Trouble — In, around, and between narratives

This essay defines narrating in terms of trouble — narrators’ interaction in the structure of narratives, with the (often troubling) contexts around narratives, and management of expectations and possibilities in the process between narratives. I frame this discussion about the narrating process as an urgent concern for designers of developmental research and practice in the rapidly changing, diverse human environments of this global era. Since narrating in a tool for individual and societal sense-making, developmental activities engage relational complexity and tension.