The Deep Story

At the 2017 National Council for the Social Studies annual conference, I had the privilege of helping to facilitate a three session symposium on the teaching of high school sociology.  Our keynote speaker was Arlie Russell Hochschild.  Dr. Hochschild is a professor Emeritus of sociology at UC Berkley.  She is a renowned ethnographer.  At NCSS 2017, she spoke about her most recent work, Strangers In Their Own Land; Anger and Mourning on the American Right.

What I found most intriguing in her book was the concept of the "deep story", or a story that shapes the way people feel.  It doesn't matter if the story is real or true or not.  What matters is that the story is believed to be true so people shape their feelings and actions as if it were real.  

Dr. Hochschild's idea is explained on NPR's Hidden Brain, 

In her new book, Strangers in Their Own Land, sociologist Arlie Hochschild tackles this paradox. She says that while people might vote against their economic needs, they're actually voting to serve their emotional needs.Hochschild says that both conservative and liberals have "deep stories" — about who they are, and what their values are. Deep stories don't need to be completely accurate, but they have to feel true. They're the stories we tell ourselves to capture our hopes, pride, disappointments, fears, and anxieties.