Alberto Ganis
Department of Politics, University of California, Santa Cruz

The focus is on the word narrative, and the word economics is associated in order to underline the framework through which the term will be discussed and defined. According to Merriam-Webster, a narrative can be defined as a “way of presenting or understanding a situation or series of events that reflects and promotes a particular point of view or set of values word derives”. It originates from the Latin verb narrare, “to tell”, which is derived from the adjective gnarus, “knowing” or “skilled”. Acknowledging the Latin roots of the term allows us to put it into context: narration is a skill, a tool to be used to frame an event or a situation in a specific way. The importance of narrative as intertwined with the daily practices and sense-making activities of the people is discussed by Amy Skonieczny in “Trading with the Enemy” (2018). The implementation of relatable narratives is crucial in policy-making processes because they place a particular policy in line with the national identity of a country, which plays a role in defining who the state is and why the proposed policy action fits within a certain conception of how the state should legislate, function, interact with other countries, etc. Ultimately the stories are told based “on existing assumptions and stereotypes about partner country identities to make sense, and activate plausible stories that craft states as characters acting in human-like ways to give meaning to economic issues” (Skonieczny 2018, 442).

Yet, a question has to be raised, why are narratives so important to appeal to the people? And how is this relatable to economics? Robert Shiller does a great job in connecting the importance of narration for humans to the economic sphere:

The human brain has always been highly tuned towards narratives, whether factual or not, to justify ongoing actions, even such basic actions as spending and investing. Stories motivate and connect activities to deeply felt values and needs. Narratives “go viral” and spread far, even worldwide, with economic impact. The 1920-21 Depression, the Great Depression of the 1930s, the so-called “Great Recession” of 2007-9 and the contentious political economic situation of today, are considered as the results of the popular narratives of their respective times. (2017, 1)

Nancy Folbre (2009) focuses on the development of capitalism through the lenses of women’s relation to labor, wealth, and caste. Through an assertion that sounds like a stab to Adam Smith, she pinpoints the hinge of one of the social implications of the industrial revolution: “the shift from family-based production to an individual wage system reduced social recognition of those aspects of women’s work that took place outside the market, such as the care of children and other dependent family members” (4). Arguably, this moment initiated the spread of a narrative that encompassed western society at large, a story that reasserted the patriarchal ideology also in the new capitalist landscape. The rise of individual occupation to the loss of the patriarchal family business exacerbated the “employability” problems of women and youth. Being female represented a lack, a lack of strength, a lack of business acumen, and most notably, a lack of morality due to the identification with the lusty Eve bestowed by the Christian faith. The narrative constructed on the basis of the story of the “Original Sin” informed the writings of several ecclesiastic thinkers; no matter their affiliation, the Smiths – the Calvins fed into this discursive construction that unfortunately still exists today. The power of the subaltern status of women as a way of framing the economy can also be seen in the use and promotion of specific terminology aimed at defining the lesser qualities of a concept by connecting it to femininity. The term ‘‘nanny state’’ for example, was and is often used to deprecate public policies that seem fussy, intrusive, and expensive, policies that would perhaps be unnecessary if individual women were more virtuous inside and outside the house (Folbre, 2009, 268).

Whilst this specific narrative is still present, it has found resistance through the organization of feminist and “humanist” groups. John Stuart Mills, for example, became a sort of a champion of women’s equality through his writings on the “Principles”, where he emphasized that values and narratives were culturally constructed and therefore changeable. By means of this understanding, he pushed for gender equality also as a way to improve the well-being of the working class because a greater economic independence for women would mean the realization of self-interest as the main force behind economic growth and welfare. Elias and Roberts (2016) pick up this idea of malleability of value creation in their paper about the intersection of International Political Economy (IPE) and Feminism. They discuss the concept of social reproduction as a key for the daily acts of resistance against the narrative of the patriarchy. They describe social reproduction as those activities usually centered on the household that are central to the production and reproduction of life yet go unaccounted for in conventional economic analysis (791). Elias and Roberts are not the only ones who speak of the importance of daily activities, in fact Hobson and Seabrooke argue that “small but important types of agent practices can contribute to the reshaping of material, institutional, and paradigmatic structures”(in Widmaier 2009, 946), adding that the understanding of narratives regarding IR and IPE should be understood in an interactive context that surpasses the classic top-down imposition of values.

Bibliography

Elias, Juanita, and Adrienne Roberts. “Feminist Global Political Economies of the Everyday: From Bananas to Bingo.” Globalizations 13 (2016): 787-800.

Folbre, Nancy. Greed, Lust, and Gender: A History of Economic Ideas. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Shiller, Robert. Narrative Economics: How Stories Go Viral & Drive Major Economic Events. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019.

Skonieczny, Amy. “Trading with the Enemy: Narrative, Identity, and US Trade Politics.” Review of International Political Economy 25, no. 4 (2018): 441-462.

Widmaier, Wesley. “Economics are Too Important to Leave to Economists: The Everyday – and Emotional – Dimensions of International Political Economy.” Review of International Political Economy 16, no. 5 (2009): 945-957.