’ structures (e.g., political and spiritual forms of governance, kinship relations, and societies that have specific duties and responsibilities in maintaining justice
within the community).”
Through participation in narrative events, they claim, those who feel as if they are alone become connected to their community.
Gray and Lauderdale’s paper, oriented toward American Indians, applies as well to the rest of us here in Indian country; the stories we tell help to model the type of society we want to live in, who we are, and where we came from. And it is this role of storytelling, the use of history, the preservation of memory, that enables us to recognize patterns of conduct and rhetoric our communities have witnessed previously, in order for us to comprehend new threats and dangers. Replenished, renewed, and repeated, these stories build a cohesive narrative of our collective understanding—our institutional memory.
Memories, however, do not reside in books or aging minds alone; indeed, they require the regular nourishment of ceremonies and conferences and public gatherings where they are spoken and heard and embellished with the perspective of time and maturation and contextual change. And by making the linkages between the past and the present, our stories--with luck--allow us to create the narrative of a future that embraces both.
In his occasional paper, Tribes Institutions Markets Networks, David Ronfeldt examines the framework of societal evolution, contending that, “Civil society appears to be the realm most affected by the rise of the network form, auguring a vast rebalancing of relations among state, market, and civil-society actors around the world...a new center of meaningful citizenship.” These networks—emerging in response to broad societal conditions—embody, he notes, “a distinct cluster of values, norms, and codes of behavior” that, combined with other forms, “allows a society to function well and evolve to a higher level,” but “depends on its ability to integrate these contradictory forms through the regulatory interfaces of law and policy.”
Absent a widespread tribal support system or reliable public or private institutions (let alone markets) for the regular exercise of our new narratives incorporating our vital stories, values, and norms, it is the network form we must now rely on as “curator” of these tales. Organizations within a civil-society network, more precisely, the individuals who retain these collective memories, are then crucial to keeping them alive. Communication of our stories will then determine who we will become. Indeed, they are all we have.
Prior to this state of affairs, though, comes a process of getting used to the idea of war, making the idea a part of everyday life. “Then,” she observes, “rules can change, rules of behavior, of language, of expectations…no room for dialogue anymore, but only for opposing sides to issue warnings, threats, conditions…”
The social conflict that precedes war or political violence is replete with abnormal conduct and rhetoric. References to fears and grievances—real or imagined—proliferate. It is during these times, in particular, that other narratives function as community safeguards against organized aggression, xenophobia, vigilantes.
Barbara Gray and Pat Lauderdale, in their paper The Great Circle of Justice, http://www.cwis.org/fwj/61/great_circle_of_justice.htm refer to narratives and stories as
“basic life forces needed to establish and to preserve communities and develop a common culture of shared understandings, and deeper, more vital ethics…how humans are to live with each other…a blueprint that provides the communities’ structures (e.g., political and spiritual forms of governance, kinship relations, and societies that have specific duties and responsibilities in maintaining justice
within the community).”
Through participation in narrative events, they claim, those who feel as if they are alone become connected to their community.
Gray and Lauderdale’s paper, oriented toward American Indians, applies as well to the rest of us here in Indian country; the stories we tell help to model the type of society we want to live in, who we are, and where we came from. And it is this role of storytelling, the use of history, the preservation of memory, that enables us to recognize patterns of conduct and rhetoric our communities have witnessed previously, in order for us to comprehend new threats and dangers. Replenished, renewed, and repeated, these stories build a cohesive narrative of our collective understanding—our institutional memory.
Memories, however, do not reside in books or aging minds alone; indeed, they require the regular nourishment of ceremonies and conferences and public gatherings where they are spoken and heard and embellished with the perspective of time and maturation and contextual change. And by making the linkages between the past and the present, our stories--with luck--allow us to create the narrative of a future that embraces both.
In his occasional paper, Tribes Institutions Markets Networks, David Ronfeldt examines the framework of societal evolution, contending that, “Civil society appears to be the realm most affected by the rise of the network form, auguring a vast rebalancing of relations among state, market, and civil-society actors around the world...a new center of meaningful citizenship.” These networks—emerging in response to broad societal conditions—embody, he notes, “a distinct cluster of values, norms, and codes of behavior” that, combined with other forms, “allows a society to function well and evolve to a higher level,” but “depends on its ability to integrate these contradictory forms through the regulatory interfaces of law and policy.”
Absent a widespread tribal support system or reliable public or private institutions (let alone markets) for the regular exercise of our new narratives incorporating our vital stories, values, and norms, it is the network form we must now rely on as “curator” of these tales. Organizations within a civil-society network, more precisely, the individuals who retain these collective memories, are then crucial to keeping them alive. Communication of our stories will then determine who we will become. Indeed, they are all we have.
