Cultivating Creativity in Methodology and Research in Praise of Detours (Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture)

PALGRAVE
STUDIES IN
CREATIVIT Y
AND CULTURE
CULTIVATING CREATIVIT Y
IN METHODOLOGY
AND RESEARCH
In Praise of Detours
EDITED BY:
CHARLOT TE WEGENER,
NINNA MEIER AND
ELINA MASLO
Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture
Series editors
VladPetreGlveanu
Department of Communication and Psychology
Aalborg University
Aalborg,Denmark
BradyWagoner
Department of Communication and Psychology
Aalborg University
Aalborg,Denmark
Both creativity and culture are areas that have experienced a rapid growth
in interest in recent years. Moreover, there is a growing interest today in
understanding creativity as a socio-cultural phenomenon and culture as a
transformative, dynamic process. Creativity has traditionally been con-
sidered an exceptional quality that only a few people (truly) possess, a
cognitive or personality trait residing inside the mind of the creative
individual. Conversely, culture has often been seen as outside the person
and described as a set of things such as norms, beliefs, values, objects,
and so on. The current literature shows a trend towards a different under-
standing, which recognises the psycho-socio-cultural nature of creative
expression and the creative quality of appropriating and participating in
culture. Our new, interdisciplinary series Palgrave Studies in Creativity
and Culture intends to advance our knowledge of both creativity and
cultural studies from the forefront of theory and research within the
emerging cultural psychology of creativity, and the intersection between
psychology, anthropology, sociology, education, business, and cultural
studies. Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture is accepting proposals
for monographs, Palgrave Pivots and edited collections that bring together
creativity and culture. The series has a broader focus than simply the cul-
tural approach to creativity, and is unified by a basic set of premises about
creativity and cultural phenomena.
More information about this series at

http://www.springer.com/series/14640
Charlotte Wegener Ninna Meier
Elina Maslo
Editors
Cultivating Creativity
in Methodology and
Research
In Praise of Detours
Editors
Charlotte Wegener Ninna Meier
Department of Communication and Department of Sociology and Social Work
Psychology Aalborg University
Aalborg University Aalborg, Denmark
Aalborg, Denmark
Elina Maslo
Danish School of Education,
Aarhus University
Copenhagen, Denmark
Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture

ISBN 978-3-319-60215-8ISBN 978-3-319-60216-5(eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-60216-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017951770
The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

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Contents
1 Editors Introduction: ThePower ofShowing How It

Happened1
Ninna Meier, Charlotte Wegener, and Elina Maslo
Part 1 Different Vantage Points, New Insights 9
2 The Wonder ofThings asThey Are: Theorizing Obesity

andFamily Life withArt11
Lone Grn
3 Into theWild Time: Notes fromaTraveller29

Christina BergJohansen
4 Thats Responsibility43
Chris Smissaert
v
viContents
Part 2 Research Life: Life and Research 55
5 In Between: Creative Spaces andDetours asPart

ofaResearchers Life57
Lene Tanggaard
6 An Unexpected Detour fromIvory Tower toAction

Research71
Jody Hoffer Gittell
7 Deliberate Detours asPaths toEmergent Knowledge

Creation79
Karen Ingerslev
8 Worth, Wonder andWorry intheAccelerated Academy93

Rasmus Hoffmann Birk
9 There Is No Such Thing asaJournal Paper103

Sarah Gilmore and Nancy Harding
Part 3 How We Know: Making Sense of Methods and

Field Work 117
10 The Unanticipated Outcomes ofResearch: Learning

andDevelopment at Work119
Stephen Billett
11 Knowing Across Time andPlace131

Ninna Meier
12 Staying onTopic: Doing Research Between

Improvisation andSystematisation143
Constance de Saint-Laurent
Contents
vii
Part 4 Coping with Complexity: Writing to Understand

What We Do 153
13 Metaphorical Structuring ofPattern Analysis155

Camilla Klsen Petersen
14 Telling Tales oftheUnexpected169

Elisabeth Willumsen
15 Writing My Way Home181

Charlotte Wegener
16 Riding theWaves ofCollaborative-Writing-as-Inquiry:

Some Ontological Creative Detours193
Ken Gale and Jonathan Wyatt
17 Give It aName andIt Will BeYours: How

Opportunities toReflect onEssential Questions Can
Create Space forLearning207
Elina Maslo
18 Confessions ofaProcrastinator219
Noomi Matthiesen
19 Epilogue or Why Creative Detours (Often) Have

Happy Endings231
Vlad Petre Glveanu
ppendix239
A
I ndex241
List of Figures
Fig. 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3 Family and relatedness drawings from
ethnographic fieldwork 20
Fig. 2.4 Conviction 6 by Maria Speyer 22
Fig. 2.5 Adherence 1 by Maria Speyer 23
Fig. 2.6 Red Sky 1 by Maria Speyer 24
Fig. 3.1 Oxygen. Copy of a milestone from a participant
in Travellers laboratory 32
Fig. 3.2, 3.3 and 3.4 Exploring ruins and goals and milestones in
sensuous ways 38
Fig. 3.5 Time pod. Artistic-sonic device with temporal
sounds, for subtle intervention in interviews
with corporate managers 40
Fig. 4.1 A warm August 2016 afternoon in Amsterdam,
Olivia and I are enjoying cold drinks on the
terrace of the canal-side restaurant close to
our home 46
Fig. 4.2 We decide to go for a little walk, and arrive at
a playground a few minutes later, to conclude
our talk 52
Fig. 7.1 Kristina Louise,founder, chairman of the board
and manager, and Jens, board member and
homeless, ready to recruit new volunteer
students for Social Health 87
ix
x List of Figures
Fig. 13.1 Coaxing 159

Fig. 13.2 Tracking and meandering 161
Fig. 13.3 Trapping 163
Fig. 13.4 Trapping and filling 165
Fig. 13.5 Completed puzzle of the cathedral 166
List of Tables
Table 9.1 Deviations 104
xi
1
Editors Introduction: ThePower
ofShowing How It Happened
NinnaMeier, CharlotteWegener, andElinaMaslo
Creativity in research is much in demand and always lauded. Every year,

the top creative universities are ranked, and at all career stages, from stu-
dent to experienced professor, academics want toand are expected
tobe creative. Most researchers have more or less explicit creative prac-
tices, but many do not know exactly how to cultivate creativity, let alone
how to teach it. Based on a view of creativity as a socio-cultural act
(Glveanu 2014, 2015), with this book we wish to give space to fresh
voices in the discussion of researcher creativity. The book introduces the
idea that creativity in research is not a method or a set of techniques we
N. Meier (*)
Department of Sociology and Social Work, Aalborg University,
Aalborg, Denmark
C. Wegener
Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University,
Aalborg, Denmark
E. Maslo
Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Copenhagen, Denmark
The Author(s) 2018 1

C. Wegener et al. (eds.), Cultivating Creativity in Methodology and Research, Palgrave
Studies in Creativity and Culture, DOI10.1007/978-3-319-60216-5_1
2 N. Meier et al.
apply to our work. Manuals on creativity and innovation often report the
creative processes in terms of stages (Wegener 2016) or as the ability to
perform divergent thinking (Glveanu etal. 2016). A creative research
practice springs from a curious, sensitive and playful life as a human
being. Plans are fine. However, if we are preoccupied with how things
were supposed to play out, we may not see and take in the inspirational
sources right in front of us (Meier and Wegener 2017). We may think
that we need to clean up the mess, get a grip and get back on track before
we can proceed with the (tidy) research. We may even think that other
researchers are much more successful in this respect. They are not.
Recipes for creativity rarely take into account the learning potential in
other peoples actual practices, messy and unfinished as they may be
(Tanggaard and Wegener 2016). Accordingly, this is not a recipe book but
a book of stories. The book offers a collection of personal, theorised essays
about the unplanned, accidental and even obstructive events that are
often erased from traditional representations of research methods. Reading
over Method sections, it seems that epistemological struggle is some-
thing to be solved, with only the outcome worth reporting. To follow the
traditional format for presenting method and analysis, scholars may feel
they have to create a certain type of narrative about the research process in
which some things are included and others left out. A tidy, edited account
feels safer because the story of what really happened may seem too intui-
tive, messy or serendipitous and thus at risk of being discarded as unsci-
entific or irrelevant, or too personal. However, as Weick (1995) famously
suggests, sense-making occurs retrospectively and is tied to action:
How can I know what I think until I see what I say?
This often-cited quote is fascinating because it reverses some taken-

for-granted premises for scientific work. If we need to see what we say in
order to know what we think, then we must act first and then under-
stand. We must do things and then find out what we have been doing
because the sense we make of what we did (or of what happened) depends
on how we word it. Yet, these utterances will rarely be final, conclusive
and exhaustive. As researchers (and as human beings), we are in a con-
tinual process of voicing in order to see our thoughts and find out
1 Editors Introduction: ThePower ofShowing How It Happened 3
more about our research topic (and about life). When we tell this kind
of story, we slightly alter our understanding of what scholarly work may
look like, how this work may be practised and to what end. Therefore,
we need stories of the routes we did not plan, the messy things we did
and the results of it allwhich we may not fully understand.
Paraphrasing Weick, this book poses the rhetorical question:
How can I know what I did until I see where I am?
The detour metaphor is a spatial expression referring to the iterations

of thinkingactingwording in academic work. We go somewhere, and
we think of this path as the straight road towards a goal or as a not-so-
straight roada detour. We think of ourselves as focused or distracted.
We think of our research as progressing or digressing, or even regressing.
Yet, how can we know, unless we say or write what we did ? If we judge
too soon, we risk missing important information or inspiration from
unanticipated sources. The book zooms in on the creative potential of
detours in academic work and in life: on the potential of not always fol-
lowing a recipe, of giving up what we think we should be doing or of
realising retrospectively that what looked like a detour or even procrasti-
nation might be just the path we came to value.
The kinds of creative detour in academic work that take place in data
analysis are already subject to much attention (Agee 2009). We carry out
our academic work with a guiding research question, hoping to be sur-
prised, to wonder and to find something we did not even know we were
looking for, as we struggle to make sense of our data. Likewise, within
anthropology, amazement is saluted (Hastrup 1992). This book adds to
this attentiveness to the unanticipated, the detours in academic work that
may originate from or spill over into our lives outside academia.
In times where we are not able to see what we say or see where we
are, a new or expanded notion of mastery may be needed. Barnacle and
DallAlba (2014) suggest that mastery is often understood as achieving
command or grasping something so there is no longer uncertainty about
how it is done or what it involves. In times of uncertainty and confusion,
it may seem reasonable to struggle even harder to analyse, categorise and
plan. Speaking about writing, Becker (2007, p. 134) puts it this way:
4 N. Meier et al.
What if we cannot, just cannot, make order out of that chaos? I dont
know about other people, but beginning a new paper gives me anxietys
classical physical symptoms. One supposedly anxiety-reducing strategy is
to try to tidy up (ones data, ones knowledge, ones research plan or even
ones life) with the goal of being able to do tidy research and write tidy
texts! This strategy can, however, turn out to be unproductive, demotivat-
ing and even restrictive of creativity.
It is often said that we acquire knowledge, gain insight and make new
discoveries (Wegener and Aakjr 2016). Rarely do we hear of scientific
work being discussed in terms of dropping something, letting go or getting
lost, although the creative potential in obstructions of different kinds is
well known across genres. Lather (2007, p.136) argues that we should
cultivate the ability to engage with not knowing and to move towards a
vacillation of knowing and not knowing. Based on Pitt and Britzman
(2003), Lather calls it lovely knowledge and difficult knowledge (Lather
2007, p.13). Lovely knowledge reinforces what we think we want, while
difficult knowledge includes breakdowns and not knowing, which
becomes the very force of creative research. Wandering and getting lost
thus become creative methodological practices, although, in an increas-
ingly individualistic and competitive academia, such practices are also
potentially risky strategies if only recognised by individual scholars.
Sharing is crucial if we want to expand the playground of research.
The stories in this book include reflections on the role of space, place,
materiality and the body, and support the idea that where we are physi-
cally in time and space, and mentally in our research process, as well as in
life, matters for the work we do and how we come to make sense of it.
The stories are personal narratives on incidents and processes that inspired
or forced the contributors to act or think differently in research, or
detours that they have taken or are still on, presented with reflections on
what these detours might mean or entail for the author. They are stories
of taking detours and the creative potential therein, but they are also
untidy texts inasmuch as they do not all have happy endings where the
researcher, through serendipity, found a new and better method, solved
the problem or ended his or her struggle.
Happy endings or not, it is our hope that these personal records will
provide for resonance (Wikan, 2012) not by telling how to do it, but by
showing how it happened (Cerwonka and Malkki 2008, p. 186).

Resonance, as we see it, is an experience that provides the power of cre-
ative production in its light (Meier and Wegener 2016). We hope one or
more of these stories will make you feel like writing. By writingsharing
readingwriting, we can inspire a research culture in which accountable
research methodologies involve adventurousness and not-being-so-sure.
The contributors are a mix of early-career and experienced researchers
in the fields of education, healthcare, business, creativity and social work,
among others. Some are part-time and others full-time researchers; some
have engaged in research late in life and others have embarked on doc-
toral studies right after their masters degrees. They are all genuinely curi-
ous researchers who interact creatively with life circumstances, obstacles
and opportunities and are bold enough to share. We are grateful to you
all for detouring with us. Thank you for showing how it happened! Last
but not least, special thanks to Vlad Glveanu and Brady Wagoner, the
series editors, for setting off with us, and to Vlad for rounding off the trip
with some final reflections on detours in methodology and research.
References
Agee, J.(2009). Developing qualitative research questions: A reflective process.
International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 22(4), 431447.
Barnacle, R., & DallAlba, G. (2014). Beyond skills: Embodying writerly prac-
tices through the doctorate. Studies in Higher Education, 39(7), 11391149.
Becker, H. S. (2007). Writing for social scientists: How to start and finish your
thesis, book, or article (2nd ed.). London: University of Chicago Press.
Cerwonka, A., & Malkki, L.H. (2008). Improvising theory: Process and temporal-
ity in ethnographic fieldwork. London: University of Chicago Press.
Glveanu, V.P. (2014). Distributed creativity: Thinking outside the box of the cre-
ative individual. London: Springer.
Glveanu, V.P. (2015). Creativity as a sociocultural act. The Journal of Creative
Behavior, e-pub ahea doi: 10.1002/jocb.94
Glveanu, V.P., Tanggaard, L., & Wegener, C. (Eds.). (2016). Creativity: A new
vocabulary. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hastrup, K. (1992). Det antropologiske projekt om forblffelse. Copenhagen:
Gyldendal.
6 N. Meier et al.
Lather, P. A. (2007). Getting lost: Feminist efforts toward a double(d) science.

NewYork: State University of NewYork.
Meier, N., & Wegener, C. (2016). Writing with resonance. Journal of Management
Inquiry. Ahead-of-print 1056492616673911.
Meier, N., & Wegener, C. (2017). The open book: Stories of academic life and
writing or where we know things. Boston: Sense Publishers.
Pitt, A., & Britzman, D. (2003). Speculations on qualities of difficult knowl-
edge in teaching and learning: An experiment in psychoanalytic research.
Qualitative Studies in Education, 16(6), 755776.
Tanggaard, L., & Wegener, C. (2016). A survival kit for doctoral students and their
supervisors: Traveling the landscape of research. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.
Wegener, C. (2016). Driving forces of welfare innovation Explaining interrela-
tions between innovation and professional development. In S. Billett,
D. Stephen, & C. Darryl (Eds.), Supporting learning across working life:
Models, processes and practices. Cham: Springer.
Wegener, C., & Aakjr, M.K. (2016). Kicked out and let down: Breakdown-
driven organizational research. Qualitative Research in Organizations and
Management: An International Journal, 11(1), 6783.
Weick, K.E. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Wikan, U. (2012). Resonance. Beyond the words. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Ninna Meier is an associate professor at the Department of Sociology and Social

Work at Aalborg University, Denmark, where she teaches and supervises students
in organisational sociology. She has carried out qualitative field studies of organisa-
tion and management of healthcare work since 2009, first focusing on the mana-
gerial work of clinical managers in the front line of hospital wards and then
focusing on the leadership and coordination practices inherent in making health-
care work coherent across geographical, organizational and professional boundar-
ies. She is particularly interested in how researchers may facilitate impact of their
work in practice, especially the role of writing herein; a topic she has blogged
about on LSE.Her latest book with Charlotte Wegener is called The Open Book:
Stories of Academic Life and Writing or Where We Know Thingsa book they did
not know they were writing until one day it was done. Currently, they are develop-
ing both Open Writing and resonance conceptually and as a field of research, a
method of inquiry and community of academics across disciplines and countries.
Charlotte Wegeneris an associate professor at the Department of

Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University, Denmark. Her work con-
cerns innovation with a specific focus on education, workplace learning and
research methodology. Charlotte runs writing workshops for doctoral and mas-
ter students, faculty and practitioners. She is passionate about writing and has
explored the art and craft of writing in several ways. She seeks to expand aca-
demic writing as both process and product by involving fiction, music, dreams
and everyday life experiences. She has published blog posts on the London
School of Economics Impactblog and Review of Books. She is also the co-author
of The Open Book: Stories of Academic Life and Writing or Where We Know Things.
Together with her long-time writing friend, Ninna Meier, she has developed the
concept of Open Writinga project devoted to the creation of a new research
field and joyful writing practice.
Elina Maslo is an associate professor at the Danish School of Education,

Aarhus University, where she mainly teaches second language learning and
teaching courses at the Masters Programme for teachers of Danish as a second
and foreign language. She conducted her PhD project at the Institute for
Pedagogy and Psychology at the University of Latvia (2003). After almost ten
years in the field of learning languages in and outside the formal educational
system, exploring successful learning spaces in practice, she is now devoting
herself to discovering and theorizing transformative dimensions of learning
spaces. Her main research interests are learning spacesmultiple, diverse,
changing, fluid, complex, always in constructionin and outside the school
and at the workplace. Elina is an active member and European co-coordinator
of the ASEM LLL Hub research network on workplace learning.
Part 1
Different Vantage Points, New
Insights
2
The Wonder ofThings asThey Are:
Theorizing Obesity andFamily Life
withArt
LoneGrn
My impression is that philosophers nowadays tend to associate the experi-

ence of wonder with the explanation of science rather than, as in
Wittgenstein and Austin, with our relationship to things as they are, the
perception of the extraordinariness of what we find ordinary (for example,
beauty) and the ordinariness of what we find extraordinary (for example,
violence). (Cavell 2005, 34)
To me, the attraction of the line has to do with its kinship with pointing.
There is no pretense in the line that it will render anything with optical
correctness. Rather a line allows me to closely examine something, I tend
to use the line almost like a sculptural modeling tool, and when I draw, I
feel like I am running my fingers across the landscape of figures and faces.
(Speyer 2011, 11)
L. Grn (*)
VIVE The Danish Centre of Applied Social Science,
Copenhagen, Denmark

12 L. Grn
For a long time I did not have a theoretical framework with which to
make sense of my ethnographic fieldwork on the obesity epidemic, kinship,
and relatedness. I did have a point of departure, a phenomenological orien-
tation, which guided how I went about the doing of the fieldwork. I also had
a hope that taking an experience-near approach to a large-scale phenome-
non like epidemics would yield something interesting. Yet, for a long time,
I did not know how to put what I found into words or how to find concepts
that could help me single out that which was most important in my data.
But I did have something. I had a novel, The Virgin Suicides, by Jeffrey
Eugenides. I had drawings by a Sydney-based Danish artist, Maria Speyer.
Both captured, pointed to, and showed, what was the most compelling
and yet to my academic understanding and language somehow elusive
aspects of exploring obesity experientially in the context of family life. Since
then I have found my analytical toolkit, but what remains intriguing is the
way the initial story and imageswhich, for a long time, remained my sole
analytical guiding starsportray the main insights more directly. One feels
the experiential truth of the image or the story right there and then, at the
very moment the lines or words touch ones eyes, ears, and heart. The theo-
retical framework that I have since then come to rely on, the German phi-
losopher Bernhard Waldenfels Phenomenology of the Alien (Waldenfels
2007, 2011), also captures the aspects that were highlighted in the pictures
and the novel, but it remains abstract and difficult to understand. I have
devoted considerable time and energy to bringing Waldenfels concepts like
the alien, responsivity, affect, and time-lag into conversation with the con-
crete everyday settings and events of family homes, kitchen, and relations
(see Grn 2017a, b, c); yet, I am often met with questions and demands for
clarification by readers, colleagues, and reviewers. Many years ago the
anthropologist Paul Stoller remarked, that recent writing on the body tends
to be articulated in a curiously disembodied language. (Stoller 1997, xiv) In
a similar vein, one could say that phenomenological theory tends to be artic-
ulated in a curiously dis-experienced language, while the story and the draw-
ings are not. They speak directly to and from experience. With force. As
Speyer writes there is no pretense that her line will render anything with
optical correctness, yet, when she draws, she feels like she is running her
fingers across the landscape of figures and faces (Speyer 2011, 11).
2 The Wonder ofThings asThey Are: Theorizing Obesity and... 13
I praise, thus, the opportunity given to me in this chapter of taking a

detour back to the detour: to explore what it is that the drawings and the
novel made possible. Before embarking on this journey back, I want to
clarify that the fact that what we as anthropologists want to express is
often elusive, that the arguments are complicated, is not what I am after
here. Furthermore, I am not reflecting here on art as a way to represent
research findings that might be more evocative or engaging than tradi-
tional academic writingsor on art as empirical examples in the style of
many of my favorite philosophers. Rather, I want to reflect on art, often
perceived as imprecise and elusive when compared to science, as a theo-
retical framework in its own right, as a way of thinking and philosophiz-
ing, which, to paraphrase Cavell, stays close to our relationship to things
as they are. I will do this in three steps. First, I will present data from the
ethnographic fieldwork; then I will introduce my use of the novel and the
drawings; finally, I end with some reflections on art as a mode of thinking
about data, that is, as theory.
The Fieldwork
The fieldwork on obesity, kinship, and relatedness was carried out with
four families in 20142015, whom I had met initially during my Ph.D.
fieldwork in 20012003. I know these families very well, and they appear
in this fieldwork not solely as informants or interlocutors, but as frontline
researchers, helping me reflect on the obesity epidemic from within their
own lived experience. The following conversation is taken from a family
interview. We are sitting around Susannes kitchen table: Susanne, her
sister Bente, and Bentes children Bo, a young man aged 25, and Marie,
his half-sister, aged 15. I ask Bo and Marie what they think caused their
obesity. After a short pause, Bente responds:
Bente: Well, shes sitting right here (pointing to herself

and following up in an insistent voice): None of
them can be blamed for becoming obese! It can
only be traced back to me!
14 L. Grn
Susanne: No, there was a father too.

Bente: Yes. Yes. But clearly ... the food that was served and
what was available in the home. I am saying
that none or my children are culpable of their
overweight
Marie: I dont think so, because it happened when I was
being bullied and I myself went to
Bente (interrupts): Marie, if the things hadnt been there, if you didnt
serve the brown gravy
Marie (interrupts): But it was my own money!
Bente (in an
insisting voice):
But Marie if you didnt serve the gravy, if you
didnt buy the pizza, the coke its not the chil-
dren, you cannot be held responsible for your own
obesity. It lies right here! In the same way, I do not
blame my parents for the obesity, but that is where
I can trace it to. () You can say, yes, Bo is grown
up today, he makes his own choices. But the foun-
dation (in Danish grund stenen, the foundation
stone) of Bos obesity its in the genes, thats for
sure, I am certain that something comes from your
genes, but it is also the food one has served them!
Bo: Yes. But well my father, he is thin and also my elder
brothers. And well, I feel they have just taken in
whatever () I mean, my impression is that we actu-
ally eat the same, or in fact they might eat a bit more.
Bente: You have double genes! Both from your mother
and from your fathers side. Genes from your
paternal grandmother.
Susanne: And your elder brother was big
Bente: Yes. He also was overweight as
Susanne: as a child. But then he got away from home,
you can say. Already after the confirmation at a
boarding school or something.
Lone: Did he lose weight there?
Susanne: Yes.
Bo (interrupts): Well the thinking goes that because it is my mother,

I got it from there. But if I had been the son of one
of the other sisters, then I think that is kind of the
same, and I would have been big there too.
I pause shortly to give you a bit more of the family history. Over the
course of one year, Susanne and her two sisters all had gastric bypass sur-
geries; while all the sisters have lost a lot of weight, between 130 and 160
pounds, Bente has changed the most: she wears tighter clothes, has divorced
Maries father and found a new boyfriend. Furthermoreand to me the
most remarkable in the course of eventsthe sisters cutting of their intes-
tines affects Bentes daughter Marie, who, after a long, painful process of
feeling excluded, having to carry all the too many kilos by herself, starts
losing weight. This is where we re-enter the family conversation.
Marie: It is up to 40 pounds now. It was the start of the sum-

mer vacation. I dont know what happened, but I just know
that that was when apparently I got the motivation () I
dont understand it myself. () I have tried so many times
saying: On Monday. I will start on Monday and then
Monday night: Oops then something happened.
I ask what has brought about the weight loss. After rejecting several
possible causes, Marie replies: Well this sounds crazy, but I use Christoffer.
Everybody laugh. Christoffer is a blond curly hair and blue-eyed pop star
who has teenage girls screaming at his arrival. Wondering about the scope
of her transformation, I ask about cravings, if she sometimes feels like
eating an entire bag of candy.
She replies: No. Not at all. Not at all like before.
Her family chips in:
Bo: There was a time when we locked the cupboards.

Bente: Marie constantly had a hole in her stomach. You had to be
filled up with food.
16 L. Grn
Marie: Yes. I was I was always hungry. I would ten minutes

after supper I would ask for food. Or if we were visiting, I
would go to my mother and ask her: When should we eat,
or
Bente: Yes it was like it couldnt be filled. You know, that hole
couldnt close.
At this point Susanne remarks that Marie has changed in other ways;
previously she was so dependent on her mother. Bente adds that she and
Marie used to be almost like girlfriends, going out to eat and buy similar
clothes. That changed when she was operated. Marie explains how she
felt betrayed and jealous. How she used to think: I will just eat and eat
and eat until I can get an operation. She did not think she could lose
weight. For me it was impossible, she says. Again, I ask her what had
changed, and, after the laughter caused by Bos joking remark Christoffer
became famous has silenced, there is a long pause. Finally, Marie says:
I dont know.
The Novel
In the novel The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides (1993), five young
girls, five sisters in fact, over a period of one year, kill themselves. One of
the sisters, the youngest one called Cecilie, initiates this small-scale epi-
demic, this chain of events by slitting her wrist in the bathtub. She is
rescued, but shortly thereafterat the end of a party organized by the
parents for the five girls and their neighboring boysthrows herself from
the rooftop and is spiked on the fence of the family house. I have written
party in quotes because, as the story is brought to us by one of the
neighbor boys who participated in the event, this wasnt much of a party,
but more like a formalized round of interchanges and movements over-
seen by the parents. It was like something that could have taken place in
the ballrooms of Versailles several hundreds of years before, but without
the luxurious dcor. This was just a party in a basement room with plastic
cups and bad aperitifs; nevertheless, the boys present are mesmerized by
this opportunity to enter the house where the girls of their dreams live
and breathe, to be in their immediate presence, use their bathrooms, and
get a peek of the beds where they sleep.
In the grand finale taking place exactly a year after this first suicide, the
remaining four girls commit suicide by different meansTherese by an
overdose of sleeping pills, Bonnie by hanging herself from the basement
roof, Lux by the gas fumes from a car in the garage, and Mary by sticking
her head in the oven. Mary does actually survive for about a month after
this collective suicide event, but by thenthis is close to the end of the
novel that is situated between this first and last event our hopes that she
will stay alive have dimmed. There is a sense of doom or inevitableness
that has, in the year between the first successful suicide to the collective
one, just grown more and more solid.
We follow the events as they unfold, as well as retrospectively, through the
eyes of the neighbor boys. One of them is the actual narrator, but he,
throughout the novel, refers to himself as part of a group of boys, a pack,
collectively fascinated with the girls. This is a novel about adolescent love,
disquiet, and death, as the blurb on the back cover says. The night the major-
ity of the girls kill themselves, the boys believe they are in the house to rescue
them, to elope with them. The excitement is palpable; on and off over the
last year the boys have felt themselves within the vicinities of getting access
to the girls magic circle. One of them, Buzz Romano, upon descending into
the basement to look for the girls whom they think are packing suitcases,
makes a little dance that captures the longing and desire of the boys:
Buzz Romano waded out to the card table, and as we all watched, began to
dance, to box-step, as his mother had taught him in the papal splendor of
their living room. He held only air, but we could see her-them-all five,
clasped in his arms. These girls make me crazy. If I could just feel one of
them up just once, he said as his shoes filled and emptied with silt. His
dancing kicked up the sewage smell, and after that, stronger than ever, the
smell we could never forget. Because it was then we saw, over Buzz
Romanos head, the only thing that had changed in the room since we left
it a year before. Hanging down amid the half-deflated balloons were the
two brown-and-white husks of Bonnies saddle shoes. She had tied the rope
to the same beam as the decorations. (209)
18 L. Grn
To paraphrase Cavell, this is a novel that invigorates the perception of

the extraordinariness of what we find ordinary (for example, beauty) and
the ordinariness of what we find extraordinary (for example, violence).
The extraordinary and ordinary, the beauty and the violence, all entangle
to form a net of fatal melancholy, that, just like a spiders web, keeps the
boys hypnotized, intrigued, enamored, enticed, and alsoduring the
year of eventson the lookout for explanations.
Explanations are there in abundance, starting right after the first
suicide: Everyone had a theory as to why she had tried to kill her-
self, Eugenides writes. She wanted out of the house, say the two
female neighbors (15). Mr. Buell, the husband of one of the women,
says: It was like anything else in this sad society. They did not have a
relationship with God. (16) From there onward, explanations are
offered from many sides, increasingly involving expert opinions:
Unrequited love, repressed urges, the contamination of tragedy, emo-
tional need, the freak (one bad sibling corrupts the others) explana-
tion, the theory of repetitive suicide along with ideas of degenerate
youth and times.
For the boys, though, these explanations are seriously lacking. They
make an exhibition in an empty garage of items and testimonies of things
as they are. Throughout the book, these numbered items are referred to
as follows. Exhibit number 1: photo of Lisbon family house before sui-
cide attempt. Exhibit number 3: photo of the Lisbon house with all it
shutters open, after first suicide, and after school dance. Exhibit number
4: school photo of Cecilia. Exhibit number 9: the first newspaper article
reporting on the suicide epidemic. Exhibit number 8: newspaper article
with picture of girls embracing the tree. Exhibit number 10: photo of the
girls in their dresses for the homecoming party. Exhibit number 1315:
two school papers from the girls and a signed exemption from sports.
In working with my fieldwork data like the ones presented in the pre-
vious section, I was struggling to find a path toward a clearing (Jackson
1989) that would allow me to reveal the experiential depth, indetermi-
nacy, and uncertainty that characterized the fieldwork experiences and
exchanges, because the obesity epidemiclike this suicide epidemic
comes with an overload of explanatory weight (individual lifestyle, the

energy expenditure model, the obesogenic society, genetic dispositions,
inequity, social inheritance). We already know it all. Yet, in hearing fam-
ily members wonder about the affects and effects of brown sauce, pizzas,
contaminated home environments, being bullied at school, having your
own money, holes in the stomach, the cutting of guts and family bonds,
a blue-eyed Danish pop star, and the repeated I just dont know, I
decided to side with the boys in The Virgin Suicides. To carefully collect
and keep to heart the specific ways in which the extraordinary reside in
the ordinary and vice versa. To stay true to what Lisa Stevenson (2014)
has termed fieldwork of uncertainty in which we take the uncertain,
the confused that which is not clearly understood as a legitimate eth-
nographic object, (ibid., 2) because, from the perspective of the families,
I have followed processes of weight gain, and weight loss remains
mysterious even if the alienness emerges in the context of the ordinary
and the most intimate settings: the home, the workplace, the family, and
ones own body and desires.
The Images
Big family and relatedness maps were drawn by family members during
our talks on kinship, obesity, and relatedness (Figs.2.1, 2.2 and 2.3).
In fact, questions of units of analysis had prompted my experience-
near approach to the obesity epidemic. Especially in relation to the spread
of conditions that are broadly conceived of as lifestyle diseases, it
seemed important to be able to get behind the strong individualism that
comes with the notion of lifestyle. Guided by Maria Speyers pictures, I
have radically changed what I find to be the relevant unit of analysis of
this fieldwork (Figs.2.4, 2.5 and 2.6).
In the book What kinship Is and Is Not (2013), Sahlins defines kinship
as a mutuality of being and describes relatives as people who live each
others lives and die each others deaths (Sahlins 2013). He reflects on
what De Castro has called the mysterious effectiveness of relationality
20 L. Grn
Fig. 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3 Family and relatedness drawings from ethnographic
fieldwork
Fig. 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3 (continued)
and places kinship within the same domain as magic, sorcery, gift
exchange, and possession. Also critical voices have warned against overly
positive renderings of kinship as relations of solidarity and support (Das
1995; Lambek 2011; Carsten 2013) and shown that what flows or sieves
within families is equally positive and negative, nourishing and poison-
ous, leading to efforts of family members to both forge and cut relation-
ships (Strathern 1996).
To me Speyers drawings said all thatand moreand transmitted
the message forcefully and instantaneously. While Sahlins could demon-
strate a wealth of ethnographic evidence which state that different per-
sons are not necessarily separate beings, as Tylor found among South
American people long ago (Tylor 1865 in Sahlins 2013) (Grn and
Meinert 2017), Speyers drawings seriously questioned our common
sense perception of there being actual space between individuals. They
spoke instead of the ways in which we are intertwined in bodies, minds,
and emotionsespecially if we are related (Figs.2.4, 2.5 and 2.6).
22 L. Grn
Fig. 2.4 Conviction 6 by Maria Speyer
Or, to put it differently, Speyer posited the experiential truth of inter-

dependence and intersubjectivity. Just as the boys in The Virgin Suicides
posited the truth of indeterminacy, another key term in phenomenologi-
cal thinking. Relatedness (Carsten 2004), mutuality of being, interde-
pendence, and intersubjectivity were all over my datain the relationship
between Marie and her mother, Bo and his paternal relatives, in the dou-
ble genes of both sides of the family, in Bente as the foundation stone of
her childrens obesity, but also in the way the cutting of intestines in one
generation led to natural, yet miraculous, weight loss in another.
Fig. 2.5 Adherence 1 by Maria Speyer

24 L. Grn
Fig. 2.6 Red Sky 1 by Maria Speyer
Thinking andTheorizing withArt

I hope to have shownmore than arguedhow thinking with art
can be conducive to research, which seeks to stay close to things as
they are without succumbing to mere description. With art, we are
not associating the experience of wonder with the explanation of sci-
ence, (Cavell 2005, 34) or rendering anything with optical correct-
ness (Speyer 2011, 11). Rather, we are being able to render an
experiential truth, which lies at the heart of the phenomenological
project. In Cheryl Mattinglys words, the strong phenomenological
claim takes objectivity itself as just one possible attitude within a

range of necessarily engaged and first p
erson ways (Mattingly 2017)
in which we try to apprehend the world, an interpretative move,
which always rests on a primary inter-subjective relation with the
world (ibid.). Mattingly formulates this as a phenomenological claim
to the primacy of first-person perspectives to third-person categories
(ibid.), suggesting not that we ignore third-person categories, but that
we enter into a relationship with them, which, so to say, turns the
third person category on its head (ibid.). This is what Eugenides does
by letting the boys who passionately loved the suicidal girls take us
through the epidemicnot grand and small categorical explanations.
This is what Maria Speyer does when she draw figures that are closest
to a resolution between me and the other () coming to terms with
a sense of bafflement and recognition, with uncertainty and convic-
tion (Speyer 2011, 65). And this is what I, inspired by their art, have
tried to do in taking seriously the ways in which indeterminacy and
intersubjectivity constitute the lived experience of the obesity
epidemic.
References
Carsten, J. (2004). After kinship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Carsten, J.(2013). What kinship does And how. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic
Theory, 3(2), 245251.
Cavell, S. (2005). Cities of words. Pedagogical letters on a register of the moral life.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Das, V. (1995). National honour and practical kinship: Unwanted women and
children. In F. D. Ginsburg & R. Rapp (Eds.), Conceiving the new world
order. The global politics of reproduction (pp.212233). Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Eugenides, J. (1993). The virgin suicides. NewYork: Picador.
Grn, L. (2017a). The weight of the family. Communicability as alien affec-
tion in Danish family histories and experiences of obesity. Ethos, 45(2),
182198.
26 L. Grn
Grn, L. (2017b). Slgt, hygge, tid og sted. Familieperspektiver p overvgtsep-

idemien. (Kinship, hygge, time and place. Family perspectives on the obe-
sity epidemic). Tidsskrift for Forskning i Sygdom og Samfund, 26, 1740.
Grn, L. (2017c). The tipping of the big stone And life itself. Obesity, moral
work and responsive selves over time. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 2(41),
267283.
Grn, L., & Meinert, L. (2017). Social contagion and cultural epidemics:
Phenomenological and experience-near explorations. Ethos, 45(2), 165181.
Jackson, M. (1989). Paths toward a clearing: Radical empiricism and ethnographic
inquiry. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Lambek, M. (2011). Kinship as gift and theft: Acts of succession in Mayotte and
ancient Israel. American Ethnologist, 38, 216.
Mattingly, C. (2017). Autism and the ethics of care: A phenomenological inves-
tigation into the contagion of nothing. Ethos, 45(2), 250270.
Sahlins, M. (2013). What kinship is and is not. Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press.
Speyer, M. (2011). Bafflement and recognition. On drawing the figure with
uncertainty and conviction. Master of Fine Arts Thesis. College of Fine Arts
UNSW.See drawings at: www.mariaspeyer.com
Stevenson, L. (2014). Life beside itself. Imagining care in the Canadian Arctic.
Oakland: University of California Press.
Stoller, P. (1997). Sensuous scholarship (contemporary anthropology). Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press.
Strathern, M. (1996). Cutting the network. Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute, 2, 517535.
Waldenfels, B. (2007). The question of the other. Hong Kong: The Chinese
University Press.
Waldenfels, B. (2011). Phenomenology of the alien: Basic concepts. Northwestern
University Press.
Lone Grn is a senior researcher at VIVE The Danish Centre of Applied Social
Science, Copenhagen, Denmark, and at the Center for Cultural Epidemics
(EPICENTER), Aarhus University, Denmark. Lone Grn has done extensive
ethnographic fieldwork on patient perspectives on chronic diseases and obesity,
highlighting the complexities of health work in the contexts of everyday lives.
Recent areas of research concern: (1) social contagion in epidemics of noncom-
municable diseases and conditions, specifically in relation to kinship, relatedness
and obesity. (2) Vulnerability in old age and the search for the good old life. (3)
Theoretical developments within philosophical and moral anthropology and
phenomenological approaches in anthropology.
3
Into theWild Time: Notes
fromaTraveller
ChristinaBergJohansen
Part I: Wrestling theUtilitarian Devil

I do not quite remember how and what led up to it, but it became very
clear that I couldnt move forward. My plan had become painful in all
itsmeaninglessness, and my subject; the way we treat time in modern
human agency and strategy, was transforming from intellectual mission
to lived experience.
It was 2013, and I was trying to realize my postdoctoral grant to study
temporal hybrids in corporate strategy. This would entail some sort of
amulti-case study, where I would follow various strategic developments
in companies and look for their temporal conditions and boundaries.
Iwanted to explore how ideals to think long-term and embrace sustain-
ability are at all possible for companiesand organizations at large
when they are bound by short-term performance measures, shareholder
C.B.Johansen (*)
Copenhagen Business School, Copenhagen, Denmark

30C.B.Johansen

demands, the acceleration of everything (Rosa 2013) and the general

impatience that seems to permeate modern human agency. What is strat-
egy at all, if not a rational idea of knowing where you are going and being
able to plot that into a logical route along a series of evenly distributed
milestones? (Joas 1996). And if strategy is rationalends and means, a to
bthen there is a limit to how far into the future a strategy can reach.
The further the reach, the more uncertain the journey and the less help
from actual strategy. There must also be a limit to how broadly one can
think with strategy, because the more people and factors you involve, the
less control you have, and your plotted path may spread out a wild net of
trails, a wilderness to the strategist that just wants the coach to take his
company to b. Those were some of my thoughts. And as I read, and con-
templated, I understood how the notion of rational agency is the onto-
logical grandstand for modern life. Results. Project descriptions.
Education. Teleology everywhere. Also inside me. I am certainly no mas-
ter of new free temporalities, I too am a victim.
Logbook note, October 2013:

In this strange period of wondering and wildering inside and around my
research, reflecting on my topics becomes increasingly personal. Who am I in
the grinding wheel of utilitarian rationalism?
The idea that time is something to be used. Time should not just flow, or
ifit does, this flow should be under control. It is so incredibly difficult for me
to just work, just do my thing not knowing what it is and which strategic
boxes it fits into. I mean, I work, but with a constant voice of productivity
standards assessing the value of what I do. This value can be many things.
Today, I have read 3 articles and researched online on autoethnography and
performative ethnography. Whats that worth? Where do I put it, what does
itcontribute to?
Logbook note, November 2013

I have to win over this utilitarian devil that lives and breathes so deeply inside
me. This inner journey I am on is showing me my deepest illusions as clearlyas
cannot be explained. In this sense, I am grateful I am apparently now wise
enough to get to this layer, and see its fossilized traces in my spirit, through
myentire history.
3 Into theWild Time: Notes fromaTraveller 31
Logbook note, November 2013

This sense that I must hold on to the personal and intimately exploratory,
must stay oddish and sensitive. And the despair of trying to make this meet
myacademic and logical constructions. I must find a method that puts my
sensitivity and poetry first, that makes them the Geiger counter of peoples
deliberations of sustainable futures.
Logbook note, April 2014

Oh dear its difficult to free up time for my project. The need to sink into
thoughts, to let the project encompass me so I can feel where it needs work and
how the parts go together, the need to just nurture the projectthis is difficult.
So if this is a normal pace in the world, how does anyone ever find the time
to stop and think. To think deeply about what is wrong, and right. To connect
poetically with ones world. To wonder, and to have enough mental stretch to
ponder existential questions and see new sides of living and being.
If we dont have time to think existentially about the worldand this can
be together with other people as wellthen we cant relate ourselves in a
world different than our immediate imagination. We cant access our deeper
reservoirs of creativity and insight if we must constantly be concerned with
making end-means relations that we can start acting upon. Its not that we
need to sitisolated and philosophize hermit-like, but that we need to have
time to let things unfold. Its not that we need to think harder before we take
our good old ends-focused action, but that the stretch of thinking and action
should be woven together by the unfolding of thoughts and people and
activitiesby time. So action becomes investigation rather than conquest.
-----
I have still not had the methodological epiphany I was pining for those
days, but I managed to explore my creativity and begin a different, deeper,
sensuous dialogue with the temporal constructs I am interested in. Think
we must, we must think! (Haraway 2016). I am learning about temporal
materialities; how we can engage both present, past and very far future
through material play. It is all still in emergence, and I dont know where
it will become usefulhow it will translate to scientific, academic value.
It makes me slow, and sometimes embarrassed, at how little I have yet
32C.B.Johansen
achieved, measured in regular academic currency. I am still on a daily quest

to not dishonour myself for not having made it further by now. Its like an
addiction, a deep habit that I am trying to break free of. But time has taken
residence inside me, and it lives there together with ghosts of the future,
and poetic sensations of the present. The researcher and the living subject
have merged, embracing the pathic (Johnsen etal. 2017) (Fig.3.1).
Fig. 3.1 Oxygen. Copy of a milestone from a participant in Travellers laboratory

Part II: Traveller Doesnt Know Where toGo

One of the places I can go to think, to revolt (Haraway 2016), to grow
precariously as matsutake mushroom in the ruins of Capitalism (Tsing
2015), is a large-scale immersive performance format called Sisters
Academy.1 Manifestations of Sisters Academy last between 1 and 4weeks,
creating a parallel universe in which performers, visiting artists and
researchers and guests explore what knowledge, learning, living could
look and feel like if an aesthetic and sensuous dimension were primary to
defining its values and forms. I have immersed myself twice thus
far4days in 2015in Sweden; 10days in 2016in Iceland; next immer-
sion is planned for autumn 2017in Denmark. Inside this sensuous and
symbiotic academy, I slip into my poetic self a deep identity and an
authentic quest that everyone in Sisters Academy develops and names. I
am Traveller. This is my poetic self, my name and being that I am able to
explore. Am allowed to explore. Am allowing myself to explore. Traveller
is not a role, she is me; my longing, my logic, my mission in time.
Inside the second manifestation I participated in, I went deeper with
Traveller. I revisited my temporal damages. One of them is the always-
between yearning for destination and my current landscape and abilities.
Always on the strategic go. Not into the landscape, but across it, towards
destinations. Yearningpotentially a slippery slope to devaluation of the
present (not an unusual position for the contemporary human). Wayfaring
as Traveller, I decided to explore the physical experience of all this yearn-
ing and strategizing, of plotting out routes and forcing myself to move.
How could I move forward if it wasnt towards something? How could I
move with my body and soul, without allowing my mind to jump to the
coachmans seat? As I started experimenting, the answer was that I couldnt.
With my mind assigned a less commanding role, Traveller simply didnt
know where to go. It happened again and again. Ready to move, my pon-
cho and fur hat in place, rucksack on my back. Nowhere to go. Or every-
where to go, but no reason compelling enough to go anywhere. Challenging
my well-known, lifelong self-violent strategizing through corporeal deep
presence prodded me to find other ways of moving in the world. It would
be dishonest to walk with purpose when there was none. And silly. It
would be just kind of silly, like the distorted sense of importance and pur-
pose that you sometimes see in organizational life, people sidestepping
34C.B.Johansen

themselves in order to reach that performance target. And not just silly;
feeling this lack of purpose and going through with it anyways would be
pretence, even betrayal. Then, actually, Id rather be silly in the proper
sense of that word, whatever that is, but be silly like the fool who really
doesnt care about anything else than her here and now. So, instead of
stepping with purpose, I could take one step that didnt lead anywhere,
and then just stop. Or tap my foot a bit on the spot. Perhaps another step.
And a lot of waiting, or rather, lingering. Standing or sitting in time. Not
blank or in some state of meditation, just reclining against time, accepting
time as an almost spatial realm. Resting is an aesthetic event, writes
Timothy Morton (2013). So I indulged in this resting in every moment
that did not have a direction; ahh the liberty of no direction! And then at
some point, the moments had formed a step and nudged me onwards.
That kind of silly: a poetic, emotional, silly walk so slow it sometimes
didnt move at all. And then, sometimes, purpose formed as an urge from
within, and I knew something I wanted to do, to go for, so I stepped out
in the world, trotting towards some landmark, or event, or idea.
This is a different kind of yearning. It transgresses impatience and tele-
ologies. This kind of yearning encompasses the potential of reflection and
mourning, connecting us with the world in all its sensations, creating the
foundation of any sustainable and informed response (Van Dooren in
Haraway 2016: 39).
What if we moved like that, in and as organizations? How slow the
world would be, how rich in discovery (Koepnick 2014). This is every-
thing that acceleration and consumption are not. It is sensation, deep
now, symbiosis.
Part III: Waste Indulgence

Strategy has little patience. One of the central signs of quality in organi-
zational agency today is efficiency; that we move forward as quickly as the
circumstances will let us. To spend as little time as possibleof course,
without compromising anything, we understandis good.
I did a small experiment inside Sisters Academy, Iceland, where I col-
lected peoples wasted time in a little bag. I would sit next to someone,
show her the bag and nudge her to take a string of yarn dangling from it
and draw it towards her. At the end of the string was a little piece of paper
that asked: What is wasted time to you? When do you waste time in your
own life? Inside the bag were crumbled pieces of paper and a pencil to
write with. I only performed this session some 67 times, but became
quite fond of it and will do it more.
The answers were all different, but one thing they shared was that
when people reflect, wasted time hardly exists except for the waste of
worrying about things that worrying will not helpand even then, peo-
ple meta-reflected that this worry was probably what they needed to go
through, somehow. One conclusion here would be that on a personal
level, it is not relevant to talk about wasted timethere isnt a lot of
waste. But then why are we organizing ourselves inside and outside as if
we should carry time in a sealed, smooth, aerodynamic vessel that cuts
through turbulence like a bullet? Why are we ourselves sometimes
idealizing this, wanting to be that vessel, to be this frictionless temporal
artefact spinning through causal pipes and pathways? This is not life. This
is not travelling. This desired vessel offers no dirt and dust, and people
and animals, and mad crossings and sweat, and disorientation and
surprise, and wo/andering. This is just us, scared senseless by the wilder-
ness, tarmacking the shit out of it so as to minimize the scarring as we
brush through. Wasted time is, in response to this, revolt. It simmers and
rots pleasurably together with all the other trash in the compost bin,
making life out of death. It hides from rational man and his scripts while
opening up its own worlds. It defies individualisms linear desperation
against inevitable death (Adam 1998; Heidegger 1996/1927) and invites
death deep into life, into all around us, in the smell of autumn soil and
winter silence, the crackling of beetles in forest grounds, the microbes in
our bodies; boldly embracing our ontological anxiety (Morton 2016).
art IV: Research-Care inandBeyond

P
theAnthropocene
We do not know what the Big Shift is, but we feel it, see it, study it,
debate it. We are in it, and while our Capitalocene (Moore 2015) struc-
tures still haunt and devour anything that can be turned into economic
growth (including ourselves), a cross-disciplinarity of sciences is locating
36C.B.Johansen

contemporary Homo sapiens in, and as, a geologic term: the Anthropocene
era (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000; Crutzen 2002; Johnson etal. 2014).
Taking over from the Holocene era, which dates back some 12000years
to the end of the last Ice Age, the Anthropocene offers an understanding
of human beings as part of, and impacting on, geological change and
hence larger times and lives than our post-World War II industrial,
Western societies. We shudder as it dawns on us that our carbon-powered
actions are fuelling uncontrollable climate change, and that our use of oil,
minerals, chemicals will be visible in the physical (and biological) layers
of the earth for millions of years to come. We calm ourselves with dys-
topic cynicism or geo-engineering exuberance (Berg Johansen and De
Cock 2017; Haraway 2016; Jameson 2005; Yusoff 2016). But we also
revolt. Across social and natural sciences, across arts and geo-philosophy
and communities and entrepreneurs, people are opening, deconstruct-
ing, decomposing the old binaries between human and nature and indi-
viduals and systems.
Challenging the notion of Anthropocene altogether, Haraway argues
for a Chthulucene world in which human beings are with and of the
earth, and the biotic and abiotic powers of this earth are the main story,
in which we and all life forms are critters of the Earth, chthonic ones:
We are humus, not Homo, not anthropos; we are compost, not posthu-
man (Haraway 2016: 55). We are part of the earth; the most minuscule
microbes live in, around and through us from birth (or before, through
the bodies of our parents and the organisms that sustain them?) through
death. I guess we never fully die, we just become something else, as exhib-
ited by one of the corpses lying in the forest at the Applied Forensics
Science Facility in Texas2; partly mummified and with several large,
brown mushrooms growing from where an abdomen once was (Costandi
2015). Our linear temporalities explode into deep cyclical nature, into
the earth that we are, as well as into the precarious conditions of earthly
life (Tsing 2015). Which types of responsibility for our presents and
futures does such a perspective invite?
Taking seriously the vast timescales in which we are but dust and
shadow3 (Amato 2001), we are challenged to a different responsibility
when we understand [that] our being is mineralogical as well as biologi-
cal (Yusoff 2016: 21). Working with million-year geologic timescales,
Yusoff expresses the (temporal) illusion of placing Anthropos at the
c entreof a world that moves in much larger and moremysterious ways

than human: As if the earth were available for human responsibility. As if
the world originated for the conscience of man (this is anthropogenesis),
rather than the pleasure of snails or the proliferation of bacterial ingesta-
tions over millennia, or the shuffling of pebbles and erratic boulders, as if
the genesis of the world was for us alone (Yusoff 2016: 17).
How delightful, this mockery of us humans! But what happens,
then, if we take seriously our situatedness in geological timescales?
Morton answers with hyperobjects; things that are massively dis-
tributed in time and space relative to humans and of which we are
part, examples being global warming, uranium or plastic bags (Morton
2013:1). We cannot see hyperobjects in their entirety, but we are
hopelessly and fully enmeshed in them. When we realize that nonhu-
man entities exist that are incomparably more vast and powerful than
we are, and that our reality is caught in them (ibid.: 130), we poten-
tially open up a new era of care and co-existence with non-humans
across time and space.
One of the ways of getting into that kind of relationship is what
Morton calls intimacy. Yes. This pulls at me; this is caring and being in
love. Like the 8000 people engaged in the Crochet Coral Reef , one of
the worlds largest collaborative art projects in which coral reef ecosys-
tems are crocheted creatively in all sorts of materials, based on mathemat-
ical codes, marine biology science, handicrafts and fabulation, and
drawing attention to the beauty, necessity and extinction of coral reefs
globally4 (Haraway 2016: 76ff; Wertheim et al. 2015). This intimacy
happens when we go slower, deeper. Like the repetitions of artists like
Kjartansson, Abramovic and Eliasson, like research that lasts a lifetime,
like the Future Library,5 like looking at lichen on remote hikes or city
walks,6 like Halperins multi-material representations of the slow tempo-
ralities of Greenlandic glaciers (see Koepnick 2014: 91ff.), like the very
base of all indigenous wisdom, like rituals and ruins (Benjamin 1940; De
Cock and ODoherty 2017) (Figs.3.2, 3.3 and 3.4).
I circle around these knowledge-scapes, drawn, trying to sniff out their
temporal qualities and peculiarities. How can I investigate the tempo
ralities of these new ontologies, how can I use my own position as a
researcher to explore them materially and conceptually, guided by inti-
macy and care? And how can I do it now, in the small and the near,
38C.B.Johansen

Fig. 3.2, 3.3 and 3.4 Exploring ruins and goals and milestones in sensuous ways
Fig. 3.2, 3.3 and 3.4 (continued)
whileI wait for Big Funding Opportunities in my little semi-precarious

researcher life? What should I offer here, at the end of this chapter, as
examples of humble but serious play? Well. I try to disrupt, for example;
to insist on challenging the managers I interview with uncanny questions
about 200-year timescales (Berg Johansen and De Cock 2017) and to
make them hold my time pod in their handsan artistic sonic device
with which you can both feel and hear the sounds of time. I try to make
rituals out of taken-for-granted strategy discourses, reclaiming means
ends language of goals and milestones together with participants in
Travellers time laboratory. We discuss and think and write our way into
goals and dreams, and the participants select and label the stones they
need to give attention to on their wayfaring towards their goals. Often,
milestones turn out to be goals in themselves, or just ongoing life, like
one participants milestone named oxygen. Yes, oxygen, let us think
about that, think we must!, oxygen as our constantly returning milestone
on the road to everything. I explore the notion of ruins with partici-
pants; ruins of our presents and futures. I investigate imaginaries and
paradoxes of sustainability among key opinion leaders in Greenland and
am hopefully going on a series of temporal travels to different Arctic loca-
tions. I write researcher-poetry and try to live with vibrant humility
inside the hyperobjects, interconnected with snails, rocks, plants, sounds,
bacteria, organizations, oxygen, art and everything else. I try to take, and
share, my time (Fig.3.5).
40C.B.Johansen

Fig. 3.5 Time pod. Artistic-sonic device with temporal sounds, for subtle inter-
vention in interviews with corporate managers
Notes
1. Sisters Academy is a school in a world and society where the sensuous and
poetic mode of being is at the centre of all action and interaction. It
defines the primary mode of being and is the values on which all societal
institutions are building including the school. Thus Sisters Academy is
the school in what we term a Sensuous society A potential new world
arising from the post-economical and ecological crisis. Between
20142020 Sisters Academy will manifest in a series of Nordic countries
(http://sistersacademy.dk/about/)
2. http://www.shsu.edu/~stafs/
3. Horaces famous quote from one of his odes: Book IV, ode vii, line 16.
4. See also the project website: http://crochetcoralreef.org/
5. https://www.futurelibrary.no/
6. For work on urban lichen-human interrelations, see Jennifer Gabrys, e.g.:
http://www.jennifergabrys.net/2012/12/urban-sitework-moss-eye-view/
References
Adam, B. (1998). Timescapes of modernity: The environment & invisible hazards.
London: Routledge.
Amato, J. A. (2001). Dust: A history of the small and the invisible. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Benjamin, W. (1940). On the concept of history. In H. Eiland & M. W.
Jennings (Eds.), Selected writings (Vol. 4, pp. 19381940). Cambridge:
Harvard University Press.
Berg Johansen, C., & De Cock, C. (2017, forthcoming). Ideologies of time:
How elite corporate actors engage the future. Organization.
Costandi, M. (2015, May 5). Life after death: The science of human decomposi-
tion. The Guardian.
Crutzen, P.J. (2002). Geology of mankind. Nature, 415(6867), 2323.
Crutzen, P.J., & Stoermer, E.F. (2000). The Anthropocene. Global Change
Newsletter, International GeosphereBiosphere Programme (IGBP), 41, 1718.
De Cock, C., & ODoherty, D. (2017). Ruin and organization studies.
Organization Studies, 38(1), 129150.
Haraway, D.J. (2016). Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the chthulucene.
Durham: Duke University Press.
Heidegger, M. (1996). Being and time: A translation of sein und zeit. Albany:
State University of NewYork Press.
Jameson, F. (2005). Archaeologies of the future: The desire called utopia and other
science fictions. London: Verso.
Joas, H. (1996). The creativity of action. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Johnsen, R., Berg Johansen, C., & Toyoki, S. (2017). Serving time. Unpublished
manuscript.
Johnson, E., Morehouse, H., Dalby, S., Lehman, J., Nelson, S., Rowan, R., etal.
(2014). After the anthropocene: Politics and geographic inquiry for a new
epoch. Progress in Human Geography, 38(3), 439456.
Koepnick, L. (2014). On slowness: Toward an aesthetic of the contemporary.
NewYork: Columbia University Press.
Moore, J.W. (2015). Capitalism in the web of life: Ecology and the accumulation
of capital. NewYork: Verso Books.
Morton, T. (2013). Hyperobjects. philosophy and ecology after the end of the world.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Morton, T. (2016). Dark ecology: For a logic of future coexistence. New York:
Columbia University Press.
42C.B.Johansen

Rosa, H. (2013). Social acceleration: A new theory of modernity. New York:

Columbia University Press.
Tsing, A.L. (2015). The mushroom at the end of the world: On the possibility of life
in capitalist ruins. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Wertheim, M., Wertheim, C., & Haraway, D. (2015). Crochet coral reef: A proj-
ect by the institute for figuring. Institute for Figuring.
Yusoff, K. (2016). Anthropogenesis: Origins and endings in the anthropocene.
Theory, Culture & Society, 33(2), 328.
Christina Berg JohansenExternal Associate Professor, PhD, Department

of Organization, Copenhagen Business School. Idealist, scholar and temporal
explorer. Christina works between and across journal-style critical sociology and
geo-philosophy, ethnographic practices and creative experiments with sound,
performance and poetry. Amid institutionalized organization theory and cross-
disciplinary weirdness, she teaches and supervises in traditional organization
and strategy curricula and loves to see students grow. She has a special interest in
Arctic issues, the Anthropocene, sustainability, long futures and human agency
in capitalist temporal structures.
4
Thats Responsibility
ChrisSmissaert
Chris: So, when Im behind the computer, its easy to disturb me,
right?
Olivia: Sure, thats what I do all day, hihi.
Chris: Well, I try not to be disturbed by you.
Olivia: Is that working out? No.
Both: Hahaha.
Open-ended conversations I have always experienced as stressful. I am

afraid that my own ideas and wishes, or lack thereof, become somehow
compromised. Morson and Emerson (1990) suggest that literary theorist
and moral philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin (18951975) might have called
this psychological otherlessness: a refusal to risk genuine encounters
with others (p.188). This otherlessness withholds fantasy from becoming
C. Smissaert (*)
Institute for Management Research, Radboud University,
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

44 C. Smissaert
creativity, because creativity, in Bakhtins definition, needs otherness: it is

another, and not the self, who bestows a final form onto what, until then,
was mere potentiality. The creative act is thus a social act. And instead of
some exceptional occurrence, creativity permeates the everyday, and is
palpable when one stops to notice. Stopping to notice, however, might be
more of a challenge than it seems. And when my mind does wander, in
between the duties of raising children, an office job and a part-time PhD
study, creative thoughts are overshadowed by concerns about my respon-
sibilities. Fortunately, though, my study is about moral responsibility in
organisation. So, when creating a research text, I like to think I combine
creativity and responsibility. But six years into my PhD research, I still
have a hard time writing and talking about it. In this text, I am trying to
grasp why that is, by talking about responsibility with my nine-year-old
daughter. Sometimes children understand the core concepts in life in a
more practical and everyday sense, less detached one might say. And it
turns out, responsibility might be quite like creativity. Or at least my dif-
ficulties with it.
About four years ago, at the early stages of my PhD, I asked my daugh-
ter Olivia, then six years old, what responsibility meant to her, and
recorded this fragment.
Chris: Olivia, what does responsibility mean to you?

Olivia: I think responsibility is, for example, like when youre a big
sister or big brother, you are able to baby-sit. If youre able to.
And, uh if you try to look after a child, then you should be
pretty big. Because if youre small then you cant really look after
a child. And uh, for example, you should play a bit with
your child. And you should make sure that your child doesnt
cry much.
Here, Olivia understands responsibility as a task, and the basic ques-

tion is whether one is up for it or not. I would say this is how we under-
stand responsibility in its everyday sense. The example of babysitting
that she provides, makes concrete what such a task would amount to
and what it would ask of the one carrying out the task, carrying that
responsibility. Olivia, by the way, had been getting used to having a lit-
tle brother who was six months old at the time. By how well the
4 Thats Responsibility 45
responsibility is carried out in practice, one might be praised or criti-

cised, depending on the circumstances at hand. Appraisal, here, is
directed at the performance of a given task (at the how), and not at
weighing whether the task should be carried out in those circumstances
in the first place (at the what). Maybe Olivia would do a great job
babysitting her little brother, but it wouldnt be responsible to have her
do that in the first place. It would not be the right thing to do, although
when we say that, we do not mean it would be wrong of her to do that.
We understand it would be wrong of the parent(s) responsible for her,
to put her, and her brother, in that position. We would ask: How could
you ask that of your six-year-old daughter? And the one up for moral
appraisal here would then be me instead of my daughter. I would be
held answerable to someone else, such as my wife, or possibly also my
daughter at a later time (how could you have asked me to do that?).
And I would have to come up with an answera justification of why I
asked her, and/or what made me do what I did, such as it was only for
a couple of minutes, or I didnt realise the risks and so on. Two aspects
are crucial here: one concerns the relationality of this kind of responsi-
bility: to answer for something to others. The other concerns what
Bakhtin would call the eventness of responsibility: the ethical cannot
ever be truly encoded into generalised rules, but only understood in
particular from within the lived performance of the one(s) who answers
for it. Bakhtin spent his career pursuing paths that would lead him
closer to understanding this responsibility as answerability, which led
him from philosophy towards his monumental study of the literary
novel (and late in his life, in some way, back to philosophy). In the novel
Bakhtin found the best medium to grasp this sense of responsibility
(Morson and Emerson 1989), as it allows for a world with a multi-
tude of individual centres of responsibility, each particular and not gen-
eralizable [which] should lead us to doubt our values and make our
commitments to them provisional [then] we arrive at a view that
makes us continually and personally responsible for our actions and for
assessing our moral responses a world in which everyone is responsi-
ble for everyone and everything, as Father Zosima says in The Brothers
Karamazov. Precisely because responsibility is not generalizable, each of
us is always responsible (p.20). But we do not have the space, nor do I
have the time (nor the skills) for a novel here. Instead, the following is a
46 C. Smissaert
Fig. 4.1 A warm August 2016 afternoon in Amsterdam, Olivia and I are enjoying
cold drinks on the terrace of the canal-side restaurant close to our home
creative detour with Olivia (who made the two drawings), to draw closer
to what I seem to be trying to convey: responsibility as answerability
(see also Smith 2015) and its relational and eventness aspects (Fig.4.1).
Chris: So, Id like to explain to you what my research is about, is that

OK?
Olivia: Sure. So, explain then.
Chris: Some people have mental issues, so uh, they feel really bad, for
example they feel really lonely or really bad about themselves,
uh, and these people, well there are some of these people that
are in serious trouble on top of that.
Olivia: What kind of trouble?
Chris: The kind of trouble like shoplifting, or getting so angry that

they may become violent to others, like just on the street. These
people sometimes have so many problems, also in their heads,
that they have a lot of difficulties with everything including
other people, and with keeping a job, and with staying away
from drugs, you know what drugs are?
Olivia: Addictions? Of course.
Chris: Alright. And these people, they get support from you need
to sneeze?
Olivia: [Sneezes] Hihi.
Chris: Could you cover up when you sneeze, Olivia?
Olivia: Sorry! Hihi.
Chris: No, its not that, but you do need to cover up sure, you
neednt hold in your sneeze but if youre in a restaurant you do
need to cover up.
Olivia: In the waiters face! Hahaha.
Chris: No, yeah, not like that. OK, were you paying attention? So, a
small group of people have both mental and social problems.
And they get support from a group of colleagues of mine.
Olivia: Hmhm.
Chris: They form a team of about fourteen people and they try to help
these other people, the patients, with their problems. And thats
hard. Because theres so much trouble. And these people quite
often do not want any help to begin with.
Olivia: But why not?
Chris: They may be angry, or disappointed, with people who have
tried to help them before unsuccessfully. Then they become dis-
trustful of others, they refuse other people uh coming close
to them. Or they think like: Well, I dont want your help
because I can figure it out myself. So, people who might lose
their temper quickly and have a lot of problems and regularly
refuse the help of others. Can you imagine what you would do
if you were a member of such a team?
Olivia: Yes, but it depends on what that person wants. Or that person
doesnt want help, because he wants to figure it out himself or
because he doesnt trust it, it depends on the kind of problem he
or she doesnt want to be helped with by that uh team.
48 C. Smissaert
Chris: So, you should figure that out first, so to speak, what it is that
is disengaging.
Olivia: Yes, so that, not again he or she refuses to co-operate with the
team.
As I tried to describe in simple terms the practice I studied and the

predicament patients and practitioners may find themselves in, I found
myself, talking then (uh) and writing now, scared of uttering something
stereotypical or oversimplified. Telling a story that would not do them
justice. What I see now as I am writing is this: where I ask her to contem-
plate hypothetically on what she would do, alone, individually, Olivia, in
turn, replies by emphasising otherness: what the patient wants, his or her
thoughts, the situation in which (s)he is located and so on. What I
described first as a complex, yet unilateral, responsibility, Olivia unfolds
as a relational responsibility, in which, moreover, the relation itself deter-
mines the responsibility in the first place, and should itself be cared for,
too. But I did not pick up on this in our conversation. I continued for a
couple of minutes to describe the predicaments of what I think is a daunt-
ing practice. And we pick it up from there.
Olivia: Well, youre going a bit far, arent you?

Chris: No, but this kind of thing really happens, for sure. Heavy, right?
Theres a small number of people in this city who may really
behave in this forceful way and who have lots of problems and
who may be quite scary for other people, sometimes.
Olivia: [whispers] I dont know
Chris: You dont know, thats fine, girl! Youre allowed to not know
many, many things. Youre nine! But suppose, right, that youre
a member of this team, thats quite hard work sometimes, right?
Pretty heavy. What do you suppose, what you do suppose these
people should do? Because, what do you think of people who
do such work? Do you think theyre a little crazy for doing such
work, or brave, or?
Olivia: Yes, I think theyre brave. And really nice. That they want to
help people. And uh put themselves on the line for someone
who does something bad or something bad to them and that
they go on anyway.
Chris: Yes. And do you think they are uh, responsible?

Olivia: What do you mean?
Chris: That they, you know what responsibility is, yes you know what
responsibility is, right?
Olivia: Yes, but
Chris: That you want to take care for another person for example, to
take care something good happens and not something bad.
Olivia: Well, not exactly, but they should act if it gets worse, of course.
Chris: Yes, then they take that responsibility, right? Do you think they
have a responsibility for a neighbour [of a patient], for
example?
Olivia: Not really.
Chris: But a bit?
Olivia: A little bit, yes. Because if you solve the problems of this patient,
then you solve directly that the neighbour is safe.
Chris: Yes
Olivia: You get it?
Chris: Yes, yes, so then they have
Olivia: To kill two birds with one stone.
Chris: Yes. And if the team doesnt do that, are they responsible for not
acting? For the fact that the neighbour might stay unsafe?
Olivia: Hmm yeah well. Half yes, half no.
Chris: Hmm, thats tricky, right? Hey, and talking about responsibil-
ity, suppose dad did this kind of work? And that I was a mem-
ber of such a team?
Olivia: Hmhm.
Chris: What would you think about that?
Olivia: Uh cool, but also not really, because Id be afraid you were
going to get beaten by this crazy person or something.
Chris: Hmm, yes. So, am I a little responsible for you, too?
Olivia: For what? What do you mean?
Chris: For you as my daughter.
Olivia: But that has nothing to do with this, has it?
Chris: No? So, if I am responsible for something in my work, then Im
not responsible as a father for you anymore?
Olivia: You are, but, thats not really related with these people, you
know?
50 C. Smissaert
Chris: Concerning those problems.

Olivia: Hmhm, yes.
Chris: But you might also say: Well, I think its scary that you do this
kind of work so Id like you to do another kind of work because
youre responsible for me and if you put yourself in danger then
you may not be able to take enough responsibility for me if
youre in the hospital.
Olivia: But, mama. Mama.
Chris: What about mama?
Olivia: Mama can always help you.
Chris: Thats true. At home.
Olivia: Yes.
Chris: Because these people do exist, so someone needs to help these
people, right, you know?
Olivia: Yes.
Chris: But rather by someone else, or preferably by us?
Olivia: It depends who.
Chris: Hmhm.
Olivia: It depends who of us.
Chris: Well, not you. But I could, for example.
Olivia: Id rather you dont.
Chris: Rather someone else?
Olivia: Yes. Rather by someone who does not have kids because he
doesnt have to look after different things at the same time.
Chris: Hmhm. Thats easier. Are you getting a little tired?
Olivia: No!
Chris: Ah, it seemed that way.
I begin here with evoking a moral appraisal by Olivia of the team

members for doing the work that they do, and I think I did it because I
wanted to resonate how I myself feel about them (and relieving a l ingering
feeling of guilt for not doing the same kind of work, later in the conversa-
tion). I wonder if that was the right thing to do, and the right way to go
about it, since I put words in her mouth, which I continue to do so in
describing what responsibility would be about. Then we explore what
might be a limit of relational responsibility, and Olivia herself finds ambi-
guity: it makes sense that the team in some way is answerable to a neigh-
bour if they can anticipate violence towards her, but the argument feels
stretched. It depends on how such an event unfolds. And we further
touch upon the eventness of responsibility when we imagine it is me who
would be a team member taking risks. Relationality may be about rela-
tional roles, such as fatherdaughter, researcherresearch subject,
employerteam member, but a sense of eventness dislodges these frames
(alibis, as Bakhtin 1993, calls them) of responding in character. As
Olivia replies, the responsibilities as a father and as a team member do
not seem to be related. But then they do appear to be related, from within
the unique place in time and space where I find myself, in thelived per-
formance of the event of my life. As Bakhtin (1990) insists, Only the
event of an action in its living performance from within the acting conscious-
ness itself is immediately ethical (an action of thinking, doing, feeling,
desiring and so on) (p. 285). I can try to think my responsibilities
towards my daughter away while at work and live my life in separated
frames, but that does not mean they have gone. Maybe I should not be
the one doing this kind of work, Olivia suggests (Fig. 4.2). But what
about the practitioners? Who answers to them?
Chris: Hey and to continue, a little

Olivia: Yes.
Chris: If you would work in such a team, right?
Olivia: Yes.
Chris: Then you work at an organisation. Right? You know what an
organisation is, dont you?
Olivia: Yes, yes.
Chris: So, what is an organisation, then?
Olivia: Something thats organised? Hihi.
Chris: Haha, and what is that, then?
Olivia: A preparation.
Chris: A preparation. Of what? Doing stuff and so on?
Olivia: Uh, what, what were you saying?
Chris: So, you work for an organisation which does preparations for
example for the team so they can help people, right? And Im in
that organisation, as well. Do you think that people in that
52 C. Smissaert
Fig. 4.2 We decide to go for a little walk, and arrive at a playground a few min-
utes later, to conclude our talk
organisation but not directly in that team, but do try to uh

work in that organisation, do you think they have a responsibil-
ity for those people in trouble?
Olivia: Yes, because they take care that the team can help those people,
you get it?
Chris: Hey and what about me, I am somebody that works in that
organisation but I also do research about that team. What do
you think I should do, as a researcher? What should I do, what
do you think? Difficult question?
Olivia: There are people that think this kind of issues are weird? And
pretty heavy. No, but, if something goes wrong then you might
end up in trouble because that person might lose it and then do
like: Argh youre so wrong! Or something like that.
Chris: Ah, like that you mean. That might happen. But I do not
describe people in such a way that they can be recognised per-
sonally, you understand? So, if you write something about the
team, or about the people, then you try to write it in such a way
that nobody can figure out about which persons I am writing
really. So no one will say: Hey, thats about me! Thats not
allowed and I dont want you to write about me! And I dont
reallywrite about the patients, but about the people that work
in the team, of the organisation. How they do the work that
they do, how they make sense of it, you see?
Those who work in an organisation and help prepare for team mem-
bers to be deployed in risky situations may very well answer to them,
not only for how well they have prepared (for the how), but also for
doing that in in the first place (for the what). We, then, are answer-
able, in light of our relation to another, each from within our own
particular centre of responsibility. And so am I, answerable to those I
write about (even when, as I suggested above, I anonymise my data),
those I write for and those who are in any way impacted by my writing,
including, of course, my own family. As Morson and Emerson (1989)
note with Bakhtin, it is quite common for scholars to take knowledge
itself as their alibi for being. The problem with this view is that the
world of unacknowledged knowledge is a world of empty potential-
ity (pp. 1718). When Olivia acknowledges and contests my ideas,
instead of running the riskof my ideas somehow becoming tainted, we
engage both in everyday creativity and in being answerable. Along with
Bakhtin, then, I am learning responsibility is not about rules or empa-
thy, nor is it about ideals and critical turning points. Instead, it is about
becoming and remaining answerable to each other in the ambiguities of
the everyday. Where there are no easy answers. From this angle, creativ-
ity and responsibility are deeply connected. And that seemed to be what
I was struggling with.
54 C. Smissaert
Chris: So, uh let me think, do you have any final questions you want
to ask me? I asked you so many
Olivia: Uh, so do you actually do any interesting stuff?
Both: Hahaha.
References
Bakhtin, M. M. (1990). Art and answerability: Early philosophical essays by M. M.
Bakhtin (trans: Liapunov, V., Ed. Holquist, M.). Austin: University of Texas
Press.
Bakhtin, M. M. (1993). Toward a philosophy of the act (trans: Liapunov, V., Ed.
Holquist, M.). Austin: University of Texas Press.
Morson, G.S., & Emerson, C. (1989). Rethinking Bakhtin: Extensions and chal-
lenges. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Morson, G.S., & Emerson, C. (1990). Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a prosaics.
Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Smith, A.M. (2015). Responsibility as answerability. Inquiry, 58(2), 99126.
Chris Smissaert is a PhD candidate at Radboud University, and a manager at

a mental health care provider. His research uses Mikhail Bakhtins work on eth-
ics and dialogue to examine the organisation of responsibility in a practice of
forensic assertive community treatment. He lives with his wife and their two
children in Amsterdam.
Part 2
Research Life: Life and Research
5
In Between: Creative Spaces
andDetours asPart ofa
Researchers Life
LeneTanggaard
Introduction
This is an essay about creative detours seen as spaces found in between,
I will give examples of detours seen as a product of activities in my own
research life where lines of thinking practices come together. Examples
of such creative detours are when the car becomes a place for listen-
ing to and analyzing empirical materials with my Ph.D. students while
commuting to and from work (Revsbk and Tanggaard 2015), or when
coffee breaks with my colleagues at a conference become the locus for
generating ideas for a book (Glveanu etal. 2016). For many years, I have
researched examples of such creative spaces in the middle, and I have
analyzed them as the product of boundary crossing, brokering activi-
ties, and creative breaks (Tanggaard 2007, 2014), inspired in particu-
lar by Wengers (1998) and Engestrms (2004, 2007) use of these terms
in their analysis of workplace learning. A space in this sense is a space in
L. Tanggaard (*)
Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

58 L. Tanggaard
time, defined by what came before and what will happen after. A space
is therefore more than a place. It is something experienced and stretched
in time and across places in a life. As emphasized in the subsequent sec-
tions, focusing on boundary crossing and creative spaces that occur in
between other activities is part of a theoretical focus on the horizontal
aspects of creativity and learning. The term space is important because
it brings together the temporal and the material, as the location where
detours happen to occur.
In the following paper, I will first, very shortly, underline the theoreti-
cal focus behind concepts like boundary crossing and creative breaks, and
then provide examples from my own life as a researcher, showing how
and where creative spaces are formed, and discussing what is at stake.
F ocusing ontheHorizontal Aspects

ofCreativity
By accentuating concepts like boundary crossing and creative spaces in
the middle of this paper, I have chosen to emphasize in a fundamen-
tal way the horizontal, sideways aspects of my own creativity. Let me
develop this point before turning to some examples demonstrating the
value of these sideways movements.
Engestrm was one of the first researchers within educational psychol-
ogy, which is my own discipline, to attempt to explicate the circumstances
where a breakthrough arises and learning occurs that might enable the
development of a practice, or what he termed an activity system. He
argues that we need a term to describe developmental, significant side-
ways learning (Engestrm 2007). He does this as part of the development
of culturalhistorical thinking, which was originally expounded by the
Russian psychologist Vygotsky, followed by Leontjev and subsequently
further developed by others, including Lave and Wenger (1991).
For Engestrm, and for me, it is important to be aware that expan-
sive learning is a type of sideways learning, where new practices are
developed alongside, or as offshoots, of existing practices in response
to contradictions or uncertainties. In contrast to the aforementioned
5 In Between: Creative Spaces andDetours... 59
culturalhistorical school of Vygotsky, which tends to see learning and

development as vertical processes designed to lift people toward higher
levels of competence, I, like Engestrm, stress the horizontal or sideways
aspects of learning. These may arise at boundary crossings, where experi-
ence is transferred from one field to another or from one task to another.
Engestrm uses the term knotwork to describe the process of connect-
ing threads or lines of thought and practice as a channel of experience.
There are many of these examples of knotwork, but for this paper, I will
focus on one that Ive reported in my research, and on one I recently
experienced myself while on a conference trip.
Many people actively strive to break routines and rules in order to
allow for knotwork. In my first book on creativity, I cited the Danish
goldsmith Mette Saaby Christensen to illustrate the value of these detours
(Tanggaard 2008). In the book, Christensen talks about her experience,
first at the Danish Institute of Precious Metals, then in a community of
practicing goldsmiths, and later studying aesthetics at university:
The biennial was six to seven years after I graduated from the Institut for
delmetal, so there is of course an element of maturing, whereby you free
yourself from the disciplined way of doing things. I had studied aesthet-
ics at university for six months becausethis was yet another of my life
crises, haha I thought it was important to apply my intellect to jewelry
making. It was too little mind, and too much craft. (Tanggaard 2008,
p.14)
Mette Saaby Christensen made her breakthrough at the Biennale six

years after her basic training. She explains that only then was she able
to free herself from working the way she was instructed at school. The
disciplined way for Christensen means a uniform, standard method
of working. It was not until the Biennale that she was able to develop
her own style and gain recognition for her creations. The disciplined or
schooled method may be the safe, the correct, and the accustomed
method, whereas finding ones own style can often require a person to
traverse several stages or to establish an independent course of learning
over time. Specific journeys across communities of practice at workplaces
and training establishments, between hand and mind, can lead to the
60 L. Tanggaard
crystallization, along the way, of ones own manner of working or style,

which may lead to the generation or ripening of ideas. Let me give an
example from my own life, where boundary crossing and knot-working
allowed me to begin the first draft of a new book.
A Book Is Born
It hits me on September 7, 2016, in a taxi heading toward Maynooth
University, just outside of Dublin, that Ill start my book here. Ive made
up my mind. I want to explore well-known creativity techniques (and
maybe even come up with a few new ones) by using them on myself.
Ill call my book Creativity TechniquesFrom the Inside, and use the
method of introspection as was described by Wilhelm Wundt, one of
psychologys founders, and his contemporaries Titchener and Kulpe.
Introspection was, for them, a means of probing a subjects thoughts and
feelings, and they considered it every bit as difficult to learn as, say, learn-
ing to become a sophisticated wine taster.
In Wundts laboratory, which was founded in Leipzig in 1879, poten-
tial subjects were required to try introspection 10,000 times before using
it in actual studies. After even the briefest experiments (for example, the
induction of various forms of sensory stimulation lasting for as little as
1.5seconds), subjects were asked to report on their own thoughts and
feelings for at least 20 minutes afterward (Lieberman 1979). Wundt
wanted to study the connection between outer sensation and inner moti-
vation, thought and feeling.
This systematic scientific method would disappear within a few years,
as psychologists became inspired by the positivistic zeitgeist of the twen-
tieth century and instead began to favor that which could be objectively
observed, namely, behavior. Watson, the founder of behaviorism, believed
that psychology should concentrate on helping people change their
behavior, and not worry too much about their inner workings. Freuds
psychoanalysis had convinced his contemporaries that consciousness had
an unconscious component that would not allow it to be observed by the
subject. This belief was bolstered by the studies of introspection, which
showed how difficult it was for subjects to identify any kind of overall
guiding order in their thoughts. Instead, thoughts and feelings swirled

confusedly together (Lieberman 1979).
Over the years, Ive scoffed a little myself at our own eras renewed urge
to turn inward and study our own thoughts and feelings, as evidenced
by the mindfulness movement and the current popularity of meditation.
When we turn inward, we risk blaming ourselves for things that may not
be our fault at all. Practicing mindfulness and meditation may, in fact,
allay my fears and lessen my anxiety, but what if my anxiety is caused
by truly unreasonable pressure at work? We risk blaming ourselves for
something that is caused by outside circumstances. I have even found
great amusement in quoting my wonderful colleague Svend Brinkmans
assertion that the only thing you see when you turn inward is your own
organs. There is no self to see, because that self we are looking for is the
one we create ourselves with our words, and with our interactions with
our cultures stories, interpretations, and limitations. The self is formed
in relation to things outside it. Ive been pursuing an academically sub-
stantiated critique of the many creativity techniques out there for years
brainstorming, Post-it note exercises, and energizers, just to name a few.
These techniques are the fruit of a particularly American faith in gadgets
and quick fixes, but there is simply no such thing as instant creativity, as
described tellingly by Beghetto and Kaufman (2014). Techniques alone
cant do it; craftsmanship, lifelong toil, and solid professional ground-
ing and commitment are required if we are to make something of our
own lives and create something beneficial to others (Tanggaard 2016).
Techniques are not enough. So what are they good for? Thats what I aim
to find out, and I plan on putting myself in the trenches in order to do
so. Isnt that the most ethically responsible thing I can do as a researcher?
Were always chasing after others with our questions, some more relevant
than others, and demanding a response to them. But what I propose will
disturb no one but myself. And its about time I take on an untouchable
principle or two, including those in my own life.
Thats not to say that Im not a little bit afraid. This could get pathetic
pretty quickly. I recall the Norwegian anthropologist Cato Wadels bril-
liant observation in his book about studying your own culture, there
is a reason researchers didnt become literary authors (Wadel 2002).
Exactly. Exposing me in this way could be an enormous mistake. One
62 L. Tanggaard
day, while were out for a run, a girlfriend laughingly accuses me of pull-
ing a Knausgaard. A literary fiction-free fiction, as Hans Hauge referred
to Knausgaards genre, because it is in fact a fiction to (re)write our own
experiences, thoughts, and feelings. I certainly hope that my work isnt
as irritating to read as Knausgaards. To echo Hans Hauge, Knausgaards
six-volume work is itself a struggle for the reader, since My Struggle is first
and foremost a spontaneous flow of unmediated thoughts and feelings
that seem to be pretty much unedited, though easier to read than Joyces
comparable work, Ulysses (Hauge 2014). Even so, you could argue that
Knausgaards opus approaches a kind of introspective method in his
effort to fight against fiction and narrative and in his fondness for the
more flickering, fragmentary, procedural flow. I have no desire to read
something thought up by others, says Knausgaard. Because of this, his
work is infused with the voice of his own personality, a life and a face we
can meet that is equal to our own gaze as readers. We are completely sur-
rounded by fictionit wants to be true. This is, perhaps, what introspec-
tion can offer modern psychology: a method that does not give rise to
narratives and social constructions, but which offers a sort of access to the
truth as it is experienced in the concrete, fragmented, flickering moment.
But why do I feel called to start my book in the taxi? In the taxi, I was
both starving and decidedly thirsty. I was on my way to a conference on
adult education, where I was to give the keynote speech about creativity
in this context. I flew out of Aarhus early in the morning, and had to
rush when changing planes in Copenhagen for Dublin. I didnt think to
drink any water during the flight. When the door to the arrival lounge
opened, giving as it always does the impression of having arrived in a
completely alien land, I saw the driver with his finely lettered sign reading
Lene Tanggaard! The university had arranged in advance to pick me up.
When I saw the driver, I didnt have the heart to tell him that I needed to
get some water, which is so typical of me. I could only think about how
long he must have been waiting there for me, and how much he probably
wanted to get going. When he offered to carry my bag, I could see he
thought it was heavy. What on earth have you got in here?, he asked.
Books, I replied. We both laughed.
During the drive, I made polite conversation with the driver, even as
I felt my throat constricting, my mouth drying out. Maybe its precisely
this moment that the idea to start writing struck me. Ive discussed the
book with close colleagues, family, and friends, and everyone is enthusi-
astic about it. All I really need to do is get going. It happens right there.
As my throat constricted, my thoughts turned inward. It isnt the first
time Ive noticed a sort of connection between hunger, general exhaus-
tion, and my own will to create. Maybe its pure survival instinct, who
knows? Thats what I need to find out. I think Ive read about it some-
place, but it could also be simply because I have given myself permission,
and because Ive exchanged the hectic routine of homethe start of a
new semester, research projects, lecturesfor a couple days of relative
peace and quiet. Many creativity researchers have written about travel
as a means of achieving a creative breakthrough. A change of scene is
always good, allowing you to get away from your normal surroundings.
Ive written about it myself several places. Its practically a clich, but isnt
this exactly whats been happening to me on my journey?
Im traveling alone to Dublin, as I often do for work, though this year
Ive traveled with colleagues on all my trips until this one. Its really nice
to have time to talk together, to hear each others presentations, to have
a beer together afterward. But it can also be intense, and right now I am
really enjoying being alone. I sit in the plane and turn off all my devices.
Earlier that morning I had read that the director of the globe-spanning
Boston Consulting Group, Rich Lesser, stated that we need to evaluate
the potentially destructive effects of new technology. New technology
gives us fantastic possibilities to share data and communicate easily with
colleagues, family, and friends across the world, but we also need to think
about how and when we communicate, and its here that we are, accord-
ing to Lessers perception, challenged. We arent actively making these
decisions; we are allowing technology to infiltrate every aspect of our
lives. I do it, too. I can feel that it makes me fidgety, stressed out, and that
it rips me out of the moment each time I go online to see what is happen-
ing on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram. Its especially distracting when
I access these sites directly via their apps. Sometimes its nice, titillating,
or interesting to see what others are doing, especially for a curious person
like me, but its often disruptive, and it prevents me from concentrating.
The two-hour flight to Dublin does me a world of good. I read 100
pages of Linn Ullmanns new book, The Worried. I always read to enter
another world with the authors voice and to be in the books pages, but I
read with extra care today. I follow the plot and allow myself to be moved
64 L. Tanggaard
by the girl in the book, whose parents are distant, take long trips without
her, and are preoccupied with everything else in the world but her, but I
cant help but pay special attention to those passages in the book concern-
ing the creative process. I cant stop myself.
There is also something about travel that sparks my own desire to cre-
ate. The passage is about muses. The mother in the book has many boy-
friends and lovers, and one of them is a Nobel Prize winner. One evening
theyre in NewYork eating at an Italian restaurant. The Nobel Prize win-
ner considers the girls mother and thinks that she was once the most
beautiful woman in the world, and that he feels a kinship with the girls
father. He is, in other words, not exactly present in the here and now.
On the next page we hear about the muses, and about instruments, and
about what we might most like to be: Her father said that her mother
was his Stradivarius. I never heard her express any discontent about the
notion of being a muse or a Stradivarius. Did she really want to be a vio-
lin? King Pierus had nine daughters and believed that their beauty was
so great, it eclipsed even that of the muses. But there he made a mistake,
for arrogance is always punished. His nine daughters were transformed
into magpies. There are worse fates to be found.
A muses entire reason for being is to mirror the great artist. No art-
ist, no muse. A magpie is no ones mirror and needs no ones help to be
noticed. In fact, a magpie can even recognize its own reflection, a feat
not many other animals are capable of. A few apes can, of coursethe
bonobo for examplecertain dolphins, and a particular kind of ant. It
turns out this ant will wash itself after seeing a dirty spot on its head in
its reflection, but it wont wash itself if there is no dirt. Studies have also
been made with elephants. Some elephants recognize themselves in the
mirror, but not all. The experiments with elephants were impeded by the
fact that the mirrors were not large enough.
Maybe she could be his muse too, thinks the Nobel Prize winner as he
looks at the girls mother. Several years later, in an airport waiting for a
delayed flight, he outlines a theory on the nature of memory based on
prolonged research into immunology. It had been over between them for
many years at that point, so maybe he didnt need a muse, a magpie, or a
mirror. Maybe all he needed was a flight delay. (Ullmann 2016, p.218)
Once I start writing after the taxi ride, I cant stop. There is some-
thing euphoric, something incredibly freeing, about the whole process. It
allows me to forget myself. If I think too much about what others will say,
I wont get anything written. My feet are freezing, and I am sitting at an
awkward desk in a room at the university. Next to me is a bookshelf with
hundreds of Bibles. The driver told me that in earlier times, Maynooth
had been a theological stronghold, but now other disciplines have taken
over. Im alone in the room and have direct access to the church. Who
knows what had gone on here through the years? Ive opened the window
because its stifling in here. Maybe its the room itself that is making me
write. I can no longer differentiate between them: my hunger and thirst,
the taxi, the campus, and now this room with its acrid smell of old wood.
But Im happy. It feels good to get started. You never know when inspira-
tion will strike again. I should go to Dublin tomorrow and see a few of
the sights before the conference begins in earnest. My family will think
its strange if I dont have any photos on my iPhone when I get home.
I cant exactly show them pictures of my fingers at the keyboard. God,
how annoying. Maybe I could take my laptop into Dublin and write in a
caf there. I know my colleague Charlotte Wegener does that. She wrote
about it in her lovely book, WriteWith Joy! Ill be like her. Thats a tech-
nique too, to write with joy and write with others. It gets a bit lonely in a
room on my own for too long. So thats a good plan. Ill go out into the
throng tomorrow and see how that influences my writing.
What Happened?
Crossing boundaries between different contexts and practices, as in the
aforementioned account from my conference trip, may force one to make
a break with one's accustomed manner of working. Both for the individual
and for established communities of practice, boundary crossing can repre-
sent the germ of change, and perhaps creativity. The traditional craftsmans
journeyman years after training is a key example of the value of traveling
in an intentional, targeted way across communities of practice in different
cultures in order to find inspiration and new ideas and change oneself as a
human beingboth professionally and personally.
66 L. Tanggaard
It is therefore possible to seek a creative break intentionally and actively

through boundary-crossing activities, but it is also worth talking about
unintentional breaks: those that simply happen without having been
deliberately sought out, as in the situation from my trip.
In the example given from my own work, there was no intentional
attempt to engage in a creative detour. It simply happened, due to
boundary-crossing circumstances. But what happens when we begin to
carefully describe and analyze these events, as in the present book?
Since I began to investigate creative breaks and boundary crossings
in my own work on creativity, the topic has risen to the top of the pub-
lic agenda, as well as in the research environment. Today, many people
maintain that boundary-crossing management is the answer to many of
the challenges, which, for example, the public sector faces due to sharply
increasing public demands for an increased level of service at the same
time as budgets are cut.
The challenge to management is to appraise and set common goals
for the more complex bottom line of the public sector. Such a challenge
means navigating and helping to create meaning and interrelations
(despite often contradictory elements) within and across organizational
and professional boundaries. Young people in the education system and
citizens in health systems suffer from ever more complicated problems
and hardship; cooperation across professions is essential in order to
achieve success. All of this has led to an unprecedented demand for the
capacity to cross boundaries and make creative breaks by sidestepping
between places in order to provide new and alternative treatments. This
means that courses and lectures on the subject are popping up every-
where. It is plain to see that expansive learning is both necessary and in
demand. Among all this, there is often a caveat (particularly for a writer
like me, who has helped to show how one should best approach the
issue): Can that which has been perceived as a necessity and as some-
thing fundamentally positive in fact turn out to pose the risk of eroding
boundaries and frameworks, which may be the very means of promot-
ing solutions? Are we overlooking the value of unintentional boundary
crossing in the effort to get more done? Is there room for stillness, or
freedom from work that, for example, a summer interlude or a study
program can provide?
I cannot, of course, provide a definitive answer to these questions, but

I would nonetheless like to suggest that we have perhaps become over-
enthusiastic about crossing boundaries. Simply staying put, or preserving
a boundary, has now become something that is considered quite reac-
tionary, and certainly not innovative, but if we do not stay anywhere it is
impossible to side-step to allow for fruitful detours.
I believe it is important to stress that the desired expansive learning can
take time, and that contradictions and inherent conflicts between activity
systems in Engestrms view, or between the socially defined and personally
experienced competence that Wenger underlines, do not emerge on demand.
It can take time for these to appear, and time for the individual to compre-
hend what they should do in relation to them. In such circumstances, a forced
break may be more destructive than useful, and slowness can allow time for
recognition to dawn. It is therefore my suggestion that we need to differenti-
ate between the intentional and the unintentional break, and to consider
carefully what breaks can usefully be made or indeed should be made.
Conclusion
The aim of this chapter has been to show how creative spaces may arise in
a researchers life. The term space is important because it brings together
the temporal and the material, as the location where detours happen to
occur. Most of my own examples are the result of an intentional bound-
ary crossing that led to an unintentional creative space being formed.
It was my intention to travel to the conference, but I did not have a
clue that a space for beginning my book would form out of this travel.
Boundary crossings are something that happens, while a creative space is
something that is experienced. Prima facie, boundary crossing does not
necessarily lead to the creation of a creative space, and a creative space
does not presuppose a crossing of boundaries.
Finally, I maintain that we need to exercise caution in relation to the
value of boundary crossing, and to take our time in deciding which breaks
it is important for us to make. We need to understand that the human
mind travels in sometimes unpredictable ways and that this is often a pre-
condition for a creative space to form.
68 L. Tanggaard
References
Beghetto, R., & Kaufmann, J. (2014). Classroom contexts for creativity. High
Ability Studies, 25, 5359.
Engestrm, Y. (2004). New forms of learning in co-configuration work. Journal
of Workplace Learning, 16(12), 1121.
Engestrm, Y. (2007). Ekspansiv lring [Expansive learning]. In: K. Illeris
(Red.), Lringsteorier 6 aktuelle forstelser. [Theories of learning Six cur-
rent perspectives] (pp.81107). Frederiksberg: Roskilde Universitetsforlag.
Glveanu, V., Tanggaard, L., & Wegener, C. (2016). Creativity A new vocabu-
lary. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hauge, H. (2014). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciXSKIo8uCw
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participa-
tion. NewYork: Cambridge University Press.
Lieberman, D.A. (1979). Behaviorism and the mind A (limited) call for a
return to introspection. American Psychologist, 33(4), 319333.
Revsbk, L., & Tanggaard, L. (2015). Analyzing in the present. Qualitative
Inquiry, 21(4), 376387.
Tanggaard, L. (2007). Boundary crossing between school and work. Journal of
Education and Work, 20(5), 453466.
Tanggaard, L. (2008). Kreativitet skal lres. Aalborg: Aalborg Universitetsforlag.
Tanggaard, L. (2014). Fooling around: Creative learning pathways. Charlotte:
Information Age Publishers.
Tanggaard, L. (2016). FAQ kreativitet [FQA creativity]. Copenhagen: Hans
Reitzels Forlag.
Ullmann, L. (2016). De urolige [the unruly]. Copenhagen: Gyldendal.
Wadel, C. (2002). Feltarbeid i egen kultur en innfring I kvalitativt orientert
samfunnsforskning. Olso: Seek.
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Lene Tanggaardis Professor of Psychology in the Department of

Communication and Psychology at the University of Aalborg, Denmark,
where she serves as the Vice Head of Department, advisor for several PhD stu-
dents, Co-director of The International Centre for the Cultural Psychology

of Creativity (ICCPC) and co-director of the Center for Qualitative Studies
(http://www.cqs.aau.dk/). She is the regional editor of the International Journal
of Qualitative Research in Education. She never had a plan to live her life as a
university researcher nor to become a professor. It is all one big detour, but as
long as it carries with it fun and joy and other people do not suffer too much,
she will continue.
6
An Unexpected Detour fromIvory
Tower toAction Research
JodyHofferGittell
Changing ones research path mid-career is humbling. I took an unex-

pected detour that grew out of my early academic work and the reaction
byreal-world practitioners to that work. It was a detour from ivory tower
to action research, though perhaps in retrospect it was more of an evolu-
tion. In this chapter I tell the story of how this detour occurred, and then
I reflect on the consequences for me and what I learned.
My Background
I grew up on family farms in Lancaster and Lebanon Counties in
Pennsylvania, in a Brethren community, with a Swiss heritage and a large
extended family. My siblings and I were expected to work from a young
age. My dad worked on the farm and also sold tractors at the Ford dealer-
ship next door to augment our income. My mom had primary
J.H. Gittell (*)

Brandeis University, Boston, MA, USA

72 J.H. Gittell
r esponsibility for the four children and our 12,000 chickens, until a dis-
ease swept through the area and many of our chickens became ill.
In the meantime, my dad had developed a reputation for effective
sales. One day a group of men in dark suits and shiny shoes came crunch-
ing down the lane to visit us, and offered Dad a job selling real estate. We
moved nearby to a small town to be closer to his work, and Mom soon
joined him in the real estate business. They formed their own company,
which, at its peak, became the largest real estate company in Lancaster
County.
We moved a few miles closer to the city, into a relatively sophisticated
suburb with neighbors and schoolmates from all around the United
States, with backgrounds that were different from my own. My many
jobspainting houses, selling jeans at The Gap, lobbying in Washington
DC, teaching migrant farm workers in Oregon, teaching city kids in
Brooklyn, and so onintroduced me to even more people from different
backgrounds.
As I grew into a young adult, I was fascinated by two thingspeople
and work. I was fascinated by the logistics of how people work together
to get things done, and I was fascinated by how we are shaped by the
relationships that surround us.
Given my love of school, writing, and thinking, these interests took a
scholarly bent. In my senior thesis at college, I wrote about The Socially
Embedded Human Subject and how our interdependence with others
creates social identities as well as obligations to each other, expanding
upon John Rawls Theory of Justice. In my PhD dissertation years later, I
studied the coordination of flight departures in the airline industry, and
how people coordinate their work across professional boundaries, build-
ing on organization design and network theories.
Striving toSucceed intheIvory Tower

This PhD dissertation, completed at MIT in 1995, focused on a dynamic
I observed while studying flight departures. I called it relational coordina-
tion, the coordination of work through relationships of shared goals,
shared knowledge, and mutual respect. For the dissertation, I invented a
6 An Unexpected Detour fromIvory Tower toAction Research 73
way to measure relational coordination as a network of ties across roles. I

provided quantitative evidence that relational coordination drives quality
and efficiency outcomes of strategic importance to airlines and to the
entire industry. I provided quantitative evidence that relational coordina-
tion can be strengthened or weakened by the organizational practices
adopted by managers. I found, in effect, that the constellation of relation-
ships that shapes our identities and obligations to each other, also shapes
our ability to work effectively together, impacting organizational and
economic success.
I enjoyed the ivory tower at MIT, with wonderful colleagues and pro-
fessors who cared about rigorous research and who sought to have a posi-
tive social impact. But I struggled in my early years as a professor at
Harvard Business School to teach huge groups of students with relatively
self-seeking agendas. I also struggled to fit my voice and my research find-
ings into the academic journals that would be essential for my success as
a professor. Not surprisingly, I failed to get promoted at Harvard; I began
to transition to a professorship at Brandeis University. Ironically, this is
when I began to hit my stride with academic publishing. The ivory tower
began to feel like a place I could call home.
As I transitioned to Brandeis University in 2000, I got an email out
of the blue from an editor at McGraw-Hill asking if I was interested
in publishing my dissertation as a book. His vision for the book was
highly practitioner-oriented. I argued that writing a book for practi-
tioners would not help me as an academic in the ivory tower and that
it might even hurt my academic reputation. He did not relent. And I
loved the idea of releasing the voices from my dissertation interviews
to the world, voices that never seemed to fit into my academic papers.
I also loved the idea of enabling real peopleincluding my par-
entsto understand my discovery of relational coordination. So I
agreed.
And it worked! Once this book called The Southwest Airlines Way: Using
the Power of Relationships to Achieve High Performance was published,
people began to read it, ask me to give speeches, and ask me questions like
How can we do this in our organization? I didnt have a very good
answer, which made me a little uneasy, but as an ivory tower academic, I
didnt have to worry about it too much.
74 J.H. Gittell
I had already begun a similar study in healthcare, focusing on rela-

tional coordination on surgical teams, how it was shaped by organization
design, and how it drove performance outcomes of strategic importance
to organizations. In 2009, I published a second book for practitioners
called High Performance Healthcare: Using the Power of Relationships to
Achieve Quality, Efficiency and Resilience. My academic papers continued
to get published, and I was feeling great. My husband and I had two
wonderful daughters, and life was good.
Detour fromtheIvory Tower

Then in 2011, several people approached me independently in the course
of a single yearall thoughtful practitioners in the healthcare industry
from around the United States and Canada. Each of them said in essence:
Your work on relational coordination is very relevant for us in the
healthcare industry right now, and we should do something about it.
Together they persuaded me to form an organizationa collaborative
that would bring researchers and practitioners together to transform
relationships for high performance. They became the founding board of
advisors for the Relational Coordination Research Collaborative, based at
Brandeis University and with partners from the USA and Canada, then
soon from Denmark, UK, the Netherlands, Australia, Japan, Ireland,
Sweden, and Norway. Our work soon extended from healthcare to other
industries. The only problem? This collaborative was all about creating
intentional organizational change, a topic I had never studied formally
and felt I had no clue about. We would have to learn together.
In addition to these highly thoughtful practitionersTony Suchman,
Margie Godfrey, Dale Collins Vidal, Thomas Huber, Gene Beyt, Kathy
McDonald, Ken Milne, Nancy Whitelaw, and othersI was approached
by an academic colleague while on a sabbatical at MIT that yearEdgar
Scheinwho invited me and our mutual colleague Amy Edmondson to
reflect on a new model of organizational change in which structures, rela-
tionships, and work processes all come together to create new patterns of
relating and new possibilities for performance outcomes. We called it a
Relational Model of Organizational Change. This model was further
influenced by the practitioners and academics who had formed the

Relational Coordination Research Collaborative. Years later, in 2016, I
documented this model in a third major book, Transforming Relationships
for High Performance: The Power of Relational Coordination.
What IHave Learned

Being Humbled by Starting from Scratch Its always humbling to learn
new things. But it was particularly humbling to give up expertise that was
somewhat widely recognized, and become a novice again. For me it was
going from the study of organization design, relational coordination and
performance, to try to understand the process of organizational change.
There were new methods to learn and new theories to learn, as well as a
need to rethink my contribution. Most of all, studying organizational
change meant I needed to engage in a whole new way with practitioners
who had far more tacit knowledge about intentional organizational
change, and who had the bruises to show for it.
Gaining a New Level of Respect for Practice As ivory tower academics

we are responsible for our ideas, but we are not typically held responsible
for the consequences of our ideas. Practitioners have a great deal of tacit
knowledge about organizational change and they are accustomed to shoul-
dering responsibility for the consequences of their actions. Practitioners
can be demoted or pilloried or fired if their ideas are unpopular, if they
challenge existing authority, or if the ideas simply dont work as intended.
Its scary to go from the ivory tower to consequential action. You have to
become more vulnerable to accepting responsibility for the actions others
may take based on your ideas, and for the consequences of those actions.
Learning to Share Ownership of Ideas and Theories As ivory tower aca-

demics, we place great value on establishing ownership of our ideas and
our theories. We are taught to carve out areas of expertise that we will
become known for, and that will form the basis for promotion, tenure
76 J.H. Gittell
and other symbolic and economic rewards. But when we move toward
action research, rather than owning our ideas and theories, we instead
begin to co-create them with practitioners who interpret them in their
own way, as they put the ideas into practice. Our ideas become subject to
interpretation and ownership by others who are themselves in competi-
tion with each other for clients and for recognition, not in the ivory
tower but in the real world where outcomes are more consequential for a
wider array of stakeholders.
Living in the Space Between Last but not least, I have learned that it is
challenging though personally rewarding to live in the space between
academia and practice, facing the need to satisfy multiple stakeholders,
each of whom requires something different from you. I went from having
to teach and do research, to also leading a collaborative that brings
together researchers and practitioners, while carrying out my own research
with an eye to its usefulness to practitioners, working in a for-profit spi-
noff that supports measurement of relational coordination, and serving as
an international speaker and occasional provider of inspiration for people
seeking to create positive change.
I feel every day that I am meeting some needs better than others, but
rarely as though I am succeeding on all fronts. It is like the challenge of
being a working mother, when you arent fully devoted to your career, or
fully devoted to being a parent, so it feels that you are open to criticism
from everyone. Just last night I watched the movie Bad Moms with my
husband, and I laughed in pure delight to see this tension so well
addressed. I highly recommend the movie for anyone who wants to
engage fully in two worlds that are not yet well-aligned with each other.
You have to accept being seen as bad and even embrace it; this is not an
easy ask for those who are perfectionists or highly dependent on the
approval of others. We are socially embedded, yes, but part of our job is
to shape others, as well as to be shaped by them. It is a constant dynamic
and we have certain choices to make about how this mutual shaping will
play out.
In conclusion, my detour from ivory tower to action research has

become more than a detour. It has become an evolution toward a more
mixed identity. Each of the tensions that arise from this mixed identity
can serve as a source of creative energy, yielding new insights. For the
most part I have embraced the uncertainty and have harnessed it for cre-
ative purposes. As a result of my experience, I have the greatest respect for
those who strive to leverage the power of the ivory tower for positive real-
world impact.
Jody Hoffer Gittell is a Professor of Management at Brandeis Universitys

Heller School, Executive Director of the Relational Coordination Research
Collaborative, and Chief Scientific Officer of Relational Coordination Analytics.
Her research explores how workers contribute to performance outcomes by
coordinating their work with each other, and how organizations supportor
fail to supporttheir coordination. She developed a theory of relational coordi-
nation, proposing that highly interdependent work is best coordinated through
relationships of shared goals, shared knowledge and mutual respect, supported
by frequent, timely, accurate, problem-solving communication. Recently,
her research has evolved from observational to interventional, in partnership
with practitioners who are using relational coordination principles and tools to
create positive real-world change.
7
Deliberate Detours asPaths
toEmergent Knowledge Creation
KarenIngerslev
Detours asaWay ofLiving

I have always engaged in (way too) many things. While I was studying
psychology at Aarhus University, I was organizing the local book store,
selling curriculum books at reduced prizes and heading the Association of
Psychology Students in Aarhus (FAPIA) and the student caf each Friday
(as well as the group organizing faculty parties, by the way). So, of course,
I was also detouring, while I was moving into research as a PhD student.
I simultaneously turned myself into an activista social entrepreneur.
Let me say, before I explain what this detour was all about, that I always
trusted that this activist detour would make sense somehow with regards
to my research. I even called the activism my lab, being the arms and legs
of my research, I guess a metaphor for my brain. I truly believed that the
combination of reading, observing and writing as well as being an entre-
preneur would merge into deeper knowledge about related issues, concepts
K. Ingerslev (*)
Central Denmark Region, Aarhus, Denmark

80 K. Ingerslev
and practices. However, during these years, filled with research and activ-
ism, it mostly felt like the lab-detour was using these arms and legs to steal
scarce hours from my proper work, my research, reading journal articles
or sitting with my note book making observations in the field.
I stop writing, get up and go to the rest room. I make myself a cup of coffee. Not
just because my body needs a bio break or caffeine. But because I have realized,
there is a pattern which Mintzberg (1985) then would call a strategy. When
I have worked hard and concentrated and then withdraw to take a break
whether to clean the wooden floors of my home, to go for a run in the forest or
to practice yoga on the living room floor ideas are coming to me, arguments
are building up and perspectives become clear. These very sentences are written,
right after I went to the kitchen to turn on the coffee machine and I now have
to go look for a certain photograph, I just remembered standing there in the
kitchen which can illustrate my detour
This is why I trust deliberate detours to nourish emergent knowledge.

Nourishment comes from making sure to get off the main roads and
heading off into emerging fields, trusting that sense and meaning will
materialize through actions and that detours will provide significant
knowledge about the subject matters under study.
This is my story of initiating deliberate detours as an approach to emer-
gent knowledge creation. Firstly, Mintzberg is my source of inspiration for
thinking of research as strategy, which will be unfolded later in the text.
Secondly, H.C. Andersen gave me the image of PhD students like myself
being on a journey, and often trying to march in step to the instructions
of how to conduct proper research. Thirdly, co-creating a participatory
citizen start-up project and a specific initiative with students and vulner-
able people, fighting inequality in health together, inspired me with new
perspectives and questions for research. The end of the story is about get-
ting to know what I did and where I went while deliberately detouring.
Research asStrategy
I really appreciate the aspiration of this book to cultivate creativity in
methodology and research. This is much needed, in order to advance our
knowledge on subject matters through empirical and theoretical
7 Deliberate Detours asPaths toEmergent Knowledge Creation 81
approaches, and also to allow for making the work of researchers playful
and a source of joy for writers as well as for readers. I do, however, wonder
about the book title notion of detours. Let me, for a moment, use
knowledge from the strategy literature to give detours conceptual
strength.
Mintzbergs work on strategy has been pivotal for the thinking of
researchers as well as managers. He has shown how strategies appear in
different ways, even though strategy sounds like something planned,
like the result of an analytical process (Mintzberg and Waters 1985).
Mintzberg defines strategy as patterns in a stream of actions and has
established a continuum from deliberate to emergent strategies along
which real-world strategies unfold. Deliberate strategies at one end are
realized as intended, while emergent strategies at the other end are pat-
terns realized despite, or in absence, of intentions. Mintzberg studies
have shown that there are no perfectly deliberate strategies. So real-world
strategies do not follow the plan. The question in this context is, whether
the same conclusion goes for research? Does research ever unfold as
intended? And if not, how does this affect how we might think of
detours? Are detours in contrast to the intention of conducting research?
Can detours be intended vehicles for knowledge creation? And if so,
could detours be the deliberate path to nourish emergent knowledge?
Research as strategy and the aspects of intentions as well as emergence
lay the foundation for telling the story of my research as a journey.
Dear Researcher, Which Path toChoose?

A soldier came marching along the high road: Left, right left, right. He had
his knapsack on his back, and a sword at his side; he had been to the wars, and
was now returning home.
As every child knows, these two lines are setting the scene for the world
famous and much loved Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale The Tinderbox
from 1835 (Andersen 2012). Like the soldiers, researchers march in step.
Or at least they try to or pretend they do. I was studying how wicked
problems are framed in healthcare and how this framing affects what
healthcare professionals attend to when they are responsible for innovation
82 K. Ingerslev
(Ingerslev 2014). By the way, this research question was, of course, written
when I was finishing my thesis and thus knew what I had been doing and
what I was thinking Weicks concept of retrospective sense-making came
in handy here (Weick 1995).
In order to march in step, the first mountain a researcher must climb
is called The Literature Review. The storytelling of this struggling jour-
ney will typically go along lines like these:
Initiating my research project, I read all the relevant journal articles on innova-
tion and collaboration across public sectors in order to establish the state of the
art. I now have a clear sense of where the gab in our current knowledge is and
am ready to collect empirical data.
In my case, I finished the theory section of my thesis like this:
In this chapter, I have presented and critically discussed the three theoretical
lenses: Innovation, framing and boundaries, which will serve as the theoretical
scaffolding for my empirical studies of how wicked problems in healthcare are
framed and how this framing affects what healthcare professionals attend to
when responsible for innovation. (Ingerslev 2014, p.75)
Even though the literature review resembles a mountain of intense

work to climb, it is framed and conducted as if it was the highway of
research. A well-paved, smooth and safe road from A to B, from ques-
tions like What do we already know on this subject matter? to answers,
accumulated and presented in the literature review. People go in the same
direction, and they go fast. However, I do not get to see much on the trip,
as I have to keep my eyes on the road. This is whyI early on, and even
before having finished climbing the mountain of the literature review,
turn down the boulevards of empirical research and choose methods like
participatory ethnography for collecting or generating empirical data.
Here at the boulevards, I am surrounded by vibrant living, people inter-
acting and moving in all directions; my pace is slower and I can pay
attention to details. I can study real people struggling to find new solu-
tions to wicked problems across sector boundaries. I even become part of
the events happening.
Taking this road, it becomes apparent for the researcher that the linear-
ity of research is a social construction. Czarniawska (2007) describes how
methods for gathering empirical material and analytical work are inter-
woven. She thus argues that in field studies, the empirical field is also an
analytical field. Consequently, an explorative field study inspires and calls
for further literature studies in order to allow for analyses of the empirical
findings. I start moving back and forth between highways and boule-
vards, which allows me to cover subject matters from more perspectives.
Fortunately, high-quality qualitative research books and journals have
well established that research is characterized by fluidity of sequences and
interconnectivity of different aspects of the process, which makes it even
more troubling that researchers keep repeating the linear narrative, when
documenting their work in journal articles.
Researchers establish and maintain the linearity of the research pro-
cess, as they must choose from a continuum of observation roles and
positions, ranging from non-participating to full participation. The fol-
lowing excerpt is how I ended up describing my approach to the
empiricalfield:
I participated in the innovation project (under study), not as observer or par-

ticipant, but as a researcher, as an external participant. This was an attempt to
make direct observations from a position of detached involvement in the work.
(Ingerslev 2014, p.102, inspired by Hastrup 2010)
I wrote this, knowing that I created a major source of inspiration, data,

knowledge and thinking for myself by walking down the untrodden
paths of spending (way) too much time as co-founder in a participatory
citizen start-up project.
ecoming anEntrepreneur: It All Started

B
atthe Kitchen Table
Sager der Samler1 is an arena for participatory citizenship, which has
existed as an institution for fiveyears. The founders are practitioners in
the field of innovation, learning, creativity, design, leadership and
84 K. Ingerslev
research, and have used their skills, expertise and network from these
arenas as participating citizens in the city of Aarhus.
It all started at the kitchen table. No, it even started before then. Five
of us engaged with each other in different constellations in dialogues on
the challenges we saw in our educational institutions and in the field of
Human Resource Management. We were committed to each other and
to a common causewe aspired to build a communitya place for
learning how to act on the challenges we face across sectors, institutions
and professions.
We generated ideas for a name for our community, searching for an
international brand, related to innovation. For a period of time, we called
ourselves UniverCity, inspired by the idea that cities represent the com-
plexity of the global challenges we are facing as well as the density of
relations and networks that allow for us to take action. UniverCity sig-
nalled how we wanted to use the city as a place for learning.
Looking back at the process, we were wandering in the land of big
brains and well within our comfort zones. We were designing learning
pathways, quite similar to what we did previously as professional consul-
tants. We learnt how difficult it was to get access and connect to people
within the major welfare institutions as long as we were inviting them
into a dialogue, focusing on processes and methods.
One day, we started to talk about places. That ideas need a place to live,
people need a place to connect, actions are taken where we live. From
that day onwards, our commitment changed from international, intel-
lectual and passionate relations to co-renting a location in the centre of
Aarhus. We decorated the place during the weekends, with help from
friends and family. And we learnt that now that we had taken the first
step, paid the rent and worked voluntarily on the project, people started
to support us in different ways with furniture, coffee, web design, and so
forth. We learned that people come to the commons to share and learn,
but that you have to start out by giving, offering the most precious you
haveyour time, commitment and professionalism.
Creating participatory institutions is also building a culture. Our place
is warm and welcoming, inspiring and fun. You meet all kinds of people
you never knew existed, and you connect because you want to create
something together.
We became Sager der Samler. Samler translates into gathering peo-

ple. Gathering people is our key activity and methodin essence our
business model. Sager translates into cases, issues, causes. We gather
people around something important like sustainability, inclusion or
healthsomething we collaboratively are able to do something about.
We created an association and learnt from our members that we were not
aspiring to educating people. We learnt that we were not consultants, but
were citizens like everybody else. We wanted to take part, offering our
professionalism in community with others.
We found a lot of opportunities opening up as we entered the city as
citizens and not consultants. But when we left the suit, we also left the
traditional business model of selling lectures, workshops and processes.
Money is not superficial, but it is created within the framework of a dif-
ferent logic. The values we create are not about money. The value is
about learning, community and meaning. A place where we are at eye
level as citizens, and not consultants, CEOs, students, and so forth. We
are not above or below each otherwe are mutually depending on each
other.
We think of Sager der Samler as a cultural institutionas a platform
for citizens to express their creativitythey might be bored at work or be
out of work. We are not creating for people. We are creating with people.
Instead of institutional processes of creating participatory institutions,
we try to create a pulse and a rhythm. We want to embody a
community.
The output of our work is twofold: Firstly, it is capacity building in the
form of new networks of engaged citizens, shared knowledge, collabora-
tive skills and trust. Secondly, it is new solutions that are put into practice
through collective action. These prototypes in themselves make a differ-
encebut more importantly they can inspire new thinking.
I sense how the story of Sager der Samler weaves together intentions as
well as emergence. However, the story somehow lands in the middle
ground between activism (a place, people, actions) and theory (concepts
of learning, meaning and community). In order for the activist detour to
nourish knowledge creation and allow for the emergence of new perspec-
tives and questions for research, let me share just one specific example
with you of what we have created at Sager der Samler.
86 K. Ingerslev
ollective Actions Transform Inequality

C
inHealthcare
KristinaLouisesigned up for a case-competition on social innovation,
where Sager der Samler was part of the jury. Kristina Louiseand her team
won the case competition with their idea of engaging students from
healthcare educations in bridging the gaps between healthcare profes-
sionals and healthcare institutions, the right to equal access to health and
citizens suffering from alcoholism, drug addiction, psychiatric diseases,
poverty and homelessness.
Sager der Samler contacted Kristina Louise and offered a physical place
for her to gather people around her idea and offered her company in
developing it into actions. Her idea became Social Health, which has
turned into an association, where socially vulnerable citizens are educa-
tors and students are substitute relatives. The initiative combines three
perspectives in addressing the growing inequality of healthcare: under-
graduate education, social innovation and organizational development.
Social Health helps citizens suffering from unequal access to health-
care, to be better able to get healthcare. They might be homeless and have
a combination of physical and mental illnesses. They often have a low
level of self-care; they tend not to show up at their appointments, not
know how to navigate the system or get into arguments with health pro-
fessionals. To address these challenges, we have trained undergraduates
from health professional educations as boundary spanners. The under-
graduates volunteer to bridge the gaps of healthcare for these citizens.
They develop a professional identity as someone who knows these citi-
zens and approaches them in a more equal manner, due to the experi-
ences and relations fostered throughout the programme.
The citizens are educators, teaching undergraduates about being vul-
nerable and their difficulties in gaining and maintaining access to health-
care. The undergraduates are substitute relatives, with a health professional
learning perspective, whohelp the citizens being patients. This way, the
students and the citizens develop crucial knowledge of how these citizens
experience healthcare and the ways in which they may experience less
inequality and better quality of life regarding their health condition. As
this initiative partners with the local municipality and hospital, it is our
Fig. 7.1 Kristina Louise,founder, chairman of the board and manager, and Jens,
board member and homeless, ready to recruit new volunteer students for Social
Health
ambition to transform these experiences into social innovation initiatives

on a larger organizational scale (Fig.7.1).
ssemblage: ANew Framework forAnalysing

A
Participation
Apart from the apparent positive values of being part of this work (doing
good, helping others, expanding mynetwork, etc.), what has been the
benefits for my researchif any?
The embodied learning from being a social entrepreneur, acting at the
intersections between sectors, has transformed me as a professional, in
action and thinking. One example is how it has enabled me to co-develop
the theoretical conceptualization of participation with Carsten Stage
from Aarhus University (Stage and Ingerslev 2015).
Participation literature has traditionally focused on decision-making
and power allocation. In this article, we present as yet unexplored frame-
work for analysing the multi-dimensionality and dis/connections of par-
ticipatory processes and their outcomes by using DeLandas concept of
the assemblage. The assemblage approach is a way of acknowledging
the institutional-, affective-, material- and power-related complexity of
participatory processes. The assemblage approach analytically stresses
88 K. Ingerslev
that the process under investigation should be evaluated both with a

more traditional focus on decision-making or power allocation, as well as
take into account the social, personal-affective and material benefits pro-
duced, and the potential for change in the relationship between public
administration and citizens. This challenges the tendency to solely under-
stand the quality of participation by its ability to redistribute power and
decision-making more evenly. The assemblage approach to participation
makes it possible to ask two open, but specific, questions: an analytical
question concerned with how the participatory process under investiga-
tion assembled humans and institutions, and an evaluative question con-
cerning how this process of assembling created value or new capacities.
In this case, the unbeaten path of entrepreneurship led right back to
research, but with questions and perspectives I could never have asked or
seen, without the activist detour.
Another outcome of the activist detour relates to identity and how I
think of myself now. Ten years ago I would have considered myself as a
manager and consultant in the field of organizational psychology. Both
terms have now faded in the vocabulary, concerning my own experiences
and competencies. My sense of myself these years is more like a com-
mander of a social movement, mobilizing people with open hearts and
curious minds. We battle for meaningful lives by empowering people to
act out the change they want to see in society. This transformation of
identity is NOT the result of linear research processes, but rather an
emerging possibility down the deliberate detour.
eliberate Detours asPaths toEmergent

D
Knowledge Creation
My research project did not follow the plan I had made. A major force in
this was the learning I took from Sager der Samler. Sager der Samler was
a detour, but it was both deliberate and emergent. It was an opportunity
that arose and which I chose to engage in. I was one of the primus motors
of the opportunity arising in the first place. And in the rear-view mirror,
I now see how I used the assemblage approach to seek out opportunities
to be part of mechanisms similar to the ones I was researching.
This detour was not in contrast to my intention of conducting research,

but a deliberate part of it. It was an intended vehicle for knowledge cre-
ation. The detour was a deliberate path to ensuring access to practical and
embodied knowledge.
A researchers pathway to contribute to the theoretical field of innova-
tion and collaboration across public sectors can follow many routes: The
highways build on mountains of journal articles in order to sense state
of the art; the boulevards of participatory ethnography, studying people
struggling to find new solutions to wicked problems across sector bound-
aries; or the untrodden paths of spending (way) too much time as co-
founder in a participatory citizen start-up project.
(Also) following this latter path indeed looked like a detour, but turned
out to offer both significant new knowledge about citizen-driven co-
creation, advanced in theoretical conceptions, and creative answers to
everyday problems.
The End
Let us return to The Tinderbox and learn from what the queen did after
the soldier had made a cross on all the doors in the city with a large piece
of chalk in order not to reveal where the princess had been during the
night:
But the queen was a very clever woman; she could do a great deal more than
merely ride in a carriage. She took her large gold scissors, cut a piece of silk
into squares, and made a neat little bag. This bag she filled with buckwheat
flour, and tied it round the princesss neck; and then she cut a small hole in the
bag, so that the flour might be scattered on the ground as the princess went
along.
The buckwheat flour leaves patterns on the roadit shows the way to
go. In this story I have revisited my detour down the path of social entre-
preneurship while I was a doctoral researcher. The pattern revealed is that
deliberate detours provide creative opportunities for emergent
knowledge.
90 K. Ingerslev
The path of becoming an entrepreneur, who was supposed to do

research, is difficult to scale. Bushes and trees are growing wildly, making
it impossible to look more than a few feet ahead. Maybe you can sense
that somebody was here before? Or is it just an animal track? Its nice you
are not alone, but in a group of people you trust. You are in this together,
but you hardly know where you are going.
I thank you for this opportunity to tell the story and thus get to know
what I did and where I went.
Notes
1. Sager der Samler is Danish for Things that connect us.
References
Andersen, H.C. (2012, original 1835). Fyrtjet. Copenhagen: Gyldendal.
Czarniawska, B. (2007). Shadowing and other techniques for doing fieldwork in
modern societies. Malm: Liber.
Hastrup, K. (2010). Feltarbejde. In S. Brinkmann & L. Tanggaard (Eds.),
Kvalitative metoder en grundbog (1st ed., pp.5580). Copenhagen: Hans
Reitzels Forlag.
Ingerslev, K. (2014). Healthcare innovation under the microscope. Framing bound-
aries of wicked problems. Copenhagen: Copenhagen Business School. LIMAC
Doctoral School of Organisation and Management.
Mintzberg, H., & Waters, J.A. (1985). Of strategies, deliberate and emergent.
Strategic Management Journal, 6, 257272.
Stage, C., & Ingerslev, K. (2015). Participation as assemblage: Introducing
assemblage as a framework for analysing participatory processes and
outcomes. Conjunctions: Transdisciplinary Journal of Cultural Participation,
2(2), 117136.
Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations. Thousand Oaks: SAGE
Publications. Foundations for Organizational Science.
Karen Ingerslev holds a PhD in public healthcare innovation and continues to

publish academic work. She leads a regional HRD unit in the Central Denmark
Region. She is board member in a volunteer organization, fighting inequality in
healthcare by engaging healthcare students in guiding socially vulnerable citi-
zens in using public healthcare services. Furthermore, she was member of the
board of Sager der Samler, a platform for participatory citizenship, which she
co-founded fiveyears ago. Detours might sound like her middle name, but her
passion for changing things for the better creates synergy between all her
activities.
8
Worth, Wonder andWorry
intheAccelerated Academy
RasmusHoffmannBirk
I will, in the following chapter, give no instructions or tips on how to

be creative, nor how to produce innovative, ground-breaking or novel
research. Instead, I tell a story about wrestling with feelings of anxiety
and worry about not producing innovative, novel and creative research.
But I do not mean this as a confessional essay. Instead, I want to sug-
gest that my personal troubles need to be understood within the con-
text of contemporary academia. In the following chapter I want to
explore how the milieu of contemporary academia can produce nega-
tive emotions, such as worry. By doing so, I hope to provide an exam-
ple of how to understand the pressures that exist within the academy
today.
R.H. Birk (*)


94 R.H. Birk
Wonder
I take my point of departure in my PhD thesis. It focused on local com-
munity work in marginalized residential areas in Denmark. I conducted
fieldwork for approximately 200hours in three different locations, where
I shadowed (Czarniawska 2007) and interviewed local community work-
ers about their practices. I started by following only one specific commu-
nity project, which took place only for a few hours every afternoon.
Wanting to get more empirical materials and become more immersed in
the everyday practices of my informants, I chose a second project to do
fieldwork in, where I spent almost 100 hours over the course of two
months. After one of my first days here, I wrote in my field diary that the
everyday-ness is an empirical point. Typing my hand-written jottings
and notes into my field note document on my computer, I added a com-
ment that It seems like a lot of what goes on is banal. At this early stage
of the fieldwork, then, I was already struck by the ordinary. Here is an
example from my field notes:
A young woman stands in the door to the office. She says that she needs
help to find a place to live, and asks if we can help her with that. It is only
Angela and I in the office. The woman explains that she needs student
accommodation, but that the municipality has said the wait is seven years.
Angela says she cant get her an apartment. Meanwhile, Jane has popped
into the office and joined the discussion about apartments, she comments
on the general lack of housing in Copenhagen. Suddenly, Angela asks me
if I know anything about housing (until now I have been sitting in the
corner, taking notes). I suggest that the woman tries private rentals, and I
try to explain to her how to use the various websites with apartments for
rent. I write down the website address on a piece of paper, and I check the
local area for her, but we only find two available apartments. Meanwhile,
Angela has started calling the municipality, and Ive gone to its website to
check the regulations for people with no housing. It turns out that people
can only be assigned housing urgently if they have social problems besides
the lack of housing. The woman says that she doesnt she just needs a
place to live. Angela hangs up the phone she couldnt get through to the
municipality and tells the woman to be back later in the day, then theyll
try again. (Field notes)
8 Worth, Wonder andWorry intheAccelerated Academy 95
This excerpt captures some of the ordinariness I encountered: People

sitting in a room, a stranger showing up, flailing attempts at help, not
through any sort of specific skillset or knowledge, but just through an
ordinary sociality. But this is exactly what I found emerging from my
fieldworkrelations of help instantiated in ordinary acts. Thus, I
observed my informants, for instance, send and receive emails, drink tea
with ginger or hold meetings with residents about everything from bills
from the dentist to how to get dual citizenship. I saw them wake up resi-
dents in the morning (so they could get to work on time) and I heard
them talk about driving people to work. These activities are, I think,
characterized by both being very disparate and by being quite ordinary.
There are no extraordinary skills, techniques or technologies being dis-
played here. My fieldwork felt characterized primarily by mundane
moments, moments of the ordinary, rather than the interesting. And this,
then, was where I encountered problems. Thinking of my thesis and my
contribution to the field (as one is supposed to do while undertaking a
PhD), I wondered whetherit was interesting enough that the practices of
local community workers consisted of the mundane. Two-thirds into my
fieldwork, I was confronted directly with this.
I am observing a meeting between my informants, all sitting around a large

table, eating lunch and drinking coffee. The relative calm is interrupted,
when one of the leaders in the project asks me a question. An anthropolo-
gist by training, she asks me if there is anything in particular I am wonder-
ing about. Because, she continues, using your feelings of wonder is typical
when carrying out anthropological fieldwork. (Field notes)
The exact wording of my answer is lost to the murky depths of mem-

ory. But I remember hesitating, being utterly unprepared for this ques-
tion. While there were things which had been surprising or unexpected
to me, little had caused me to wonder. I had at no point, during my
fieldwork, become astonished, overwhelmed with curiosity or experi-
enced very many of the different affects that are typically associated with
creativity. In fact, when I had carried out my fieldwork, what had sur-
prised me the most was the apparent mundanity of the practices I encoun-
tered. The practices I had observed seemed to be permeated by a quality
96 R.H. Birk
of the everyday life, such as watching my informants sort paperwork,

send emails and both make and receive many phone calls.
As such, being asked what had made me wonder was not a particularly
pleasant moment. I gave a mealy-mouthed reply that the mundanity
seemed interesting. Through my informants question, I felt a distinct
absence of wonder. And this led me to worry. What I did not say to my
informants (or my supervisors) was that my fieldwork had left me con-
fused, underwhelmed and worrying about the quality of my research.
Would my material be good enough for a thesis? Should I change my
focus? What should I write about, when what I was apparently mainly
seeing were mundane, everyday life activities? It is easy, here, to dig for
psychological explanations. Experiencing a lack of curiosity, tiredness and
lack of engagement can, to be sure, be attributed to me, as a research
student. Perhaps I was being sloppy; perhaps I should have tried harder,
asked more questions or changed my methods and my focus. Perhaps my
worries came from an inadequate engagement with the literature, a lack
of the right theory or framework.
But what I want to suggest, instead, is that experiencing such absences
of wonder, which includes tiredness, boredom and exhaustion, is normal,
entangled with both fieldwork and human life as such. I especially want
to argue that these emotions are especially problematic due to the modes
of worth existing within the modern university today. Let me give some
examples.
Worth
Universities todayboth in my native Denmark and internationally
are increasingly being scrutinized for their worth. In Denmark, for
instance, universities are in these years being put under political pressure
to contribute more directly, visibly and measurably to society, especially
the economy. Universities in Denmark must also ensure that their candi-
dates contribute as well as possible to the needs of the economy and busi-
nesses. It seems, sometimes, that universities are either good for business,
or good for nothing. Of course, such discussions are not new (Collini
2012, p.39), and I do not want to engage in a discussion of the purpose
of the university. Rather, I want to point out that since the 1990s, critical
scholars have increasingly turned their attention towards the structures in
which they themselves are embedded. Strathern, for instance, has exam-
ined the audit culture of universities (in the UK) at length (Strathern
2000), especially in regards to the many performance measures proliferat-
ing here (see also Neyland and Woolgar 2002). Indeed, when criticisms
are raised against the structures of contemporary universities, a great deal
of attention is usually paid to the manifold systems of measurement and
accountability that have arisen since the late 1980s. As argued by Burrows
(2012), contemporary academia (his case is the UK, but arguably this
counts for Denmark as well) is permeated with systems of accountability
that have privileged metrics and numbers. As he eloquently puts it, the
world of the academy has become [] a world in which the role of num-
ber and numbers has come to take political precedence over the aesthetic,
the affective and the hermeneutic; and a world in which structures of feel-
ing have been, consequently, fundamentally altered (Burrows 2012, p.358
my emphasis). The worth of researchers, today, is measured not so much
by the intellectual quality (and it is questionable if that is even measur-
able), but by the amount of their publications, the prestige of the journals
they publish in and the number of times their work is cited by other
scholars. This world of numbers is permeated by an emphasis on produc-
tivityof doing as much as possible, in as little time as possible, what
Carrigan has aptly termed the accelerated academy (Carrigan 2015).
While these analyses of the complexes and structures of the contempo-
rary academy deserve more thorough discussion than I can offer here,
they do show that the world of academia, today, has been recast in com-
plex systems of accountability and metrics. The contemporary and accel-
erated academy is dominated by modes of worth that privilege productivity
and numbers. There is an imperative to produce high-quality research as
fast as possible; research should easily be translated into the fateful fields
of business/industry, practice and policy.
Being a PhD student in Denmark, one is spared of the brunt of these
measurements. Yet I think there are signs that this, too, is beginning to
trickle down into the ranks of early career researchers and PhD students.
For example, it is increasingly stressed that academics (and especially
junior ones) must communicate their research and engage with the
98 R.H. Birk
ublic. In todays world of social media, there is no justification for keep-

p
ing knowledge within the fabled ivory tower. A concreteand well-
intendedmanifestation of this, in Denmark, is the yearly PhD Cup.
This is a competition to find the PhD student(s) who are the best at dis-
seminating their research in three minutes. PhD students across the country
are encouraged to apply. From the applicants, five students with the best
application are selected. The criteria of selection include demonstrating
societal value and novelty and having a broad audience. These students are
then trained to present their research in succinct and interesting ways to
the general publicin three to five minutes. The PhD Cup is filmed and
televised, showing viewers, for example, how researchers were coached
and trained in how to do a good, captivating, mesmerizing presentation.
The PhD students attempt to pull this off in front of a live studio audi-
ence and a panel of judges, and are critiqued accordingly. This format has
an eerie resemblance to the many reality contests that proliferate across
the media. There seems to be an imperative to be interesting, an impera-
tive to astonish (the layperson). I do not want to belittle the importance
of being concise and clear about ones research, or of communicating
research to the general public.
I want, instead, to suggest that the PhD Cup is emblematic of how the
competitiveness and focus on novelty and demonstrable value is becom-
ing increasingly present for junior academics as well. My argument here
is not that it is bad to be concise, to be able to communicate ones research
to the public, nor that it is bad to be entertaining! But if the ability to
disseminate research within three minutes, while simultaneously demon-
strating novelty and proving direct societal and/or economic value
become the norm, then one might, reasonably, fear for the quality of the
work. Some research simply does not fall neatly within what various pub-
lics may deem acceptable or valuable, but this should not detract from its
value. The idea of making ones research interesting and accessible is a
double-edged sword. It is undoubtedly a great exercise for many budding
scholars, and of public benefit. But students whose topics are not easily
accessible (but may still be valuable) or who struggle with discovering
something interesting are put under pressure.
This is only amplified by the pressures to publish, which affect PhD
students too. The article-based format of the PhD has become increasingly
popular in Denmark, moving from its origin within the natural and
e ngineering sciences into the domain of social science. Here, one writes a
thesis which consists of 34 articles with an introduction, literature
review, methods section and a conclusion. It is not required for these
articles to be published for the thesis to pass the defence, but it does not
hurt for them to be either. For some studentsmyself includedthere is
thus the added pressure of having findings that are publishable within
the three years (something not made easier by the fact that peer review
can be quite lengthy). The same goes, of course, if one is the recipient of
a postdoc grant, or if one is an assistant professor, who has to balance
vital publications with a high amount of teaching. For early career
researchers, it is vital to publish if one wishes a chance to secure some-
what stable employment, rather than precarious short-term positions.
Worry
When we consider how the contemporary university seems to be struc-
tured around modes of worth, which prioritize novelty, specific demon-
strations of value (such as publications) and productivity, the worries
Iexperienced while doing my PhD take on a new meaning. First, we may
consider the element of time.
Anthropological fieldwork islike most processes of researchtime-
consuming. This is a long-term process of immersion into a different
culture or practice than ones own, a process of attentiveness, of relation-
ality, of commitment (Ingold 2014, p.384). To engage in research here
means to stay in touch with ones interlocutors for months or, in some
cases, years. Hence, the pressure to produce quickly is potentially not very
conducive to actually carrying out good fieldwork or qualitative inquiry.
In my case, my fieldwork was not one that immediately opened itself up
to me. Instead, it had to be unpacked. I continuously reread my empirical
materials, I read widely in different literatures and I wrote (and discarded)
draft after draft. The mundane, in this sense, was worrisome because it
required time to unpack and understand. And time, in the accelerated
academy, is the most precious resource. When one constantly feels behind,
when one constantly feels like there is much more to do, then that which
forces you to think slowly and carefully can be an unpleasant
experience.
100 R.H. Birk
Secondly, there is unpredictability to any kind of research.

Understanding peoples lives, their practices, their point of view, is diffi-
cult. Learning from others, learning what a particular way of being in the
world is like is to engage in open-ended social relations (Strathern 2002,
p.310). In doing so, the unpredictable is embraced. The fieldworker does
not know exactly what she will see and hear, the interviewer does not
know exactly what she will be told and the scientist might not know if her
experiment will work. There is a fundamental mismatch between the
emphasis on producing creative, innovative, ground-breaking research,
the valuation systems within the academy and the fundamental unpre-
dictability of doing research. For me, the unpredictability was realized in
my absence of wonder. I did not expect not to be astounded. I expected
to encounter the wondrous, but I encountered the everyday.
And it is exactly the encounter with the slow, ordinary every day that
can be a frightening experience within the contemporary academy, as
it emphasizes the novel and valuable. Within this context, experiences
of boredom, absences of wonder or tirednesseven if they are normal
experiencesare not only frowned upon, they are distinctly problem-
atic. They are problematic, because they lie outside the modes of worth
existing within the contemporary academy, and as such, the confron-
tation with absences of wonder, or with the mundane, has the poten-
tial to produce worry, anxiety and, overall, negative emotions. How,
then, to cope, if ones findings, like mine, seem to be grounded in
everyday life?
I am not able to give general prescriptions here. My mode of coping
was to work. I read, I wrote and I wrote even more, trying very hard to
find the wondrous in my empirical materials. Inspired by literatures on
everyday life (e.g., Back 2015; Pink 2012), I attempted to foreground
the mundane. Rather than (analytically) unmake it, I tried to turn it into
an empirically based concept and analyse what this meant for the prac-
tices I had studied. This, of course, still left me with the worries of whether
or not this was interesting enough. In other words, my strategy of dealing
with the worries, induced upon me by the structures of the contemporary
academy, was to work harder. Of course, such a process does not at all
undo the problem at stake here, namely, the accelerated academy. That is
to say, the structures that seek to make academics work harder and faster
workedthey made me work more, and work harder. I end this essay on
this note. If nothing else, I hope the reader will be able to be self-reflexive,
should they come in a similar situation to mine. The readers may think
to themselves, is it me, or is it the academy? I hope this essay has given
them some of the tools to put the blame in the right place.
Acknowledgements I would like to thank Jess Perriam, Hanna Sjgren, Monica

Greco, Ninna Meier, Elina Maslo and Ignacio Rivera Volosky for reading and
commenting on this chapter.
References
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livable. Sociology, 49(5), 820836. doi:10.1177/0038038515589292.
Burrows, R. (2012). Living with the h-index? Metric assemblages in the con-
temporary academy. The Sociological Review, 60(2), 355372. doi:10.1111/j.
1467-954X.2012.02077.x.
Carrigan, M. (2015). Life in the accelerated academy: Anxiety thrives, demands
intensify and metrics hold the tangled web together. Retrieved October 30,
2016, from http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2015/04/07/
life-in-the-accelerated-academy-carrigan/
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Ingold, T. (2014). Thats enough about ethnography! HAU: Journal of
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Pink, S. (2012). Situating everyday life: Practices and places. London: SAGE
Publications.
Strathern, M. (2000). Introduction: New accountabilities. In M. Strathern
(Ed.), Audit cultures: Anthropological studies in accountability, ethics and the
academy (pp.118). London/New York: Routledge.
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(pp.302313). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
102 R.H. Birk
Rasmus Hoffmann Birk is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology and

Social Work, Aalborg University, Denmark. When he is not worrying about the
state of the world, he tries to understand subjectivity and the urban, primarily
through qualitative methods.
9
There Is No Such Thing asaJournal
Paper
SarahGilmore andNancyHarding
Ford, Harding, Gilmore and Richardsons Becoming the leader: leader-

ship as material presence was accepted for publication in Organization
Studies in late 2016 (Ford et al. 2017). The paper conforms with the
dominant format for academic journal papers. It outlines how the idea
for the study on which the paper is based was arrived at, lists its aims and
objectives, discusses its methodology and methods, has a long section
labelled data analysis, has a discussion that develops a theory arising out
of the data analysis and includes a short conclusion looking forward to
future work. It gives the impression of a smooth passage from inception
of an idea about a topic that needs to be researched through the fieldwork
to the papers publication. Because Organization Studies is listed as 4* in the
Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS) journal rankings list,
S. Gilmore (*)
University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
N. Harding
Bradford University, Bradford, UK

104 S. Gilmore and N. Harding
a considerable proportion of the paper is devoted to the methodology of

the study and to its theoretical location. We are quite proud of thesewe
developed a method for interviewing people that helps them articulate
abstract ideas, and we brought together new materialities theory, notably
the work of Karen Barad, with psychoanalytical theory, through the work
of Christopher Bollas.
But we do not say that we are proud nor, even in this age of mandatory
reflexivity, is there any hint of the authors having hinterlands, or lives
outside academia that might have impacted the development of these
ideas or the ways by which they were realised in this work. Furthermore,
the implicit claim of smooth transition from idea to publication is a bla-
tant lie. To say that the paper smooths over a rather complex and bumpy
path to the final, published version would be to engage in whatever is
the opposite of hyperbole. Karen Barads (2007) description of entities
as enormously complex, mutually constitutive entanglements is a better
description of the processes that led to that papers publication.
Table 9.1 shows the major deviations from the papers claims. The
column theory summarises the birth myth that is implicit in the paper.
Table 9.1Deviations
Theory Practice
The study emerged out JFa and NH had a vague idea they wished to
of an explicit set of exploreprobably about a decade and more
aims and objectives before the paper was actually published
The aims and objectives They went through multiple versions, and the final
were consistent version was influenced more than we had wished
throughout by reviewers comments
The theoretical JF, SG and NH had a passion for Bollass work and
perspective was thought his ideas would help explore embodied
chosen to reflect the appearance more than any other psychoanalytical
issues the paper was theorist. Barad arrived on the scene very lateand
exploring were we to discuss her arrival we would be
launched into another entanglement as complex as
the one we report on here
The methodology was True, but they were a mish-mash arrived at after
designed with the frustration JF and NH experienced when using
aims of the study in repertory grid techniques to support another
mind colleagues research
(continued)
9 There Is No Such Thing asaJournal Paper 105
Table9.1(continued)
Theory Practice
All four authors played True, but each had a different role: JF and NH
an equal role initiated the study; SG rescued it after they had
found it impossible to publish it; SR did the bulk of
the fieldwork
The paper was The paper had been submitted to several journals,
submitted to and several special editions. It has received several
Organization Studies, desk rejects, and several rejections after a first
where presumably it review. Sometimes this was because of weaknesses
needed one or more in the papers draft, but as it became more refined,
revisions, before being rejection arose from reviewers coming from
accepted for another discipline and palpably not understanding
publication its approach. This continued with the revisions
process, and at times, we felt embattled with
reviewers seemingly misunderstanding our
intentions
a
Key: JF Jackie Ford, SG Sarah Gilmore, NH Nancy Harding, SR Sue Richardson
The column practice summarises the process that actually happened

(although it may merely substitute one birth myth with another).
Birth Myths
Those are the most obvious differences between the impression the paper
gives and what happened off-stage as the paper was written. But this is far
too simplistic a summary of the papers evolution from idea to publication.
Here we would have liked to use a diagram of its entangled genealogies,
similar to the one Barad (2007, p.389) draws. Each node in that diagram
should lead to another node, and another and another, all diverting from
each other and coming together. But the limitations of the printed page
suggests it is better if we tell you a story. In what follows Sarahs account is
in Avenir Medium Oblique Font and Nancys in Apple Chancery.
But the following accounts are not in date order: that would impose a
linearity on events that would betray the arguments we are developing.
Note how some of the memories overlap, but in others you would hardly
think that the two of us had shared the same experience.
November 2015
Its cold. Nancy and Jackie are at my house for a short stayto do some
work on the paper and to lead a seminar at my Subject Group the next
day. It is also Nancys birthday. My old house. I have a sense of nostalgia
for its Victorian beauty: the high ceilings, the gorgeous ceiling roses and
the original shutters that divide the 35-foot room. But its a cold snap
and Im concerned that they arent too cold or uncomfortable on the sofa
theyre sharingthe one I was able to afford through putting a large bet
on Roger Federer winning Wimbledon.
We are at a crisis point in the data analysis and its infuriating. We are
so close to getting to the intricate knot at the heart of the piece but its
evading our recognition. Papers are all over the floor and there are books
all over my sofa. Jackie finds a review of Bollas work which we pore over
in detail. I dont remember what happened next but apparently, I noticed
something in the dataI think that it was a repetition in the language one
of the respondents used. The way she described herself as a person; how
she dressed, how she felt she was as a leaderand the images she selected
of potentially excellent leaders. A mirroring was going on; a recognition
that seems to be at the heart of our research. The ideal leader? Its me.
We then celebrated Nancys birthday. Theres a somewhat grainy photo
of us taken at Loch Fyne and its beautiful. We look flushed with wine,
happiness, relief and pride.
What a wonderful excuse to get together with Sarah and work on the
Bollas paperJackie and I had been invited to give a paper at Portsmouth
Business School where Sarah then worked, and we extended our stay
(courtesy of Sarahs spare bedrooms in her lovely terraced house) so we
could work on the Bollas paper. What was it about that paper that we
werent seeing, despite poring over the transcripts very many times? We
sat in Sarahs living room and went through two of the transcripts para-
graph by paragraph, over and over. Sarah noticed somethingaha, a
breakthrough moment. Jackie noticed somethingwow, were on a roll
now. I must have noticed something but I cant remember what. Sarah,
if I remember correctly, noticed that each interviewees description of
themselves matched their description of their imagined ideal leader. We
pored over Bollass books, exploring how to account for what we knew
when we checked the other transcripts: the description of the self matched
the description of the ideal leader in all the transcripts. It was only later
that we realised that we needed a theory of materialities (we found it
in Karen Barads work) in order to account for embodiment (reviewers
said the paper was not concerned with aesthetics but embodiment, but
another reviewer said the body was absent from the paperthe paper
evolved accordingly). After a day of intense poring over transcripts we
were saturated with attempts at thinking. It was my birthdaywe went
for dinner at a rather nice restaurant, and drank champagne. The weather
was frosty.
July 1999 (or WasIt 1998?)
I dont remember ever being so wet. Or quite so lost. And in some ways
the physical sense of dislocation reflected my internal state of disorien-
tation. This was my first scholarly conference, and I had dropped off
my suitcase at the halls of residence where I was staying. In doing so,
I met Nancy for the first timeas she was also staying in the flat. We
both agreed to walk to the conference venue and we ventured forth. I
dont remember if we had a map and I think that we had maybe just one
umbrella but it might have been no umbrella and no map and we cer-
tainly had no sense of direction.
Ostensibly you might think that a rainy walk to a conference wouldnt
combine well with a process of getting to know someone and their
research, but you (and I) would be wrong. I remember us stopping a lot.
Partly because we were lost but also out of a sense of intellectual recog-
nitionyou do this?! Oh! Wow! Who is this author? And how are you
using their work? Which book? Is there a paper youd recommend? So,
there was a double sense of getting lost: both geographically and in an
unfolding of ideas as well as an unfolding of us.
The next day I met Jackie. One thing you need to know about Jackie
is that she can map read. In years and conferences to come, Nancy and
I learn to leave this task to her and follow in her elegant, assured wake.
Until I learned that it is okay to be alone, I hated going to confer-
ences by myself. Technically I wasnt alone at the SCOS conference in
Edinburgh as Jackie was there, but with her new baby, young daugh-
ter and her husband, and staying in non-conference accommodation.
We would meet to present our paper but for very little else (the confer-
ence paper had been conceived while Jackie was heavily pregnant with
Michael, who is now 17). I was staying in student accommodation that
comprised bedrooms around a communal kitchen. I wandered into the
kitchen, or I think I did, and got into conversation with a woman who
was staying in the same set of rooms. Sarah, she said her name was. We
were both nervous about being unable to find the conference venue the
next day, so set off in search of it. It was raining, and it was cold. We chat-
ted non-stop, in that getting to know you type of chatter. Later, we went
into Edinburgh and found a rather lovely restaurant, with wood-panelled
walls. We talked a lot. Jackie and I were presenting our paper in the form
of a play but we needed a third person to act the role of Mephistopheles/
the organization, while Jackie and I played Faustus/the employee and
Marlow/the Author. I remember it working so well that people came up to
Sarah to congratulate her on her Mephistopheles. After that we bumped
into each other at conferences on several occasions but it took about a
decade for acquaintanceship to grow into friendship, and then friend-
ship into co-authoring. Meanwhile, Jackie and I, both then working at
Leeds University, started work on the Bollas paper, which was intended
to be a study of the aesthetics of leadership, with the interview materi-
als analysed through the theoretical lens of psychoanalyst Christopher
Bollas. We carried out the pilot interviews in c. 2003. Jackie is an expert
in critical leadership studies, and Id been introduced to Bollass work by a
doctoral student of mine, Kavi Vadamootoo, who Id met while I worked
at Swansea University. Kavi is an art therapist and how I ended up super-
vising his thesis is another long story. Flash forward 20+ years. Without
Sarahs input the Bollas paper would not have been published. Jackie
and I had presented it at several workshops for psychotherapists and had
a warm reception each time; someone at one of these workshops sent the
paper to Christopher Bollas, who contacted us to say how much he liked
it. But we could not get it published in academic journals. Sarah brought
a different energy that revived the paper. So in some ways the papers
conception occurred at Leeds University, but its long gestation started
in Swansea University in 1995, or in the NHS where Jackie first became
interested in leadership research, or in Edinburgh where we met Sarah, or

in Bradford where Jackie and I were working when we finally wrote the
paper. There was no pristine conception and birth. Without Kavis input
we would not have heard about Bollas. Without Jackies already plough-
ing a deep furrow in critical leadership studies we would not have been
exploring leadership. There was no logical arrival at a decision of a topic
that needed researching, a literature search, fieldwork, data analysis, etc.
but rather a number of threads that became woven together in an ha ha
moment when we said lets look at .
July 2016
Im sitting on the floor of a student bedroom. I cant remember if there is

a radiatorif there was, then that might explain why Im sitting on the
floor as I remember the rain and damp of Keele and my teenage habits
of sitting on my bedroom floor seeking the warmth of a radiator whilst
doing my homework. We are working through a second set of revise and
resubmit requirements. As such it feels a bit tense because a lot will rest
on what we decide to do today.
Theres an odd smell in the room. Although Jackie has sprayed the
room with scentwhich is gorgeoustheres an underlying hum of
socks, sweat and a general sense of being unkempt. Stuffy with the under-
tow of teenager. It feels lonely as all identifiers of previous occupants have
gone leaving me with a sense of absent presences and an underlying sense
of sadnessNancy insists on breaks for tea as we try to tease out what we
need to do with these revisions. I am grateful for this. The room is dark,
bleak and uncomfortable. Jackie is sitting on her bed but shifts position
regularly theres a sense of no physical comfort to be found here. Our
work takes hours. Its painstaking, slow but I feel a real sense of relief
when theres a set of actions against each editorial requirement. Its there.
It has to be there. We discuss what were going to do once the conference
is over. It feels as though it must be the end of the revise and resubmit
(R&R) journey but there is the lingering feeling that it might not be and
that acceptance is not inevitable. Im tired. Its been a long week of writ-
ing retreat organisation/participation and the forthcoming co-convening
of a gorgeous stream so I dont want to go out for dinner.
It is a very wet summer, this summer of 2016. We are at the Gender

Work and Organization conference at Keele University. Sarah and I have
come from a writing retreat we organised in a rather lovely boutique
hotel 20miles away. Its just after the Brexit vote, and that shock to the
system is followed by this shock to the systemwere now staying in
student accommodation and eating mass-produced food. And its rain-
ing. And raining even more. Jackie arrives and we enjoy a very mediocre
lunch. But there are people here we havent seen for ages and there is a
lot of laughter. Rain and laughter, and a very good conference stream
with thoughtful, innovative papers and an attentive, supportive audi-
ence. But first we have to work on the second revise and resubmit for the
Bollas/Barad paper. Wed sent it to a four-star journal in 2015 that had
sent it for review to psychologists who couldnt understand a paper that
focused on examining individuals in their complex singularity rather
than as samples of larger groups in some presupposed classificatory sys-
tem (Sanger 1996, p.20). After that rejection we submitted the paper to
Organization Studies without further ado. It was sent to reviewers sym-
pathetic to qualitative research methods and the application of theory.
We had dealt with the first revise and resubmit but the second one still
required some rather tricky thinking. We gathered in Jackies room in the
student accommodation, bringing mugs of tea from our rooms. Jackies
room smelt of mens socks. Shed opened the windows and sprayed some
rather expensive perfume, but the smell of stale socks seemed to have
penetrated into the fabric of the room. There was only one chairSarah
sat on the floor, Jackie on the bed, and I took the one chair (well, Im
the oldest and creakiest, after all!). Lord, but the discussion about how to
respond to the reviewers was torturous. Id laboured long and hard at a
writing retreat over a particular section that I really lovedthe problem
is that no-one could understand it except me. It had to go. We worked
out what we needed to do in response to the latest reviews, shared out
the work between us, worked out a timetable, and got on with being at a
conference. I can still smell the stale socks. But the paper has been pub-
lishedwhere can we find another bottle of champagne?
So a paper that gives a sense of its having had a gestation of just a
few years has evolved over at least ten years. But none of it would have
happened if events that had occurred up to 20years ago had not con-
gealed, in circumstances that were somehow conducive to their meeting.
But there is another timeline to the development of this paper and it
could go something like this:
19931995 NH is working in Swansea University where she is asked to take
over supervision of a small group of MSc students studying a
programme in psychotherapy. One of them, art psychotherapist
Kavi Vadamootoo, will become her PhD student. He is an object
relations theorist, and he introduces her to the work of
Christopher Bollas
JF is working in the NHS in Leeds, developing close contacts with
Leeds University, and starting to explore leadership;
SG is working as a National Officer for the public sector union,
Nalgo. During this period, the organisation underwent a merger
with two other health service unions, Nupe and Cohse. Life is
therefore lived as a tale of two halves: getting to know a highly
bureaucratic, masculinist organisation and then being plunged
into a new, emerging one, which was mired in politicking,
backstabbing and betrayal. She was also undergoing analysis in
the wake of a serious period of depression
1996 SG got married in May on a glorious early summers day. She had
started working as a PTHP lecturer in Southamptona baptism
of fire but with friendly peopleand was fleshing out ideas for
her PhD.The union movement was left behind, which puzzled
the academics she encountered who assumed that her nascent
thinking would involve employee relations contributions
After a traumatic divorce, NH, floundering, not knowing who she
is as a single person rather than part of a couple, moves to Leeds
and meets JF who promptly disappears on maternity leave. After
her return, they become firm friends and colleagues. LOTS of
discussions ensue (and continue daily). At some point they start
studying the merger of two hospitals, which leads them to
1999 The Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism (SCOS)
conference in Edinburgh. Paths convergeSF, NH and JF meet
for the first time
20002009 JF and NH start what they call the Bollas study, but we cant
remember when. All we know is that we had carried out pilot
interviews before 2007. Either one or both of them keep
bumping into SG at conferences. Her PhD was awarded in 2001,
and she has a permanent academic job. By 2006, she also has an
MSc in psychoanalytic theory. She reads her decree just before
one of the last seminars at UCL with a sense of surprise and
relief. A friendship emerges, and loose plans to write something
together are floated
20092014 JF and NH now working at Bradford, where SR joins them as a

researcher. She carries out more interviews for the Bollas paper.
JF and NH, both promoted to professor during this period,
analyse the empirical materials and draft several versions of a
paper. Psychotherapists seem to love it, but no journal in MOS
will accept itit is either desk-rejected or rejected by reviewers.
Meanwhile, other papers and some books get written
SG is coming to the close of data gathering at her two
ethnographic organisations, and after a spate of good papers,
the well runs dry through over-ambition and a focus on 4* US
journals. Consulting within the football world also gradually
comes to an end, as frustration with the industry overwhelms
the fiscal and intellectual rewards it brings
2010 While SG and NH are each working on solo papers (that never got
published) they hear that someone has plagiarised bits of a
paper by SG and smaller bits of a paper by NH.What a
coincidence! If plagiarists can do it, why cant we? At last,
friendship turns into colleagueship as we jointly battle editors of
journals who are reluctant to act against the plagiarists. They
start working on combining SGs Did you bring your boots? and
NHs Surprised into Gender (the latter became a chapter in
Harding [2013] after it had been rejected by several journals).
(After several rejections of the joint paper, we asked Jackie to
join us, and Surprised out of our Boots is now out for review)
2013 At the Academy of Management (AOM) in FloridaJF cant make
it; the Disneyworld venue is awful, but SG and NH have a whale
of a time at what is possibly the worst conference in the history
of the AOM.Is the Bollas paper raised at this conference? We
cant remember. An abiding memory is an evening stroll to buy a
bottle of wine. We are accompanied by Mark Learmonth as we
stroll through family groups enjoying the warm evening with a
gaggle of adults and children flopped on large cushions
watching The Aristocats projected onto a large sheet. Children
splash in a nearby pool. We find a quiet spot and enjoy our wine
(and some cheese wed exported [i.e., shoplifted] from a
journal reception). Another is of finding a bench near to the
automatic doors into the conference venue; we hog it, because
just as we are starting to feel too hot the doors open and a blast
of cold, hyper-air-conditioned air rushes out and over us. We
started discussing the potential of a paper on the male gaze,
which hasnt got any further, but SG religiously purchased GQ
every month for some time as a form of data collection. She
develops a desire for impeccable tailoring, which is yet to be
realised
2014 JF and NH at EGOS in Montreal revive the Bollas paper, now

calling it Embodied Selves and the Aesthetics of Leadership.
(Was this where we came up with the brilliant, amazing idea to
ask Sarah, who has a background in psychoanalytical theory, to
join us on this paper?) Neither can remember
Was it NH: What was the date of first meeting in Leeds to discuss the
2015? Bollas paper?????? SG: no idea. I have no memory of being
asked to get involved! I do remember being taken to the
Hepworth Gallery, Leeds Art Gallery and the Yorkshire Sculpture
Park once Nancy realised that I get all my best ideas at galleries
and gardens. A rambling walk in Edinburgh without a sense of
direction has, over time, become mirrored in other walks
without a sense of direction or map. It is as if getting
temporarily lost is not only a feature of our relationship but of
how ideas emerge, take some shape and frequently disappear
into the ether until we need them or until the need becomes
too much to keep inside
Conclusion
There may be many colleagues across management and business schools
whose papers emerge as the myth suggests they should, through the
maligned act of gap-spotting (Alvesson and Sandberg 2013), or from
the realisation that little is known about something, somewhere, that
we need to know more about. For such researchers, a logical process of
the sort laid out in research methods textbooks may follow. But for us,
and we suspect for many others, that process [excuse me: toilet break] is
mythical, a fantasy, one we strive to achieve but never do. Rather, we
retrospectively impose logical, rational, rule-conforming processes upon
our papers and books as we write them. We may write that we have [oops:
must email Jayne to book a room] spotted a gap in the literature, but the
action is the reversewe have an idea and then find a theoretical or prac-
tice gap into which we can slot it.
The origination of the idea may be a mysteryit may seem to have
popped out of plain air and into conscious sensibility one day, or a con-
versation may have sparked a thought, likewise something in the media
[on which, email SG.Shes just asked when is Game of Thrones next season
due to air?], an observation of everyday life, a book or a paper (or sev-

eral or dozens) read. Bollas (1993, 1995) would suggest it comes from
objects we observe that become absorbed into numerous tracks of
thought that somehow come together [now thats an interesting idea: is the
computer screen an object because I dont really see it when Im writing, only
the writing]. The unconscious may no doubt influence the process. Life
influences the process.
In fact, you could argue that life does far more than that and argu-
ably is the process, thus making something of a mockery of the accounts
we give in methodology sections. If life influences or is the process, it is
also inherently linked to time. It is very clear that the paper we feature
had a lengthy gestation. Whilst it was accepted at the end of 2016, its
tendrils go back decades before that. Even if we apply the scalpel to the
intra-actions that inform it and view the starting point as that of the
data collection, it took over 15years from start to publication. In the
era of research assessment exercises, which are increasingly propelling us
to publish or perish, this seems a relic of a bygone era. Reading our
account, the time we took makes us look almost frivolous in our use of
time, but we would argue that ideas take the time they take because they
are also predicated and imbricated with the formation of the relation-
ships, which foster and nurture them.
Our thoughts, after drawing on Barads work for the Barad/Bollas
paper, is that her thesis has a certain magnetic attraction for academics
because, in its descriptions of a profoundly complex and messy world, it
reflects the profound messiness of our research/writing/lives/thoughts/
bodies/relationships/homes. She says, in effect: its okay if your research
doesnt follow the rational and logical processes [I need a bowl of soup
my stomach is rumbling and stopping me thinking] the textbooks tell you
it should, because research and writing, just like life, are performatively
constituted through multitudinous intra-actions that reconstitute entan-
glements (Barad 2007, p. 74). To paraphrase the Barad/Bollas paper,
the neologism intra-actions captures the idea that research, papers and
books are not ontologically separableeach and every piece of research
and writing is constituted within and through its meeting with numer-
ous other objects, events, people, experiences, happenstances, accidents,
strategies and so. There is no such thing as a singular paper or book or

research project, but rather each is an amalgam of so many things. There
is, in short, no such thing as a journal paper either; rather, there is a fan-
tasy of a 4* journal paper that beats us up, governs our careers, controls
and subordinates us. But set against this fantasy is our paean to friendship
and the detours, relationships, ideas and personal support that academic
work needs to nourish it. Thats life, after all .
Acknowledgements The authors would like to acknowledge the central role

played by Jackie Ford in this story. It has been published with her approval, and
we would like to state our gratitude to her for everything she has done and con-
tinues to do for our research, work more generally, and most of all, for her con-
tinued friendship.
References
Alvesson, M., & Sandberg, J. (2013). Has management studies lost its way?
Ideas for more imaginative and innovative research. Journal of Management
Studies, 50(1), 128152.
Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway. Durham: Duke University Press.
Bollas, C. (1993). Being a character: Psychoanalysis and self experience. London:
Routledge.
Bollas, C. (1995). Cracking up: The work of unconscious experience. London:
Routledge.
Ford, J., Harding, N., Gilmore, S., & Richardson, S. (2017). Becoming the
leader: Leadership as material presence. Organization Studies. doi:10.1177/
0170840616677633.
Harding, N. (2013). On being at work: The social construction of the employee.
New York/London: Routledge.
Sanger, J. (1996). The compleat observer?: A field research guide to observation.
London: The Falmer Press.
Sarah Gilmore faces the world as a Senior Lecturer in Organisation Studies at

the University of Exeter Business School, where she also holds the position of
Director of Research Impact. This belies a patchwork career as an administrator
for a development agency, a national officer for a public sector trade union and
an advisor to the Work Foundation. Whilst she has published in various man-
agement and organisation studies journals, she is probably most proud of the
gardens she has created over the years. She lives in Bristol.
Nancy Harding works at Bradford Universitys School of Management, where

her job title is Professor of Organization Theory, a rather grand title for some-
one who started her working life as a typist, spent time as a full-time teenage
mother, and in between worked as a piece-worker on the lines in a factory. She
has since published in the usual journals, and is desperately trying to get on with
the third book in a planned trilogy. She is also trying to learn to do handstands,
and while working on the chapter with Sarah lifted 40kg for the first time. She
lives in Leeds in England, much to the disgust of her Welsh extended family.
Her greatest pride is her grandchildren: never have such perfect creatures walked
the earth.
Part 3
How We Know: Making Sense of
Methods and Field Work
10
The Unanticipated Outcomes
ofResearch: Learning andDevelopment
at Work
StephenBillett
nanticipated Outcomes ofResearch: Learning

U
andDevelopment atWork
As withother contributors to this volume, my experience has been that
the unanticipated outcomes of research have been at least interesting, if
not more, than those that were the intended focus of the inquiry. Those
unanticipated outcomes have been the ones that have also shaped my
research trajectory over the last two and a half decades. So, the key point
I want to make in this brief chapter is that unanticipated outcomes can
both challenge what researchers are focused on and direct their efforts in
ways that open up unanticipated questions and avenues. When the litera-
ture suggests one thing, and something quite different arises in their
reviewing or empirical work, researchers have a choice. Is this an incon-
venient, annoying and unwelcome finding, or does this become the
source of further inquiry? Obviously, I would like to believe that the
S. Billett (*)
Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia

120 S. Billett
latter is the choice selected by researchers, at least sometimes. Over my

research career, there has been a series of unanticipated outcomes that
have fundamentally shifted my conceptions, challenged precepts and
have been the source of key conceptual contributions and have prompted
just plain curiosity. Ultimately, the unanticipated and unexpected has
energised and directed my research-related activities. There seems to be
something inherently engaging about discovering something, which you
did not anticipate, and that presents you with what Piagetians might
describe as dis-equilibrium.
In making my case, I point to four of these experiences: (i) in my doc-
toral studies on situated cognition; (ii) early studies of workplace learn-
ing; (iii) learning through small businesses and (iv) mimetic learning
through work. The unanticipated findings arising, respectively, through
the importance of person-specific contributions of individuals life histo-
ries when engaging in and learning through goal-directed activities, the
negotiations between the personal engagement and the situational affor-
dances, how such negotiations occur in relatively socially isolated circum-
stances and how most of the development of occupational capacities
across human history have arisen from learning rather than teaching.
There are other examples. However, this grouping captures the formation
and continuity of a line theorisation that largely arose through unantici-
pated outcomes.
octoral Studies onSituated Cognition:

D
Contributions ofthePersonal andSituational
My doctoral work focused on identifying by what degree there are situa-
tional contributions to human cognition (i.e. situated cognition). This
work occurred at a time when there was a debate occurring about the
need to understand the contributions of the social context in human
thinking and acting (Brown etal. 1989). This was a response to concerns
that overly cognitive accounts of human cognition (i.e. thinking, acting
and learning) were dominating views about learning (Greeno 1989), but
were seen as unhelpful for addressing practical problems associated with
learning in schools and other places (Raizen 1989). Rather than cleverness
10 The Unanticipated Outcomes ofResearch: Learning and... 121
in the form of abilities to manipulate knowledge, it was suggested that

social factors and contributions from the world also played roles (Lave
1990). In essence, the cognitive revolution needed extending to accom-
modate factors beyond the persons skin (Wertsch and Tulviste 1992).
My doctoral study focused on how workers cognition was shaped by
the particular workplaces (i.e. hairdressing salons) in which they learnt
and practised their occupations (i.e. hairdressing). This inquiry required
me to identify the contributions that shaped these hairdressers work
activities and learning that arises from them, using a combination of eth-
nographic studies and detailed analysis of problem-solving activities. I
was able to identify contributions that arose from the culturally derived
practice (i.e. occupation) of hairdressing and also situational factors shap-
ing how the particular hairdressing practice was conducted and learnt in
these salons through everyday work activities and interactions. However,
unanticipated was the evidence of person-particular contributions that
arose through individuals personal histories and how these shaped how
these hairdressers engaged with work activities, selected goals and proce-
dures and, reciprocally, what they learnt through them (Billett 1996a, b).
So, more than socially suggested situational factors shaping their think-
ing and acting, it was also mediated by what they knew, could do and
value. All of this arose through earlier experiences.
Moreover, it was possible to identify in some detail how these earlier
experiences had come to shape their thinking and acting (Billett 1998).
For instance, one apprentice hairdresser had an interest in hair colouring.
She ended up apprenticed to a hairdresser who had a slight deficiency in
colour recognition (i.e. form of colour-blindness). So, her particular set
of interests, and situational factors, together meant that this young hair-
dresser was able to engage in organising and enacting hair colouring far
earlier than would normally occur in hairdressing apprenticeships. There
were other examples of individuals whose earlier experiences and learning
(i.e. ontogenetic development) profoundly affected their preference for,
ways of engaging and judgements about their work. For instance, whilst
these studies were set in Australia, one of the hairdressers had been trained
in the United Kingdom, and unlike all of her Australian counterparts,
was less aware of the impacts of using combinations of chemicals and hair
dyes. This is important in a country where there is a lot of bright sunlight,
122 S. Billett
but also where many people swim in chlorinated swimming pools. So,
whereas the indigenous hairdressers were aware of these concerns, the
overseas-trained hairdresser was either unaware or did not factor these
considerations as much in her thinking and acting associated with her
occupation.
So, a study aimed at identifying the situational effects upon cogni-
tion, generated unanticipated findings and contributions about role of
individuals personal histories shaping how they engage in situational
activities and interactions (Billett 2003). This then led to a line of theoris-
ing and considerations that have directed my interest over the last
20years.
arly Studies ofWorkplace Learning:

E
Negotiations Betweenthe Personal
andtheSituational
The focus on how workers mediate their experiences was evident in a
series of studies I undertook across different kinds of workplaces that
aimed to understand further how learning through work arises. Much of
my concern was to identify how best to make workplaces more effective
learning environments. My intended focus was on what curriculum prac-
tices and strategies could be used within work settings to promote that
learning. Through those studies, however, it was identified that regardless
of whether the learning occurred within everyday work activities or
through intentional activities to promote workers learning, these experi-
ences and the learning arising from them were shaped by a duality
between person and place. That is, on the one hand, there is what the
workplace afforded individuals in terms of the activities and interactions
provided, and, on the other hand, how individuals elected to engage with
what was afforded them (Billett 2001b). This led to the understanding
that it is not possible to refer to the learning processes and outcomes in
workplaces by referring to either the contributions of the workplace or
intentional support for learning (e.g. training programs, guidance by a
mentor), or how individuals engage. It was necessary to understand how
both of these factors came to play and that rather than being dualisms
(i.e. separate set of contributions), they were instead dualities (i.e. two
sets of factors that are highly linked and associated) (Billett 2001b).
This unanticipated finding led to a reconsideration of how we view
workplaces and other settings as environments in which to learn, and also
the kinds of language and descriptions we use for these kinds of processes.
Through these findings, I concluded that to refer to workplaces as infor-
mal learning environments is wholly erroneous. That is, the experiences
from which individuals learn is based upon what is available for them (i.e.
affordances) and how learners can access them (Billett 2002). Those affor-
dances are distributed in different ways across workers of diverse kinds
and workplaces. Rather than being informal (Eraut 2004; Marsick and
Watkins 1990), the provision of those experiences was shaped by work-
place norms, forms and practices, such as divisions of labour, hierarchies
of work, perceptions of the worth of work tasks and also who were permit-
ted to undertake those tasks. This finding questions the emphasis given to
intentional workplace curriculum and pedagogic practices and, instead,
privileged a need to consider what worker-learners know, can do and value
and bring to the workplace and elect to engage in workplace activities.
Hence, these unanticipated findings lead to aconsideration ofthe duality
between the workplace settings and individuals engagement with and
learning through themas a central explanatory concept. This then pro-
vided a framework to consider learning not only through work but also
through other kinds of social practices including educational settings.
Subsequently, I undertook studies that applied these ideas to educa-
tional settings and programmes. These included trying to understand
how transitions from school to work or further education progressed,
particularly for at risk school students (Billett etal. 2012), and also how
mature aged adult students came to engage with and learn through a
higher education programme (Billett and Searle 2013). So, these con-
cepts of the duality between the person and the situation, although an
unanticipated finding from studies of learning through work, later was
able to be used to explain high school students engagement and adult
students coming to negotiate their participation in higher education
programmes.
124 S. Billett
L earning ThroughSmall Businesses:

Negotiations Occur inRelatively Socially
Isolated Circumstances
These ideas about negotiation between the personal and social contribu-
tions were advanced in another way, which again was wholly unantici-
pated. I undertook a research project to understand in greater depth why
small business workers and operators were reluctant to engage in provi-
sions of vocational education and training (Coopers and Lybrand 1995).
To address this question, I conducted 26 case studies of how small busi-
nesses had learnt to implement a goods and service tax (i.e. GST) that
had recently been introduced in Australia (Billett 2001a). This meant
that nearly all businesses had to understand and administer the GST,
manage the gathering of that tax and pay it to the government every three
months. This offered an opportunity to understand how these small busi-
ness operators have learnt this new set of work requirements. Knowing
that there is often a reluctance by these operators to engage in training
programmes (Coopers and Lybrand 1995), it was helpful to understand
retrospectively how they had learnt the range of skills associated with
administering the GST.Those skills included, for many small businesses,
their first move to computerise their business administration processes. It
required them to understand computerised systems and to manage a par-
ticular software to gather and administer this tax, which, in many
instances, comprised significant changes to their business practices.
A key finding from this project was that many small business operators
worked in ways that can be described as being socially isolated. Unlike in
other work situations, these operators had to work and learn in the
absence of more experienced others. So, being guided by a more expert
partner or more experienced co-worker was not relevant here. The data
indicated that many of these small business people had to act agentically
(i.e. independently initiating and intentionally addressing problems) to
identify sources of expertise that could be trusted and engage with it in
ways that had to be aligned with the needs of their small businesses (Billett
etal. 2003). The taxation rules applied in different ways across different
kinds of goods and services. Therefore, individual, small business
operators had to identify how these rules applied to their small business.
Whilst some engaged consultants and accountants, it was imperative to
avoid becoming reliant upon these individuals because of their costs.
Hence, most became quite active in identifying sources of knowledge
about how to administer this tax as relevant to their business. Hence,
they were quite critical of general talks and advice from experts who did
not understand their businesses operation. So, emerging here is a fresh
consideration of how this kind of learning occurs in socially isolated cir-
cumstances. This finding is important because much of the orthodoxy
associated with developing occupational capacities is associated with
them being mediated by a more experienced other (e.g. teacher, supervi-
sor, workplace expert). Yet, whilst this finding relates to small business
operatives, it is the case that much of learning across work and social life
arises outside of circumstances where there is close guidance.
Importantly, the kinds of agency demonstrated by these small business
operators is a quality relevant to understanding workers further develop-
ment of their capacities across working lives as they engage in their work
activities and interactions (Billett 2008). So, again, a study that was
undertaken for one purpose led to key findings and directions, which had
relevance for a broader understanding of human cognition and develop-
ment and had particular qualities that were helpful in directing further
my research focus.
L earning AcrossHuman History: Mimetic

Learning atWork
Recently, I had a significant breakthrough in my understanding of how
people have learnt their occupations that builds upon some of the afore-
mentioned ideas. This breakthrough was unanticipated and counter to
what I anticipated would be discovered. I was engaged in a project to
understand how humans have learnt their occupations across history and
had been studying that learning in different cultures and continents. This
included studies of the learning of skills in early Imperial China,
Mesopotamia, Central Asia, Hellenic Greece and Europe, also India and
126 S. Billett
Japan. My exploration of these issues was largely undertaken through

reading historical and anthropological texts. I had anticipated finding a
range of curriculum and pedagogic practices that had been used across
history to develop occupational skills, albeit in workplaces. The point
here is that educational provisions for occupations have only occurred in
relatively recent times, that is, since modernity, when the formation of
modern nation states and response to industrialisation led to the forma-
tion of mass education (Gonon 2009a, b).
Hence, it was important to understand how learning occurs outside of
those circumstances and, in particular, educational programmes and
institutions. What I had anticipated finding were sets of curriculum and
pedagogic practices, for instance, those practices used by fletchers, coo-
pers, millers, smith and milliners. Yet, I found very little of that. Even in
China that is renowned for its intricate recordkeeping and recording of
processes, there is little reference to any form of assistance in developing
occupational capacities. Instead, it became clear from the literature that
rather than being taught, across human history, the vast majority of prac-
titioners had learnt their occupations in personally mediated ways. That
is, the onus and locus of their learning have been placed on the learners.
Because we all live in contemporary societies in which schooling is ubiq-
uitous, it is taken for granted that much of learning, particularly impor-
tant learning, comes through being taught. Yet, it seems that before
modernity, except for a very privileged few, the vast majority of humanity
did not experience anything remotely of what we would classify as teach-
ing. Instead, it seems they learnt, and in largely socially isolated ways.
So, a study intending to identify curriculum and pedagogic processes
occurring in workplace across human history was suddenly turned on its
head. Instead of focusing on practices used by workplaces to develop
skills, the problem required a consideration of how individuals came to
learn occupational knowledge. The process referred to as mimesis
observation, imitation and then rehearsalcame to feature this consider-
ation (Byrne and Russon 1998). This places a significant demand upon
the learner and the learner's need to be active, intentional and agentically.
These are the qualities individuals needed to learn in the absence of direct
teaching and educational processes. Interestingly, this has been well
acknowledged across human history. It was found that the origins of the
word apprenticeship refer to apprehending or taking the knowledge

required to practice the occupation (Webb 1999). Recent work in the
Middle East that examines apprentices learning to build minarets, found
that there was no intentional teaching and that the apprentices had to
steal the knowledge required to construct these buildings (Marchand
2008). This approach is also found elsewhere in anthropological studies
of apprenticeship, including those from Japan where the word appren-
ticeship refers to learning through observation (Singleton 1989). In this
way, findings emerge, which were totally unanticipated and distinct from
the intended research goals. Yet, it led to drawing upon that earlier work
and developing the concept of mimetic learning. This went beyond
mimesis and drew upon early theorising to elaborate this concept by sug-
gesting that more than observation, other human cognitive, sensory and
process of engagement, such as haptic processes, were important and that
it was necessary to consider both the contributions from outside and
within the person, and the relationships between them (Billett 2014).
Yet, in closing the circle, these contributions made sense and were
aligned with earlier findings about people learning in contemporary
workplaces. However, such is the strength of the educational discourse in
contemporary schooled societies that the concept of learning through
mediated processes tends to be downplayed. So, here was an example of
the process that is central to human development. It is also worth noting
that across our own personal lives, mimetic processes of learning are
important not only for our occupations, but also for our family and social
life, and how we confront and engage with new tasks. So, again, a con-
cept coming from a consideration of learning through everyday work has
far broader implications.
Unanticipated Research Outcomes

What has been proposed across this chapter is that the unanticipated and
unexpected outcomes of research can be powerful for identifying phe-
nomena, contributions and contesting what is taken as orthodox. So,
rather than the unanticipated and unexpected being seen as an unhelpful
inconvenience, it opens up the possibilities for researchers to make new
128 S. Billett
contributions, have significant breakthroughs and problems, which, to

date, remain unsuccessfully addressed by existing precepts and practices.
So, there is much to be gained from unanticipated and unexpected out-
comes, and they should not be seen as being deficit. Moreover, for the
researcher, such outcomes offer a significant way forward. That is, they
provide forks in the road, complexities to be addressed rather than
ignored, new and potentially novel insights and contributions. Whilst
not seeking to be in any way held to be exemplary, had I ignored or put
aside unanticipated outcomes, my research trajectory and contributions
would be different and, I suspect, of a far lower magnitude. Not the least
here is that when unanticipated findings arise, they also prompt research-
ers to consider whether their existing approaches to the problem being
addressed, the kind of literature being engaged with and research proce-
dures may be insufficient. In my case, each of these unanticipated out-
comes from research has led me to engage in quite different literature and
conceptions. So, for instance, the recent work on mimetic learning led
me to engage with literature from cognitive and neuroscience to under-
stand how humans mediate experience. Hence, more than providing new
avenues and new views, perspectives and insights become available for
the researcher.
In conclusion, the request here is that rather than discarding or ignor-
ing unanticipated findings, researchers view these as opportunities to
extend their insights, potential and current ways of undertaking their
enquiries. That has been the case for me.
References
Billett, S. (1996a). Constructing vocational knowledge: History, communities
and individuals. Journal of Vocational Education and Training, 48(2),
141154.
Billett, S. (1996b). Situated learning: Bridging sociocultural and cognitive theo-
rising. Learning and Instruction, 6(3), 263280.
Billett, S. (1998). Ontogeny and participation in communities of practice: A
socio-cognitive view of adult development. Studies in the Education of Adults,
30(1), 2134.
Billett, S. (2001a). Increasing small business participation in VET: A hard ask.

Education and Training, 43(8/9), 416425.
Billett, S. (2001b). Learning through work: Workplace affordances and indi-
vidual engagement. Journal of Workplace Learning, 13(5), 209214.
Billett, S. (2002). Critiquing workplace learning discourses: Participation and
continuity at work. Studies in the Education of Adults, 34(1), 5667.
Billett, S. (2003). Sociogeneses, activity and ontogeny. Culture and Psychology,
9(2), 133169.
Billett, S. (2008). Learning throughout working life: A relational interdepen-
dence between social and individual agency. British Journal of Education
Studies, 55(1), 3958.
Billett, S. (2014). Mimetic learning at work: Learning in the circumstances of prac-
tice. Dordrecht: Springer.
Billett, S., & Searle, J.(2013). Mature age students successful transition into
higher education: Factors and interdependencies. In J.Seifried & E.Wuttke
(Eds.), Transitions in research in vocational education (Vol. 2, pp.263282).
Opladen/Farmington Hills: Budrich Publisher.
Billett, S., Ehrich, L., & Hernon-Tinning, B. (2003). Small business pedagogic
practices. Journal of Vocational Education and Training, 55(2), 149167.
Billett, S., Johnson, G., Thomas, S., Sim, C., Hay, S., & Ryan, J.(Eds.). (2012).
Experiences of school transitions: Policies, practice and participants. Dordrecht:
Springer.
Brown, J.S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated cognition and the cul-
ture of learning. Educational Researcher, 18(1), 3234.
Byrne, R. W., & Russon, A. (1998). Learning by imitation: A hierarchical
approach. Behavioral and Brain Science, 21(5), 667721.
Coopers and Lybrand. (1995). Small business: A review of training evaluation
and effectiveness In Enterprising nation (Research report volume 2).
Canberra: AGPS.
Eraut, M. (2004). Informal learning in the workplace. Studies in Continuing
Education, 26(2), 247273.
Gonon, P. (2009a). Efficiency and vocationalism as structuring principles of
industrial education in the USA. Vocations and Learning: Studies in Vocational
and Professional Education, 2(2), 7586.
Gonon, P. (2009b). The quest for modern vocational education: Georg Kerschensteiner
between Dewey, Weber and Simmel (Vol. 9). NewYork: Peter Lang.
Greeno, J.G. (1989). A perspective on thinking. American Psychologist, 44(2),
134141.
130 S. Billett
Lave, J.(1990). The culture of acquisition and the practice of understanding.

In J. W. Stigler, R. A. Shweder, & G. Herdt (Eds.), Cultural psychology
(pp.259286). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Marchand, T.H. J.(2008). Muscles, morals and mind: Craft apprenticeship and
the formation of person. British Journal of Education Studies, 56(3), 245271.
Marsick, V.J., & Watkins, K. (1990). Informal and incidental learning in the
workplace. London: Routledge.
Raizen, S.A. (1989). Reforming education for work: A cognitive science perspective.
Berkeley: National Center for Research in Vocational Education.
Singleton, J. (1989). The Japanese folkcraft pottery apprenticeship: Cultural
patterns of an educational institution. In M.W. Coy (Ed.), Apprenticeship:
From theory to method and back again (pp.1330). NewYork: SUNY.
Webb, E. (1999). Making meaning: Language for learning. In P. Ainely &
H. Rainbird (Eds.), Apprenticeship: Towards a new paradigm of learning
(pp.100110). London: Kogan Page.
Wertsch, J., & Tulviste, P. (1992). L.S. Vygotsky and contemporary develop-
mental psychology. Developmental Psychology, 28(4), 548557.
Dr Stephen Billett is currently Professor of Adult and Vocational Education,

within the school of Education and Professional Studies at Griffith University,
Brisbane, Australia. His work life has featured detours comprising being trained
for and working in clothing manufacturing for many years, being a vocational
educator, educational administrator, teacher educator, professional development
practitioner and policy developer in the Australian vocational education system
and then as a teacher and researcher at Griffith University. Since 1992, these
detours have included researching learning through and for work and publish-
ing widely in fields of learning of occupations, workplace learning, work and
conceptual accounts of learning for vocational purposes. These detours have led
to him being a Fulbright scholar, national teaching fellow, recipient of an honor-
ary doctorate from Jyvaskala University in Finland and elected Fellow of the
Academy of Social Sciences of Australia.
11
Knowing Across Time andPlace
NinnaMeier
This chapter contains two stories based on the same academic work
viewed from two different vantage points. One story is the traditional
story of how I went from A (field studies) to B (results), following the
traditional route step by step. This, however, is not the whole story. By
sharing the second story, the story of how I actually got to B by virtue of
a detour (iterations of thinking, writing, doing prompted by a tendency
to draw things), I offer an example of how I fully understood and appre-
ciated both what I did and the analytical insights I gained only after hav-
ing detoured physically and mentally from what I had planned. In short,
I show how a conference presentation at the other side of the world in my
case allowed me to retrospectively make sense of what I had been doing
by telling others what I did.
Drawing is a part of how I understand things: I need to see them out-
lined on paper before I can connect the dots, so to speak. Yet, the signifi-
cance of this idiosyncratic way of engaging with the world for my research
is something that came to me slowly, in iterations, as an awareness that
N. Meier (*)

132 N. Meier
developed and grew stronger, more firmly grounded, over time and in
different specific places: hospital doctors and nurses consulting rooms,
seminar rooms at conferences, my workplace at hometo name but a
few.
To illustrate the point, I need to tell two stories. First, the story of how
I have continually used drawings to support questions in interviews and
to tease out insights in the process of analysis, as I research the ways in
which staff and managers work to make patient pathways coherent across
geographical, organisational and professional boundaries. This story
revolves around drawing as a methodological and analytical tool; it can
be presented in an orderly, linear fashion. Second, I will share the story
of how this way of working was developed without deliberation, at
times not even recognised, and how it was, on the whole, not until late
in the research process that I saw the elements and impacts of this
method. This story shares the interrelatedness of the iterations of under-
standing that the research process, for me, consists of. To tell this story, I
need a different structure: I need to be true to the cyclic and interruptive
nature of this process. Each of the two stories contains its own represen-
tation of academic work; to share my detour, I have to tell both stories
and show (dont tell) how they relate to and reinforce each other.
The first story is the one we write in papers and share at conferences: it
is the official account of how methods are developed and used. In my case,
it would go something like this: Because the focus of this research was
coherence in patient pathways, I asked participants to draw the paths of
their patients: where the patients were before the interviewee met them in
his/her work, and where the patients went after their stay in a given ward/
unit. I then asked them to highlight where in such paths coherence was
most difficult to achieve, and to offer their view of potential reasons why.
These drawings were made by nurses, doctors, clinical managers and ward
managers. They were made by several participants in different roles on the
same ward, they were made by participants from all participating wards,
and they were made throughout all three years of the research process.
Drawings from the pilot studies were used to formulate the data collection
plan for each ward, as they were a rich source of information on perceived
gaps and challenges in creating coherence. In interviews, they were created
while participants talked about their patients, but were also used to elicit
11 Knowing Across Time andPlace 133
examples of specific workflows (e.g. the process of admitting a patient).

They were used in the data analysis in combination with interviews, field
notes from observations and archival data to explore the significance of
distribution of work across organisational, professional and geographical
boundaries. Here the drawings yielded detailed information on the inter-
relatedness of specific work functions at one site with work carried out in
other places, e.g. inside or outside the hospital and/or at other times of
day. Often, participants would draw challenges to coherence as tangled
knots on the pathways their patients took. In short, the drawings were a
valuable source of knowledge on how participants saw their own work in
relation to patients and to the work of their colleagues. The drawings were
used in the data analysis after each data collection phase as well as in the
final data analysis stage. The main findings of the research namely, the
significance of place and distribution of work in relation to knowledge, the
patients body, and the importance of relational aspects of creating coher-
ence arose from eliciting and using these drawings.
As this first story shows, this kind of representation of academic work
is often presented as a linear path that we take either in using the methods
of others or in developing our own. Yet we know from decades of research
into creativity and innovation that this representation of such processes
captures only part of what happens. Its not that the first story is untrue;
rather, it is a representation based on a retrospective construction of what
happened, similar to sensemaking processes. Weick etal. (2005, p.409)
remind us that sensemaking is about the interplay of action and interpre-
tation. Applied to academic work, this concept describes what I expect
most of us scholars do when we write our methods and analysis section:
we look back at the empirical work, immerse ourselves in the material we
have produced, reread old notes and drafts of text and we start noticing
and bracketing (p.411). In the analysis process, many of us start cluster-
ing material into themes, assigning labels or categories to the empirical
material, but also, and perhaps more importantly for this book, to the
work we have done along the way. An example of this from my first story
would be the retrospective reconstruction of my past work into the tem-
poral categories pilot study, or in interviews, or as part of the analysis
following the data collection phase. These categories hint at a linear, tem-
poral development that echoes mainstream research methods: first, you
134 N. Meier
conduct a pilot study, then you do the real empirical work in the field,
then you analyse your material and then you write up your work into a
publishable paper. Place is not important in this story: where I did this
work is irrelevant outside the spatial category or labelling of a place as the
research field.
If Weicks (1995) sensemaking recipe is How can I know what I think
until I see what I say?, then I suggest that making sense of the research
process entails a recipe more along the lines of How can I know what I
did until I see what I know? The construction of academic knowledge,
this suggests, is linked to the retrospective sensemaking of what happened
when the researcher was actively actingthinkinginterpreting during the
period that will later be reconstructed as data collection. In practice, I
suggest, the sensemaking concept explains the iterative and simultaneous
retrospectiveprospective nature of academic work.
The second story is much harder to write, because I have to tell it back-
wards or in circles, so to speak. To be true to my ambition, this story is
not linear, and some of the points might only be clear at the end, just as
they were to me. Just as mistakes in medicine are only ever recognised as
mistakes after the action, in hindsight (Paget 1988), the creative potential
of detours may only reveal itself when we know where the detour took us
and retrospectively make sense of the process and what we now know. To
underscore that the different parts of the story unfolded at different
points in time and space, I have attached a place and a time to each part.
This story begins in early December 2015, in Singapore. Here, on the
back seat of an uncomfortable minivan, I am trying to make the best of a
misguided guided tour of the sights of Singapore that I am on with a
handful of co-participants from a recent conference on workplace learn-
ing. I am sitting on the back seat with the co-editors of this book, and
from here we cant even see out properly, because the windows of the van
are too low in relation to the seats. So, instead, we talk about work. We
pick up earlier threads of conversation about academic work and writing,
how emotions and the body are part of what we know, how we know and
where we know: issues we have been discussing on and off during the
conference. At one point, Elina and I talk about her way of working with
photos, and Charlotte says: Lets write a book about that, about the
things we do without ever planning them, where people share their stories
of how they found a way, about the nonlinear paths that are also part of
research life. Instantly, I reach out my hand and say: Im in, lets do it.
And we start brainstorming, all three of us, and the idea is born in my
head: I am going to write about what I thought was an unexpected find-
inga surplus resultand how the events that led up to the decision to
write this book made me realise that I have been researching the spatial
consequences of distribution of work on coherence all along, even when
I did not know that this was what I was doing.
Brabrand, August 2016

I am sitting at the garden table in my allotment garden in Brabrand,
a suburb of the city of Aarhus in Denmark. August has provided the
right amount of sunshine and rain, and every plant seems to be over-
productive. The garden is overflowing with fruits and vegetables: plums,
apples, tomatoes, cucumbers even the raspberry bushes are so plentiful
that my kids grow tired of eating the delicious berries. Amidst all this
abundance, I am revising my text and as I read what I originally wrote, I
see threads of knowledge in the text that I can now weave my current
thoughts into, as I elaborate and unfold them. The idea for this book and
the act of writing the proposal and this abstract have changed the way I
write and think about writing. It is as if I have opened a door to a cre-
ative place I had not previously known I could write from. Shortly after
writing this, I started writing blog posts about the materiality of writing
and thinking,1 and about writing in time and space.2 I developed the
idea of current-author me and future-author me, and as I pick up this
text today, I realise that this spatial and temporal distribution of think-
ing and writing is the main thing I learned from my trip to Singapore. I
travelled across the world to learn about the way I think and write,
something that was in me all along. Strangely, this feels right: as if this
insight had to be had in Singapore, as if it was somehow there, waiting
for me to arrive.
In reality, the story began three and a half years ago, as I started my
postdoc project. I just didnt know it at the time. As the project moves
from idea and application to funded research project, I start the empirical
studies that are part of it. In doing this, I am suspended between three
136 N. Meier
research sites as I travel between the three hospital wards participating in

my project. I spend hours in trains so early in the morning that it feels as
though the world is still asleep apart from me and a few other commut-
ers. I drag my tired and over-stimulated body and mind back into bed at
night, knowing that I have to get up before dawn the next day, already
preparing for the next days work. I am immersed in the work, reading up
on clinical guidelines for treating cardia cancer or the latest policy paper
on patient involvement. In a strange way, it doesnt matter where I am,
because I am always at work, to some degree, even when I am attending
a birthday party or cooking dinner: my work is not place-bound, although
place has such an important meaning in this project. When I am at work
(when I have moved my body to the places where the work I study takes
place), I walk up different stairs and down long corridors, looking for
offices and people to interview. I get lost, take the wrong turns and end
up via a back door at the radiology departments break room or take a
stairway from the basement that leads me to emerge in the elective day
surgery reception area, like a mole appearing from an underground tun-
nel: Uh, sorry, wrong department. And I dive back into the bowels of
the building and move on, looking for where I am supposed to be.
Hospitals are immensely complicated places to navigate if you are not
very spatially gifted. They are often built in phases as the money becomes
available or the need to expand arises, one building latching onto the
next, levels not corresponding to anything one might expect (in one of
my hospitals, levels 3 and 4 are both ground floors).
My spatial confusion mirrors the opacity I experience in the field. Once
you start talking to clinicians and clinical managers, categories are never
simple and things are intertwined: the word patients is both an all-
encompassing categorya boundary object (Star and Griesemer 1989)
and a term that refers to real individuals in need of help and care. I soon
realise I have not made this research project easy on myself by choosing to
study coherence in patient pathways. This proves to be an elusive unit of
analysis and to cope, I ask people to draw for me while they speak. Im
intrigued! They produce the most fantastic drawings, with a level of detail
that helps me understand where and how I might capture what I aim to
study. So I keep going. Mostly because I am curious to see where this will
take me, but also because I realise that these drawings are an aid in the
interviews, and I can honestly say to the interviewee that the drawings
help me understand the patients pathway and how work is organised. In
one key interview, the participant draws a sick patient, a frustrated and
crying relative, herself and her colleague, and enacts (complete with dif-
ferent voices) how a relative might call her, the conversation they might
have and what she would do afterwards to help: who she would then call,
what she would do and how this would help the patient and relative. I
walk out of this interview with a gut feeling of being onto something; my
researchers curiosity is on high alert. But I also know that I cannot yet
fully understand what is at stake hereIll have to wait and see, pursue it
further. The discrete elements are not yet fully assembled; the bigger pic-
ture is still not clear.
Back at the conference on workplace learning in Singapore, Charlotte
Wegener and I decide to skip PowerPoints for our presentation. Instead,
we negotiate access to the conference room before the talks in our ses-
sion begin, so as to make several drawings on the whiteboard and pres-
ent our work based on these. The room is sparsely furnished: it is a
classroom at the university where the conference is being held. There are
several rows of chairs and a teachers desk in front of a large whiteboard.
I pick up a marker and start drawing. These are drawings I have devel-
oped based on the empirical material and the data analysis so far. They
are visual representations of how cancer treatment is organised in
Denmark, with the patients home in the middle (because cancer treat-
ment is primarily outpatient treatment), and the places of work (e.g. the
GPs surgery, the chemotherapy unit) are drawn as sites placed in a circle
around it. We also draw the consultation room: a patient and an oncolo-
gist sitting opposite each other with a desk and a computer between
them. We draw this to illustrate how the consultation room is a desig-
nated place for patient involvement, and how the distribution and there-
fore lack of co-location between patient and healthcare professional
separate the patients body, the specialised, clinical knowledge and the
direct monitoring of the patients symptoms (which requires co-location
or line of sight).
I have given talks without PowerPoints before, and I like to be able to
move around and to return to the drawings, to underscore points by
showing how the patients are always elsewhere for the oncologists, who
138 N. Meier
only see them in brief intervals. I love the way the drawings make my
points about the displacement of the patients body and the clinical gaze
intuitively easy to understand: when people leave you, you cant see them,
everyone gets that, and if the responsibility to act is tied to the monitor-
ing of the body (and thus the person who sees the symptoms), then the
lack of co-location between oncologist and patient splits the responsibil-
ity in two: the responsibility that comes with specialised knowledge and
a state-sanctioned mandate to treat and the responsibility that comes
with seeing and experiencing what happens in/to the patient/body. This
has a whole range of potential consequences, and, as I started to explore
these, I realised that this might turn out to be one of my most important
findings.
Four months later, in a meeting room on the top floor of the oncology
department, I share the results with the ward management and a handful
of clinical leaders from the oncology ward. They stop me in my presenta-
tion as I talk about the distribution of the patient/body, the oncologists
sight/monitoring and the responsibility for action: this problem is some-
thing they know, something they and their staff live and they want to talk
more about it. My drawing of the patient at home, in the middle, repre-
sents a coordination challenge they try to solve every day, and we end up
talking mainly about this, because in a simple way this drawing illustrates
why coherence is difficult and at the same time crucial to achieve. The
oncologists ask for these drawings, so they can use them for their work on
coherence. I forward them the slides and drawings, and as I leave later
that day, I smile at the situation: my drawing interpreting the multitude
of their drawings has now assumed a life of its own and has gone from me
to do work in the clinical world from which its ancestors originated. This
makes me happy: I have produced a tangible and useful thing that is now
out there, separate from me, but active in its own right.
As in much academic work, this main point of my work was not clear
from the start. As I started the field studies in the spring of 2013, I began to
hear, see and experience hints of the significance of place in the way people
talked, where they were, who they knew and how these aspects affected
their working conditions and practices. As I dived into the more detailed
analysis of the data from the first year, the importance of place kept asserting
itself, repeatedly, stubbornly. In the initial thematic analysis of data from

year one, I labelled boundaries in speech and action, and reference to and
navigation of geography and distance became a theme. The experience of
doing field work, shadowing different healthcare practitioners in their work,
provided me with embodied knowledge in practice of the distances practi-
tioners had to walk to get to meetings, conferences, talks with colleagues or
just as they went about their daily work. I got a sense of changes of pace
(who needs to run, when and why?), different behaviours in different rooms,
the significance of distances and how people navigate them, and how hall-
ways can be transitional places where one changes attitude, body language,
topic and tone of voice. All these things made me think about the symbolic,
cognitive and socially constructed boundaries that are at the same time
highly influential on work, organisation and collaboration in practice.
My insistence on using drawings in interviews stemmed from the way
I learn things: when I see how things are connected to something in the
world and to each other, I understand them much better. So while I
initially asked participants to draw me the maps as a way to foster my
own understanding, it quite early on became clear to me that I would
find a way to use the drawings, particularly as the same types of patients
movements were drawn differently depending on the organisational and
geographical position of the participant in question. I just couldnt yet
see how.
In combination with the field study data, I am beginning to under-
stand the link between the experiential knowledge of being there when
shadowing practitioners and how this can inform the potential of visual
representation of space. In my work, this translated into drawings of
where patients were at given points in time, and these insights initiated a
quest to explore where we know things and examinations of the relation-
ship between space, body and knowingthe work that we presented in
Singapore and later wrote a paper about. From a sensemaking perspec-
tive, the conference in Singapore was an event in which the iterative cycle
of interpretation and action of academic work reached a state where the
actions I had taken over the last two and a half years were understood in
the light of the future collaboration between Elina, Charlotte and myself:
a collaboration which so far has resulted in this book. In this, I started
140 N. Meier
interpreting the usage of drawings as events in which I was actually mak-

ing important components of the work that lay ahead of me, although I
couldnt quite see this at the time.
I hope these two stories illustrate the two different kinds of representa-
tion of academic work: the linear and the iterative/cyclic. One of the
potentials of acknowledging creative detours, I suggest, lies in seeing the
kinship between academic work and sensemaking processes: they are
both retrospective and prospective. Additionally, they both entail attempts
to order the flux of human experience and action (for instance, through
labelling and categorising) and to give these actions a particular shape
and meaning through spoken and written words. This, I argue, is what
happened when we came up with the idea for this book in the minivan:
I began to see how what initially looked like a detour might, in fact, be
an important path to the finished results and work beyond.
Notes
1. http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2016/02/26/the-materiality-
of-research-on-the-materiality-of-writing-in-academia-or-remembering-
where-i-put-my-thoughts-by-ninna-meier/
2. http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2016/05/20/the-materiality-
of-research-thinking-and-writing-in-time-and-space-by-ninna-meier/
References
Paget, M.A. (1988). The unity of mistakes. A phenomenological interpretation of
medical work (2nd ed.). Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Star, S.L., & Griesemer, J.R. (1989). Institutional ecology, translations and
boundary objects: Amateurs and professionals in Berkeleys Museum of
Vertebrate Zoology, 190739. Social Studies of Science, 19(3), 387420.
Weick, K.E. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations. SAGE: Thousand Oaks.
Weick, K.E., Sutcliffe, K.M., & Obstfeld, D. (2005). Organizing and the pro-
cess of sensemaking. Organization Science, 16(4), 409421.
Ninna Meier is an associate professor at the Department of Sociology and

Social Work at Aalborg University, Denmark, where she teaches and supervises
students in organisational sociology. She has carried out qualitative field studies
of organisation and management of healthcare work since 2009, first focusing
on the managerial work of clinical managers in the front line of hospital wards
and then focusing on the leadership and coordination practices inherent in mak-
ing healthcare work coherent across geographical, organizational and profes-
sional boundaries. She is particularly interested in how researchers may facilitate
impact of their work in practice, especially the role of writing herein; a topic she
has blogged about on LSE.Her latest book with Charlotte Wegener is called The
Open Book: Stories of Academic Life and Writingor Where We Know Thingsa
book they did not know they were writing until one day it was done. Currently,
they are developing both Open Writing and resonance conceptually and as a
field of research, a method of inquiry and community of academics across disci-
plines and countries.
12
Staying onTopic: Doing Research
Between Improvisation
andSystematisation
Constancede Saint-Laurent
Its a cold afternoon of March, as winter refuses to give way to spring. Im

sitting in a caf in the centre of Brussels, and luckily, crowded as it is, it is
warm enough. But it is loud. So very loud, as loud as it was quiet when
I discovered the place a week before and decided to use it for my inter-
views. Luckily, my interviewee is a sound guy, as I understand it, and
he explains to me how I can clean my tape. I feel a bit reassured, but I
dont like all this last minute, all this improvisation. This is not what
academic work should look like, I think, as I go through my quickly put
together interview guide. I know what Im looking for, but Im not sure
how to find it. I want to know how he understands history, how he relates
to it and how he came to understand it in this way. It means, sometimes,
moving a bit away from the topic. But it doesnt matter; people often
talk about history when they realise it the least. As the interview goes on,
I regain confidence. This is good data, I think. And I look professional
enough, like I know what Im doing. That is, until Boris tells me, half
amused half reproachful:
C. de Saint-Laurent (*)
University of Neuchtel, Neuchtel, Switzerland

144 C. de Saint-Laurent
So, we were supposed to talk about history, and we spoke geopolitics, then
philosophy, and now we are talking international finance, so we are not
talking about your topic at all!
Im thrown off. There is an air of are you making me waste my time?,

of do you even know what youre doing?. I laugh; I say its very fine for
me, that I am getting interesting data. So as long as he is not getting
bored, all is good. But I spend the rest of the interview struggling to show
Boris that we are staying on topic, even if it doesnt matter for my inter-
view. And I wonder, as I finish the interview, how did I get there, turning
my carefully crafted project into such an improvisation?
The Story
It started as the most amazing opportunity I could have dreamt of. I
wanted to study the development of collective memoryour biased
representations of history (Wertsch 2002)in teenagers, and how spe-
cific educative interventions may encourage them to challenge the glori-
ous representations their country has of its past. As generations of citizens
were, at the time, getting ready in the UK to get [their] country back,
as they are now ready to make America great again, educating young
generations in a way that encourages them to think critically about their
country and its past seemed like a pressing issue. I was aware that it
would, however, require long and careful planning to create a study able
to explore both the development of collective memory and how teenagers
can be introduced to alternative accounts of the past. This is when I was
offered the perfect opportunity: a one month all-paid fieldwork in
Brussels, where I would go and observe daily workshops organised with
teenagers, where they would be asked about their relation to history and
introduced to critical ideas about it. If it sounds too beautiful to be true,
its because it was. I am deeply grateful to the team that welcomed me in
Brussels, and to those who made it possible for me to get there. But it
sounded so perfect that I forgot to ask questions and to check what was
going to happen. I had the absolute certainty that I knew what I was
doing and that it was going to go perfectly well, if anything because
someone else had thought out this fieldwork for me.
12 Staying onTopic: Doing Research Between Improvisation... 145
The first shock came when I arrived at the theatre where the workshops
were to take place. Misunderstandings, wrong documents and cultural
differences: the result was the same; the students were on holiday during
half of my stay in Brussels and would not be taking part in any work-
shops. The second surprise? When I was told that the workshops were not
so much on history then they were introductions to a theatre play the
students were about to see. I knew they were organised around a play, but
it had sounded so far as if they were merely associated to it, because both
were on a historical theme. By the third shock, I was getting desperate: the
small, intimate workshops that I had imagined, favouring reflexivity and
critical thinking turned out to be one-hour time slots with around 80
high-school students. The students were excited and loud; the workshops,
short and fast paced. They were introduced to a few historical and geo-
graphical concepts indeed, but just enough for them to understand the
play they were about to see. And the students were asked to participate, to
create timelines of their lives and subjective maps of the world, but
they would only hand out the finished product, after working on it indi-
vidually. In hindsight, there are many things I could have done with it.
But, on the spot, I was lost. How do I interact with the students? The
workshops would go by so fast, so loud, being so crowded; I didnt have
time to create any rapport. So I took notes, copious notes, of what I could
see. And I collected dozens upon dozens of timelines and personal maps
from the students who agreed to give them to me. But it was little, very
little: there was not much to observe of the students, and not much to say
about the timelines and maps for which I had no explanation.
Most of the workshops I could observe had passed already, and the
holidays were coming up, meaning that I had an almost two-week break
with nothing to do. The play was still running, though, a perfect example
of reflexive and critical use of history. This is when I decided to improvise
and to seize any opportunity I could find. I was not going to waste my
time when I did have the ideal workshop (the play) and plenty of
participants (the audience). And if I couldnt access teenagers and study
collective memory as it develops, I could still interview people about their
past about the past. In the next few days, I ran around to print business
cards, find a place to do my interviews (that I thought was quiet, but it
turned out it was just the holidays), recruit participants, prepare an inter-
view guide, test it and update it.
People agreed to participate, people dropped out, but all in all, I man-
aged to interview seven people in ten days. The interviews went well, and
most participants were benevolent, even when they could see that I was
not completely sure where I was going. I asked people about their rela-
tion to history, how they talked about it at home when they were young,
how it evolved over time and how they understood the world. It became
clear, with every passing interview, that peoples relation to history is
deeply related to how they see the world. I improvised every day, adapt-
ing the interview guide after each interview, depending on what was new,
what was failing and what was interesting. It was exciting, fascinating,
but I was pretty sure that it was not science. A good introduction to my
PhD, maybe, but nothing more. And as Boris told me in his interview,
for it is how I interpreted his remark about how I had left the interview
stray away from topic, it could be nothing more.
Interlude
It took me almost a year of transcribing and analysing the data to see how
interesting the interviews were on their own, not just as an introduction to
a subsequent research. As it should be the case (Valsiner 2014), the ques-
tions evolved with the data, interests changed and issues were redefined.
As a result, new field works emerged; new theories were proposed. And
until I started writing this paper, I had actually forgotten what it was that
I was so convinced I would find in Brussels. In the next section is what the
study now looks like, in a manner similar to how it has been presented in
the scientific publications that followed (de Saint-Laurent in press, 2017).
The Science
Collective memorythe lay representations of historyhas been shown
to encourage the glorification of the past of the group by proposing biased
and one-sided perspectives on history (Wertsch and Batiashvili 2012).
These narratives are then mobilised in public discourses to defend, for
instance, conflicts (e.g., Nicholson 2016), exclusion (e.g., de Saint-Laurent
2014), and discriminations (e.g., Favero 2010). Understanding how

some people come to challenge hegemonic representations of the past is
thus a critical issue. However, current research on collective memory has
been blind to these questions, mainly because it has primarily focused on
group dynamics and showed little interest in how people relate to history.
This study thus aims to answer two questions: (1) how do people develop
a specific relation to the past and (2) how do they come to challenge
existing representations of history?
To answer these questions, nine semi open interviews were conducted
with artists and intellectuals around a theatre play on the history of the
IsraelPalestine conflict (Rosenstein 2014) in March 2014 in Belgium
and in June 2015in Switzerland. The participants included seven specta-
tors of the play and two members of the theatre team, in their mid 30s to
mid-60s. They were chosen because of the highly critical nature of the
play, offering the advantage of making it very likely that the participants
were themselves critical about history, as it is clearly how the play was
advertised (and as turned out to be the case). The participants were inter-
viewed on their relation to history, how this relation evolved through
time, what types of resources they had used and with whom they had
talked about it. The interviews lasted between 45 and 90 minutes and
were all conducted in French. They were then transcribed using Sonal
and coded in Nvivo.
The analysis of the data aimed at reconstructing the trajectories of the
participants in their relation to history, what I have termed elsewhere
trajectories of remembering (de Saint-Laurent 2017; de Saint-Laurent
and Zittoun in press). To do so, a life narrative analysis was used
(Rosenthal 1993): the interviews were cut into sections corresponding to
different periods of the participants lives and then reorganised in
chronological order. Then, for each section, the tools used, the interlocu-
tors referred to, the stories told about history and elements metamem-
ory the participants general understanding of how collective memory
works (de Saint-Laurent)were coded. Once all the periods had been
analysed, a final layer of analysis was added by focusing on (1) the
changes between periods of life, (2) what may have provoked them and
(3) the integrations between these different periods (e.g., how perspec-
tives developed at different moments in life can be integrated in a
general metamemory in adulthood), using a life-course analysis (Zittoun

2006, 2012).
Three full case studies were developed from the data, presented in two
separate articles and focusing on different aspects of the interviews
(de Saint-Laurent 2017). So far, the results have suggested that people
develop a unique relation to history through the relationships they forge,
the (intellectual) resources that become available to them and the evolv-
ing contexts they are part of. These relations are often characterised by
tensions: between what one learns in school and hears at home; between
what was acceptable in a previous context and, suddenly, is not anymore;
between what they had thought to be true their whole life and what a
recent encounter just shattered. Each personal relation to history, then,
reflects how the person managedor notto integrate or navigate the
contradicting historical accounts available in their environment. If we are
all, in one way or another, exposed to alternative accounts of the past (de
Saint-Laurent 2014), what matters is how we can make sense of such
contradictions and mobilise them to develop a reflexive perspective on
what happened. Two subsequent studies were planned to test these con-
clusions: the first one, which took place last year, aimed at looking at the
microgenetic processes in place when people encounter alternative ver-
sions of the past (de Saint-Laurent submitted-a, submitted-b), while the
second one, in preparation, will look at which tools are most effective in
helping people make sense of these often-contradicting stories.
Epilogue
In this chapter, I have tried to present as two separate discourses, two
central aspects of research that, yet, are often considered at odds with
each other. On the one hand, the story presented the subjective narra-
tive of my fieldwork, which reflected on what happened from my per-
spective. This is, as often, a story of improvisation, because no amount of
preparation can allow us to predict what exactly is going to happen in a
fieldworkalthough it can, luckily, prevent many of the surprises this
impromptu fieldwork led to. On the other hand, the science presents a
clear, logical and chronological version of the study, even if it never hap-
pened like that. But it offers a systematic and scientific account of the
questions the data can answer and how it answers them. Paradoxically, it
is full of technical descriptions and yet doesnt say much about how the
research was actually conducted. This is, I believe, because scientific dis-
course is not about reporting how things were done, but about convinc-
ingly communicating what can be said about a certain phenomenon
under study (see, for instance, Billig 2013 for a similar argument).
It could be tempting, depending on the vision we have of science, to
consider one of the two discourses proposed in this chapter as more true
than the other, as more valuable. From a naturalist or positivist perspec-
tive, the story is nothing more than a literary endeavour. From a con-
structionist perspective, the science is nothing more than an artifice, a
pretty way of presenting things to make us feel like we know what we are
talking about. I believe there is much to be gained by integrating both, by
considering that science is done halfway between improvisation and sys-
tematisation. On the one hand, improvisation is necessary because study-
ing human life is a messy adventure, and trying to do away with it is
running the risk of missing the most interesting parts: what participants,
communities and often the data itself have to say about the phenomenon
we are trying to study. On the other hand, systematisation is necessary for
the development of scientific knowledge. How to reach the truth about
the world and its inhabitants is still very much a topic of disagreement in
the humanities and social sciences (Cornish and Gillespie 2009), but all
would probably agree that systematising how we produce knowledge and
the data on which this knowledge is based is one of the keys to answering
this question. Developing strategies to consistently analyse data, con-
struct new theories or conduct research is our safeguard against the
everything goes constructionists are so often accused of. And it is by
improvising that we can remain both open to what the world actually has
to say and creative about how to explore it.
If this is also an epistemological debateas in a way all methodologi-
cal questions arethen a midway between naturalism and construction-
ism has been proposed already, under the name of pragmatism. From a
pragmatist perspective, what is true, what makes scientific knowledge, is
what works in practice to help us reach our aims (James 1922; Pierce
1877). In many ways, then, scientific research is a craft (Brinkmann
2012), and as any craft it requires both to build on existing sets of rules
and to adapt to the new conditions (Glaveanu 2014). By insisting on one
aspect over the other, we run the risk of either sterilising scientific debate
or ignoring what has worked in the past. In the first case, we limit science
to sanitised studies that reproduce works that have already been
accepted by the community. In the second case, we at best perpetually
reinvent the wheel and at worst risk falling in old pitfalls that could easily
have been avoided and may have a tremendous impact on the people we
study. Studying racism without building on post-colonial research runs
the risk of falling back into paternalism; studying mental illness and
ignoring research on its social construction can lead to the reification of
problematic categories; and at a more theoretical level, studying everyday
thinking and overlooking the work done on social representations can
easily send us back to Le Bons barbarian hordes (de Saint-Laurent 2015).
Scientific research, then, requires to both systematically build on what
has been before and improvise in order to go beyond what we thought
could be done and actually produce useful knowledge.
When I transcribed Boris interview, a few months after it took place,
I found none of the reproachfulness I heard on the day. What I heard,
instead, was an interviewee trying to show me that he, too, knew what
we were talking about, and that he remained on top of the topic. In
the end, I had tried so much to look professional that some interviewees
reacted by insisting on how much they knew about the topic at hand,
rather than answering the questions. By focusing too much on dressing
up to look professional and sounding like what I thought participants
would expect of a scientist, I forgot, at times, to build a rapport with
them. This is a mistake I hope I will not do again. In the meantime, I
will enjoy the comfort of finally doing my interviews in a T-shirt and a
pair of jeans.
References
Billig, M. (2013). Learn to write badly. How to succeed in the social sciences.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brinkmann, S. (2012). Qualitative research between craftsmanship and
McDonaldization. A keynote address from the 17th qualitative health
research conference. Qualitative Studies, 3(1), 5668.
Cornish, F., & Gillespie, A. (2009). A pragmatist approach to the problem of

knowledge in health psychology. Journal of Health Psychology, 14, 800809.
doi:10.1177/1359105309338974.
de Saint-Laurent, C. (2014). I would rather be hanged than to agree with
you!: Collective memory and the definition of the nation in parliamentary
debates on immigration. Outlines. Critical Practice Studies, 15, 2253.
de Saint-Laurent, C. (2015). Dialogue and debate in psychology: Commentary on
the foundational myth of psychology as a science. In J. Cresswell, A. Haye,
A.Larrain, M.Morgan, & G.Sullivan (Eds.), Dialogue and debate in the making
of theoretical psychology (pp.231239). Concord: Captus University Publications.
de Saint-Laurent, C. (2017). Personal trajectories, collective memories.
Remembering and the life-course. Culture & Psychology 23(2), 263279.
de Saint-Laurent, C. (in press). Trajectories of resistance and historical reflec-
tions. In N.Chaudhary, G.Marsico, P.Hviid, & J.Villadsen (Eds.), Resistance
in everyday life: Constructing cultural experiences. Singapore: Springer.
de Saint-Laurent, C. (Submitted-a). Historical reasoning: A cultural psychology
perspective on emergence in collective memory. Integrative Psychological and
Behavioral Science.
de Saint-Laurent, C. (Submitted-b). Collective memory beyond memory:
Psychosocial processes in historical reasoning.
de Saint-Laurent, C., & Zittoun, T. (in press). Memory in life transitions.
In B. Wagoner (Ed.), Handbook of memory and culture. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Favero, P. (2010). Italians, the good people: Reflections on national self-
representation in contemporary Italian debates on xenophobia and war.
Outlines. Critical Practice Studies, 12(2), 138153.
Glaveanu, V.P. (2014). Thinking through creativity and culture: Toward an inte-
grated model (1st ed.). New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.
James, W. (1922). Pragmatism: A new name for some old ways of thinking.
NewYork/London: Longmans, Green and Co.
Nicholson, C. (2016). The role of historical representations in Israeli-Palestinian
relations: Narratives from abroad. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace
Psychology, 22(1), 511. doi:10.1037/pac0000143.
Pierce, C.S. (1877). The fixation of belief. Popular Science Monthly, 12, 115.
doi:10.7135/UPO9780857286512.036.
Rosenstein, A. (2014). Dcris-Ravage. Brussels: Thtre Ocan Nord.
Rosenthal, G. (1993). Reconstruction of life stories: Principles of selection in
generating stories for narrative biographical interviews. The Narrative Study of
Lives, 1(1), 5991.
Valsiner, J.(2014). Needed for cultural psychology: Methodology in a new key.

Culture & Psychology, 20(1), 330. doi:10.1177/1354067X13515941.
Wertsch, J. (2002). Voices of collective remembering. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Wertsch, J., & Batiashvili, N. (2012). Mnemonic communities and conflict:
Georgias narrative template. In I.Markov & A.Gillespie (Eds.), Trust and
conflict: Representation, culture and dialogue. London/New York: Routledge.
Zittoun, T. (2006). Transitions: Development through symbolic resources.
Greenwich: Information Age Publishing.
Zittoun, T. (2012). Lifecourse: A socio-cultural perspective. In J.Valsiner (Ed.),
The handbook of culture and psychology (pp. 513535). New York: Oxford
University Press.
When Constance de Saint-Laurent was a child, she wanted to be president

or astronaut. For training, she read Asimov avidly and decided instead that she
should become a psychohistorian, one of Asimovs fictitious future-predicting
scientists. After a few detours through social and cultural psychology, in which
she received her Msc from the London School of Economics in 2012, some
would say she is right on track: she is currently doing a PhD in psychology
on collective memory and how people relate to history, at the University of
Neuchtel, Switzerland.
Part 4
Coping with Complexity: Writing to
Understand What We Do
13
Metaphorical Structuring ofPattern
Analysis
CamillaKlsenPetersen
I study my empirical data, and I look for patterns.

I wait for the secret tremor deep in my bones, the alluring feeling
of a pattern emerging. The luscious understanding of meaning. Then
I get sidetracked; what if there is no pattern in these data? Why do
I automatically assume there will be patterns in the data for me to
explore? Because I am a trained pattern finder, I expect patterns; I
always search for the hidden layout of reasoning and actions; I expect
a useful pattern to emerge over time; I expect meaningfulness, con-
nections, interactions, patterns. The question is not whether there is a
pattern in the data, but how to lure a meaningful pattern out from its
hiding place in the data cave. This is an uncharted process, and just
like love, it is a process that is almost entirely metaphorically struc-
tured (Lakoff and Johnson 2003). The concept of love, for example,
is structured almost in metaphorical terms; LOVE IS A JOURNEY,
LOVE IS A PATIENT, LOVE IS A PHYSICAL FORCE, LOVE IS
MADNESS, LOVE IS WAR and so on, they say on page 85 (Lakoff and
C.K. Petersen (*)

Alexandra Institute, Aarhus, Denmark

156 C.K. Petersen
Johnson 2003). Lakoff and Johnson (2003) then define metaphorically

structured concepts this way: This is typical of () concepts, which are
not clearly delineated in our experience in any direct fashion and there-
fore must be comprehended primarily indirectly, via metaphor (p.85).
The process of pattern analysis islike loveminimally structured
into conceptual subcategories that explain and describe the process. This
is why this chapter tries to create a metaphorical structuring of the pro-
cess by charting the process like making a jigsaw puzzle. The linearity of
words in the chapterthat no metaphor can change the appearance of,
by the wayis ordered in an introduction to patterns, what I need pat-
terns for in my line of research and then the metaphorical structuring of
the analytical pattern-finding process. At the end, there is a reflection on
the metaphorical structuring.
A Short Note ontheConcept ofPatterns

In short, a pattern is a chosen and sought for organizing principle that
can help and support the understanding of the data set in the context of
the use of the data. Sometimes the data parts are of the same kind, and
then the pattern will have a form of organizing the data in a structure of
categories and subcategories. Sometimes if the data parts are not so much
the same, it might even be unclear how they are related, and then the pat-
tern will be metaphorically structured (Lakoff and Johnson 2003). Patterns
are about levels of description and organizing data. The pattern is a form
of entity on a higher level, consisting of a constellation of entities from the
lower level. The entity on the higher level is thus necessarily more general
than the particular constellation of entities from the lower one. () A
tiger is a tiger, even if it may be so in a very wide range of physical ways
and may appear in a lot of different states () (Emmeche etal. 2000).
The interesting thing is that the lower entities have a character of potenti-
ality that can be realized in an organizing pattern, if one can find it.
I assume there are many potential patterns in every data set, but the
resulting pattern is my analytical construction informed by the empirical
data at hand. A pattern is first found as a form of emergence of a pattern
that I then unfold and construct in accordance with the further use of
13 Metaphorical Structuring ofPattern Analysis 157
the data-driven pattern. The emergence of a pattern is a combination of

more simple interacting elements, and then the combination of elements
is put to the test to see whether the pattern can function as an organiz-
ing principle for the data set. The combination of simpler entities into
larger organizations of data indicates an assumption that several levels of
observance of reality co-exist as different levels of description (Emmeche
etal. 2000). Many potential patterns are present in the data, but only a
few are constructed and tested in the analytical process, and even fewer
can work as a meaningful organizing principle for the data. The clue to
meaningful lies in the intended use of the pattern.
What IUse Patterns For

Striving to locate a pattern is related to a purpose of the pattern. I work
in the field of IS (Information Systems) in the interdisciplinary sphere
of people, technology and business. This encompasses the ability to both
use and create information systems based on people interacting with
information and communication technology (ICT). Creating and
designing information system sets the analytical spotlight on the dialec-
tics of the physical world and the symbolic, modelled world in the tech-
nology part of information systems. To make a meaningful information
system for users that makes sense in action and decision-making, the
designer needs to represent both situated practice and knowledge from
practice in abstract models based on robust patterns of practice and
robust sets of instructions to the computational machine. The real focal
point of this situation is the fact that the software programs controlling
the computational power of the information systems are almost as plas-
tic as any other text; there is no fixed design or instruction delimited by
the technology; the programmer writes the software in the chosen pro-
gramming language. This connects to the pattern finding in that a
meaningful empirical pattern can be part of the backbone of the use
cases and the user scenarios guiding the programmer as he or she creates
the virtual world of the information systems we manufacture in this
field. A pattern in the systems design process may consist of An abstrac-
tion of users or other s ystems interacting with the system and A pattern
158 C.K. Petersen
for interaction between the system and the actors in the systems domain
(translated into English from Mathiassen etal. 2001).
The analytical effort described in the following pages is then related to
connecting unique incidents and human actors into an abstraction or a
generalized pattern that can be used as a model of practice to be trans-
lated into an information system. In my experience, the analytical process
is not clearly delineated and can only be comprehended via metaphor
in Lakoffs and Johnsons words (2003). Even through this chapter is set
in the context of information systems and their inherent plasticity, the
pattern-finding process is part of many research processes and therefore
of common interest in so far as this process can be metaphorically struc-
tured for communication.
Hunting forPatterns: Metaphorical

Structuring
The metaphorical structuring of the analytical process of pattern finding
is made up of the metaphor analytical pattern work as hunting, that is,
finding a pattern through coaxing, tracking and trapping. I will further
structure this metaphor of the analytical process with observations of
making a jigsaw puzzle, seeing the progression of making a jigsaw puzzle
as the progression in the analytical process. The wordings coaxing, track-
ing and trapping are thus no coincidence in this contextthose are care-
fully chosen concepts in the metaphorical structuring. The concept of
hunt describes an intentional activity that involves some honed and
hard-won skills, like tracking and trapping, but also the attention is
drawn to an activity that cannot be planned beforehand.
Coaxing
When I make jigsaw puzzles, I always begin with the frame. I build the
frame to get the feeling of the size of the puzzle and to form expectations
of how big the different depicted elements will be. I can get the same
information from the box, but that does not make it tangible for me.
I need to see the size of the puzzle square on the table. Building the
frame in empirical data is trying to frame the expectations. From where
do I expect the pattern to stem? What seems to be interesting in the data?
What do I know about this part of the world, this practice? I need the
physicality of the frame to guide my further work with the jigsaw puzzle.
In the empirical analysis, I read all the data files, I make many notes. If I
use NVivo to categorize the data, I experiment with the categories; I look
for categories that are usable in all cases and categories that are only prev-
alent in a few cases. I think of criteria for categories. If I am involved in a
quantitative analysis, I describe data. I look into the variables. I roam the
data set. Nothing is set; it is a getting-to-know-the-data phase (Fig.13.1).
Fig. 13.1 Coaxing

160 C.K. Petersen
I collect corner pieces in that data set, and I gauge the lengths of the
frame and of the distance between categories that might get interesting.
Will they get attracted to each other? I might start building specific features
to try them out and to anchor my understanding and first e xpectations.
I look at the puzzle I am building of the cathedral; I have now built the
frame of the puzzle and some of the iconic domes of the Cathedral of
Vasily the Blessed, commonly known as Saint Basils Cathedral. I also
note all the single pieces floating around inside the frame. They are can-
didates to be part of categories in a pattern, but not yet discernible. This
is to actually analyse the first interviews or test the first hypotheses. I need
to see the first infant results in order to figure out how to proceed.
The puzzle I make is of the Saint Basils Cathedral. The Saint Basils
Cathedral apparently has no analogues in preceding, contemporary or
later architecture of Muscovy or Byzantine cultural tradition in general.
In Russian Architecture and the West (Shvidkovsky 2007), it says: () it
is like no other Russian building. Nothing similar can be found in the
entire millennium of Byzantine tradition from the fifth to the fifteenth
century. A strangeness that astonishes by its unexpectedness, com-
plexity and dazzling interleaving of the manifold details of its design. In
other words, the cathedral is in itself a beautiful metaphor for the process
I try to structure metaphoricallythe feeling of strangeness, unexpected-
ness and layers in the complexity, the tingling of the senses when coaxing
a useful and thus meaningful pattern out of the empirical data.
The pattern seems as strange and otherworldly as the basilica, but I
trust I will find its tracks.
Tracking andMeandering
At some point, the coaxing leads into tracking. This is no straightforward
process (Fig.13.2). In my puzzle, I see a mirror image of the meandering
mind walking on many different paths at the same time, filling in some
spaces, trying to connect pieces into categories, building complexity,
searching for the organizing principle, the pattern. The photo on the left
in Fig.13.2 is from an earlier time than the one on the right. In the photo
on the right, it looks as if some parts of the puzzle are actually finished
Fig. 13.2 Tracking and meandering
now, for instance, the road part at the bottom of the picture of the cathe-
dralthe easy parts of the jigsaw puzzle where the pieces can only fit
here. This is some reduction; it actually makes room for the real complexity
of the other 800 multi-coloured pieces. Tracking a pattern is the process
of adding complexity, expanding the feel of the whole picturetrying
out different mental models, moving the pieces around, looking for cat-
egories. Some pieces are still floating around in the empty spaces, might
they fit here or here?
It might seem counter-intuitive to proceed the coaxing of the pattern
by adding complexity in a rush instead of trying to find the simplicity of the
pattern. Nevertheless, the tracking is simultaneously following many dif-
ferent leads in the empirical data. In the jigsaw puzzle, it is a tendency to
work on many parts at the same time, figuring out how the parts are located
relative to each other and connecting them. A lead can be something that
looks interesting, a relation between cases or variablescategories that
162 C.K. Petersen
suddenly look to be of the same kind, or seem to differ unexpectedly. An

unorderly processone thought leads to the next, one curiosity to the
next. Why are these two variables related? Why are these categories not
the same? What does this mean? In the puzzle, I connect the top of the
windows to the arching roof, but I still cannot place the domes in the
right place. There is no idea of a clean slate; I am a certain person with a
certain interest and use for the pattern, but I have not yet decided what I
am looking at; I do not yet see the full cathedral. It feels like losing con-
trol and losing sight of the end goal.
I need to stay alert and confident. This phase involves handing over
the rational overview to the mind hounds. Giving in feels like letting the
hounds out. It is hard-work pattern analysis: lots of running over data and
many wrong turns. The conscious mind is working the data, reading the
transcripts again and again, running the analysis again from the begin-
ning in the statistics programme, making data displays, munching over
diagrams, tables and formulations, and all the while, the mind hounds
are tracking all the potential patterns, sniffing out the traces of them. The
hounds are the trained pattern skill, the persistent and tenacious observa-
tion of the data, the endless trying out where the pieces might fit.
It is a process of looking with the all-the-while-more-and-more-emerg-
ing organizing principle made from the data, back at the data, looking
through the principle, again and again, piling more and more data onto
the pattern, testing the robustness, falsifying it. Often, an organizing prin-
ciple seems promising and all the analytic capacity pours into checking
it out. All the knowledge from the meandering gets sorted in accordance
with the organizing principle in focus; sometimes the pattern fails, and
sometimes it holds. If it holds, more data are organized through the prin-
ciple; if it fails, it all is back to the simple categories and variables again.
It is important to say that, of course, theory and the use of the pat-
tern play a main role in the tracking phase. Theory from the information
systems field helps with choosing relevant perspectives, suggesting orga-
nizing principles and making relevant connections. In addition, I know
what kind of information system is in question; I know what kind of
functionality I am looking for.
When observing the puzzle I am making, it is evident that the analyses
are not finished off. The building of complexity as a means to uncover the
central organizing principle is making connections between data items

and data-driven concepts, testing theoretical perspectives in the current
data and looking for categories, prototypical categories and effects.
Then the trapping, the decision of a pattern.
Trapping
The trapping is the first wording of the organizing principle. It does not
have to be words that trap the pattern; it may as well be a drawing, a
modelwhatever symbolic representation comes to mind. Figure13.3
Fig. 13.3 Trapping

164 C.K. Petersen
shows a trapped pattern in the puzzle metaphor. It is now clear what the
picture is, and all the central parts of the image of the cathedral are
connected. In Fig.13.3, we now see the contours of the cathedral; we
understand the different parts of it, how the towers are located in relation
to each other, the foreground and the background.
There is no more placing bits and pieces in the wrong place within
the frame, and it is clear where the different elements belong; the single
strange-coloured piece is no longer a mystery; rather, this piece is placed
right away where it belongs as part of a certain wall or a windowsill or a
tower. This is the easy part.
Now I sort the rest of the jigsaw puzzle pieces into piles to fill the
gaps that emerged in the preceding process. A gap in the puzzle is like
a category in the analytic pattern, and the analysis process is to connect
the relevant data to the category. The category itself is well-defined and
clear-cut at this time in the process. All the testing of the potential pat-
terns has resulted in a robust pattern. I have looked for a way to organize
the observed practice and related thought processes represented in the
data in order to produce a pattern that is useful as a rich abstraction of
users and systems in the information system under construction. I have
made a constellation of entities from the lower level of practice into a
pattern, that is, I have completed the structure of the puzzle with the
jigsaw pieces. When I am sure that I have a good pattern, I need to
figure out how to communicate it. This is like finding a pattern in the
pattern, moving to an even higher level of description, for instance,
naming different categories, phases and practices, and drawing a model
or similar activity.
I then describe the pattern in words or a figure and organize the
remaining part of the data in accordance with the pattern.
I often experience at this time in the making of a puzzle that other
people get attracted to the puzzle, they can see what it is meant to rep-
resent and they understand the piles of pieces and the structureand
then they finish it off while I peel the potatoes or lay the dinner table (see
Fig.13.4).
Fig. 13.4 Trapping and filling
Afterthought
The metaphorical structuring of the analytic process described here
through the puzzle metaphor lends itself to some afterthoughts that I
would like to comment on as the last part of the metaphorical descrip-
tion. This is why I have put the finished puzzle in the next figure
(Fig.13.5); these two reflections are the last part of the metaphor:
( 1) What have I learnt about the way I work with pattern analysis,
(2) What is the value of the lengthy metaphor I have relayed here.
166 C.K. Petersen
Fig. 13.5 Completed puzzle of the cathedral
These two reflections are tightly interwoven. The value of the meta-
phorical structuring equals the insights I have gathered about my own
analytical work process that I may have succeeded in presenting in a
way that other researchers can relate to their own experiences. Hence,
they may also enrich their own understanding of their own analytical
processes.
Insights About My Pattern Analyses

To me it was like a stroke of lightning to see the puzzle stages in Figs.13.1,
13.2, 13.3, 13.4 and 13.5 as my own pattern analysis process. I have worked
my way through many pattern analyses, but never really seen them as physi-
cal entities. It felt like stumbling upon a photograph of a ghost to see the
coaxing, the tracking and meandering and the final trapping in the puzzle.
The pattern form of analysis is strange in the way that the pattern, at the
same time, represents the simple data entities and itself as an abstraction
and more general constellation of the data. The pattern analysis process has
to move at the same time on different levels of reality that co-exist in the
data. This became apparent to me when studying the puzzle photos because
I got attracted to the structuring going on in making the puzzle. I was
building the puzzle from all sides at the same time; I did not finish the sec-
tions of walls, towers, domes or rows of windows. I was laying out the
structure of the whole in a very unstructured way, jumping from section to
section, not caring for completion of the one section, only focused on the
whole and connecting the sections. I only finished enough of each section
to be able to understand the colours and patterns on the related jigsaw
pieces, building on all sections simultaneously and making lots of mistakes
with location of pieces, elements and so forth. This was a revelation to me
that I work in this way. Intuitively, I choose to work in this way when left
alone to my own devices and not being influenced by considerations for a
coordinated research process with team partners or co-researchers. In addi-
tion, I understood right from the start that it would not be easy to convey
this experience to others. I grasped for the edge of insight, and I have made
up this lengthy metaphorically structured concept of the pattern analysis
process. To me this is as clear as it gets.
alue intheMetaphorical Structuring

V
ofPattern Analysis
The value of understanding the hunting of a pattern is that patterns are
prevalent in many sciences and domains. In this context, I have been
concerned with patterns of human practice in order to form this practice
in a meaningful way into designs of information systems, but I also busy
myself with evaluation and change processes where I hunt for patterns
and archetypical practice and behaviour. The real value of patterns is that
you can make constellations of patterns or use them as organizing prin-
ciples for patterns or data. However, the pattern analysis and the subse-
quent handling of patterns should not be a black box process or a process
168 C.K. Petersen
shrouded in veils of mystery. It has merits to the research community to

captivate the illusive processes like pattern analysis. Lakoff and Johnson
(2003) conclude their book by saying that () reasoning in abstract
domains uses the logic of our sensory-motor experience (p.248). This made
me understand why I needed the physical photos of the puzzle in order
to figure out my own mode of working. I needed the physical images and
to observe the process they held captured. To me it is very important to
clarify that the metaphor connects to the analytical process and not the
quality of the resulting pattern. There is no right or true pattern; rather,
there are many potential patterns. This is also important to state as a clos-
ing note to avoid the easy overstretching of the puzzle metaphor into the
normative conclusion that all (data) pieces must fit into the pattern-puzzle
in the one right way or the pieces will be destroyed. The work I did on the
metaphor is only on the hunting and not on the resulting pattern.
References
Emmeche, C., Kppe, S., & Stjernfelt, F. (2000). Levels, emergence, and three
versions of downward causation. In P.B. Andersen etal. (Eds.), Downward
causation. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press.
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (2003). The metaphors we live by. Chicago/London:
The University of Chicago Press.
Mathiassen, L., Munk-Madsen, A., Nielsen, P.A., & Stage, J.(2001). Objekt
orienteret analyse & design. Aalborg: Forlaget Marko Aps.
Shvidkovsky, D.O. (2007). Russian architecture and the west. New Haven: Yale
University Press.
Camilla Klsen Petersen is Master of Arts and PhD in Business Informatics.

She is the head of People, Technology and Business Lab at The Alexandra Institute
in Denmark. Camilla is working with change and innovation in the field of
information systems and evaluation of change and innovation based on theories
of practice and program theories. Camilla is attracted to the complexity and
variation in this work and she is especially attracted to the open challenge the
work poses to her senses, creativity and pattern-finding abilitiesthe intertwin-
ing of creativity and organizing patterns in swirls of practice.
14
Telling Tales oftheUnexpected
ElisabethWillumsen
Narratives inQualitative Research

The text in this chapter is based on experiences from my PhD project
Interprofessional collaboration in residential child care (Willumsen
2006), which was in public health science and social work. I conducted
several qualitative interviews with professionals and parents of young
people in residential child care. These young people suffered from serious
psychosocial conditions that created personal, family, and societal prob-
lems. At the end of one interview, the father told me his story. This con-
stitutes the narrative in this chapter. Narratives can include words and
expressions that affect our emotions, our sense of recognition and our
perception of isolation. Narratives can be quite powerful if we listen care-
fully, are open to the tales of the unexpected, and if we are willing to
accept an emotional impact as well as carrying out an analysis of the nar-
rative. If we listen carefully, we might need to take a detour from our
interview guide and let the tales of the unexpected be our guide.
E. Willumsen (*)
University of Stavanger, Stavanger, Norway

170 E. Willumsen
It is important that professionals in health and welfare services are able

to understand the stories they are told by parents and children. In my
experience, the way of listening can be very different when you are acting
in the role of a researcher rather than in the role of a social or health
worker. I will elaborate on these issues after a brief introduction to narra-
tion in social sciences and research.
hat Is aNarrative andHow Can It BeUsed

W
inSocial Research?
According to Czarniawska (2004), there are a number of reasons why
people tell stories, and narration is a common form of communica-
tion. Indeed, social life may, in itself, be regarded as a narrative.
People try to make sense of their lives by telling and retelling stories,
including aspects of incidents and perceptions that constitute the
structure of the story attached to a timeline; past, present, and future
(Lundby 2000). Hence, a narrative is not primarily a truth, but
gives the listener insight into a persons interpretation of his/her life
in terms of creating a framework for making sense of experiences
(Epston etal. 1992).
Having first influenced literary theory, interest in narrative during the
1980s and 1990s appeared in social sciences, such as history, psychology,
sociology, and political sciences. In social sciences, as well as in social
research, narrative is connected to the creation of an understanding of the
meaning of things.
The French semiologist and literary critic Roland Barthes (19151980)
is, by Czarniawska (2004), given the honor of having made one of the
most quoted utterances about the use of narratives in social life:
The narratives of the world are numberless. Narrative is first and foremost a
prodigious variety of genres, themselves distributed among different substances
as though any material were fit to receive mans stories. Able to be carried by
articulated language, spoken or written, fixed or moving images, gestures, and
the ordered mixture of all these substances; narrative is present in myth, legend,
14 Telling Tales oftheUnexpected 171
fable, tale, novella, epic, history, tragedy, drama, comedy, mime, painting
stained glass windows, cinema, comics, news item, conservation. Moreover,
under this almost infinite diversity of forms, narrative is present in every age, in
every place, in every society; it begins with the very history of mankind and
there nowhere is nor has been a people without narrative. All classes, all human
groups, have their narrativesCaring nothing for the division between good
and bad literature, narrative is international, trans-historical, transcultural: it
is simply there, like life itself. (Barthes 1977: 79)
How can narratives be used in social research? Czarniawska (2004) lists

the following steps in the field of research (p.15):
Watch how the stories are being made

Collect the stories
Provoke story telling
Interpret the stories (what do they say?)
Analyze the stories (how do they say it?)
Deconstruct the stories (unmake them)
Put together your own story
Set it against/together with other stories
In qualitative research methods, with interviews as part of the research

study, it can be quite easy to allow narratives to appear. In the following,
I will adapt Czarniawskas steps as a guiding structure for the presenta-
tion. First, I present the fathers story.
The Narrative: AJourney onaBus

At the end of the interview with a father about his experiences of collab-
orative work concerning his son, he asked, Do you want to know my
view on this? When I nodded, he continued:
I really wondered a lot about what was going on because I didnt really under-
stand my sons situation. I realized I couldnt solve this alone, and I hoped that
someone else would assume responsibility, because I couldnt manage it myself.
I have compared it to travelling on a bus where Ole [son, 14 years old] is
172 E. Willumsen
placed on a seat. The bus fills up with different people and I am sitting on the
back seat. Many of the people take the seats in the front, steering the bus along
the various roads. After a while I am allowed to steer the bus a bit myself on
straight roads. Then we arrive at various bus stops and gradually some people
get off the bus. Then Ole and I can manage the corners and hills together, and
finally we are alone, just him and me in the bus. This is the sort of picture I
have of the situation. And I wish that the people on the bus, those who are the
members of the collaboration team, could understand that this is how I see it.
I knew immediately that this was a very important message concerning

my study and I noticed that he touched me emotionally during the sto-
rytelling. He had invited me to take part in his life situation and I felt this
was a vote of confidence. It was a spontaneous act on his part and, fortu-
nately, I had the time to stay and listen to what he wanted to tell me. It
was as if he had given me a gift, and I felt he had decided that I was a
person whom he considered capable of receiving it. I cannot recall that I
did anything special in that particular interview and I have wondered
about what was created in our interaction and communication that trig-
gered and released his decision to reveal his story and share it with me.
The way he made up the story, he showed me a direction forward and
how he wanted me to understand his life situation from his point of view.
This was a message not only to me but also to other professionals and
collaborative partners. I think he wished he could share his vision with
people more generally. I also think there is something to learn from his
story and I will return to that later.
ow Can WeUnderstand theNarrative asaStory

H
ofaFather andHis Worry AboutHis Son?
When the father tells the story about the journey on the bus, he portrays
a way forward for himself and his son and shows how he assesses the cir-
cumstances. The story appears to include hope for the future, although
he and Ole will need support from quite a few people at the beginning of
the journey. The image of the journey on the bus and the different chal-
lenges they will meet, described as corners and hills as well as straight
roads, constitute metaphors that make it easy for the reader/listener to

follow the storyteller and recognize the message he is focusing on.
The father makes a point about where he and Ole are sitting in the bus.
At first, Ole is sitting alone on his seat, which associates with Oles out-
of-home placement that was decided by the child care service and taken
out of the hands of the father. The father is, at first, sitting in the back seat
with many different people in the front seats helping to steer the bus. It
is easy to relate to this description, indicating that he and Ole are not
coping with the situation in the beginning and other people have to find
the way. Later, father and son move forward in the bus and take more
responsibility, and finally they are sitting in the front of the bus. The
other people have now become passengers who gradually leave the bus,
and in the end, the father and Ole are by themselves, sitting in the front
seats and steering the bus on their own.
In his storytelling, the father uses an image of how he moves from the
back to the front of the bus to show how his role changes from being a
passive passenger to being an active person in charge at the front; he is
becoming the driver. Through this image, the father expresses significant
hope, and he shows that he wishes for a solution where he and his son
achieve independence in terms of handling the situation on their own.
The way the father describes his concern and his difficulties in under-
standing and managing his sons situation, reveals both his worry and his
feeling of insufficiency. I think this creates an anxiety that includes his
role and identity as a father who cannot currently fulfill the requirements
of taking proper care of his child. It may also comprise his concern about
what is going to happen with Ole and how his son will manage life in the
future. However, the father does manage as they are alone on the bus in
the end and they succeed when he steers the bus singlehandedly.
Finally, this father sends a message to the other passengers in the bus,
whom he identifies as the members of the collaboration team working to
help his son. The final statement concerns how he himself sees it, with the
emphasis on how HE sees it. We get the impression that it is important
for him to use this opportunity to communicate his point of view.
Probably this is because he really wants to help his son to become more
independent and because he wants to show that he, as a father, ultimately
174 E. Willumsen
wants to take responsibility himself. The image in the narrative, as well as

allowing him to make a statement about his own view, may also indicate
that, so far, he feels the professionals have dominated how the picture is
constructed.
In his narrative, the father portrays the journey on the bus referring to
the pastwhere he is sitting in the back and other people are steering
the presentwhere he wants to be an active part in Oles lifeand the
futurehe wishes to take responsibility and be in charge himself with his
son. Therefore, the bus journey, as a metaphor, consists of several smaller
stories, which can be ambiguous and contradictory. However, in order to
make sense of the story, we simplify and focus on what we are or who we
want to be, for example, a good parent, a competent teacher, a friendly
person. There are obviously a number of incidents related to this bus
journey that the father is excluding, such as the relationships with his
ex-wife and with Oles siblings and the way he handled the divorce period
by leaving the family (he moved out). This illustrates which parts form
the dominating story and which parts are considered unessential.
In accordance with Lundby (2000), the dominating story makes sense
and coherence in our lives and fits in with our identity, that is, who I am,
in a particular context. Hence, stories may change in terms of their focus
and which parts dominate depending on the context. For example, we
can imagine that the father will emphasize different parts when telling his
story to a friend, to a researcher, to his therapist, or to professional
partners.
Narratives andEmotions
When I have re-read or retold the story of the bus journey, I have, on
several occasions, become emotional and so have others. I cannot remem-
ber that the father was particularly emotional when he told me the story,
but I remember I was touched myself while he was revealing the parts of
the story, and he probably noticed tears in my eyes. He was showing his
vulnerability and powerlessness regarding Oles situation and how he had
failed to be a good father. The simple and naked way he was expressing
himself appeals to basic human issues that are easy for most people to
relate to as well as for me as a parent myself. His story of hopelessness and

lack of parental influence describes a miserable and undesirable situation
and identifies common human reactions to such circumstances.
Placing himself in the back of the bus dependent on everyone else to
take care of Ole, he illustrates how he has become an outsider in Oles life
and probably realizes how he has let his son down. As a parent or an
adult, it is not difficult to identify with this situation and the feeling that
he probably could have done more to prevent such circumstances. We
can imagine the disappointment and rejection Ole must have felt when
he was placed in residential child care. Additionally, we can easily imag-
ine the fathers feelings of guilt and anxiety.
According to Kleres (2010), there has been little focus on emotions in
narratives as part of qualitative research. He claims we need to adopt a
novel understanding of emotions, the idea that the nature of emotions is
narrative and conversely that narratives are emotional (p.185). Anger,
disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise are categorized as the six
basic emotions (Ekman and Friesen 1971), and they have been developed
into a number of subcategories. When we tell stories about everyday life,
we verbally relate to and share emotions that are narrative. Actually, emo-
tions in themselves may be regarded as embodied rather than narrative,
for example, when we think of the highly emotionally charged and
expressive character of music, painting, and other forms of nonverbal art.
Nevertheless, the point is the way we relate to emotions and/or share
them. That has a narrative structure because we do this primarily through
language. Hence, the emotions influence the narrative in various ways,
both negatively and positively.
Particularly in child care, when central care needs and protection of
vulnerable children are at stake, basic emotions may be provoked on the
part of both parents as well as professionals. I think the father has had the
opportunity to think and reflect on Oles situation, coping with his own
emotions and reaching a conclusion. When he tells the bus story, he
describes a metaphor that leaves us with images and experiences of worry,
anxiety, powerlessness, helplessness, guilt, and shame. However, he seems
quite determined about what he has to do and how he can handle the
situation, which demonstrates feelings of hope and improvement. The
way the emotions are integrated into the narrative show that they may
176 E. Willumsen
be considered as constitutive, integral elements of emotional experience

(Kleres 2010). Perhaps the metaphor about the bus journey has itself
been part of the process that has helped him make sense of the situation,
sort out his feelings, and find potential solutions.
Narratives inResearch
There are some heartbreaking elements in the story that strike us as read-
ers/listeners, and these have to do with human life in general and how we
view parents responsibilities to children. You are supposed to protect
your children from harm and ensure they have a safe environment and
upbringing. Parents usually care about their children in different ways
and there is no specific answer to how to raise children the best way.
Literature and research differ when it comes to what parents should
emphasize as important when raising children. Through history, we
notice various trends and changes related to childrens roles and impor-
tance in family and society. Although all children need care and protec-
tion (Childrens rights, UN 1989) depending on their age and maturity,
the way of providing this differs between societies and cultures. However,
when parents are concerned and express that they do not understand
what is going on, only that something is terribly wrong, there are reasons
to take them seriously and listen to their story. In this chapter, we are not
concerned about the particular reasons why this boy is living in residen-
tial care. However, when children are placed in out-of-home care, it indi-
cates that serious difficulties exist in the family, such as abuse and neglect,
difficulties related to the childs health and/or behavior in school,
or more generally, dysfunctional interactions or combinations of these
issues, all together constituting very complex situations. This demon-
strates some of the characteristics of out-of-home child placements and
probably why this field provokes particular emotional sensitivity. Hence,
the fathers narrative not only concerns his family and relationship to
Ole. It focuses on more universal issues connected to family life, parents
responsibilities, and childrens needs for safe upbringing. My experience,
on many occasions, has been that the narrative about the bus journey is
easy to relate to, as it moves people when I read it aloud as a closure of
a presentation. It has followed me for over 10 years and I still become

emotional when I read it, as do many audiences listening to it.
In this particular experience, it was the narrative told to me by the
father during the research interview that made his story clear and compel-
ling and had an emotional impact on me. Among the features connected
to narratives is the ability to make an emotional impact. A story can be
told quietly, but still unfold and reveal deeply personal and difficult expe-
riences. The narrative illustrates that emotionality itself may be an inex-
tricable part (Kleres 2010) and so may be hidden or is easy to overlook,
although the emotions may represent strong messages. Further, the nar-
rative illuminates the importance of emotions having many expressions
and they should be listened to in order to get a nuanced understanding of
the persons situation and possible solutions. When I have worked with
the reflections about the bus journey as a narrative, it strikes me how
important it is to see the fathers picture of the situation in order to under-
stand what role he can take and what kind of resource he may represent
in Oles life in the future. As a social worker, and as a researcher, it is easy
at first glance to get the impression of a father who has abandoned his son
and it is easy to judge him. Yet, he shows very strongly in the narrative
that, at the present, he is willing to take remedial measures.
The narrative described in this chapter has made me think and reflect
on several issues related to social work and research. As a social worker, I
have practiced for many years with families in settings like this. The role
of a social worker focuses on finding practical solutions to improve the
childs and familys situation. Social workers in child care are entitled to
clarify the situation, define what is going on, assess the circumstances and
the risk to the child, and initiate/start efforts/actions. This way of think-
ing is supposed to be structured, perhaps scored into templates and
recorded depending on the service context. In principle, this way of
working is part of the mandate for all professionals in welfare services in
order to distribute resources, ensure that services reach the people in
need, and improve peoples lives (Abbott 1988). It is very easy for this
rationale to become a routine within the structures and demands of
daily practice and heavy workloads. It is easy to overlook or to neglect the
stories and expressions from service users that do not directly support the
information needed to fulfill the rationale.
178 E. Willumsen
As a researcher, I have been placed in a different role. When we apply

qualitative methods, the goal is to explore the interviewees experiences
and perceptions. Time has to be allowed to let the person reflect on
incidents related to the interview themes. The structure should be more
vague, with room for associations and for the persons own initiatives
and contributions. My experience is that, in this setting, we can receive
different types of descriptions: perhaps small stories that illustrate what
has happened. Sometimes, quite unexpectedly, a narrative may occur
that can clarify, strengthen, and lead our understanding in a certain
direction from the point of view of the storyteller, such as the bus jour-
ney narrative. If we are able to listen to the emotional element, this may
guide us or give us direction toward central aspects of the story/narra-
tive. However, there are some challenges. Researchers are not in the role
of a therapist and the role of a researcher ought to have been made clear
before the interview. Still, a researcher has to cope with strong emotions
if and when they occurreceiving another persons secrets or signs of
strong emotions, in other words, the unexpected tales. Even as a
researcher, you cannot pretend it did not happen. Therefore, this is
something researchers should not overlook or ignore, rather be pre-
pared and trained for.
Concluding Remarks
I think that my experiences from being both a social worker and a
researcher may have contributed to my reflections related to narratives
and the uncovering of emotions. I hope I have helped show the impor-
tance of emotions, how to identify them, and how useful they are when
listening to and analyzing narratives. Unfortunately, so far, I have not
seen much focus on emotions in qualitative research. Perhaps it is time to
address some questions to academia. Are we scared of emotions in our
work? Do we edit them out? How do we edit them out? Why? Are they
not scientific enough? Does this apply to all fields? In my view, to capture
the more fragile parts of life, we need to understand the significance of
emotions as a valuable contribution.
References
Abbott, A. (1988). The system of professions. An essay on the division of expert labor.
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Barthes, R. (1966/1977). Introduction to the structural analysis of narratives.
In: R.Barthes (Ed.), Image-music-text (pp.79124). Glasgow: Collins.
Convention on the Rights of the Child. http://www.ohchr.org/EN/
ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CRC.aspx. Accessed 12 Mar 2017.
Czarniawska, B. (2004). Narratives in social science research, Introducing qualita-
tive methods. London: Sage.
Ekman, P., & Friesen, W.V. (1971). Constants across cultures in the face and
emotion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 17(2), 124129.
Epston, D., White, M., & Murray, K. (1992). A proposal for a reauthoring
therapy: Roses revisioning of her life and a commentary. In S.Manamee &
K.Gergen (Eds.), Therapy as social construction. London: Sage.
Kleres, J.(2010). Emotions and narrative analysis: A methodological approach.
Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 41(2), 00218308.
Lundby, G. (2000). Historier og terapi. [Histories and therapy]. Tano Aschehoug.
UN. (1989). UN convention on the rights of the child, ratified by Norway
08.01.1991. Oslo: Barne- og Familiedepartementet.
Willumsen, E. (2006). Interprofessional collaboration in residential childcare.
Doctoral thesis at the Nordic School of Public Health, Gothenburg, Sweden.
Elisabeth Willumsen is a professor in social work at the University of Stavanger

(UiS). She is educated as a social worker, has a masters in special education and
a PhD in public health, titled Interprofessional collaboration in residential
child care. Her research/publications have focused on interprofessional collabo-
ration/collaborative work and service user participation in welfare contexts and
additionally between academia and practice (practice research). Recently, the
area of social innovation in public sector has become central to her research
projects, which have received funding from EU and the Norwegian Research
Council. Willumsen holds a Professor II position at Molde University College
and a co-position at Centre of Innovation Research (UiS).
15
Writing My Way Home
CharlotteWegener
This chapter is made up of pieces written to my writing friend and the

co-editor of this book, Ninna Meier. It takes in a detour that spans three
decades and takes off (or rather, arrives) just at the point where we have
concluded that our co-authored text, The Secret Book, is ready for publica-
tion under a new name: The Open Book.1 We have a mission. There are
too many neat texts out there, and we know that people are suffering,
celebrating, laughing and crying as they write. Some of all that life out
there is definitely valuable, too. We advocate open texts, and we are
absorbed in the creation of a new playground for academic writing, which
we call Open Writing. We have started blogging, a three-year Open
Writing project gets funding, and, finally, our paper Writing with
Resonance2 is accepted for publication in a management journal.
Meanwhile, life goes on. Or rather, life strikes back.
C. Wegener (*)

182 C. Wegener
June
Yesterday evening I cut down a tree. It was dead, its branches entangled
in my beloved apple trees nearby. I have an injured thumb, and it was not
a clever thing to embark on. Today my hand hurts badly. But, you know,
I have this guy building a new terrace, and at the end of the day, he left
his machines in my garden. I realised that, if I cut down the tree now, he
would pull up the stump and remove it along with the old terrace tiles. I
was right. This morning he immediately noticed the stump and pulled it
up before getting on with the terrace work. The apple tree branches are
free, and the hole is filled with new soil. I also do some puppy training.
The way Im having to clean up after the puppy takes me back to when
the kids were learning to handle a spoon. We are practising sit, down
and dont pick my underwear out of the laundry basket. We are pro-
gressing with sit and down.
Meanwhile, I am developing the concept of Open Writing3 with you,
I am applying for a grant to support the work, and I teach writing classes.
There is an ease to my work and I let go of work easily, too. What I dont
accomplish today, I will catch up on tomorrowprobably. If not, it is
not the end of the world. Last night I dreamt that I had taken over a farm,
which used to be my childhood home. I discover two baby animals that
have almost died of thirst. One is a foal and one is a lamb. I have been in
charge for some time and this is my responsibility. I had forgotten about
them. I am embarrassed and frightened. One at a time, I take them out
in the open, give them water and watch them drink until, finally, they are
both able to stand. Their shrivelled bodies swell with replenished fluid as
they hesitantly walk about. I am so relieved. They were almost dead. I
forgot about them. I promise myself I will never again lose sight of what
is important.
I was 16 when I left home. My boyfriend was six years older than me and
I wanted to be a grown-up like him, so that Id be a worthy match. There
were four rooms for rent, two of them vacant, on the first-floor hallway, along
with a shared kitchen and bathroom. On the ground floor lived the property
owner, his wife and their three kids, whom I soon started babysitting. There
were all kinds of snacks, shelves of VHS tapes, the kids were cute and I was
welcome to bring a friend. I felt like a grown-up when I tucked in the kids
and sang them a lullaby.
15 Writing My Way Home 183
What is important? How do we know? I know you would ask where do

we know? In our dreams? In our past or present awareness? Do we even
discover if we are lost? And if we do, what the hell are we supposed to do
about it? Have I told you about the artist Tal Rs giant hat?4 Two years
ago, when it was all falling apart, I visited his exhibition and walked into
that hat. I stood in the middle, looking up inside the crown of the hat,
which was hung with cooking pans. I loved those cooking pans inside the
hat; they made no sense. I asked: What am I supposed to do? The hat
replied: Youre not supposed to do anything.
July
I know that my gateway to freedom is writingthe things I write when
I cant find my way. We have been writing to each other for months now,
and I hope we will never stop. Writing extends my spheres of action and
encourages me to make good use of my intellectual and emotional gifts.
Through writing, I am allowing myself to be ambitious, a bit off, a trust-
worthy friend, and a loving, fun mum. I am spending time alone these
days. My daughter is on holiday with her cousin, the older ones are with
their girlfriends, and I settle, profoundly. I have this new wide terrace. I
have to brush sand in between the tiles to make them steady. I go to the
hand surgeon. He tells me I have arthritis and that I should consider
reporting my thumb injury to my insurance company. They will proba-
bly not give you anything if you call them in ten years and say you cannot
use your hand. He reaches out and I think he is going to examine my
hand further, but it is a handshake and he says goodbye, gently and
firmly: Dont make a long-winded report. Some women do. Keep it
short. I text you first thing, and you call me immediately so we can have
a laugh. Your right hand has been injured for quite a while, and now I
follow you with my left hand in a bandage. Between us, we have two
good hands. Should be sufficient to master the laptop keyboard, right?
One of the vacant rooms was spacious and filled with sunlight during the
day. The other was half its size, facing north, and with a sloping wall. My
parents were to pay my rent, and I chose the small room. So there I was, free
and ready to grow up. I had a hard time getting out of bed in time for the
morning lecture.
184 C. Wegener
I report to the insurance company, succinctly; I increase the payments

for my retirement savings; I promote my book; I get involved in the wage
negotiation for my new position and suggest a pay rise that makes my
shop steward exclaim that if I manage to get that I will be on the 5 oclock
news. I feel laughter rise from the bottom of my belly and leave the
remaining negotiation to him; I walk the puppy; I sit in the patio door-
way, barefoot. I cook food my kids do not like and eat standing at the
kitchen table with a long-forgotten pleasure and sense of self. Ninna, we
were supposed to take a break, not work, recharge for the autumn sprint.
But ideas keep exploding, things we want to do, explore, achieve and, of
course, write, write, write.
August
You think you are on top of things, that you have moved on and then,
BAM. Life smacks you right in the face or creeps in and stabs you in the
back. Blood is involved. It is a mess. It is ugly. Right now, my mess takes
concrete form, which is somewhat soothing. There is nothing in my
kitchen but a few buckets of paint, the carpenters gloves and a dryer that
has to be left on all night. My new kitchen is in packages in the living
room because it was delivered before the room was ready. Just like grief,
kitchens do not progress in a neat series of stages. I have never believed in
those stage theories, and now I have evidence. More than I like. My tem-
porary kitchen is in the eldests old room (he has left home and right now
he is also in Indonesia). Dishes are in the bathroom (doing the dishes has
never been more unattractive and the kids leave to eat elsewhere; I do not
blame them). Even the office floor is strewn with stuff from the closet to
make way for electrical work behind boxes of family photos (undividable?),
tools (his or mine, who can tell?) and cords from long-gone electronic
equipment (spoiled kids?). My memories, my belongings, my family
members are distributed in time and space. It is a mess, and yet all these
upheavals create mysterious, nameless spaces, allowing for resonance I
did not know about.
Later, the spacious room became vacant again. I asked my parents for more
money, carried my painted beer crates and my two mattresses down the hall-
way and expanded my radius a bit. My friend from elementary school moved
in under the sloping wall. He was paying the rent himself, he was no longer
in love with me and I had lost the desire to maintain his fire. I welcomed him
as a friend and he treated me like one. For the first time, I had someone to
cook with, eat with, and party with and I sensed that my free-floating body
might someday find a place to call a home.
September
It is my birthday. The autumn morning is quiet, sunny and damp. I
make myself comfortable on the terrace with my laptop under the para-
sol, and the puppy sleeps in the patio doorway. My friends text me
congratulations. I know a man who says that we do not celebrate our
birthdays because we have grown one year older; we celebrate having
been born. Over recent weeks, each and every routine has been dis-
rupted. Halfway to work, my car refuses to go further and I have to give
up a full day of visioning and planning with my colleagues and return
with roadside assistance. The lawnmower breaks down. The printer
does not connect to my laptop (or does my laptop not connect to the
printer?). During calls, my mobile phone loses connection every 30
seconds. The electrician cannot find the last power outlet behind the
fresh wallpaper, so half the electrical system in the new kitchen (includ-
ing the fridge) does not work. The kitchen company has failed to deliver
a tap and my salesperson is on holiday. I cannot work, and have not
been able to for weeks now. I can answer emails and teach the most
basic things, but I cannot think and I cannot write. It is painful. I am
stuck in a moment of inconvenience, insidiously afraid of losing con-
trol of my everyday life, which is not that unfamiliar, but also of my
work, my writing! On my way home from work, I get a sudden fever
and I have to cancel meetings for a couple of days. I recover quickly, but
I still cannot write and I cannot read or even revise. I have this voice in
my head, a voice that has been quiet for so long that I arrogantly pre-
sumed it had left: You cannot, you cannot, you will never be able to
write like that again; fun will fade away, enthusiasm slowly die and you
will plod your way through life from now on.
186 C. Wegener
My firstborn is back from Indonesia. He tells me that everything is

going to be all right soon. He asks me what I would like for dinner and
suggests a new takeaway (no more pizza). The three of them have brought
me a joint present and they are all going to be here tonight. They like
spending time together. This is their home.
The weather is great. The electrician comes by with a tool for locating
hidden power outlets. I call the guy who built my terrace, tell him my
lawnmower has broken down and ask if his son still mows lawns. He says
he relaxes by fixing things, and he will look at my lawnmower in a few
days. He also arranges for his son to come in half an hour. This voice in
my head insists: you cannot, you cannot.
Yesterday, we talked about your hand and the assessment for your new
position. The assessment committee wrote that you have had quite exten-
sive activities over relatively few years taking three periods of maternity leave
into consideration. I mentioned that they had not taken into consideration
family care leave for your beloved mother, a son in pain, your injured hand,
and all these disturbances also called life, you ended my sentence.
All these disturbances also called life.
All these disturbances became The Secret Book, which is now on its way
out into the world as The Open Book. I did not have a clue what we were
doing when we started writing it. An innocent conference paper exploded
and when it reached page 150, you told me it was done. I still did not
have a clue. Done? We wrote to survive and heal and it turned out to be
quite a party. Now, I sense the shape of a real book, and you are right, it
is done. I do not know why I fear opening it. I fear I cannot revise the text
and make it work in the open. I want to but I am stuck.
Stuck in a moment.5
In the lunch breaks, I worked in the canteen. The payment was a free lunch,
which I had five minutes to eat before afternoon lectures. After school, I worked
in the school library re-organising books on the shelves and writing index cards
for the new books. I loved everything in that library, but most of all writing
those index cards. My boyfriend lived in another town; he came to visit me and
told me he was in love with someone else. It was kind of a relief although the
pain was firm and physical. I regretted having moved out, but home was not
really home any more and I just had to stay where I was and wait. Soon, my
boyfriend changed his mind and wanted me back. I could have said no.
I am not sure if there is always gold to be dug up at the stuck places as

Patti Lather suggests.6 Sometimes we may just ask for assistance from
someone who relaxes by fixing things, quietly celebrate having been born,
and wait for the moment to pass.
October
These days, it feels as if I have stopped writing; aiming at nothing, no
expectation of any kind of redemption, just breathing in and out life as it
is. I am present in every moment, which meditation teachers over the
years have told me is a good thing. I am indeed present in my body, in my
home. I cook, I do the laundry, I go to the gym, and I listen to music with
my teenager, who, before she goes to bed, tells me this is her favourite
way of spending Friday night. I do everything I must do. I am mourning,
as if writing is no longer a cure. As if life has taken over, controlling what
I can and cannot do. I desperately need to return to writing. I am return-
ing now, trying to write in the midst of life. All these disturbances. All
this light reaching the apple tree branches. If I keep waiting for healing, I
will find peace for writing when I am in my grave. By then it is probably
too late. I need the writing right now; it channels life into textual form
and, eventually, transformation. This is not intentional self-coaching, far
from it. It has nothing to do with becoming the best version of myself .
I am not a version. I am just me, for better or for worse.
My friend under the sloping wall and I had a mutual friend whose big
house was the hub of raucous parties. I was there because it was a home
(although not mine) and because I was in love with her brother. I usually met
him in the big house, which was also his home of course, but once he visited
me. I recall us hugging and kissing in my shared kitchen. I also recall his
silence that day and the darkness surrounding him. His dad had just died. I
am not sure he even told me; I might have got the information from someone
else. We didnt talk much that day or any other day. I wanted to talk to him
but my mind was quiet. Sometimes, he talked about fishing.
He still does; occasionally, I hear him on the radio and imagine his
19-year-old face (I just broke the spell and searched his name and there
he was: 50-something, still good-looking).
188 C. Wegener
I am rereading Cheryl Strayeds Dear Sugar advice column7 in search

of comfort. I reply to your text message about our blog post, Open
Writing8 (it is now number one on Popular Posts). I reply that it is great
and crazy, that I feel terrible and that my whole body is aching. I ask you
what the hell is going on. You reply that pain is pain, you guess, and pain
hurts. OK, I did not really recognise this as pain. I think, I do not know,
maybe, I am not sure, I presumed it was just me being very stupid, cling-
ing to shit. Anyway, my mind tells me that this shitty aching is definitely
the result of my doing something utterly wrong. Not only today, which
is bad enough, but right from the beginning of my marriage and way
back throughout my tumultuous youth. Cheryl Strayed replies to the
distressed letter-writers in a variety of ways that what you are really ask-
ing me is if it is OK to be you. Every time I come to this part of her often
long and always personal advice, it brings tears to my eyes. Is it OK to be
me? I would like Sheryl Strayed to tell me it is.
On Sundays after a party in the big house, wethe silent brother, his sister
and my friend from under the sloping wallwould play four-hand whist, in
which I would usually lose a fair amount of money. I really didnt want to
leave that house. The first time he kissed me, it felt as though he was offering
me everything I had ever wanted in my whole life.
November
Yesterday, while revising our upcoming blog post, Writing Friends,9 I
looked up the term lost love. I had omitted it in the first version, but I
knew I had to refrain from censoring. I often look up phrases just to see
them used in different combinations. I like conjoining things. In Writing
Friends, we tell the story of our friendship, how it evolved through writ-
ing and how we investigate all kinds of sources for our work through
writing with only one rule: no censoring. The blog post includes the piece
I wrote in The Secret Book (now The Open Book) about me, armed with a
steamer, removing layers of wallpaper in readiness for my new kitchen
while listening to Jeff Buckleys cool version of Calling You,10 the theme
song from the movie Bagdad Caf. This piece was my first attempt, not
to write about resonance but to perform textual resonance with clusters of
words stretching across time and space. I was able to do something with
the words that day, something I really liked and am proud of. Actually, it
was far from the first time I had attempted to perform resonance, but
there was a bit of magic in the writing that day that makes me sad because
it is lost, and happy because it was there and I paid attention and wrote
it. All that spacetime material simply arrived in front of me, and I just
had to arrange it as to make it shine. I created no narrative, I arranged no
neat series of stages. It is a mess. It is beautiful.
The first hit from my lost love Internet search is an art project. The
artists invite people to donate their wedding rings with a statement about
their divorce, about the ring or about anything else they would like to
mention. In a weeks time, all the donated wedding rings will be moulded
into a bronze sculpture in the shape of an anatomic human heart, and all
the statements will be exhibited together with the sculpture towards the
end of December.
My affair with the silent brother ended at somebodys giant birthday party
that included my out-of-town, six-years-older boyfriend because I did not
manage to come up with an excuse to go without him. I wanted the silent
brother badly, but I lacked the words and he never told me he loved me. When
I pulled him aside and told him I had arrived with someone else, I realised
that he did.
December
I fill in the donation form and fasten the ring with adhesive tape beside
my handwritten statement, which is going to be displayed at the exhibi-
tion, anonymously. I go to the post office, buy a packet of envelopes and
a stamp, and put my wedding ring in the mailbox. I have forgotten the
statement already, but it was a shorter version of my mail to you with my
latest revision of the Writing Friends blog post attached. Here is that
mail in its entirety:
I suggest we aim for 1,000 words. Here is a slightly edited version. I cant
make any more life-or-death decisions today. I will check out the graphic
novel you mentioned and send my wedding ring to be moulded into a
190 C. Wegener
work of art. I stumbled over the invitation to donate when revising. I have
no idea how these juxtapositions happen to me. Treat our blog post as you
wish; cut, chop, kill, and pass over the bloody and vibrant leftovers tomor-
row. This will be good.
In the chapter Lost fingers, Dani Shapiro11 tells the story of jazz gui-
tarist Django Reinhardt, who lost the use of his ring and little fingers in
a fire when he was 18. He was told he would never play again, but,
instead, he learned to use his two good fingers for solos and his two
injured fingers for chord work, thus creating his own distinctive style.
We all have our lost fingers Shapiro writes. What is unavailable to us,
what we cannot do, informs the way we express ourselves. We write from
that tension, she says. That tension pushes us into dark corners where,
Houdini-like, we have to perform feats seemingly beyond our capabilities
to wiggle our way out.
Now I know that freedom is not when we succeed in wiggling our-
selves out. Freedom is having the courage to stay right in the mess with
our own and each others injuries; perform feats beyond our capabilities;
sit in the patio doorway, barefoot; take the baby animals out in the open,
give them water, and watch them drink.
Notes
1. Meier, N. and C.Wegener (2017). The Open Book: Stories of Academic Life
and Writing or Where We Know Things. Boston: Sense Publishers.
2. Meier, N. and C. Wegener. (2017). Writing with resonance. Journal of
Management Inquiry. 26(2), 193201.
3. https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=open%20writing%20
community
4. http://www.talr.dk/
5. U2s Stuck in a moment from the album All That You Cant Leave Behind,
2000.
6. Lather, P. (1998). Critical pedagogy and its complicities: A praxis of
stuck places. Educational Theory, 48(4), 487497.
7. http://therumpus.net/sections/dear-sugar/
8. http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2016/11/04/
engaging-with-the-process-of-writing-can-connect-researcher-and-
reader-and-foster-real-innovation-and-impact/
9. https://patthomson.net/2016/11/17/writing-friends/
10. Jeff Buckleys Calling you from the album Live at Sin-, recorded in
1993, released in 2003.
11. Shapiro, D. (2013). Still Writing. The Pleasures and Perils of a Creative
Life. NewYork: Atlantic Monthly Press.
Charlotte Wegeneris an associate professor at the Department of

Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University, Denmark. Her work con-
cerns innovation with a specific focus on education, workplace learning and
research methodology. Charlotte runs writing workshops for doctoral and mas-
ter students, faculty and practitioners. She is passionate about writing and has
explored the art and craft of writing in several ways. She seeks to expand aca-
demic writing as both process and product by involving fiction, music, dreams
and everyday life experiences. She has published blog posts on the London
School of Economics Impactblog and Review of Books. She is also the co-author
of The Open Book: Stories of Academic Life and Writing or Where We Know Things.
Together with her long-time writing friend, Ninna Meier, she has developed the
concept of Open Writinga project devoted to the creation of a new research
field and joyful writing practice.
16
Riding theWaves ofCollaborative-
Writing-as-Inquiry: Some Ontological
Creative Detours
KenGale andJonathanWyatt
We, as the two of us as well as in other assemblages, have been writ-

ing collaboratively (about collaborative writing) for over ten years. Most
recently, we have been exploring the idea of our writing together as a
process of writing to it (Gale and Wyatt 2016): how, whatever it is we
are seeking to examine or explore, writing to it is what leads to new
experimentations and productive writing practices.
In this chapter, we take the notion of writing to it further in pick-
ing up this books necessary and urgent call for finding ways to resist
the hegemony of conventional academic writing (see also Gale et al.
2010). Through writing both with and against notions of creativity and
detours, we bring the two together as we seek to reconceptualise creative
K. Gale (*)
Plymouth University, Plymouth, UK
J. Wyatt
University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland

194 K. Gale and J. Wyatt
detours even as we follow them; orbetteras they take us with them.

We write our collaborative way into an ontological reconfiguring of cre-
ative detours.
We began writing this chapter through our familiar between-the-twos
(Gale and Wyatt 2009), each in turn exchanging attachments via email;
and we then played with the texts. This playing involved reordering,
splicing, and adapting them, searching for how the texts spoke to one
another; to, through, past, with, between and beyond each other, seeking
connections, dissonances, echoes, and refrains. This processual engage-
ment involved a creative collaborative series of turning and returning to
the texts, suggesting lines of flight, taking detours, always moving the
work in different directions.
Kens writing is in plain text from here; Jonathans is italicised.
The Impossibility ofDetours

I have been thinking about, writing about, and engaging in, what I con-
sider to be creative practice, for a long time. I realised this morning, as
I was engaging in all kinds of displacement activity before writing to
this topic, that my first publication of anything to do with education
and research was a chapter that was published in an edited collection
some 15 years ago, called Teacher Education within Post-Compulsory
Education and Training: A Call for a Creative Approach (Gale 2001).
Making tea, replying to emails, reading a newly published paper sent to
me by a colleague, continuing with these displacement activities as day,
I read through my chapter again. I felt saddened a little by its seeming
naivety and somewhat surprised that, even at that early stage of my life
engaging in academic research and writing, I was able to express some
disquiet about the way that creativity had been treated as an object of
inquiry in the years preceding the publication of my piece. Without
spending time going over the detail of that writing within the emerging
context of our chapter here, suffice it to say that what might be involved
in conceptualising creativity has always interested, troubled, and excited
me to the extent that it somehow remains with me as a vibrant, vital,
16 Riding theWaves ofCollaborative-Writing-as-Inquiry: Some... 195
and animating conceptualisation as I continue writing and engaging in

inquiry today. I understand concepts to be fixed as substantive categories
of difference, whereas I understand conceptualisation as involving active
processes of concept making, where each making of a concept is a creative
act in itself; it is an encounter, an event.
Saturday, just over a week ago, was a dazzling early autumn day in
Edinburgh. I was alone. In the afternoon I walked.
Close to home, a few minutes north down the hill and away from the city,
you can step down from the roads onto an emergence of paths. They take you
along, across, and away from the Water of Leith a stream, no more, that
becomes, perhaps three miles further northeast, the Firth of Forth.
Its been a demanding month. I, somehow, somewhere, knew I needed to
walk. I didnt think it. It happened. I found myself walking. I dont often
walk, but I knew I needed to look up at the branches of trees, to feel fallen
leaves and firm earth beneath my feet, to have the sun strike my face and
hands.
Most of the paths are well established and broad; theyre busy with cyclists
and walkers, especially at the weekend. To begin with I walked on a famil-
iar route from the road, through a childrens play area, through a tunnel
under a different road and out towards Leith. Its a route I used to run until I
decided it was time to give my knees a break. I dont run anymore.
I knew where this path would take me, but I hadnt decided I would fol-
low it or, once on it, whether I would stay. A pair of runners overtook me. A
family on bikes passed, talking, ringing a single-tone bell to warn me, though
they didnt need to. Their voices were loud and cheerful. I heard them some
distance back.
I came to a crossroads. The crossroads stopped me. (I was going to write:
I stopped, but that conveys too strong a sense of my agency.) The crossroads-
and-I held the body-I-call-mine steady. Paused me. We paused. I looked at
the signposts. I didnt recognise all the names. The left turn to Trinity chose
me. (Which sounds grandiose: the left turn to Trinity and I found ourselves
together.)
Hold there. Lets hold just there now at that moment of left turn. That
step. Those steps. That series of shifts in body weight; the eyes, ears, face, feet,
torso, organs, bodying, turning this way, that way, not as one, not as a ship
might turn, a conflicting mix of push and pull, of loss and hope; a heartbeat
of flux.
Hold. Freeze the frame there. But lets not stand outside or back from
it, so we can reflect upon it; lets stay within. Lets honour its-and-our, the
moments, immanence: a vibrant, vital and animating conceptualisation,
as you write.
You will notice the shift that moves us away from the use of the word
concept toward that of conceptualisation. You will recognise this; in
our writing, this has been done numerous times before. In doing this
here, I want to emphasise the precedence that Whitehead gives to process
over substance in his work and to mobilise this thinking in terms of mak-
ing a new creative detour, which I will offer as an understanding as a
Deleuzian line of flight (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, pp.889). I love
the way their conceptualisation of lines of flight offers great challenge to
the dominance and pre-eminence of, what they describe as, order words
in the fields of inquiry in which we are learning to make play. This trou-
bling of order words is not simply something to do with language and
the kinds of discourses that set up notions of creativity, for example, as
objects of inquiry. I feel greatly influenced by them when they use these
lines of flight to encourage a bursting out of containment (ibid, p.88),
something which I sense is more to do with substance and materiality
than simply the words that are used to culturally and discursively inscribe
it. In this, it feels to me that enabling and enacting lines of flight is
hugely processual, it is active, it is about territorialisation (op. cit.): it
does.
I am sure that you have found me here! You have often discovered me
playing, dancing, and working with these Deleuzian conceptualisations
in the writing and inquiry with which we have been engaged for a long
time. You know that they have been with me in ever changing ways for
nearly as long as the writing of the chapter that I have referenced above
initially took form. The sharing of them with you is full of delight and
it is exciting. In terms of the current piece of writing, this sharing is
reciprocal, it is iterative, it is, as we have emphasised so many times, col-
laborative; it is a form of sharing, as we have recently discussed, that is
constituted by a practice of writing to it (Gale and Wyatt 2016).
Stephanie Springgay and colleagues have a fascinating website, www.

walkinglab.org, where they offer a multiplicity of takes on walking. Walking
as fluidity and possibility. One contributor invites us to consider how walking
for some is a form of labour. Carry something and walk, she says. Across your
shoulders. Feel it. Another offers evaporation walking as a practice for letting
go of grief. The gesture of carrying evaporated water is a metaphor for car-
rying a dying body. Along the way, perceived boundaries between space and
matter soften. (http://walkinglab.org/evaporation-walks/)
The body that walks is not the individuated, humanist subject moving
through passive space, but body-space-matter created through movement,
differentiating endlessly. This movement is intensive, flowing and affective.
(Truman and Springgay 2015, p.151)
Last Saturday and that left turn, that creative not-detour: Hope. Delight.
Sadness. Affects that de-phased (Manning 2013) at that instant, then. Add
wistfulness, now, as I write, telling you this one week later:
[E]nabling and enacting lines of flight is hugely processual, it is
active, it is about territorialisation: it does.
From there, from that left turn, as I walked, there were moments, some-
times minutes, when I was alone.
There was a bridge over other paths. The clearance from trees allowed me
to stand full in the sun. I stopped and turned to it, allowing it to envelop me,
stood a few minutes. No one came past.
At one point I heard voices above the path. Shouts. The sound of a match
rugby or football, I wasnt sure. I found a worn track up the short steep bank.
I made it only half-way up and no further; I couldnt maintain a grip. The
match, the excitement, the energy, the company, just out of reach. I slipped
back down and walked on. The voices took minutes to fade.
Later, a ramp to my left joined the path, a gentle slope down from a quiet
road. At its top I saw an older woman turn onto it as if to walk down. She
was hesitant, neither still nor moving, leaning on her walking frame. A wire-
haired terrier trotted into view, pausing at her side, and they began to walk
down towards the path. They moved together. I watched as I passed. I knew
it wasnt, knew it couldnt be, but I imagined for those seconds it was my
mother I was watching. Her dog close by, devoted; the way she carried herself
(stooped, delicate, careful); how she talked to him; their intimacy.
This is where our writing has led me. Here, to this walk. Im resisting mak-
ing explicit why and how it happened that our writing brought me (and now
you) here, not because I know and am withholding but because Im unsure
and can only leave this uncertainty intact. I want to respect it:
[E]nabling and enacting lines of flight is hugely processual, it is
active, it is about territorialisation: it does.
At Swim-Two-Birds1 or Maybe More?

We will say of pure immanence that it is A LIFE, and nothing else. It is not
immanence to life, but the immanent that is in nothing is itself a life. A life
is the immanence of immanence, absolute immanence: it is complete
power, complete bliss. (Deleuze 2001, p.27)
I have written so much with and to you and, yes, perhaps less so, with
others, about the place that I go to swim. I call it place and yet it is more
credible to describe in sense making terms as space. It has a name so, for
now, it is a place. That is an identifier, it represents, it does in particular
ways. The naming is simply functional, I have to use it to signify and I
always rebel against significations: you know that. So Whitsand Bay is
a place that I spatialise (Soja 1996): as a place it is always there, in
space, in space making, it is always different. What happens in this place
when I am there is always different, I always make sense of it in different
ways, in space it does things to me, in non-human ways it does. When I
read your walking story through the park in Edinburgh, it had a power-
ful impact upon me. I sensed that some of this power emerged out of,
out of our, relationality; I thought about what you had shared with me
to do with the pressures that you had experienced at work over the last
few months and about your views to do with friendship in relation to
your life in Edinburgh. This prompted me to think about this place that
I go to, this place that I love. I began to wonder about someone secretly
watching me as turned this place into a space, my space, perhaps. I began
to wonder if that person was curious enough and they wanted to stand
there at the top of the cliff, unobserved, and watch me doing what I do
there, again and again, would they see me doing the same things, again
and again?
That series of shifts in body weight; the eyes, ears, face, feet, torso, organs,
bodying, turning this way, that way, not as one, not as a ship might turn, a
conflicting mix of push and pull, of loss and hope; a heartbeat of flux.
You can imagine if you like. I can share a naming of my doing of these
things:
Climbingclambering down the slippery, narrow, brambled, often
hidden cliff pathstopping, watching Brimstone and Peacock butter-
flies seeming to sunbathe in limp autumn light, or secretive Stonechats
nervously hopping from one gorse bush to another, clearly irritated by
the presence of their observermoving through the rushes at the base
of the cliffpulling off flip-flopshop, skip and jumping over the
massive boulders therebounding in one excited leap on to the warm
gritty sandwalking, like a tourist, across the empty beachlooking
for a patch of welcoming, dry sandsittinghurriedly unpacking a bag
(towel, swimming trunks, notebook, pen, reading book, glasses, phone,
banana, apple; The Things They Carried)changing into swimming
trunksstanding, legs apart, hands on hipslooking at the sea, look-
ing across to Rame, at the skywalking down the beach to the water
looking again, left and right and back up the cliffwalking in the water,
slowly at first, ankle deep in the shore break, a brief initial hesitancy per-
haps, speeding up, purposeful, striding through the heaving, breaking of
the swells, diving under and through the first wave that lifts its self above
the others, then through another, surfacing, a sudden furious splashing
out, another wave, duck, dive, emerge, swimming, laterally across the
waves to where the break beginsswimming slowly, treading water
looking back to the shorelooking out to sea, beyond the breakwait-
ingspottingturningswimming strong swim-strides in the grow-
ing, catching of the not yet breaking wave and then, body lifting, the
wave taking over and the searing, tumbling ride beginning, heaving,
rushing, ending in sand filled floundering in the shallows of the shore
breakwalking out into the waves again, into newly forming waves
breathing more deeply now, chest pumping, face grinningheading into
the deeper waterwatching for the next big wave, the next rushing ride
and thendoing it againand againand again
I can picture this, yes; though picture is too visual. I can hear it, feel sand
under my feet, am being lifted by the swell, sense anticipation in my lower
chest as the wave takes me. My breathing sitting here in Edinburgh on our
sofa on an early Thursday morning deepens with yours. I read on.
This is how it is. These are the verbs. This is the body doing. This is
what a body can do. These are bodies; Bennett calls them things, in
human/non-human relationality: Ken-sand-waves-tide-current-wind-sun
relationality as assemblage, as always becoming other, always in the mak-
ing, world-making. Thing-power (Bennett 2010). In these body-doings,
there is an impossibility of separated objective individuality. These Ken-
sand-waves-tide-current-wind-sun relationalities as assemblage offer, in
appropriation of Bennett, a windowing onto an eccentric out-side
made possible by the fortuity of that particular assemblage (and)also
by a certain anticipatory readiness on my in-side, by a perceptual style
open to the appearance of thing-power. (ibid, p.5). This windowing is
not a casting of light, it is not meant to offer signification, interpretation,
and representation, it is simply a doing, an experiment in world-making,
an expression. The creative act of expression both lives with and con-
structs worlds through sensing thing-power, through making present
experimental relationalities that live in the flows, harmonies, and refrains
of rhythmic human/non-human animation. The expression of a life
(Deleuze 2001, p. 27) in these vibratory relationalities is windowed in
and through the doings, the animations, that are the creative energising
life force of these Ken-sand-waves-tide-current-wind-sun becomings.
As Manning says, (an) emphasis on expression leads us away from a
signifying subject to a becoming of relation. (2007, p.111). Bennetts
engagement with thing-power, with Spinoza, sees such relationality
as involving animations which break through the binary separation of
human and non-human and which sees all things as having power, albeit
in different degrees. Deleuze and Guattari, without equivocation, alert us
to the fact that the smallest unit is the assemblage (Deleuze and Guattari
1987) and so there is a becoming aware of the observer at the top of the
cliff at Whitsand Bay, looking down from above and there is a wonder-
ing here about what that seeing might involve. These seeings are doings;
they are not simply representational, they exist in relationality and in this
sense they must be seen, not with the subjective eye of the i ndividualising
Cartesian I but within and through the processual individuations of
always relational becoming: Beyond the human, beyond the sense of
touch or vision, beyond the object, what emerges is relation (Manning
2009, p.42).
So in sensing a life, a life engaged in these animations, involved in
these doings, present within and activating these vibrant relationalities,
intoxicated by these world-makings and irrepressibly bringing to life
these expressions, already new and exciting dialogics of assemblage are
(always) emerging from their larval slumber. As this writing also comes to
life it is not engaged in making expressions that offer statements of fact or
verifiable certitude; as Manning says, (to) express is to speak-with. Any
speaking-with implies a dialogue, an infinite conversation. An infinite
conversation supposes that the work is yet to be invented (2007, p.111).
And so the creative rhizomatic possibilities that emerge from the non-
representational vigour of these conversations encourages an engagement
with language in its experimentally most productive form. In this sense,
language is always invoking and giving breath and the very lifeblood
to the body-without-organs (Deleuze and Guattari 1987). In these
respects, creative expression always windows, challenges, and lives out-
side of the pacifying regulatory practices of organised bodies, human and
non-human. In these world-makings that always pose Spinozas beauti-
fully practical and rhetorically weighted question, What can a body do?
we are always expressing and bringing to life the ontologically vibrant
and ethically sensitised relational possibilities of becoming in worlds that
are always not-yet-known.
Riding Waves
We return to this hegemonic plain font, the one that implies normal
(the font that has been Kens in this chapter), for our first person plural
voice as we draw to a close.
We sense that writing to it is part of what Barad describes as an
ethico-onto-epistem-ologyan intertwining of ethics, knowing, and
being (2007, p.185). It is perhaps, what Deleuze and Guattari (1987)

describe as becoming, where the multiplicity of our engagements, our
theorisings-as-practice, our processes of world-making are constitutive of
being in the world. Barad offers an evocative description of this when she
asserts that
each intra-action matters, since the possibilities for what the world may
become call out in the pause that precedes each breath before a moment
comes into being and the world is remade again, because the becoming of
the world is a deeply ethical matter. (op. cit.)
So it seems that these practices that we call writing to it are creative

practices, which are deeply and crucially infused with these practices
of affective world-making. It is not to make creative detours that
are based upon reflection or to make an interpretation or a critical
engagement with what might be the best course of action in a par-
ticular situation. Rather, we feel that it is about an immersion in the
world where the animation of bodies is always about the potential of
those bodies to do, to actively engage the world and to be concerned,
with Spinoza, with what these bodies can do. There is a clear and
incisive politics of affect present in Nietzsches mistrust of concepts
when he says:
(We) must no longer accept concepts as a gift, nor merely purify, and pol-
ish them, but first make and create them, present them and make them
convincing. Hitherto one has generally trusted ones concepts as if they
were a wonderful dowry from some sort of wonderland. (Nietzsche 1968,
p.409)
It is this that leads us to thinking about what these creative practices,

these creative detours perhaps, actually involve: what will this body do,
what will these bodies do when carrying them out? For Deleuze and
Guattari,
(c)oncepts are not waiting for us ready-made, like heavenly bodies They
must be invented, fabricated, or rather, created, and would be nothing
without the creators signature. (Deleuze and Guattari 1994, p.5)
This seems to provide a clear answer to these questions. We do not

accept those concepts that are already waiting for us ready-made; at
best, we mistrust them and engage selves in active concept making, pro-
cesses of conceptualisation, in short, in creative practices. Simply taking
them off the shelf, offering them up, purifying and polishing them is not
enough. The practices of reflexivity, interpretation, and critique so loved
by the academy all have a tendency to do this; they seem to accept the
wonderlands from where these concepts originate and delight in looking
with delight and growing self-esteem at the reflections that their polish-
ings provide. By setting up these concepts as categories of difference and
as objects of inquiry these established orthodoxies of practice implicitly
engage in and bring to life processes of reification that have the potential
to cause experimentation and creativity to wither and die.
Therefore, creative practices are more than taking or making detours.
Creative practices of concept forming, always involving active concep-
tualisation, are the very processual activities that trouble the reified sub-
stantialities of conventional inquiry. They are not simply about changing
the concept from one thing, once classified object of inquiry, to another
through practices of critical interpretation, they involve selves in doing,
in engaging in affective forms of inquiry that animate doing-bodies in
ethical, political, and always experimentally infused ways. As Massumi
says, it is about thought taking the plunge, consenting to ride the waves
of affect on a crest of words, drenched to the conceptual bone in the fine-
ness of its spray (2015, p. vii).
Notes
1. At Swim-Two-Birds is thetitle ofanovel by Flann OBrien. It is anexam-
ple ofwhat has been referred toasmetafiction inwhich anumber ofsto-
ries become intertwined witheach other.
References
Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entan-
glement of matter and meaning. Durham/London: Duke University Press.
Bennett, J.(2010). Vibrant matter: A political ecology of things. Durham/London:
Duke University Press.
Deleuze, G. (2001). Pure immanence: Essays on a life (trans: Boyman, A.).
NewYork: Zone Books.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizo-
phrenia (trans: Massumi, B.). London: Athlone.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1994). What is philosophy? (trans: Burchell, G., &
Tomlinson, H.). London: Verso.
Gale, K. (2001). Teacher education within post-compulsory education and
training: A call for a creative approach. In A.Craft, B.Jeffrey, & M.Leibling
(Eds.), Creativity in education (pp.103116). London: Continuum.
Gale, K., & Wyatt, J.(2009). Between the two: A nomadic inquiry into qualitative
inquiry. Cambridge Scholars: Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
Gale, K., & Wyatt, J.(2016). Writing to it: Creative engagements with writ-
ing practice in and with the not yet known in todays academy. Writing
Development in Higher Education. University of Plymouth, 2729 July.
Gale, K., Speedy, J., & Wyatt, J.(2010). Gatecrashing the oasis? A joint disserta-
tion play. Qualitative Inquiry, 16(1), 2128.
Manning, E. (2007). Politics of touch: Sense, movement, sovereignty. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Manning, E. (2009). What if it didnt all begin with containment? Toward a
leaky sense of self. Body and Society, 15(3), 3345.
Manning, E. (2013). Always more than one: Individuations dance. Durham/
London: Duke University Press.
Massumi, B. (2015). Politics of affect. Cambridge: Polity.
Nietzsche, F. (1968). The will to power. NewYork: Vintage Books.
Soja, E.W. (1996). Thirdspace. Malden: Blackwell.
Truman, S.E., & Springgay, S. (2015). The primacy of movement in research-
creation: New materialist approaches to art research and pedagogy. In T.E.
Lewis & M. J. Laverty (Eds.), Arts teachings, teachings art (pp. 151162).
London: Springer.
Ken Gale works in the Institute of Education at Plymouth University and has
published widely and presented at a number of international conferences on the
philosophy of education and collaborative approaches to education practices.
His recent work involves the use of affective modes of theorising as practice in
relation to the intra-active entanglements within and between discursive and
representational constructions and human and nonhuman materialities in con-
temporary higher education settings.
Jonathan Wyatt is a senior lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, where he

is the Director of Counselling, Psychotherapy and Applied Social Sciences, and
director of the new Centre for Creative-Relational Inquiry. He has taken many a
detour, some more creative than others, to find himself in Edinburgh. His article
with Beatrice Allegranti, Witnessing loss: A feminist material-discursive account,
won the 2015 Norman K.Denzin Qualitative Research Award and his recent
books include On (writing) families: Autoethnographies of presence and absence,
love and loss, co-edited with Tony Adams and published by Sense.
17
Give It aName andIt Will BeYours:
How Opportunities toReflect
onEssential Questions Can Create Space
forLearning
ElinaMaslo
Introduction
It started in Singapore. I was ready to present my new research on differ-
ent perceptions of learning at work to a conference on workplace learn-
ing. I had some splendid data. One particular conversation illustrated
how two different persons had different understandings of the learning
phenomenon. There were three different understandings, in fact. The
interviewer, mea conversation partner, I would say todayhad her
own version too.
I knew it from the very first minutes of the very first conversation with
the two participants in the study. I felt itI felt that, in this particular
moment of this particular conversation, the two different notions of
learning were constructed by the conversation partners. I felt that
thesetwo different notions differed from the one I had arrived at myself.
Intuitively, I knew exactly what to do with the precious research material.
E. Maslo (*)
Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Copenhagen, Denmark

208 E. Maslo
As the deadline for writing a paper approached, however, I experienced

serious difficulty in describing the method of analysis. What is the name
of the method I am using? A simple question, and one you normally
know the answer to before you start the analysis, you would think.
For me, it was the beginning of a long methodological hiking tour
through the literature on approaches and methodsuntil a good col-
league said to me: Give it a name and it will be yours! A sentence that
turned weeks of uncertainty and doubt, looking for one right research
method, into productive reflections on being creative with the research
material. And into a long line of reflections on research, identity, ways of
thinking and ways of writing, communicating and creating. Reflections
on being uncertain, always in doubt, always seeking the right way, being
afraid of static texts, mirroring ones own work in others, thirsting for
feedback from a good colleaguethese are the themes I have been reflect-
ing on when writing this text. This text itself can be considered as a
detour.
Months laterwhile writing this chapterI would understand why
the meeting in Singapore was so important. I would understand how the
opportunity to put simple questions to a good colleague created space for
reflectiona kind of safe space where everything was allowed and possi-
ble. A space where you were allowed to show your doubts without losing
face and to share your un-knowings, the space where you find the oppor-
tunity to reflect on essential questions and seek the answers. A space
where you have a chance to understand things.
Later, I would understand that this kind of space also emerged when I
was discussing learning with the research participants in the example
mentioned above. When discussing the method of the studygo and
take pictures of your learning, we asked research participantsthe two
conversation partners simply questioned the central theme of the study:
learning. Which kind of learning should we take pictures of? Without
this conversation, we would not necessarily have a chance to see how dif-
ferent the two persons look at learning.
And, one day, I would find myself reflecting on the question of oppor-
tunities to reflect on essential questions together with others. At a writing
retreat, I would be asked to write about simple things. When writing, I
would reflect on all the methodological questions I had been dealing with
17 Give It aName andIt Will BeYours: How Opportunities... 209
for a long time. When writing, I would understand the importance of

having a space to reflect on these simple, but often essential, questions.
This essay is about the three spaces for reflection I have experienced
recently: the conversation with two research participants in a study of
learning at work, an important meeting at the conference in Singapore,
and the situation at a writing retreat where I reflect on simple things.
Allthree situations have this in common: they provided a space for reflec-
tionspace for learning.
Space forReflections onLearning

In December 2015, in Singapore, I presented some results of the pilot
study on people learning at work. My case was about two retired teachers,
who have been running a Bed and Breakfast after retirement. I wanted to
find out how they learnt at work. The study used the participatory photo
interview method (Kolb 2008). After a short introductory talk, the par-
ticipants were supposed to take pictures of their learning at their work-
place over a period of two weeks. The pictures were to be of situations
where they felt that they were learning. Later, there would be an inter-
view, where the pictures would be used. The conversation I analysed at
the conference in Singapore took place immediately after I introduced
the study and the method. They simply questioned the task as it was for-
mulated: Please take some pictures of those situations where you think:
I am learning! or I have learned! or similar. What kind of learning do
the researchers expect them to take pictures of? The two research partici-
pants were reflecting on what learning is even before the data collection
process began. This came through in this conversation (Maslo 2016):
Elina: So how do I learn in my every day work ?

Eva: So, if it says I have learned, it doesnt mean a long time ago,
Asger!
Asger: You learn something, and you learn something all the time,
right? And part of it is the further development of something
learned before. For example, I can say: I used to take the big fat
210 E. Maslo
computer under my arm and sit there and work; later, I got an
iPad, right? I have learned to use the iPad for our business
Eva: Yes, yesbut no one is interested in that right now, Asger, dont
you understand!? It is right now! What do you learn today?!
What do you learn this afternoon!? Or tonight when he arrives
.
Elina: But it doesnt have to be so . [complicated] Here is your
working place, and if you are thinking now I have learned
something or I am learning now! take a picture of it! And
you dont have to think further about itjust take pictures!
(laughs)
Eva: But not to do with something that you have learned a long time
ago? You know, it is far too formal, what you have got there! (is
saying this to Asger)
Asger: I am quite formal (laughs loud).
Asger: (reading the information letter) I am learning or I have learned or
similar I have learnedit is something that happened in
the past, damn it!
Eva: No! Listen! In this situation, both can be used, because you have
learned. It is not the same as it is Elina is saying that it must
be a moment when you are suddenly thinking Ahh, there I just
learned something! so it saysI have learned.
When analysing this conversation intuitively, I could clearly see differ-

ent levels in it. I could see a couple arguing in the present, but I could also
see from this conversation that the two persons had discussed this issue
before we met for the interview. At the same time, I could see from this
text that one person thinks of learning as something that has happened in
the past and is finished, a kind of product, while the other thinks of learn-
ing as a process happening right here and right now. I could hear them
telling me what is important for them considering their own learning.
While listening and re-listening to this conversationa method of
data analysis I had been told of by another colleague at the other confer-
ence (Revsbk and Tanggaard 2015)I discovered more and more mean-
ing, more and more nuances about different understandings of learning. I
understood that Asger considers that he learns on the basis of previous
experience that results in new knowledge and skills, whereas Evahis

wife and colleaguethinks of learning as happening only while commu-
nicating with herself when thinking and via verbal and non-verbal com-
munication with others. I concluded that, when thinking about learning,
we need to look at it from at least three different perspectives: time, space
and interaction (the personal, the social and the complex interactions of
both). Learning always takes place in time, in space (mental and physical)
and in the interaction between and within individuals.
But there was more. The conversation with the two study participants
created a space for reflections about the theme of my study: learning.
Space forReflection onDoing Research

It was when I met the two young researchers from Aarhus. We met in
Singapore. Somehow, I dared to share my reflections about method with
the two women. Somehow, they became interested in my research and
took our discussion of method further, to a new level. We decided to
propose a book. A book about reflections, uncertainties, detoursuntidy
stories about doingor you could say, creatingresearch.
On a bus ride, we spoke about our work. We felt it was challenging to
navigate the complex academic world, where on the one hand you
areexpected to follow certain well-established traditions of research, but
on the other you are expected to find something newto be creative. We
quickly found out that we all wanted to be creative. The three of us
wanted to find new ways of doing things.
But there is one but. It is often when dealing with simple questions
that it becomes interesting to look for new ways. It is exciting to chal-
lenge taken-for-granted views of the world, to challenge the way in which
things are understood. The problem is: when can these issues be consid-
ered sufficiently interesting? Where is the line between the banal and the
essential? And how to be self-confident enough to dare to challenge
something many others take for granted? Yes, this is the general question
about research. Becker has a suggestion: say such things out loud and
make everyone think about them seriously (Becker 2007, 128). I
believethis is what I was thinking of when writing the text presented in
212 E. Maslo
the next section. This text was written at a course on writinga writing
retreat, offered by Charlotte Wegener and Hanne Ravn in a small city in
Denmark. It was a day, where small writing exercises were beautifully
framed in different relaxing and focusing activities. This particular exer-
cise was a 20-min nonstop writing exercise on the topic The simplest of
all things. We were invited to write about anything. We wrote about the
things that concerned us. I wrote about my methodological struggle and
the simple questions I could not answer. I enjoyed writing it.
The Simplest ofAll Things

The simple thing is something you really can manage. Something you have
really understood. Something you have understood so deeply that it feels really
simple. So simple that it is easy to explain to others, easy to write about, easy
to find examples of. But there is one challenge. When you really can manage
something, and have understood that something so deeply, then you can find
yourself thinking of that something as a banality. Because it is so simple. And
when something is banal, is there then a reason to speak about it at all? Is
there a reason to explain this something to someone else? The trick, then, is to
be able to look at oneself and ones own world from the side, and be able to
judge whether this knowledge and these skills are something special, some-
thing relevant for others to know more about. Yes, of course you can always
analyse the need, ask people directly whether they would like to know some-
thing about it. You can wait for someone to ask you about this something.
Buthow can the world know that you are in possession of unique reflections
about some specific thing? That you are in possession of something that can be
considered expert knowledge or expert skills? And how can you share this
knowledge without first having been through identity work about what you
can do and what you know, who you areand what drives this identity work
forward?
I am thinking a lot about what children should learn at school. In the light
of these reflections of mine, it is definitely not knowledge and skills we should
teach children at school. The task for the school should rather be to create a
space where children can learn how to reflect on what they can do and what
they know, yes, who they are and what they would like their lives to look like.
Which again requires that you can mirror yourself in others
So, why is it so difficult for me to write? Is it because I do not believe that
I know enough to write? Or is it because I see the critical reader on the other
side of my computer desktop? Every time I use the keyboard to create a new
section in my text, I have this almost physical feeling, that I must show every-
thing I can do at once. I feel the pressure I put myself under when thinking
about a reader who should be able to evaluate meme, as a personfrom
my writing, and hopefully in a positive direction.
Oh no, how liberating it is to be allowed to just write away. To take time
simply to write without this proofing-deadline warning light that makes your
blood boil. To take time to sit peacefully and quietly in the room together with
other writers, and write. To write without thinking of the ghost of the bad-
cop-reviewer, who questions whether what you write makes sense at all. And
to take breaks. Breaks in total quiet without being forced to say anything. Itis
so long since I took the time for this kind of thing. For just sitting and having
a break.
Where does this desire to write come from? A feeling of being re-born. A
feeling that this day will influence the rest of my life. I really would like to
share these feelings with others in the room, but do I dare? I write a conclu-
sion: The simplest of all things is to immerse yourself in something, study this
something and become good at it.
pportunities toAsk Essential Questions:

O
Spaces forReflection, Spaces forLearning
I have now described three very different situations that occurred in very
different settings but were similar in terms of opportunities for reflec-
tionor salient experiences, as Charlotte Wegener called them in her
research (2013). The first situation is an interview with two research
participants, who, by questioning the formulation of the task they have
been set by the researchers, create a space for reflection about learning
for all three of us. The second situation, on the other side of the conti-
nent, describes the space that gave rise to many months of reflection on
214 E. Maslo
methodology in particular, and on the researchers life in general. The

third situation demonstrates the space for reflection provided in the
writing exercise. A space where, while writing, I am reflecting on con-
cerns I have been grappling with for a long period of time. With the
three situations, I have tried to illustrate how different contexts can cre-
ate opportunities for reflecting on things and how these reflections call
for other reflections, and the other reflections hopefully can result in
some better understandings of things. The three stories are illustrations
of my own learning spacean unpredictable, complex interaction of
physical, mental and social factors interacting during thinking and learn-
ing: the content to think about, the desire to find the answers, travelling
to a place, meeting people, etc.
Yes, when do we learn, and how do we learn? a question I am
addressing in my research. Thinking about these three examples, we learn
when we think, when we ask questions and when we reflect. We learn
when we meet other people and reflect on the essential questions together
with our peers. We learn when we write, when we engage in a dialogue
with ourselves or our readers. We learn when we read each others work.
We learn when we get feedback from our peers. But there is something
more. It depends on what we are reflecting on, why we are reflecting on
something and who we are reflecting with. Reflection is both an indi-
vidual and a social process that is mediated by interactions with objects
and other actors in the social context (Wegener 2013, 3) and thereby
always situated in a context.
In a context of learning, reflection is a generic term for those intel-
lectual and affective activities in which individuals engage to explore their
experiences in order to lead to a new understanding and appreciation
(Boud 1985, 19). Learning happens when we actively engage in mean-
ingful activities: activity in a meaningful environment generates affor-
dances for enhancing that activity and subsequent activities (van Lier
2004, 80). Learning is an extremely complex multidimensional process
that happens differently to everyone and involves a host of subjective
parameters, such as perceptions, emotions, feelings, attitudes and values.
It is like a good piece of music, where every element contributes to the
effect on you: rhythmdrums and bass, melodyhigh and low notes,
unpredictable developments in the melody, the words of the song, the
voice of the singer, your mental state when listening, who you are listen-
ing with, who you are thinking of when listening, where you have been
Learning, aside from being a cognitive process, is also an emotional and
social process that happens in the interaction between people and their
environment on the basis of their experiences (van Lier 1996, 2000).
In an attempt to capture the complex inter-relationships between the
learner and the environment and to understand the complexity of the
factors influencing learning, I try in my research to look at learning from
a new perspectiveto look at learning as a bunch of interconnected ele-
ments using the space metaphor. Space understood not as concrete, mate-
rial object, but also as ideological, lived and subjective (Lefebvre 1991).
Space understood relationally as constituted and given meaning through
human endeavor (Singh et al. 2007, 197), space both constituted
through social relations and constitutive of them (Lefebvre 1991).
In the example of the analysis of the conversation with two partici-
pants, I tried to free myself from what I knew from learning theory and
tried to look at the processes afresh. I felt that I needed to some degree to
reconstruct the knowledge I had so that I could discover something new.
I needed to ask simple questions. I needed to start from scratch.
Now, more than a year later, I understand that I always had what I
needed to conduct this analysis. But not until having several salient expe-
riences, three of which I have recounted in this chapter, was I able to
apply the knowledge acquired earlier to a new situation. I simply could
not lift myself to the metacognitive level needed to find the language to
describe what I was doing. I needed to take a detour lasting over a year
before I was able to write my methodology chapter. Simply because I
needed to reflect on it before writing it. Meeting curious colleagues at a
conference, engaging in dialogues with the research participants or engag-
ing with a text on the significant questions, where opportunities for
reflection emerged in my life. They took me a step further. We will always
need salient experiences to keep moving: we can only learn about our
lived times and spaces in increments, never satisfied with existing levels of
knowledge but constantly moving on, almost like philosophical nomads,
to search for the new, to push the frontiers of knowledge and u nderstanding
forward, and hope for the unexpected (Soja 2010, 102). I will name my
method reflective layering. Now it is mine.
216 E. Maslo
References
Becker, H.S. (1986, 2007). Writing for social scientists. How to start and finish
your thesis, book, or article (2nd ed.). Chicago/London: The University of
Chicago Press.
Boud, D. (1985, 1994). Reflection: Turning experience into learning. London:
Routledge Falmer.
Kolb, B. (2008). Involving, sharing, analysing Potential of the participatory
photo interview. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 9(3), 125.
Lefebvre, H. (1991). The production of space. Oxford: Blackwell.
Maslo, E. (2016). I have learned It is about something that happened in the
past! Time, space and human interaction in different perceptions of learn-
ing at work. In A.Ostendorf & C.K. Permpoonwiwat (Eds.), Workplaces as
learning spaces Conceptual and empirical insights (pp.105123). Innsbruck:
Innsbruck University Press.
Revsbk, L., & Tanggaard, L. (2015). Analyzing in the present. Qualitative
Inquiry, 2(4), 376387.
Singh, M., Rizvi, F., & Shrestha, M. (2007). Student mobility and the spatial
production of cosmopolitan identities. In K. Gulson & C. Symes (Eds.),
Spatial theories of education: Policy and geography matters (pp. 195214).
NewYork: Routledge.
Soja, E.W. (2010). Seeking spatial justice. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press.
Van Lier, L. (1996). Interaction in the language curriculum. Awareness, autonomy
& authenticity. London: Longman.
Van Lier, L. (2000). From input to affordance: Social-interactive learning from
an ecological perspective. In J.P. Lantolf (Ed.), Socio-cultural theory and sec-
ond language learning (pp.245285). Oxford: University Press.
Van Lier, L. (2004). The semiotics and ecology of language learning. Perception,
voice, identity and democracy. Utbildning & Demokrati, 13(3), 79103.
Wegener, C. (2013). A situated approach to VET students reflection processes
across boundaries. Journal of Education and Work, 27(4), 454473.
Elina Maslo is an associate professor at the Danish School of Education, Aarhus

University, where she mainly teaches second language learning and teaching
courses at the Masters Programme for teachers of Danish as a second and foreign
language. She conducted her PhD project at the Institute for Pedagogy and
Psychology at the University of Latvia (2003). After almost ten years in the field
of learning languages in and outside the formal educational system, exploring
successful learning spaces in practice, she is now devoting herself to discovering
and theorizing transformative dimensions of learning spaces. Her main research
interests are learning spacesmultiple, diverse, changing, fluid, complex, always
in constructionin and outside the school and at the workplace. Elina is an
active member and European co-coordinator of the ASEM LLL Hub research
network on workplace learning.
18
Confessions ofaProcrastinator
NoomiMatthiesen
This text was never intended to be published. It chronicles a useless detour.

Reading it may very well turn out to be a useless detour. Or more precisely,
rather than being useless in the sense that you, the reader, necessarily will
find no relevance or have no benefit from reading the text, it is useless in that
particular sense that all sociological and psychological detours are, that is,
intrinsically un-purposeful at the outset: They are not an instrumental tool;
they have no predetermined goal; they have no predetermined outcome. As
opposed to material detours, that are often paved or tarmacked beforehand
leading to a fixed endpoint, this specific kind of detours are per definition
unplanned and uncontrolled. They have no deliberate use. In fact, we can
only categorize these detours properly the moment we are no longer detouring
but once again back on track. Until that moment, we are merely derailed.
And only then can we determine its value. Defining a detours usefulness is
thus a retrospective endeavor. Consequently, detouring may never become a
useful, instrumental imperative. So, with this prelude, I invite you to risk a
brief derailment with my confessions:
N. Matthiesen (*)

220 N. Matthiesen
It is 8.53am on a chilly Friday morning in September. I am on my

couch in my living room, a green couch, with my laptop on my blanket-
covered lap, a blue blanket. I have a whole day set off in my calendar
for writing. I have just opened a fresh blank document and write this.
This. The morning started well. I wrote an abstract for a conference last
nightI have just read it through and edited some details; sent it in
a few minutes ago; satisfied. I then opened a document with the title
Moments of Change, an article for a special edition on parentteacher
relationships. I intend to spend the day writing it. The deadline is next
week and I have only got three pages so far. I know what the story is: par-
entteacher relationships with immigrant and refugee parents are often
characterized by a deficit rationale. This rationale is critiqued from a post-
structuralist perspective, but this perspective builds on a theory of repro-
duction and does not provide a path forward, does not allow for thinking
about transcending marginalization and social change. So, I have looked
to the parents own narratives of change and have used situated learning
theory to understand these stories. The point of the article is clear. I just
need to write it. Quickly. The deadline is looming.
At 8.38am. I looked at the bottom of page three, sighed and wrote,
These interventions and programs can be critiqued for adhering to a
deficit logic where immigrant and refugee parents are considered
blank.
What are they considered?
They are considered deficit but I have already used that as a noun
in the sentence. What is a suitable adjective? Deficit. I opened safari and
typed in th thesaurus.com came up. I typed deficit, glanced at the
words: loss, default, deficiency, insufficiency. None of them seem quite to
embody what I want to say. But what I want to say is so simple. So easy.
But nothing. Nothing. I thought about how I just wanted a moment to
enjoy the victory of writing a 250-word abstract. We need to celebrate
the victories, even the small ones, I thought to myself. I smiled. I thought
about how writing 250 words is a dismally wretched victory, like reaching
the summit of an anthill with your arms raised in triumphant jubilation.
But I do not have time for a celebration today, so I glared emptily at the
beating cursor on my screen. Pulse.
18 Confessions ofaProcrastinator 221
Nothing.
I opened this document. Sometimes writing the recalcitrant sentence
in a blank document, detached from the myriad of words in the full doc-
ument, helps me. I once again typed: These interventions and programs
can be critiqued for adhering to a deficit logic where immigrant and refu-
gee parents are considered
Still nothing.
So I write this. This. But this is not helpful.
I return to the Moments-of-change document. The articles name
has been changed several times and the title now reads The Becoming
and Changing of Parenthood, but the document title is still saved as
Moments of Change. It is written in white on the blue bar at the top of
my Word document. I think about the irony of the title, like an indiscrete
mockery. There are no moments of change right now. Everything is stulti-
fied. I become aware of a familiar feeling of pressure in the middle of my
chest, seeping through my torso, accompanied by the heaviness of a per-
vasive feeling of being empty in my head. It is not a feeling of anguish, not
a feeling of shame exactly. I cannot lay claim to these emotions, powerful
and clearthere is no vivid horror or noble flaming passions. I think of
Martha Nussbaums1 neo-stoic understanding of emotions as evaluative
judgments, eudaimonistic, and concerned with our values in a world to
which we are subjects (in both the submissive and the agentive sense
of the word). These evaluations, perhaps precognitive but not irrational,
are always about something, and thus closely connected to action, where
anger, for instance, may be a reaction to injustice and prompts resistance
or struggle, or fear prompts flight and so on. But this murky pressure
seeping through my body is a far more subtle discomfort. I cannot char-
acterize the agitation, cannot ascribe a clear identity to the emotion. It is
something much weaker than any word I can summon, something more
complex and ambiguous, like standing chest-deep in lukewarm mud.
Stuck. My fingers on the keyboard, so often rhythmically chatting along
in a merry miniature tap-dance, now immobile. This murky discomfort
obliterates action rather than creates it. I want to struggle and overcome
this ugliness. I want to transform it into virtue and clarity; oh, how I long
to be polished and neat and unambiguous; the recipe for efficiency.
222 N. Matthiesen
An email notification makes its entry in the top right corner of my

screen, hangs there for a moment, and disappears. Instant relief from the
murky ambiguous pressure. I immediately use my index finger to pull the
curser down to my email program. Open it. It is an email from Charlotte
asking about our next meeting about our journal. I replysuggest a date.
I think about our journal and wonder about what would be a good theme
for a special issue. We want to be creative, expand the boundaries of
academic writing, transgress disciplinary borders, and be inspired by lit-
erature and art. I think about artists. The only artist I know is Casper, cur-
rently living in Paris, exhibiting his paintings in London and NewYork. I
open Instagram on my phone, check his profile to see if there is anything
new: a simple black, white, and red painting of entangled bodies called
The memories boulevard of a Friday night. And selfies. I am once again
struck by how beautiful he is. Boyishly beautiful. Beautiful and produc-
tive. I remember a frivolous night years ago where he sat on the worn-
down broad-planked floor of his Copenhagen apartment, wearing only
a ripped t-shirt and his boxers, high on marijuana from pusher street in
Christiania, now covered with painted hearts and temporarily drug-free,
showing me his art for hours. I was sober. I was bored. I was oddly fasci-
nated. And I was convinced he would never make it as an artist, felt sorry
for him and his nave dream, as he sat there, skinny and pale and beauti-
ful, surrounded by sketches. Now he is exhibiting in Paris and London
and NewYork. Beautiful and productive. And I am on my couch. My
green couch. I cannot even find a suitable synonym for deficit, so I can
finish my sentence. Except for me of courseat this moment I am the
embodiment of a synonym for deficit, with my inadequacy and shameful
lack of self-discipline. The murky, smoldering ache returns, accompanied
by a distinct sense of bitter envy. Once again, I am paralyzed.
I realize that I need to do something, anything to get my writing flow-
ing, so I open this document again and here I am, writing this. This.
Several times I have heard Charlotte say that it is important to keep
writing. It does not matter what you write as long as you write, she says.
I do not question anything Charlotte says about writing. I trust in her
blindly. I think now about how I know she will hate that I have written
this when she reads itif I let her read it, that is. She will call me silly
and shake her head at me. But she ought to know by now that very little
of what I do can be labeled not-silly, very little that does not have an ele-
ment of pointlessness or randomness to it. Most of what I do is habits;
arbitrary, lacking reflection, just stuff I do with no real thought behind
it. This makes me think of the old article in New York Times called The
amygdala made me do it.2 The title is funny. It always makes me smile.
It is funny because of the idea that some small part within me, and yet
objectified as something other than me, can make me do something.
Who is me in that sentence? Who is me? Me? I resist the temptation to
do some serious soul-searching (that would be too tiresome on a Friday
morning) and instead open up Safari and type: The amygdala made me
do it. The article comes up at the top of the google search and I read:
The choices we make in day-to-day life are prompted by impulses lodged

deep within the nervous system. Not only are we not masters of our fate;
we are captives of biological determinism. Once we enter the portals of the
strange neuronal world known as the brain, we discover that to put the
matter plainly we have no idea what were doing.
That is an unsettling thought. I suppose it contains a certain relief:

I am subject to my own bodily mechanisms, I do not control myself, I
can thus not be held responsible for the fact that I am, at this moment,
incapable of writing what I am supposed to be writing. But this thinking
is nonsensicalI cannot be separated from my brain as if it was some-
thing other than me. I think of Gilbert Ryles3 the ghost in the machine.
I remember Merleau-Pontys famous quote: Truth does not inhabit
only the inner man, or more accurately, there is no inner man, man
is in the world, and only in the world does he know himself (1962, p.
xi).4 Behavior is not a mere indicator of an inner stateconsciousness
is always about something, always intentional and directed toward the
world. The mental and the physical, the I and the body, cannot be sepa-
rated, like they cannot be separated from the world. We are not solely
determined by biological mechanismsthe biological mechanisms can-
not be isolated from us as we cannot be isolated from the world. The
neurological research acknowledges this and subsequently points to the
solution: the article suggests that we need to create good habits so that we
can trick our brainan alcoholic needs to alter his/her behavior that
224 N. Matthiesen
triggers the impulse to drink, like going to an AA meeting rather than a

bar. Consequently, the responsibility is once more placed on me. I need
to form good writing habits. I think guiltily of my email program that
I know I should shut down while writing, but it is such a good path on
which to flee from the agony of inaction. I want to leave the door ajar. A
trapdoor.
Thinking of habits, I remember Jespers5 phenomenological work on
distraction in the classroom and how he brilliantly shows that high school
kids do not spend time on Facebook in class because of a lack of self-
discipline, but rather because of the complex relationship between the
human subject and materiality that is dialectically constitutive of their
being. Material artifacts and technologies act upon the subject while the
subject simultaneously acts upon the material world. The high school
students embodied habitual being in the material world means that they
are drawn by Facebook rather than necessarily actively choosing to flee
from the lesson by directing their attention elsewhere. This makes me
wonder whether writing on a typewriter or with pen and paper would
help me move on. I wonder about whether writing PUBLISH OR
PERISH on my screen saver would help. I imagine a neon light sign
with those words flashing on my screen, a kind of ominous reminder of
what is at stake when I fall into idleness. I think about my first night in
a big city where I could not fall asleep because of a flickering neon light
sign on the building adjacent to my window. I was 12. The city was
Durban in the early 1990s, still ecstatic from Mandelas rise to power and
the Springbucks glorious victory in the rugby world championship. It
was my very first time in a large city. Being white and poor in Africa is not
an available category. It cannot exist. In Doris Lessings6 novel The Grass
is Singing, the poverty of Mary and Dick Turner in Southern Rhodesia is
largely ignored and estranges them from their neighbors. But we could
in no way lay claim to poverty like Mary and Dick. We never worried,
always had what we needed, went to good schools. But almost every-
thing was homemade from the clothes we wore to the food we ate, even
our ketchup was homemade from homegrown tomatoes, ripe from the
baking Zambian sun. Today, that would be idyllic. At the time, it was a
constant source of embarrassment. My friends all had satellite TV and
clothes bought in the UK and coke and biscuits and store-bought bread
in their kitchen cupboards. So being white and, in a sense, poor, I only

barely clung on to being an existence. And this threadbare existence of
mine seemed even paler and ghost-like, surreal, in the glamor of Durban.
The shopping malls, large and glittering, were like stepping into a movie.
We ate at McDonalds. We watched Casper the friendly ghost in a cinema.
We walked on the promenade, watched the palm trees sway, and lay on
the beach with the smell of salt in the warm wind. I will always associate
that salty, windy smell with something other than me; something exotic
and different, something fundamentally more real than I.My air, the air
that was familiar to me, was dry and hot and full of dust and heavy with
the smell of cattle not far off; sometimes mixed with the warm, sweet
smell of the jacaranda or the minty leafy smell of the eucalyptus; far too
often mixed with the dizzying smell of hot sweltering tarmac and diesel
and dripping exhaust pipes. Now the air just smells clean. I do not notice
it. There is no air that is mine anymore.
I breathe deeply.
Notice the nothingness.
Think again of the neon light sign flickering in the salty smelling night
in Durban in the early 1990s.
The hotel we stayed in was not glamorous; small rooms and narrow
corridors. Everything was gray. I wanted to use the elevator, but my father
coughed and looked away when I suggested it. We took the stairs. I could
not sleep, that first night in a large city, lying on a hard matrass with
white sheets and white pillows and a scratchy gray blanket, the walls bare,
the open window, narrow, covered with a mosquito-net-gauze and a thin
white curtain that lay motionless like a veil. There was noise from engines
and brakes and honking horns and car alarms and occasionally someone
yelling. But I was used to noise when I slept; noise from crickets and frogs
in the swamp, from barking dogs, and from the bustling of my parents.
What kept me awake that night was that flickering light of the neon sign
on the building adjacent to my window. I do not know what the sign
said. I just remember the incessant flashing of red and yellow gatecrash-
ing into my consciousness through my too weak eyelid-barrier. But now,
at this moment, in an elicit co-production of memory and imagination,
the words that are flashing in the neon light sign clearly say, Publish or
perish! I smile. I imagine that sign constantly hanging over my head.
226 N. Matthiesen
Crackling and flickering. I chuckle under my breath and wipe out the
image. Silly image. I tell myself, that I like to write. I tell myself, that this
is one of the joys of my life. I open my Moments-of-change document
again, stare emptily at the beating cursor. Pulse.
Nothing.
And my article remains dormant, festering stagnation, while this
story progresses; a flourishing prodigal textwords, fingers, mind gone
roguethe emerging materialization of my failure. Consumed by ugly
feelings, action suspended, I get up and make my way to the kitchen,
put on the kettle, look absentmindedly at Facebook on my phone while
the water boils. I make a quick cup of Nescaf and return to my couch.
My green couch. With the coffee in my hands, I cannot type. I let myself
dwell in the emptiness of the sweet guilt-free moment. But the relief is
ungenerousevery time I try to run away from the smoldering ache of
inactivity, I, in my escape-attempt, chase down more murky, ugly feel-
ings, absorbing them in my flight: I flee nothing, the shame becomes
intolerable. I drink more coffee.
I am embarrassed by my constant derailing and lack of self-disci-
pline, too easily seduced into a long trail of association upon associa-
tion, all self-centered, fraught with pettiness. I want my writing to be
larger than this. I want it to have meaning. But, perhaps, in this hunt
for meaning, there is a kind of grandiosity, a longing for significance.
And who am I to want to be significant? Who am I to believe that
I can do anything, change something in the world in any real and
substantial way? I pendulate between a desire for significance and a
self-obliterating abasement. Where is that elusive fine line? How do
I find my balance? I long to be a tightrope walker. I want to be Jorge
Ojeda-Guzman7 spending endless hours on a wire in complete bal-
ance. But there is a kind of morbid relief and pleasure in wallowing
in self-loathing, trotting about myself: an indecent self-obsessiveness,
like Narcissus gazing at his own reflection, believing that he is gazing
at something other than himself, only my self-love is tainted with
repugnance. However, like Narcissus, I too believe that I, by looking
at my text, am looking out into the worldI give myself over to a
remorseless self-deception.
I open my Moments-of-change document again and stare at the beat-

ing curser with no real ambition or belief that I will ever complete that
sentence. Resignation. I limply raise the white flag. Now I no longer
know whether my suspended action is creating the ugly feelings swelling
within me, gripping my chest, or if it is these ugly feelings, fraught with
nastiness, that are holding my actions captive. I give insurrender to
inactivity.
I think: The most encumbering aspect of human being is this urge for
idleness. But I immediately regret that thought. I long for idleness, for
its legitimacy. I long for the legitimacy of the unproductive, the space
for confusion, the space for just being with no other reason than being.
I long for the time where I can surrender, I long for resistlessly allowing
the world to act upon me rather than always being pushed to act upon
the world. I long for reading; I always long to read when I write, on rare
occasions I long to write when I read. Reading is surrendering. Reading
is being invaded by anothers thoughts. Reading is allowing oneself to be
lured by the seduction of words, taking me places I could not have con-
ceived of or dreamed up on my own. The best books are those that force
themselves upon me, dissolve me, make me forget my own existence, lead
me down paths that are beyond my own potentiality, that do not exist for
me before the words make my feet wander along them. The best books
are those that wistfully, unnoticeably, captivate my being.
But now is not the time for idleness, I think, I sigh, I squabble with
my conscience, the inner voice of reason. There is a time for everything,
I remind myself, and resist a rare urge to read Ecclesiastes. But when is
the time for idleness?
I breathe deeply, put down my coffee cup, open my Moments-of-
change document and write inadequate as parents.
The text now reads: These interventions and programs can be cri-
tiqued for adhering to a deficit logic where immigrant and refugee par-
ents are considered inadequate as parents. The sentence is complete. I can
move on.
I have already forgotten why this was so difficult to come up with. If
I had not written this text, the past couple of hours would already have
dissolved into mere remnants of a memory of suffering, vague sediments,
228 N. Matthiesen
sifted through my limbs. I do not know where the words came from.
They did not pass through my mind in any conscious manner, did not
come to me in a eureka-moment. It was more as though they were lodged
in my fingers, as though I somehow stepped aside and let them come into
existence on their own.
I wonder, with Sianne Ngai,8 if words come from within or from out-
side the author. It occurs to me that the very distinction is in essence
futile.
Ironically, however useless this detour seemed, it led to a publication in
an academic world of counting, but far more importantly it allowed for the
immense pleasure of writing something that was full of meaning, something
that for me was saturated with significance. I wrote a piece of text that I
needed to read. Maybe it has also led to something else, something out of my
control, out of my realm of imagination: something sparked within you. I do
not know. What I do know is, that it was given this chance because I shared
it with Charlotte. I talked to her about dreaming, about joys and wonders,
about confusion and struggling, about the mundane and the trivial. I talked
to her about life. Research, work, writing; it is all life, made up of relations
all kinds of relations between subjects and objects and histories and structures.
But most importantly, it is made up of social relations, relations that in many
ways are detours, useless in any instrumental and predetermined sense but
fundamentally meaningful and significant.
Notes
1. Nussbaum, M. (2001). Upheavals of Thought. The Intelligence of Emotions.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/opinion/sunday/the-amygdala-
made-me-do-it.html
3. Ryle, G. (1949). The Concept of the Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
4. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945/1962). The Phenomenology of Perception.
London: Routledge.
5. Aagaard, J. (2015). Drawn to distraction: A qualitative study of off-task
use of educational technology. Computers and Education. 87, pp.9097.
6. Lessing, D. (1950/2007). The Grass is Singing. London: Harper Perennial

Modern Classic.
7. Jorge Ojeda-Guzman; a tightrope walker that holds the Guinness Book of
World Records, Tightrope Endurance Record, for living 205days on the
wire, from January 1 to July 25, 1993in Orlando, Florida.
8. Ngai, S. (2005). Ugly Feelings. Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard
University Press.
Noomi Matthiesenis an assistant professor in educational psychology at

Aalborg University, Denmark. Her research interests include marginalization,
ethnicity, communication in schools and parenting. (Editors note: She has
many talents and one of them is to keep it brief and concise).
19
Epilogue or Why Creative Detours
(Often) Have Happy Endings
VladPetreGlveanu
What is a detour? In physical terms, it refers to taking a different route,

oftentimes longer, to getting somewhere. Metaphorically, it means going
against the direct, shortest path from A to B by going through C, in what
might seem like a less economical move. When it comes to research,
going through C to get to B instead of directly travelling there borders
the absurd. Are not methods and methodologies presumably designed to
safely carry us from A (questions) to B (answers) in a logical and time
effective manner? Who needs the C (creativity?) in this process? As this
exciting collection of essays shows, we all do and, even if we think we do
not, we often cannot escape it.
The direct path from questions to answers is well-established in psy-
chology and similar disciplines, where comfortable formulas for how to
do researchinscribed into algorithmic methodological pathsare very
popular. Methods books, aimed at quantitative and increasingly at quali-
tative researchers, compete in establishing the necessary, logical steps tak-
V.P. Glveanu (*)

Webster University, Geneva, Switzerland

232 V.P. Glveanu
ing one from A to B.No getting lost, no detours, little excitement In

the name of accountability (Gaskell and Bauer 2000), itself a honourable
goal, researchers are invited both to document carefully their actions and
not to miss necessary steps, little less to invent new ones. Detours have a
bad name precisely because they can get researchers lost in the field, in
the analysis, in their writing.
It is all the more important then to reflect on the stories collected
within this book. Stories of the unplanned and the accidental, of messi-
ness and of getting lost, of rebelling and procrastinating in doing research.
As the editors note, these other paths, often erased from traditional rep-
resentations of methodology, have value (Meier etal. 2017, this volume).
More precisely, they have creative value. Why is this the case?
To answer this question, we need to consider for a moment the
essence of creativity. Such a multifaceted phenomenon, it might be
argued, has more than one defining characteristic (and certainly goes
beyond simple cognitive processes such as divergent thinking). Since cre-
ativity is largely domain specific (Kaufman and Baer 2005), there are
potentially as many creativities as there are tasks, people and contexts.
And yet, what brings instances of creating together, I suggest, is the fact
that they highlight, cultivate and actively use difference (Glveanu and
Gillespie 2015; Glveanu 2016). There are important differences between
creator and audience, between symbols and things, between past, present
and future, between the actual and the possible and so on. Added to them
is the difference between linear paths of action and detours.
A detour does not simply offer us a new route but also a new position
to see the world from and, with it, a new perspective (Glveanu 2015).
Getting to point C does not simply disrupt the move from A to B, but
helps us see both of them in a different light. The creative value of differ-
ences in perspective, occasioned by physical or mental detours, rests pre-
cisely in giving us a bigger picture of where we are and where we are
heading. A detour, either while beingtaken or afterward, offers the travel-
ler an opportunity to reflect. This reflexivity is not a solitary, instanta-
neous cognitive act. It is a long-term, embodied, imaginative exercise of
placing different perspectives in dialogue and learning from them. In
methodological terms, the reflexivity prompted by a detour encourages
researchers to consider their premises, questions, methods, analysis and
19 Epilogue or Why Creative Detours (Often) Have Happy Endings 233
findings from a new standpoint (C), outside of the familiar and the
expected (A and B).
This dynamic is widely documented by the preceding chapters. They
both document and advocate for the creative value of detours in a variety
of research contexts and at different times within the research process.
What helped contributors reach a new vantage point on their path?
Reading novels, doing art and philosophy (Grn 2017, this volume) or
travelling around (Johansen 2017, this volume). Deciding to do things
differently by engaging in action research (Gittell 2017, this volume),
activism (Ingerslev 2017, this volume) or a critical reflection of academic
practices (Birk 2017, this volume). Using new methods such as drawing
tasks (Meier 2017, this volume) and adjusting ones expectations while
conducting fieldwork (de Saint Laurent 2017, this volume). When the
data are all collected, new possibilities for detours come out of hunting
for patterns (Klsen 2017, this volume) or collaborative writing (Gale
and Wyatt 2017, this volume; Gilmore and Harding 2017, this volume).
These experiences encourage researchers to reflect on the emotional value
of narratives (Willumsen 2017, this volume) and to experiment with
open texts (Wegener 2017, this volume). When findings emerge, they
might be surprising or contradictory (Billett 2017, in volume) and ask
for detours in interpretation. The task of writing up may invite procrasti-
nation (Matthiesen 2017, this volume). On the whole, these activities
reveal the numerous opportunities embedded within everyday conversa-
tions (Smissaert 2017, this volume), meetings (Maslo 2017, this volume)
and the fruitful intersections between life and work (Tanggaard 2017,
this volume).
The detours above vary in scope, nature and consequences. Some take
the researcher through the world of things and places, others through the
world of other people and others yet through explorations of the possible
and the imagined. They tell us about risk taking, accepting to be lost, to
be messy, to be worried and to improvise. Importantly, each chapter, in
its own way, documents a basic fact: that one never returns from a detour
to the very same point. Even when they do not take us far or get to a dead
end, detours enrich our experience as researchers and open to us a new
world of possibilities for thought and action. If the creative process is
often described as a type of aller-retour (Glveanu et al. 2013)a
234 V.P. Glveanu
constant movement between self and other, mind and matter, doing and
perceivingthis dynamic is completed by detours, that is by the possibil-
ity to take new routes, embody new positions and bring new perspectives
to the situation.
Towards the end, an observation about the path we are taking detours
from. Weicks (1995) important question how can I know what I think
until I see what I say? (see the Editors Introduction) can be replaced here
by: how do I know the road until I have seen it from a detour?. In line
with my argument above, detours create the necessary distance to notice
differencesbetween plans and reality, between what is and what could
be, and so on and cultivate their creative potential. And yet, for several
reasons, this kind of reflexivity comes from having experienced the
beaten path first. First of all, it is by knowing the established road that
we can recognise a detour. Second, when placing perspectives in dialogue,
it is important not to operate with stereotypical views of what the main-
stream is and what the path it lays before us can offer. Third, there is a lot
of value in encouraging free thinking, spontaneity and improvisation in
research and academic discussions, as long as they build on a solid basis.
Nothing replaces having travelled the conventional path, especially think-
ing you have travelled it just because you saw it from afar. Last but not
least, for as fascinating as detours are, they cannot make up a whole jour-
ney. The value of taking a detour rests on being able to reflect on this
experience in relation to others. Just as there is no creativity without con-
straints, there is no detour without the main road; both should be appre-
ciated in their own right.
Finallyand up for the occasiona note on endings, in particular
happy endings. The meaning and importance of detours should not be
reduced to their immediate outcomes. In the short-term, we are likely to
feel confused, lost or scared when stepping outside the comfort of beaten
paths. And we might even travel them reluctantly, worrying about time,
effort and our final destination. The story of creativity is often told in
terms of happy endings (i.e. creative products) rather than meaningful
journeys (i.e. creative processes). This is highly misleading, especially
when it comes to research activities, for which we can legitimately ask
what the end actually is. Is it the moment the data were collected? The
findings wrote up? Or published? Or cited? Focusing on outcomes at the
expense of processes drains research of the excitement and wonder that

should be fuelling it. The current volumes extensive discussion of detours
points, on the contrary, to the intimate link between wandering and won-
dering. Living nomadic research lives is the anathema of todays academic
practices. For contributors to this book, it is its only salvation. By wan-
dering, they argue, we rediscover our passion for a topic, our interest in a
question, our fascination with the world around us. It is a kind of happi-
ness that waits for no particular ending, indeed, one that has none in
sight.
References
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opment at work. In C.Wegener, N.Meier, & E.Maslo (Eds.), Cultivating
creativity in methodology and research: In praise of detours. London: Palgrave.
Birk, R.H. (2017). Worth, wonder and worry in the accelerated academy. In
C.Wegener, N.Meier, & E.Maslo (Eds.), Cultivating creativity in methodol-
ogy and research: In praise of detours. London: Palgrave.
de Saint Laurent, C. (2017). Staying on topic: Doing research between impro-
visation and systematisation. In C.Wegener, N.Meier, & E.Maslo (Eds.),
Cultivating creativity in methodology and research: In praise of detours. London:
Palgrave.
Gale, K., & Wyatt, J. (2017). Riding the waves of collaborative-writing-as-
inquiry: Some ontological creative detours. In C. Wegener, N. Meier, &
E.Maslo (Eds.), Cultivating creativity in methodology and research: In praise of
detours. London: Palgrave.
Gaskell, G., & Bauer, M. (2000). Towards public accountability: Beyond sam-
pling, reliability and validity. In M.Bauer & G.Gaskell (Eds.), Qualitative
researching with text, image and sound (pp.336350). London: Sage.
Gilmore, S., & Harding, N. (2017). There is no such thing as a journal paper.
In C.Wegener, N.Meier, & E.Maslo (Eds.), Cultivating creativity in meth-
odology and research: In praise of detours. London: Palgrave.
Gittell, J.H. (2017). An unexpected detour from ivory tower to action research.
In C.Wegener, N.Meier, & E.Maslo (Eds.), Cultivating creativity in meth-
odology and research: In praise of detours. London: Palgrave.
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Glveanu, V. P. (2015). Creativity as a sociocultural act. Journal of Creative

Behavior, 49(3), 165180.
Glveanu, V. P. (2016). Difference. In V. P. Glveanu, L. Tanggaard, &
C. Wegener (Eds.), Creativity: A new vocabulary (pp. 3642). London:
Palgrave.
Glveanu, V.P., & Gillespie, A. (2015). Creativity out of difference: Theorising
the semiotic, social and temporal origin of creative acts. In V.P. Glveanu,
A. Gillespie, & J. Valsiner (Eds.), Rethinking creativity: Contributions from
social and cultural psychology (pp.115). Hove/New York: Routledge.
Glveanu, V. P., Lubart, T., Bonnardel, N., Botella, M., de Biaisi, M.-P.,
Desainte-Catherine, M., Georgsdottir, A., Guillou, K., Kurtag, G.,
Mouchiroud, C., Storme, M., Wojtczuk, A., & Zenasni, F. (2013). Creativity
as action: Findings from five creative domains. Frontiers in Educational
Psychology, 4, 114.
Grn, L. (2017). The wonder of things as they are. Theorizing obesity and fam-
ily life with art. In C.Wegener, N.Meier, & E.Maslo (Eds.), Cultivating
Ingerslev, K. (2017). Deliberate detours as paths to emergent knowledge cre-
ation. In C.Wegener, N.Meier, & E.Maslo (Eds.), Cultivating creativity in
methodology and research: In praise of detours. London: Palgrave.
Johansen, C.B. (2017). Into the wild time: Notes from a traveller. In C.Wegener,
N. Meier, & E. Maslo (Eds.), Cultivating creativity in methodology and
research: In praise of detours. London: Palgrave.
Kaufman, J.C., & Baer, J.(Eds.). (2005). Creativity across domains: Faces of the
muse. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Klsen, C. (2017). Metaphorical structuring of pattern analysis. In C.Wegener,
Maslo, E. (2017). Give it a name and it will be yours: How opportunities to
reflect on essential questions can create space for learning. In C.Wegener,
Matthiesen, N. (2017). Confessions of a procrastinator. In C. Wegener,
Meier, N. (2017). Knowing across time and place. In C.Wegener, N.Meier, &
Meier, N., Wegener, C., & Maslo, E. (2017). Editors introduction: The power
of showing how it happened. In C.Wegener, N.Meier, & E.Maslo (Eds.),
Cultivating creativity in methodology and research: In praise of detours. London:
Palgrave.
Smissaert, C. (2017). Thats responsibility. In C.Wegener, N.Meier, & E.Maslo
(Eds.), Cultivating creativity in methodology and research: In praise of detours.
London: Palgrave.
Tanggaard, L. (2017). In between: Creative spaces and detours as part of a
researchers life. In C. Wegener, N. Meier, & E. Maslo (Eds.), Cultivating
Wegener, C. (2017). Writing my way home. In C. Wegener, N. Meier, &
Weick, K.E. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Willumsen, E. (2017). Telling tales of the unexpected. In C.Wegener, N.Meier,
& E.Maslo (Eds.), Cultivating creativity in methodology and research: In praise
of detours. London: Palgrave.
Vlad Petre Glveanu is a big fan of detours. He is an Associate Professor and

Head of Department of Psychology at Webster University Geneva, lives in
Switzerland, grew up in Romania and finished his university education in the
United Kingdom. He studied social and cultural psychology, worked for many
years on creativity and is currently exploring topics related to politics and activ-
ism. He enjoys academic writing (at least once in a while) but also tries to experi-
ment with fiction, painting and poetry (more or less successfully). Despite these
many detours, he remains surprisingly stubborn in his food preferences, work
routines and obsession with his two cats, Peanut and Butter.
Appendix
This book is a collection of personal, theorised essays about the unplanned,

accidental and even obstructive events that occur in research life and
the substantial potential for analytical insights herein. We call them
detoursthe routes we did not plan, the clutter we made or encountered
when carrying out our research and the results of it all, which we may not
fully understand.
Recipes for creativity rarely consider the learning potential embedded
in stories of other peoples actual practices, messy and unfinished as they
may be. Sharing such stories holds the power to make us more adventur-
ous, sensitive and creative researchers.
Hopefully, some of these stories will resonate with you as a reader
and make you feel like writing. By writingsharingreadingwriting, we
can expand the playground of research and inspire a research culture in
which accountable research methodologies involve adventurousness and
not-being-so-sure.

Studies in Creativity and Culture, DOI10.1007/978-3-319-60216-5
Index
A C
Academia, 3, 4, 76, 93, 97, 104, Concept, 12, 44, 58, 79, 82, 85, 87,
178 100, 123, 127, 133, 134, 145,
Acting, 3, 49, 51, 87, 120122, 155158, 163, 167, 182, 195,
170 196, 202, 203
Action, 2, 31, 36, 40n1, 45, 51, Conference, 57, 59, 62, 65, 67,
71, 80, 8487, 109, 113, 107112, 132, 134, 137, 139,
133, 134, 138140, 155, 186, 207, 209, 210, 215, 220
157, 177, 183, 202, 221, Creativity, 1, 2, 4, 5, 31, 44, 53,
226, 227, 232, 233 5863, 65, 66, 85, 95, 133, 193,
Analysis, 2, 3, 19, 57, 103, 106, 109, 194, 196, 203, 231, 232, 234
111, 121, 132, 133, 136139, Culture, academic, 61, 84, 125
147, 148, 155, 169, 208, 210,
215, 232
D
Data, 3, 4, 12, 13, 18, 22, 53, 63,
B 82, 83, 103, 106, 109, 112,
Boundary/boundaries, 29, 5760, 114, 124, 132134, 137139,
6567, 72, 82, 89, 132, 144, 146149, 155157,
133, 136, 139, 197, 159164, 167, 168, 207, 209,
222 210, 233, 234

Studies in Creativity and Culture, DOI10.1007/978-3-319-60216-5
242Index
Detour, 35, 13, 46, 71, 74, 75, 77, K

7990, 115, 132, 134, 140, Knowing, 4, 30, 83, 111, 124,
169, 181, 193203, 208, 211, 131140
215, 219, 228, 231235 Knowledge, 4, 33, 53, 72, 75, 79,
Detouring, 5, 79, 80, 219 95, 98, 121, 125127,
Difference, 85, 105, 145, 195, 203, 133135, 137139, 149, 150,
232, 234 157, 162, 211, 212, 215
Discomfort, 221
Diversity, 171
Drawing, 37, 114, 127, 131, 132, L
137, 138, 163, 164, 233 Learning, 2, 31, 33, 53, 5760, 66,
67, 75, 76, 8385, 87, 88,
100, 119128, 134, 137, 196,
E 207, 220, 232, 239
Emotion, 221 Life, 25, 11, 30, 33, 35, 36, 39,
Ethnography, 12, 13, 1921, 89, 44, 45, 51, 86, 96, 100, 111,
112, 121 114, 115, 120, 125, 127,
135, 138, 147149,
170178, 181, 184188,
F 194, 198, 200, 201, 203,
Family, 11, 53, 63, 65, 71, 84, 112, 213215, 223, 226, 228, 233
127, 169, 174, 176, 177, 184,
186, 195
Finding, 59, 112, 119, 123126, M
135, 157, 158, 177, 193 Materiality, 4, 31, 104, 107, 135,
Friendship, 111, 112, 115, 188, 198 196, 224
Method, 1, 2, 4, 31, 59, 60, 62, 75,
82, 83, 85, 103, 104, 110,
H 113, 132, 208211, 215
Home, 14, 19, 46, 50, 63, 65, 73, Methodology, 4, 5, 31, 103, 104,
80, 81, 132, 137, 138, 146, 114, 132, 149, 208, 212, 214,
148, 181 215, 231, 232
Methods, 84, 96, 99, 132, 133, 171,
178, 231233
I
Innovation, 2, 8184, 86, 87, 89, 133
Interview, 13, 39, 40, 73, 108, 111, N
112, 132, 133, 136, 137, 139, Naming, 164, 198, 199
143148, 150, 160, 169, 171, Novel, 12, 13, 16, 45, 93, 100, 128,
172, 177, 178, 209, 210, 213 175, 189, 224
Index
243
P Reflection, 4, 5, 13, 34, 64, 156,

Participant, research, 80, 82, 83, 87, 165, 166, 177, 178, 202, 203,
88, 132, 133, 136, 208, 209, 208215, 223, 226, 233
213, 215 Reflexivity, 104, 203, 232, 234
Pattern, 80, 89, 155168 Research, 15, 13, 24, 30, 37, 44,
Place, 3, 4, 16, 17, 21, 33, 45, 48, 57, 59, 63, 64, 66, 71, 73, 76,
51, 53, 57, 58, 63, 66, 73, 77, 7983
75, 8486, 88, 94, 101, 120, Responsibility, 36, 37, 4354, 72, 75,
122, 126, 131133, 136, 138, 171, 173, 174, 182, 224
137, 139, 143, 145, 148,
150, 155, 162, 164, 171,
185, 187, 198, 209, 211, S
214, 227, 233 Sensemaking, 2, 82, 133, 134, 139,
Potential, creative, 3, 4, 134, 234 140, 198
Practice, 2, 4, 45, 48, 5759, 65, Sharing, 4, 5, 196, 239
73, 75, 76, 80, 85, 94, 95, Space, 1, 4, 21, 37, 45, 51, 76, 134,
97, 99, 100, 105, 113, 135, 139, 160, 184, 189, 197,
121124, 126128, 134, 198, 207215, 227
138, 139, 149, 157159, Spatiality, 3, 34, 135, 136, 198
164, 167, 177, 193, 196, Stories, 25, 12, 16, 36, 48, 61, 71,
197, 201203, 233, 235, 239 80, 81, 85, 89, 90, 93, 105,
Practices, creative, 1, 194, 202, 203 108, 132135, 140, 144149,
Practitioner, 48, 51, 71, 7376, 83, 169172, 174178, 188, 190,
126, 139 198, 203n1, 211, 214, 220,
Process, 2, 4, 15, 19, 59, 64, 65, 74, 226, 232, 239
75, 81, 8385, 87, 88, 99, Strategy, 4, 29, 30, 34, 39, 80, 100,
100, 104, 105, 107, 113, 114, 115, 122, 149
122124, 126, 127, 132134, Stuck, 185187, 221
140, 148, 155158, 160, 162, Sustainability, 29, 39, 85
164, 166168, 176, 193, 195,
196, 202, 203, 209, 210, 214,
215, 231235 T
Procrastination, 3, 233 Temporality, 30, 36, 37
Theorizing, 24, 120, 122, 127, 202
Thinking, 2, 3, 13, 15, 22, 24, 31,
R 51, 57, 58, 72, 8083, 85, 87,
Rationality, 30, 35, 113, 114, 162 95, 107, 110, 111, 114,
Reading, 2, 5, 62, 79, 80, 114, 126, 120122, 135, 145, 150, 177,
136, 162, 194, 199, 219, 227, 194, 196, 202, 208, 211215,
233, 239 220, 223, 224, 232, 234
244Index
Time, 4, 12, 15, 2940, 44, 45, 50, Wording, 3, 95, 158, 163
51, 58, 59, 61, 63, 66, 67, 83, Work, 25, 30, 31, 50, 51, 53, 57,
84, 89, 95, 97, 99, 107, 108, 5963, 65, 66, 7176, 8085,
111114, 120, 131, 144147, 87, 94, 95, 97, 98, 100, 101,
155, 160, 161, 164, 167, 172, 103, 104, 106112, 114, 115,
178, 182186, 188, 189, 119, 132140, 143, 146, 147,
194196, 209211, 213, 214, 150, 157, 159, 161, 165169,
220, 224, 226, 227, 231, 234 171, 173, 177, 178, 182,
Travel, 35, 39, 6365, 67, 135, 136, 184186, 188, 190, 194, 196,
171, 214, 231, 233, 234 198, 201, 207209, 211, 212,
214, 224, 228, 233
Work, scientific, 2, 4
U Writing, 3, 5, 13, 44, 48, 53, 62, 65,
Unexpected, 7177, 95, 120, 127, 72, 73, 79, 80, 109, 110, 114,
128, 135, 169178 134, 135, 146, 181190,
193196, 198, 201, 202, 208,
209, 211215, 220224, 226,
W 228, 232, 233, 239
Wonder, 3, 11, 31, 50, 81, 93101,
144, 198, 222, 224, 228, 235

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PALGRAVE

More information about this series at

Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017951770

The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

Cover illustration: TAO Images Limited / Alamy Stock Photo

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

1 Editors Introduction: ThePower ofShowing How It

Part 1 Different Vantage Points, New Insights 9

2 The Wonder ofThings asThey Are: Theorizing Obesity

3 Into theWild Time: Notes fromaTraveller29

Part 2 Research Life: Life and Research 55

5 In Between: Creative Spaces andDetours asPart

6 An Unexpected Detour fromIvory Tower toAction

7 Deliberate Detours asPaths toEmergent Knowledge

8 Worth, Wonder andWorry intheAccelerated Academy93

9 There Is No Such Thing asaJournal Paper103

Part 3 How We Know: Making Sense of Methods and

10 The Unanticipated Outcomes ofResearch: Learning

11 Knowing Across Time andPlace131

12 Staying onTopic: Doing Research Between

Part 4 Coping with Complexity: Writing to Understand

13 Metaphorical Structuring ofPattern Analysis155

14 Telling Tales oftheUnexpected169

15 Writing My Way Home181

16 Riding theWaves ofCollaborative-Writing-as-Inquiry:

17 Give It aName andIt Will BeYours: How

19 Epilogue or Why Creative Detours (Often) Have

Fig. 13.1 Coaxing 159

Table 9.1 Deviations 104

Creativity in research is much in demand and always lauded. Every year,

The Author(s) 2018 1

How can I know what I think until I see what I say?

This often-cited quote is fascinating because it reverses some taken-

How can I know what I did until I see where I am?

The detour metaphor is a spatial expression referring to the iterations

showing how it happened (Cerwonka and Malkki 2008, p. 186).

Lather, P. A. (2007). Getting lost: Feminist efforts toward a double(d) science.

Ninna Meier is an associate professor at the Department of Sociology and Social

Charlotte Wegeneris an associate professor at the Department of

Elina Maslo is an associate professor at the Danish School of Education,

My impression is that philosophers nowadays tend to associate the experi-

The Author(s) 2018 11

I praise, thus, the opportunity given to me in this chapter of taking a

Bente: Well, shes sitting right here (pointing to herself

Susanne: No, there was a father too.

Bo (interrupts): Well the thinking goes that because it is my mother,

Marie: It is up to 40 pounds now. It was the start of the sum-

She replies: No. Not at all. Not at all like before.

Her family chips in:

Bo: There was a time when we locked the cupboards.

Marie: Yes. I was I was always hungry. I would ten minutes

To paraphrase Cavell, this is a novel that invigorates the perception of

comes with an overload of explanatory weight (individual lifestyle, the

Fig. 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3 (continued)

Fig. 2.4 Conviction 6 by Maria Speyer

Or, to put it differently, Speyer posited the experiential truth of inter-

Fig. 2.5 Adherence 1 by Maria Speyer

Fig. 2.6 Red Sky 1 by Maria Speyer

Thinking andTheorizing withArt

claim takes objectivity itself as just one possible attitude within a

Grn, L. (2017b). Slgt, hygge, tid og sted. Familieperspektiver p overvgtsep-

Part I: Wrestling theUtilitarian Devil

1 Editors Introduction: ThePower ofShowing How It

Part 1 Different Vantage Points, New Insights 9

2 The Wonder ofThings asThey Are: Theorizing Obesity

3 Into theWild Time: Notes fromaTraveller29

Part 2 Research Life: Life and Research 55

5 In Between: Creative Spaces andDetours asPart

6 An Unexpected Detour fromIvory Tower toAction

7 Deliberate Detours asPaths toEmergent Knowledge

8 Worth, Wonder andWorry intheAccelerated Academy93

9 There Is No Such Thing asaJournal Paper103

Part 3 How We Know: Making Sense of Methods and

10 The Unanticipated Outcomes ofResearch: Learning

11 Knowing Across Time andPlace131

12 Staying onTopic: Doing Research Between

Part 4 Coping with Complexity: Writing to Understand

13 Metaphorical Structuring ofPattern Analysis155

14 Telling Tales oftheUnexpected169

15 Writing My Way Home181

16 Riding theWaves ofCollaborative-Writing-as-Inquiry:

17 Give It aName andIt Will BeYours: How

19 Epilogue or Why Creative Detours (Often) Have

Fig. 13.1 Coaxing 159

Table 9.1 Deviations 104

Thinking andTheorizing withArt

Part I: Wrestling theUtilitarian Devil

Part II: Traveller Doesnt Know Where toGo

Part III: Waste Indulgence

art IV: Research-Care inandBeyond

F ocusing ontheHorizontal Aspects

Striving toSucceed intheIvory Tower

Detour fromtheIvory Tower

What IHave Learned

Detours asaWay ofLiving

Dear Researcher, Which Path toChoose?

ecoming anEntrepreneur: It All Started

ollective Actions Transform Inequality

ssemblage: ANew Framework forAnalysing

eliberate Detours asPaths toEmergent