Epilogue

Even when the truth isn’t hopeful, the telling of it is. —POET ANDREA GIBSON I have made it a habit to have an epilogue, which goes by many different names, as a parting effort to finish a book that simply refuses to be finished, and more so on a topic such as urban gun violence. Trauma’s reverberations are immediate and intergenerational, including the generation yet to be born, spanning multiple decades and becoming part of urban family and community narratives. These generational reverberations also compromise the nation’s moral fabric, casting it internationally as violence prone....

The Shadow of the Pithead: Understanding Social and Political Attitudes in Former Coal Mining Communities in the UK

The economic plight and consequent social and political attitudes of ‘left behind’ communities have become subjects of intense focus across a world impacted by inequality, social unrest, and political populism. We examine whether particular types of local long-term social and economic history affect how residents in different places view the world; here in former mining communities of the UK which remain economically peripheral, and are home to community narratives that emphasise the shared economic, political and cultural heritages that are often fundamental those places’ very existence. We use data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study to contrast political views and social attitudes in communities that were, in 1981, economically dependent on coal mining, with other communities that are similarly economically peripheral in contexts and challenges, but without a shared history of economic decline. We find that residents of former coalmining communities are highly politically disengaged, with low levels of trust and political efficacy, and low involvement in the political process. Moreover, our analysis shows an increase in political engagement over the EU referendum campaign period, which directly addressed some of the grievances felt by these communities. We conclude that community narratives of economic peripherality are strongly inter-linked with trust in government and political engagement.

Ready the Canons: The Role of Canonical Stories in Organizational Sensemaking

This article examines the role of canonical stories in sensemaking. Canonical stories are known by members of a group; storytellers can refer to the shared narratives as repositories of meaning. While the sensemaking literature includes multiple studies of stories and storytelling, no studies have explicitly examined the role of canonical stories in sensemaking. Interviews with 55 top leaders in U.S. Catholic universities confronting a fraught issue in their institutions (undocumented student access) indicate a variety of ways that canonical stories operate in their sensemaking. Respondents referred to community narratives, canonical stories that hold specific meaning for their university communities. They told generic or stereotypical stories and fragments as shorthand in their communication. They also used counterfactuals as referents for their sensemaking. These findings help us better understand the role and importance of canonical stories in organizational sensemaking.