Counter-Narrative: How Progressive Academics Can Challenge Extremists and Promote Social Justice

by H.L. Goodall Jr.

Goodall portrays a world caught up in the middle of a narrative arms race, where the message of the political right has outflanked the message of the political left. It is a world where narratives used by the far right inch ever closer to those employed by right-wing extremists in the Muslim world. Rather than dismiss the use of political narratives as a shallow tactic of the opposition, Goodall promotes their usefulness and outlines a number of ways that liberal academics can retake the public discourse from the extremist opposition. This is an essential text for the aspiring public intellectual and will appeal to students and scholars of qualitative methods, communications and media, and political science alike.

207 pages, Hardcover

First published September 15, 2010

About the author

Harold Lloyd Goodall Jr. (Bud) was an American scholar of human communication and a writer of narrative ethnography. He was a professor in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University. He is survived by his wife Sandra Goodall and their son, Nicolas Saylor Goodall.

Reviews

[Drick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Goodall is a Communications Professor who sees the "narrative" of the extreme conservative right as effectively overtaking the American political and social landscape and challenges the progressive left to develop its own counter-narrative to combat it. The thesis of his book is well-intentioned but in my view this becomes at times a personal rant that falls short of the goal its mark. He makes a convincing case for the power of the right's message and shows how its myths and lies have captured the popular mind - distrust of evolution, unbelief in global warming, belief in political myths like the need for "less government" and no taxes. He proposes that progressives take on the pragmatic progressive narrative of Obama. While there was much that was insightful in this book, particularly his focus on narrative as an operational principle and his analysis of the Right's narrative, in the end the book was more depressing than inspiring and helpful. He tries to position himself left of center but not extreme, but given the failures of the Obama message in the last year since the book was written h is message rings hollow.

[Melanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having loved other writings by this author, I was a bit disappointed with the name calling in this one. It contradicted a call for more civil dialogue. That said, he highlights a critical need for academicians to deliver good thinking skills to the future electorate with examples from contemporary civic life. But an important part of that development is encouraging understanding in the case of difference rather than encouraging a demonized other (or enemy). I was hoping for a move to use narrative to promote more civil (vs. polarized) public discourse (harder on issues and easier on people, vs. dismissing them as dumb asses). It didn't quite get there.

[Mills College Library]

306.20973 G6468 2010