Language: English

This toolkit is designed to help promote constructive dialogue in societies and political systems marked by polarisation. It is meant to be used among persons with opposing views on a given topic, where the conversation has escalated to the use of pejorative language and limited listening. Informed by the work of the IFIT brain trusts in Colombia and Mexico, and by IFIT’s Inclusive Narratives Practice Group, the toolkit does not aim to generate consensus or agreement around a given topic. Instead, it promotes viewpoint plurality – the idea that we can and should talk with those whose views are different to our own.

Based on moderated processes in contexts ranging from the classroom to public debates, the tools in the toolkit enable people with opposing viewpoints to use terms that open up engagement, express concerns without insulting, break down assumptions about each other, acknowledge positive aspects of the other’s position, and understand the internal and external limitations opponents face when taking difficult political decisions.

For more information, see IFIT’s practice brief on the process of developing the toolkit and recommendations based on lessons learnt for how to create and use such a resource to enable narrative transformation and manage conflict.

The DOI registration ID for this publication is: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10809237

This PDF of the presentation in Features of Narrative: Structure and Dynamics (part 1) serves as a quick reference guide and a training tool for actors working for peace. In the presentation, narrative theory expert and IFIT Inclusive Narratives Practice Group member Sara Cobb explains what narratives are, how narrative dynamics shape our worldview, and how we can transform simplified narratives that polarise societies into complex narratives that help people engage peacefully. 

Using examples of polarising narratives in the United States, Cobb demonstrates how they promote the validity of one group’s grievances and the moral superiority of its intentions and actions, while delegitimising the ‘other’. Soon, two to three narratives begin to dominate the public sphere. They appear as the only way to describe what is occurring in politics and society, creating an ‘us versus them’ environment and eclipsing other, less prominent narratives. 

Noting that people tend to become stuck in their polarising narratives, the document advocates for using narrative strategies and tools to help people move from simple, linear stories to more complex ones by introducing new values (grey, not ‘black and white’), new characters (beyond heroes and villains) and new plot points (that do not fit the simplified story). This approach can give increased legitimacy to both sides, enable a sense of shared responsibility for conflict, build agency to create bridges between poles, and ultimately foster social engagement for peace.

Watch the accompanying video:

This PDF of the presentation in Narrative Elaboration: Tools for Change (part 2) serves as a quick reference guide and a training tool for actors working for peace. In the presentation, narrative theory expert and Inclusive Narratives Practice Group member Sara Cobb focuses on practice, sharing a set of narrative tools and how to use them to transform polarising narratives as part of peacebuilding efforts. 

Cobb describes a narrative as a tree. The trunk is the visible narrative, which hardens and forms from shared roots and justifies people’s ideas and actions. The roots are facts, events, parables and stories about the collective past, which anchor people’s worldviews. And the branches are actions, policies and other outcomes of the narrative trunk. It is the branches and roots that are most amenable to change, as the trunk tends to be most rigid.

A range of proven narrative tools are then presented. These can be employed in meetings, workshops, public debates and similar spaces for peacebuilding. The first is positive connotation, through which participants describe the opposing side in terms of a positive trait or intention in order to enable humanisation and mutual legitimacy. The second is circular questioning, through which participants make comparisons between their own and others’ stories and thereby introduce new elements that transform their narrative. The third is scaffolding, which helps participants identify exceptions to events in their stories to again introduce new elements and change their narrative. And the fourth is narrative inoculation, where participants identify obstacles to narrative transformation ahead of time so they can strategically address them. 

Watch the accompanying video:

In this 30-minute video, recorded as part of our 10 Peacebuilding Innovations webinar series, two members of IFIT’s Inclusive Narratives Practice Group, Sellah King’oro and Mauricio Meschoulam, discuss IFIT’s approach to narrative peacebuilding. Using the analogy of a ‘narrative tree’, they explain how simplified, divisive narratives emerge and come to dominate the narrative landscape in polarised contexts. Arguing that the unifying narratives peace actors tend to promote from outside are often rejected, they share IFIT’s approach of enriching narrative landscapes from within by increasing public awareness of narrative dynamics, amplifying many alternative stories, and working with people to transform their narratives.

Sellah and Mauricio reflect on lessons learnt from applying our narrative peacebuilding approach in collaboration, respectively, with the National Cohesion and Integration Commission in Kenya and IFIT’s brain trusts in Mexico and Colombia. A key learning from this work is that lasting peace does not come from imposing a narrative and everyone telling the same story – it emerges in societies where many complex, diverse narratives are encouraged to thrive together.