Exploring a Social Identity Theory of Shared Narrative: Insights from Resident Stories of Police Contact in Newark, New Jersey, and Cleveland, Ohio

• Date: 01 June 2021
• Published date: 01 June 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/0093854820969751
• Author: Kwan-Lamar Blount-Hill
• Subject Matter: Articles

CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR, 2021, Vol. 48, No. 6, June 2021, 810 –827.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0093854820969751

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© 2020 International Association for Correctional and Forensic Psychology

810

EXPLORING A SOCIAL IDENTITY THEORY OF

SHARED NARRATIVE

Insights from Resident Stories of Police Contact in

Newark, New Jersey, and Cleveland, Ohio

KWAN-LAMAR BLOUNT-HILL

Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York

Narrative identity theorists have long held that individuals construct identities as a coherent tale of their past, present, and

future selves. These life stories are structured along predictable scripts borrowed from cultural master narratives. Heretofore,

legitimacy theorists have relied on social identity theory to explain legitimation processes. I propose integrating elements of

narrative identity theory with social identity for a more complete legitimation theory. I analyze 92 in-depth interviews with

individuals who encountered the police departments of Newark, New Jersey, and Cleveland, Ohio. Respondents’ narratives

followed common narrative scripts, suggesting a shared master narrative guiding interpretations of police encounters. A

significant proportion of the sample interpreted their views of the police from a group-based lens, while an equally significant

proportion used alternative narratives. An integration of social identity, narrative identity, and current legitimacy theory holds

promise for a more comprehensive model of legitimation and a more complete theory of self.

Keywords: narrative identity; social identity; legitimacy; police; police-minority relations

INTRODUCTION

Through storytelling, we bind our personal selves to the various groups that give us defini-

tion, tie our individual experience with those of important others, and connect our present to

our past and to our future (Smith et al., 2017). Life narrative is central to how we perceive our

world (McAdams & McLean, 2013). My own identity is based on a personal story of schol-

arly pursuits and imagined accomplishments that cannot be fully understood disconnected

from the larger histories of the social groups which help define me (Ajil & Blount-Hill, 2020;

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Thanking first my Inspiration, I also thank the Center for Court Innovation—especially

Cassandra Ramdath and Josephine Hahn—for providing data for this research, and Lila Kazemian for intro-

ducing me to narrative identity theory and for feedback on iterations of this work. I also thank Victor St. John

for his support and assistance in this research, as well as the anonymous reviewers, Dr. Morgan and

Dr. Huebner for invaluable feedback and suggestions. Correspondence concerning this article should be

addressed to Kwan-Lamar Blount-Hill, Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New

York, 199 Chambers Street, Room S-715, New York, NY 10007; e-mail: kblounthill@bmcc.cuny.edu

969751CJBXXX10.1177/0093854820969751Criminal Justice and BehaviorBlount-Hill / Social Identity Theory of Shared Narrative

research-article2020

Blount-Hill / SOCIAL IDENTITY THEORY OF SHARED NARRATIVE 811

Blount-Hill & St. John, 2017a, 2017b).1 Humans link together independent events to form

cohesive narratives and to find collective meaning. Recent history demonstrates this. The

homicide of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, is viewed as one scene in a long storyline of

police murder and oppression of Black Americans that includes those of Breonna Taylor and

Rayshard Brooks. Publics, policymakers, and scholars must recognize that the anger which

follows is directed at a grand narrative of abuse, not just one or a few incidents. It is impos-

sible to understand police-minority relations without a narrative context.

The need to present the discontent of Black individuals with America’s criminal justice

system through their own stories has been a persistent call in criminology and criminal jus-

tice (Brunson, 2007; Brunson & Wade, 2019). Nevertheless, while the importance of narra-

tive may be implicit in the research methods of prominent qualitative criminologists, findings

are not often interpreted through the lens of narrative identity. Moreover, though narrative

criminology is offered as a means for critical analyses of justice systems (Presser & Sandberg,

2019), it has not been closely linked with psychological theories of identity nor applied

widely to explore narratives of Black responses to police injustice.

Narrative is defined as “a temporally ordered statement concerning events experienced

by and/or actions of one or more protagonists” (Presser, 2009, p. 178) and storytelling as the

act of communicating narrative to another. In recent decades, criminologists have explored

life narrative as a crucial site for theorization and intervention for criminal offenders

(Denver & Ewald, 2018; Dickinson & Wright, 2017; Presser, 2009), part of the “narrative

turn” seen across social sciences (Presser, 2016). Meanwhile, criminal justice research and

practice has been transformed by an ever-growing interest in the psychology of justice and

processes of legitimation, drawing primarily from social psychology (e.g., Hamm et al.,

2017; O’Brien, Tyler, & Meares, 2020; Radburn et al., 2018).

Shared master narratives are crucial convergence points for these expanding—yet

separate—theoretical discourses. A person’s self-narrative guides actions important to their

social group, such as criminal activity or compliance with the law, and is constructed by

reference to the repertoire of templates acceptable within that group (McLean & Syed,

2015). According to McLean (2008), people frame their stories of self by drawing heavily

from accepted and widely known cultural master narratives. The following study explores

the linkage between narrative identity and social identity-based legitimation by examining

the shared construction of master narratives about relationships with legal authority, namely

the police. Specifically, I present results from 92 qualitative interviews with individuals,

mostly Black, previously involved in the local criminal justice systems of Newark, New

Jersey, and Cleveland, Ohio. Reviewing transcripts of their interviews, I find (a) shared nar-

rative themes generally in line with Bell’s (2017) theory of legal estrangement, which I

review below and (b) shared interpretations of encounters with police that draw on social

group identities and explicitly build on larger cultural narratives about police abuse.

LITERATURE REVIEW

EXPLORING A SOCIAL IDENTITY THEORY OF LEGITIMATION

The basic finding of social identity research is that individual identity is significantly

defined by membership in social groups, collectives defined by a common socially salient

trait or set of traits (Tajfel, 1972). We categorize ourselves into social groups (i.e., self-

categorization into “ingroups”) and designate groups for others (i.e., social categorization;