The Imperative to Narrate: Personal Storytelling and LGBT Norm Translation in China

Abstract

How do personal stories emerge and shape norm translation in human rights advocacy? This article explores the relationship between personal storytelling and human rights, through a political ethnography of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) regional LGBT project in China. Drawing on participant observations and interviews with norm translators, the actors who reframe and repackage normative scripts across local-global layers, this article traces how personal stories are used as evidence, a tool of mobilization, and means of localization in the case of emerging LGBT norm. The article argues that, first, instead of training and empowering the narrators, norm translators focus on the selection and organization of typical stories in order to highlight structural restraints in defined areas and justify normative changes. Second, instead of replacing or reframing the local norm, the selected personal stories maintain the centrality of individuals in human rights advocacy, while redefining and shifting the meaning of individuality and personhood to include local norms such as family roles. In contestation, norm translators supplement the stories based on data and lessons from other localities, which reinforce the public and the universalistic character of the human rights issues beyond the impression of being emotional, subjective, and individualistic voices.