Brian Miller

Communal and Individual Meaning-Making

Brian Miller, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology

I enjoy being in and watching crowds. Whether in a busy streetscape or at a concert or on a lively holiday shopping day, crowded settings offer numerous opportunities to be part of a human energy, a collective effervescence that can transcend individual experiences. 

In these situations, each person brings their own story. They are a unique individual who tell and live out their story in a particular way. They have specific social markers and locations. The people around them see and interpret their being and actions in certain ways. They have specific experiences. They bring what has shaped them and how they responded to that shaping to this crowded setting. They are taking in the same stimuli in the crowd and perhaps understanding it very differently than the person within a few feet of them. 

The sheer number of stories in one place at one time often impresses me. If we stopped each person in those settings and asked, “What is the story you want to tell right in this moment?” we would likely hear a unique story from each person. We might hear narratives of joy and tragedy, perseverance and obstacles, restraint and ambition, love and evil. How exactly that moment near many other people fits in that individual story likely varies dramatically. 

Many great cultural works, whether paintings, plays, songs, dances, or books, draw on these profoundly individual stories. The richness of human experience can be brought out in revealing and innovative ways. 
And we can also tell stories of groups and crowds. Collectives have their own experiences and logics. Institutions and groups often live longer than individuals, can do things that individuals on their own cannot accomplish, and have complex histories involving internal and external social forces. These groups, whether families or congregations or nations or corporations, influence people in profound ways. We are who we are because of these social contexts where collectives empowered and constrained us. 
My discipline, sociology, tends to focus less on the individual story each person has and focuses more on the ways we have intersecting and communal stories. In the subfield of the sociology of culture, we define culture as “processes of meaning-making.” Groups go through processes of interpreting the world and developing narratives in interesting and complex ways. These processes can follow certain patterns but also sometimes defy expectations as context and contingency matter. 

Take, as one example, the narratives that suburban communities tell about themselves. My own research on this started as a graduate student when I wanted to compare the different development trajectories of three Chicago area suburbs, Naperville, West Chicago, and Wheaton. While my research revealed that I could point to key moments in each community that sent them down a particular path, the most interesting part was the meaning-making that accompanied those moments. Discussions among leaders and residents showed that different people interpreted actions and possibilities in different ways. People on all sides did not just consider the unique proposal or action at hand; they had a sense of what the community was and how it might be affected by this particular decision. Someone might support a particular development decision because of the business opportunities it would open up while someone else could oppose the same proposal because they perceived it as a threat to an established sense of community. In a crowded public hearing or local rally, each person there may have had a unique story and the group itself had its own story. Each community was continually wrestling with their story about themselves. This meaning-making continues today and into the future as residents wrestle with what they think their community narrative will be. 

So, when we are with other people, we can work to listen to stories of individuals and of groups. Both sets of narratives reveal truths about humans and humanity. Each matter for how we understand others and ourselves. And both are part of God’s story for us and with us.