Summary
A deep narrative is a theme lying so far beneath a culture’s stories that it passes for common sense. The term comes from narrative-change practice. The US-based Narrative Initiative defines deep narratives as “the stickiest themes and ideas that have permeated stories for more than 50 years”, which “undergird collections of narratives”. Its example: ‘Jaws’ is a story; all the stories of man-eating sharks add up to a narrative that sharks are dangerous; beneath both lie deep narratives about the human relationship to nature and fear of the unknown.
In the UK, Ruth Taylor’s 2021 report ‘Transforming Narrative Waters’ found practitioners agreed that they “sit beneath other more specific narratives”.
Rationale
Our starting term, and the subject of that 2021 report by one of us. Part 1 now wonders whether the language is “slightly misleading”, since we’re pointing at something “more like an orientation than a story”.