Empathy, Narrative and Cultural Values

How do we make sense of the stories we hear and read? What core beliefs are at work when we accept and empathise with some stories but not with others? How do we better understand the part cultural values play in securing our assent for certain propositions within narrative? And what social benefits might accrue from a better understanding of how narrative identification is shaped by such values in a multicultural society?

This project explores how explanatory frameworks and beliefs affect how South Asian Muslim subjects in the West Midlands perceive and categorise narratives. It will locate those aspects of narrative that are most successful in encouraging empathy and consider how identification with elements of narrative is influenced by faith and culture-specific aspects of underpinning values.

The project looks specifically at how cultural values derived from Islam play a part in how subjects place themselves in relation to narratives in educational and health settings: two contexts in Britain where perceived 'Muslim values' are sometimes seen to present a challenge to effective interactions. The education strand considers how cultural values inform identification with literary texts and their characters for South Asian Muslim heritage students taking English Literature at A Level at Joseph Chamberlain Sixth Form College, Birmingham: a mixed, multicultural sixth form. Our work will allow us to build an empirical evidence base for the nature of multicultural interpretative practices and how pedagogy and the syllabus can better reflect them.

In the health strand, we will focus on the narratives produced by those affected by cancer diagnoses in their interactions with 'Cancer Champions' from Green Lane Masjid, Birmingham. We will attend to how they communicate their experience and choices in narrative form, using words and phrases which reflect existing cultural frameworks. The resulting video and toolkit will help to address the disconnect between the essentially secular, individualistic narratives employed by most health providers and the worldviews of Muslim users by examining how individuals bring to bear their core values when engaging with health messaging, thereby paving the way improved communications and better outcomes in the future.