Judy and diane,
We are now into our 4th year and fifth project as users of DWR within a
single manufacturing company (although over 3 countries and 7 sites). We
constantly encounter the issues that you two are discussing. I can only
describe how it feels to us.
(1) Our metaphor for own engagement is that we are a tool to be used by the
people we work with. But we are a tool with 'artificial intelligence', which
explains why we are not a passive tool. We are explicit about this, and we
tell them that they are free to 'put the tool-us' down whenever they feel we
aren't being useful to them. There are tensions in the operation of this
metaphor. They are funding us to intervene, and sometimes we don't, because
nobody explicitly asks us to. Then they complain. And then we have a
conversation about the boundaries of our involvement, and together we expand
into a new kind of relationship.
(2) We are explicit about our own motivation for being there. We invite them
to join with our motivation if they wish, or to disregard it if they wish.
As Mike has said in a message here today, we would not be there unless they
had a motivation to change radically. A consequence of that is that choices
by some of them to engage with our motivation as researchers are frequent.
(3) On the other hand, as time goes on we become inclined to lose sight of
both our theory and our method as we become increasingly motivated by the
desire to help them work through immediate operational imperatives, and also
we slip into emotional engagement with them as individuals and in their
personal lives. We predicted that these things were likely to happen over
time. So we have set up a dual team. There is an 'insider team', which works
in the field, and there is an 'outsider team' which works only with the
insider team. There are meeetings - at least weekly - at which the insider
team describes its actions within the company, and these descriptions are
scrutinised by the outsider team using such questions as 'What has that got
to do with DWR?' 'In what way was that helping them to learn by expanding?'
This is necessary for us because, unlike Yrjo's students in Helsinki, we are
not doing PhD's and we do not have supervisors to perform that role for us.
(4) The foregoing demonstrates, I hope, that we are NOT leading them to the
'big contradictions' in a direct sense. We speak when we are spoken to, but
when we speak we try to speak in the manner of Yrjo's 'fourth umpire'.
Occasionally when we are spoken to the words are 'help us, we are drowning'.
At such times we become directive. But always, afterwards, we ask them to
consider why it was that they used us in a role that our contract with them
specifically excludes. Such dialogues about the secondary contradiction of
our active intervention is one of the most powerful routes to making visible
primary contradictions.
(5) Over time these people have gained faith in the utility of us-as-tool.
This makes delicate methodological judgments easier to make. But we still
fail often - actively intervening too soon and too heavily, or too late and
too lightly. But we are also able to use our theory most effectively at such
times, and it is through engaging with the group we are working with to
explore the nature of our own failure, that some of the most productive
expansive visibilisations occur.
(6) A so far unexplored aspect of the AT's I am describing is that of
funding. Our first project was a research project funded by our equivalent
of your NSF. The firm 'let us in' to them as a case study site. The 2nd and
3rd. projects were purely contractual consultancy relationships, although
the project designs LOOKED like DWR academic research designs. The current
project is 50-50. That is the company has put up half the money and the
science agency has put up half the money. We are absolutely clear that the
funding source profoundly modifies the way in which the system works. We
have not yet carefully set out to document and analyse this.
Phillip Capper
WEB Research
PO Box 2855
(Level 9, 142 Featherston Street)
Wellington
New Zealand
Ph: (64) 4 499 8140
Fx: (64) 4 499 8395
-----Original Message-----
From: Judith Diamondstone [mailto:diamonju@rci.rutgers.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, 6 June 2001 05:02
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Re: Re(2): chapter 5
>this assumes quite a lot - isn't it more likely that the conditions are
>always present, but concealed by traditional practice, institutional
>ideology, discourse, and so on? meaning, the "conditions" are not
>"created" but are revealed as always-already present?
Your phrasing is much better. What about the hypothesis (i.e., the point)
>>That would require familiarity w/ and trust
>>of the external researcher whose actions bring to the surface the Big
>>Contradiction that explains the prevailing cycles of activity & the
>>different tensions/problems that everyone sees; and yes, diane, the
>>duration of the project and number of analyses performed and shared seem
>>central to this stage-setting.
>
>hm. again, in my experience, the Big Contradictions come from within, not
>from an other's deliberate attempts to "induce" such a recognition - i
>always thought that a serious understanding of writings by folks such as
>Foucault, or Althusser (biographies and all) would point towards more
>revelation about practice than any particular manipulation - reading
>Perkins-Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper," or Kafka's "Metamorphosis," can
>point towards Foucault, Althusser, and other institutional criticisms -
>understanding Freud, or Judith Butler, as well - in my experience, it is
>through understanding the available interpretations of social systems and
>structures that the Big Contradictions
the whole point and for me potential excitement of AT is that it
presupposes much critical and contemporary theory but it is directed to
actual conditions of real participants in everyday activities. THAT
distinguishes it from critical interventions by authors, performance
artists, whatever -- it's not only disrupting us as reflective selves but
disrupting us in our everyday practices.
And for that, the researcher as outsider may perhaps be necessary. I don't
know. Action research certainly shares the potential for disrupting the
everyday. But AT offers a flexible but rigorous / systematic tool for
intervention, which, if participants buy into it, might have pervasive
effects. Now whether the effects it has on an institution are "good" in MY
sense of good, I'm not sure. I mean, maybe we (as participants in some
institution, like health or academia) have to get better at life within
fast, global capital, but better at it for what? It's the critical edge,
the relation of the institution to the status quo, that I'm not sure about.
>emerge.
>as such, a duration is conditioned by learning, not methods. ooh. radical!
>ha ha
well, we have a different perspective on the utility of methods,
systematicity, and all that. The value of systematicity and of theory in
general is that it affords collective learning, eh?
>>My questions concern the stage-setting steps of the process, but I agree
>>the springboard metaphor has potential as the moment where
>>individual/collective terms seem least to be in concert and most in need
>>to
>>be concerted.
>
>again, the idea that a single individual can "orchestrate" the Big
>Contradiction strikes me as Highly Unlikely. the idea that a coordinated
>concert will produce the conflicts that lead to learning is also mythical,
>really, since it is conflict that produces conflict - a tidy methodology
>will, invariably, construct a tidy interpretation - regardless of the
>collective activity.
Well, that's not how i read the last chapters of LBE. It's a complicated
and not solo effort -- but you're right, it is still mythical for me since
I haven't done it. And I agree with your previous agreement with my
previous political commentary :) the role of the researcher(s) in relation
to the others in the institution should be always in question....
>to immerse in the collective activity, i'd suppose a large amount of
>research-control must be given up in order to really be receptive to the
>processes of an activity. don't you think? i mean, in order to be "true"
>to CHAT?
yeah, and I interpreted the methods of developmental research to be
procedures for giving up control....
>>But IF the stage were effectively set, then springing towards a better
>>understanding rather than out of the playing field seems probable.
>
>again, the idea that one could "set the stage" for change is, to me,
>wildly presumptuous.
>it's impossible to know what will "set it off" so to speak.
>by the same token, it is entirely possible to participate in an activity
>where the ambition is to "set it off" so long as the process remains the
>condition of activity, and not the researcher's agenda. know what i mean?
This is what I'd like to understand more about -- how the researcher(s)
'set it off' both shaping the course of change and then stepping out of the
way. I jez
dunno.
>hm. my thinking suggests that as people learn new languages (say, please
>say "THEORY") the interpretations of that, in terms of significance and
>meaning, emerge - these emergent interpretations of theory can become the
>condition of change,
>because it entails self-reflection.
>frankly, i don't understand how anyone can "study" Foucault and not become
>partially insane, if only because of the inherent contradiction of
>institutionalizing the institutional critique, silencing the very
>articulation in an effort to articulate the silence, so to
>Wittgensteinian-esquely infer,
>(ahem) -
>
>IDEAS change people's perspectives about how they see and do things,
>languages alter the ways people speak about things,
>and it seems to me that theories, as ideas and languages, offer any
>activity a valuable point of departure as well as a critical investigation
>into what "practice" engages.
diane, diane, what about performance? it's not the word it's the act or the
word AS act....
judy
>
>diane
>a.k.a. theory slut!!
>
>
>
>
>"If you'll excuse me now, I'd like to be alone with my sandwich."
>Homer
>
>
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