Taking off the Heat: Narrative Sensemaking in Post-crisis Inquiry Reports
研究了法国2003年致命热浪后的官方调查报告如何通过叙事重建意义，回答了“发生了什么”“是否可预见”“谁负责”等问题，并提出了危机情节类型学。
Crises represent moments when sensemaking fails. Official reports of post-crisis analyses re-establish patterns of sensemaking. Whereas scholars agree on the narrative basis of post-crisis sensemaking, the means by which meaning is recreated about the confusing events have not been fully investigated. To fill this gap, empirical data are drawn from the series of investigations that took place after the sudden and deadly heat wave that occurred in France during the summer of 2003. Introducing tools from narratology, this article analyses how these reports restore meaning by addressing the following questions: What happened? Was it foreseeable? and Who is responsible? The key narrative choices implied are mapped. A typology of crisis plots is proposed. Building on this typology, the article demonstrates that successive reports progressively built a focused, simplified story about the crisis. Methodological and practical implications for scholars and practitioners using inquiry reports for research and learning are also discussed.