Stories, big and small: Toward a synthesis

Michael Bamberg’s article “Who am I? Narration and its contribution to self and identity” is an important attempt to locate the fashioning of self and identity in those sorts of local, relational, interactive practices found in everyday life. Valuable though this “small story” perspective is for turning our attention to these more local narrative practices, it is but one inroad into the formation of self and identity. Rather than serving as an alternative to those “big story” approaches that rely on individuals reflectively taking stock of larger segments of life (as in memoirs, autobiographies, and other such life narratives), it is thus more appropriately seen as a useful complement. Also argued herein is that the local narrative practices being considered, rather than serving as the source of self and identity formation, are more appropriately seen as the interactive sites in which they are expressed and refigured. Only by integrating small story and big story perspectives, therefore, can we begin to tell the whole story of who we are.