Theoretical considerations: The world and I
Theoretical considerations: The world and I
I see I last finished writing in this diary thinking that the next step was going to be brief and straight. Well, it's as brief as I can get it I guess. And straight? Because stone throws always make curves, I should perhaps surrender to the idea that this space can be anything other than slightly bent. As an unspontaneous and prepared text what follows is perhaps best read listening to Manu Chao singing Mala Vida or Art Brut playing Bad Weekend at max volume. Rock 'n' roll.
So, to bring some of these strands of thought together into a more coherent format I going to try to summarise 1) how I see the world (where the phenomena I study take place) and 2) my position in it (as a researcher) – illustrating places where these thoughts come from. (Existential Disclaimer: these preliminary thoughts and may well change or be subject to further exploration).
The world
is composed of an unlimited number of realities, or rather, reality is multiple. That means that the world is the totality of lived realities (which are, again, uncountable). This is not a relativist statement or just another way of saying that reality only occurs inside our heads as mental phenomena, it is simply granting our different experiences in the world status as 'real': reality is not what we find once we deny our perceptions, constrain our frame of thinking, and calculate spatial and temporal relations from data collected using scientific instruments. Rather, claiming that one object is not the same to two people who name, use or interact with that object in different ways, this perspective examines how the object is part of effectively different realities. The philosophical foundations of this way of thinking is explained by Annemarie Mol in her book 'The body multiple: ontology in medical practice' (2002). She says:
“It is possible to refrain from understanding objects as the central points of focus of different people's perspectives. It is possible to understand them instead as things manipulated in practices. If we do this – if instead of bracketing the practices in which objects are handled we foreground them – this has far-reaching effects. Reality multiplies [...] The body, the patient, the disease, the doctor, the technician, the technology: all of these are more than one. More than singular. This begs the question of how they are related. For even if objects differ from one practice to another, there are relations between these practices. Thus, far from necessarily falling into fragments, multiple objects tend to hang together somehow. Attending to the multiplicity of reality opens up the possibility of studying this remarkable achievement” (p. 4-5)
This is also the position that 'objective reality' as understood in a positivist frame of thinking is not empirically perceivable. Rather, the realities we engage with and co-create as social creatures are very 'real' and they are so on an equal footing with the laws of physics, psychological phenomena and deeper social dynamics (although these can only become 'real' once they are embodied by living beings). As such, what we may be tempted to designate 'ultimate reality', or the whole of lived realities, is unknowable insofar as it remains a metaphysical concept. However, we can of course gauge deeper structures and patterns within our realities through careful observation and deliberation – our realities do not exist as separate spheres, but converge, overlap and melt into each other. Although they can of course contradict each other, as a whole they map unto each other so neatly that we can actually talk about, and conceive of, such a thing as one world. In fact, we tend to take this one reality for granted most of the time. Plurality does not imply chaos (or irrationality), rather it is the background of a world so large that it can be described in an unlimited number of ways (here I follow Mary Midgley in her essay 'Putting ourselves together again').
Actors in the world
are entities which bring particular realities into existence and without which a particular reality would look different. Thus, actors are 'reality co-constructors' merely by virtue of being in the world no matter whether this is consciously recognised by humans. They come into being in practices, that is in perception and interaction. In this way, electromagnetism, cars, climatic systems, dreams, animals, plants and humans all have agency. Each actor has its own dynamics and patterns according to which they manifest. This does not mean, however, that all agencies are equally appropriate or valid in our analyses. Neither does this position say that we cannot know these agencies just because they have different characteristics and dynamics to ourselves. Insofar as we are skilled observers, interpreters and analysts of the world, we can know non-human actors. That other-than-humans should have agency becomes obvious from contemplating statements like: 'the globalising force of free markets challenges national autonomy and liberal democracy'. There is clearly an actor (free markets) who is imagined to act by challenging.
However, such manners of speaking also highlights that there are better and worse ways of assigning agency. As Bruno Latour (whose ideas should be obvious here) says in his book 'Reassembling the social' (2005): 'An 'actor' in the hyphenated expression actor-network is not the source of an action but the moving target of a vast array of entities swarming toward it' (p. 46). To understand the actor then means understanding how and why this array of entities swarm toward it. Why do we treat free markets as independent forces that construct our realities?
An important insight from actor-network theory is that actors are at the same time networks, which is to say that they are composed of actors themselves in the same way a group is composed of individuals which is composed of minds, bodies, organs and cells. This also brings along with it a certain degree of uncertainty around who or what is doing the acting. A skilled social scientist will know where to make the appropriate cut between actor and network in the analysis (or she will at least check the difference in her results if she makes the cut differently).
The public
sphere is that place where life itself takes place or where interaction between actors happen or where phenomena occur. It is not, however, a kind of spatial entity where actions take place, it is more like a field that makes interaction possible in the first place. In this way, it is where realities unfold. This means the public sphere is multitudinal and just as much imaginary (in a similar manner to Walter Lippmann's 'phantom public') as it is embodied. The public sphere is where all the conversations between actors, as partakers in different realities, take place. It is possible to say that the relation between speaker and audience – or the relation between conversational partners – defines the nature of a particular public space.
Using the metaphor of a conversation here presumes that the public relation is based on equality. This is not necessarily the case, perhaps it is not even the case in the majority of relations in the public sphere. As such the nature and quality of the public relationship is an indicator of the social standing of the actors. Perhaps the interaction takes the form of an order rather than a conversation. To use another image, if actors, say trees for example, are been killed, perhaps for selling or use as timber, the social standing of trees is obviously lower than that of the actor(s) doing the killing. Such examination of the quality of interactions in the public sphere is an interesting and promising line of enquiry. Here I draw inspiration by David Graeber who identifies three different kinds of moral foundations for economic relationships (chapter five in 'Debt', 2011). Identifying three different modalities of economic relations he is able to show how we continually shift between different moral standards (although we possess them all the time) and that these standards entail very different social relationships. Paying attention to the nature of the interaction in the public sphere will reveal a great deal about the field itself.
It is in the public sphere that social research takes place. This is important to keep in mind in order to avoid imposing theoretical preconceptions unto the 'observational field': real phenomena are lived phenomena, and abstract phenomena can only ever become real insofar as they are perceived, experienced or manifested by living beings.
Human nature
is by definition a contradiction in terms. If we take seriously that the nature/culture divide is a mirage, any 'essence' left after we have distilled the human is paradoxical (if it is there at all). This does not leave us incapable of speaking about character traits, rather it points to the fact that no one character trait is IT. In the words of Alex Haslam, professor of psychology at the University of Exeter: human nature 'affords infinite potentials for lightness and dark' (Radiolab, The Bad Show). It does not make sense to point at any one moment in an infinite progression and exclaiming 'essence'. Discovering 'human nature' must then simply mean careful observation of humans in their habitat. Wittgenstein reminds us of the futility of preconceived ideas about human nature in a parable reminiscent of the meditating Descartes:
“But can't I imagine that the people around me are automata, lack consciousness, even though they behave in the same way as usual? – If I imagine it now – alone in my room – I see people with fixed looks (as in a trance) going about their business – the idea is perhaps a little uncanny. But just try to keep hold of this idea in the midst of your ordinary intercourse with others, in the street, say!” (Philosophical Investigations 420)
The present
moment is characterised by a deep crisis which is ultimately grounded in how we relate to each other and the world. Modernity has undermined itself (if it ever was there in the first place as Latour posits) with the result that the problems created by modern ways of living and thinking cannot be adequately addressed by the institutions of modernity. This is the crucial insight of Ulrich Beck who shows how the complexity and entanglement of issues like loss of biodiversity, pollution, climate change, poverty, resource depletion, or population overshoot overwhelm and incapacitate the social and political institutions that are supposed to deal with them. This means that decision-making occurs within a seeming paradox: because we are forced to act on anticipation of breakdown rather than breakdown itself, we can fail both by over-reacting (creating inaction through hysteria) and not reacting (anticipation becomes eventuality). This in a situation where our institutions are already unable to respond on the necessary time-scales! (Note to self: This provides a direct link to Barbara Adam and Robert Hassan's use of 'timescapes'.)
The conclusion that is becoming increasingly obvious is that progress was always a lie (or at best a fairy tale). In Beck's way of speaking belief in progress has taken the place of religion (with promises of rationality, security and truth) and to 'secularise' modernity means accepting that we are at some level constructing our own fates. If progress is no longer appropriate as a foundational myth for organising our lives the question arises what other myths are better suited to narrate our realities.
Narrative
It should now be obvious why narrative is a good approach to studying social change. The narratives we use to guide our interactions in the public sphere are crucial to understand what kind of realities we create. Narratives both represent and constitute reality. Narrative as representation is aptly described by Jerome Bruner: “Given their constructed nature and their dependence upon the cultural conventions and language usage, life narratives obviously reflect the prevailing theories about "possible lives" that are part of one's culture. Indeed, one important way of characterizing a culture is by the narrative models it makes available for describing the course of a life” (Life as Narrative, p. 1987). The constitutive nature of narratives is explained simply by Paul Atkinson and Sara Delamont: “narratives, and the accounting devices they enshrine, create the realities they purport to describe” (Editor's introduction: Narratives, Lives, Performances, 2006, p. xxxiv). In this way narratives in some way tie realities (and Mol's practices) together by establishing common frames of reference and suggesting particular ways of doing and thinking.
I suspect it is these features of narrative which leads Giles Foden to say that narratives can 'provide a link between individual and socio-ecological sustainability' as mentioned earlier (diary entry 12.01.12). They somehow structure interaction in the public sphere: this becomes immediately obvious considering the contrast between the myth of progress and earlier myths. Within a progress narrative the human world is distinct from the natural world and it comes as a surprise that humans could actually damage or induce change to nature who is mighty, untamed and treacherous (the very idea would have been laughable to many enlightenment philosophers). Compare this with narratives where the earth is a life-giving Mother. Here, entirely other norms and views are in place – damaging nature would be an act of utter disrespect both to self and other.
Because narratives are both constitutive (creative) and representative of our realities they are a suitable starting point for examining change processes: they are embedded in conventions, social interactions, organisational and institutional structures, shared and individual identities and collective ways of doing. They are present in the places where change occurs both as that which reproduces the old and that which inserts the new. They are, in this sense, a kind of barometer of change. One might say that tracing narratives, and their accompanying myths, metaphors, and images, provides an opportunity for unearthing the how and why of change. A word of caution may be appropriate here, however: the researcher must as always maintain 'a commitment to an analytic stance, and not a celebratory one' (in the words of Atkinson and Delamont) and refrain from imposing her own explanation on her observation (in the ethic of Latour).
My approach
as a researcher therefore begins with a commitment to enhancing my skills in observation and description as well as maintaining an open frame of mind regarding causes and effects. Preconceived ideas (as in prejudice) about the researched should be left behind the moment the researcher enters the public field of the subject matter. I also maintain, as should be clear from the above, that theory is justified only insofar as it is anchored in lived realities (and I believe that there is a direct correlation between this and their explanatory power). In a famous phrase Wittgenstein says “words have meaning only in the stream of life” (and one could say the same of narratives). Marie McGinn (1997), whom I was lucky enough to study Wittgenstein with, summarises the inherent problem with theorising in these sentences about Wittgenstein's approach which are worth quoting at length:
“What we really need is to turn our whole enquiry round and concern ourselves, not with explanation or theory construction, but with description. The nature of phenomena which constitute our world is not something that we discover by 'digging', but it is something that is revealed in 'the kind of statement we make about phenomena', by the distinctive forms of linguistic usage which charaterize the different regions of our language. The method we really need is one that 'puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything. – Since everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain' (PI 126)” (Wittgenstein and the Philosophical Investigations, p. 19).
This means that it is inappropriate to begin an explanation with separating how we know the world from how we live in the world as the two are deeply entangled. This insight has also emerged from Science and Technology Studies (STS) which has shown that science is not some sort of adjudicator for an otherwise transcendent reality but a way of knowing the world with its own inherent culture, emotion and politics. Reason, rationality, and theory are not free-standing facts, they are by always 'co-produced' within specific norms and values, institutions, identities and discourses. Sheila Jasanoff (2004) sees co-production, not as a theory, but a way of going about doing theory: 'a way of interpreting and accounting for complex phenomena so as to avoid the strategic deletions and omissions of most other approaches in the social sciences' (p. 3 in 'State of Knowledge', 2004). It is such deletions and omissions I seek to avoid.
Doing narrative research necessarily involves choices when it comes to re-telling the story but such choices occur after the story has been recorded and they should always be made in the open. Theory usually gets in the way, as Bent Flyvbjerg (2006) tells us: “Narrative inquiries do not―indeed, cannot―start from explicit theoretical assumptions. Instead, they begin with an interest in a particular phenomenon that is best understood narratively. Narrative inquiries then develop descriptions and interpretations of the phenomenon from the perspective of participants, researchers, and others” (Five Misunderstandings About Case-Study Research, p. 240). In researching the narrative of the Dark Mountain Project, my aspiration is then to create what Flyvbjerg compares to a 'virtual reality', a narrative account which by virtue of careful description and attentive interpretation allows the reader to step into the story and explore the ways in which the narrative can be read by herself.
26/01/2012