CHAPTER 11 Culture as Text: Narrative and Hermeneutics

Structuralist Poetics

When structuralists approach the analysis of narrative. especially conventional stories and literal ure.
their activity is often given the name of structuralist poetics. The central theme here is often not so
much binary opposition.

THE CRITIQUE OF STRUCTURAL POETICS

The approach of structuralist poetics. exemplitied by Propp and Frye. has a number of strong suits. From
a sociological point of view. it offers powerful evidence for understanding narratives as ··social facts··
which are subject to laws and empirical regularities of which authors and readers may be unaware. This
allows for the possibility of constructing general theories and powerful analytic models with which to
explore meanings in texts. By demonstrating the presence of structured regularities driving meaning,
such an approach also allows us to aftirm the autonomy of culture.

Narrative and Social Process

the most part the analysis of narrative has been an activity of literary theorists interested in the study of
texts. The tield has a lot to say about cultural content and. with its robust and structural models. it
provides a basis for theorizing the autonomy of cultural forms. It also has quite a bit to say about
agency. Yet it has almost nothing to say about how narrative intersects with broader social life.

Hermeneutics

There are strong afllnities between the hermeneutic tradition in social science and those advocating the
centrality of narrative. Hermeneutics as an area is concerned with issues of meaning and mutual
understanding. Traditionally, it has tended to be subjective. humanistic. individualistic. aesthetic.
philosophical. and phenomenological in orientation.