NARRATIVE CHANGE
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
Copyright © 2020 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
E-ISBN 978-0-231-54548-8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hansen, Hans (College teacher), author.
Title: Narrative change: how changing the story can transform society, business, and ourselves / Hans Hansen.
Description: New York: Columbia University Press, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019051925 (print) | LCCN 2019051926 (ebook) | ISBN 9780231184427 (hardback) | ISBN 9780231545488 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Narrative inquiry (Research method) | Capital punishment—Texas. | Social change.
Classification: LCC H61.295 .H37 2020 (print) | LCC H61.295 (ebook) | DDC 364.6609764—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019051925
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019051926
A Columbia University Press E-book.
CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at [email protected].
Cover design: Lisa Hamm
Cover image: © lukbar/Adobe Stock
Contents
3 How the Change Model Emerged
7 Narrative Selection Versus Narrative Construction
8 Narratives as a Way to Organize
10 Big Ideas and Narrative Modes
I would like to thank the Texas Regional Public Defender Office for Capital Cases for inviting me to work with them in fighting the death penalty, and for allowing me to conduct ethnographic research on their work and lives. I am particularly grateful to Philip Wischkaemper and Jack Stoffregen for giving me unprecedented access to a remarkable setting and for their willingness to try innovative approaches to stop executions. I also want to congratulate them on their tremendous success in changing the way the death penalty works in Texas. I am grateful to my family and my colleagues for supporting my work. I am also thankful for the guidance of my editor, Myles Thompson, at Columbia University Press.
This book offers a model of change for everyone, but it emerged from an unlikely tale of a small group of people who managed to change the way the death penalty operates in Texas. I have since tried, tested, and refined the model and applied it in a variety of settings. I am now confident enough to release it so others can benefit from what I have learned about the processes of change.
On one hand, this book came out of the blue. Changing the death penalty, a Goliath of an institution, began with an unexpected phone call from a lawyer wanting me to help build a small team of people. He was vague on the phone, and I agreed to meet with him, but only to get some more details about this new team and suggest someone more suitable than me to help them.
On the other hand, this book has been in the making for more than twenty years. I can see how all of my past experiences, even my shortcomings—maybe especially my shortcomings—prepared me for the challenge I faced in fighting the death penalty. Planned or unplanned, all of my experiences forged in me a perspective of change that would become invaluable.
Our tremendous success was unlikely. No one, not even the death penalty team members, ever imagined we would accomplish what we did. The team has stopped well over one hundred executions against nearly insurmountable odds. During my time with the team, we were 70 and 1, and now the team is 165 and 4.
This story begins in West Texas, where the powerful state got death sentences in capital trials more than 90 percent of the time. I learned a lot in working to change an extremely ingrained institution, and I think the same processes and model I used could work for any team, organization, or individual.
I knew I had to share it.
■ ■ ■
Recently, I had the opportunity to spend some time with someone I had long admired, Sister Helen Prejean. Sister Helen is the famous Catholic nun who wrote Dead Man Walking, which described her relationship with a death row inmate and her witness to the effects of the death penalty on everyone involved. Susan Sarandon played Sister Helen in the critically acclaimed movie of the same name and won an Academy Award.
Sister Helen and I shared our joys and struggles in wrestling with the death penalty, both of us having gone from unwitting outsiders to central players. I was so happy to finally meet someone whose introduction to the death penalty reflected my own. Neither Sister Helen nor I ever had any intention of getting involved with death penalty cases. In her case, someone casually suggested she write to a man in prison.
“I thought I was getting some sort of pen pal!” Sister Helen told me.
My introduction was that unexpected phone call requesting a