Why we cannot live without narratives : the emergence, development and ending of narratives in multimedia conditions

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Under the theme of "Why we cannot live without narratives : the emergence, development and ending of narratives in multimedia conditions," we held during three years various lectures and research meetings (21 times), one international symposium, two field surveys, six panel discussions. Our research was divided into two lines, one about theoretical problems, the other about case studies. The theoretical problems researched includes the definition(s) of narratives, the conditions necessary for the existence of narratives, the ontology of narratives etc. We didn't treat narratives in a narrow and strict sense, but tried to clarify their nature in a broader multimedia and transdisciplinary context. Our case studies include many crosscultural and transdisciplinary issues, but if roughly classified, they include four researches on literature, five on media, three on movies, two on fine arts, two on cultural institutions, one on consumerism, one on theater, one on economics, one on psychology. In each studies, we observed radical struggle between grand (hi)stories and small stories, and in recent years a great many small (hi)stories play great roles collectively, though not a few grand (hi)stories still survives and are about to be influential again. Our research, consisted of both theoretical and case studies, was very effective in making clear the complicated functions of narratives, and offer new and heuristic viewpoints about the crosscultural and multimedia aspects of them.