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Chapter Two – Being There – On Method Chapter Two – Being There – On Method ON BEING AND INSIDER LOOKING IN Interviews with Bruen and Chilmaid Prolonged On-Site Social Action And
Research Engaging In Naturalistic Inquiry Re-cognizing Fractals and Holographs Using Thematic Analysis/ Narrative
Analysis Structure/Event Process Analysis On Being a Scientific Detective ON BEING ETHICAL AND ECOLOGICAL TABLE Table 1 Examples of Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s
Indigenous Research Projects (Smith1999) Table 3 Thematic Analysis Process from
Miles and Huberman’s list (Miles and Huberman 1994) OVERVIEW This
chapter describes the research methods I used to source and gather data about
Neville’s life work, and the processes I used in making coherent sense out of
the diversity. The Chapter commences with how issues concerning being an
insider looking in were resolved. My data collecting, using a combination of
interviewing, archival research, on site visits and immersion in prolonged
action research in enabling and supporting social action, is discussed. My
use of naturalistic enquiry is outlined and the Chapter concludes with a
discussion of the processes I used for data analysis and the steps I took to
ensure trustworthiness. ON BEING AND INSIDER LOOKING IN When
I started this Thesis I sensed that I was an insider looking in. I had
people’s trust. I had special insider knowledge that an outsider may never be
given clearance to know. I had access. I had had a massive amount of access
to Neville. I had a feel for what Neville and the Laceweb were all about. I
knew a lot. For me, there was concern about my being potentially prejudiced,
biased and selective in data gathering and analysis, even with the best will
in the world. Any outsiders attempting to do this Research would also bring
their biases and prejudgments to the task. An outsider may never find out
about the Laceweb. I chose to use naturalistic inquiry and this puts big ‘O’
Objectivity into question (Lincoln and Guba 1985).
Outsiders would have potentially even greater difficulty than I did in
sussing out what was and is going on. Outsiders would also have had issues
with bias and what to included and exclude. It could be said that as an
insider I would be interested in giving it a ‘good spin’. I have a vested
interest because of my close connection to ensure that this Research has
rigor and substance. Only a very good Thesis would have ‘legitimizing’ value.
For example, according to Dr. Elizabeth deCastro, a long-term attendee at
International forums, my inclusion in a UN Expert Group on Psycho-Social
Response to Emergencies in Thailand in August 2001 was dependent on my Thesis
involvement. To address these issues I endeavored to be simultaneously close
and detached. Neville specifically worked with me on attachment/detachment. I
was at varying times by contextual circumstance and intentionally, an insider
and outsider, native and stranger. At times I felt this role fluidity as
emotionally painful, wearing and exhausting (Petford Working Group 1992).
Ultimately, this ‘insider looking in’ issue becomes a matter of degree and
being mindful of the issues. I had a strong drive to have the Thesis
methodological sound. The topic deserves this. While
I had written over 150,000 words on Laceweb related frameworks, processes and
action before commencing this Thesis, it turned out that I was not the
insider I thought I was at the start of this Research. Then I had very little
of what is woven into this Thesis. I had bits. I did not at first realize I
had scant knowledge, understanding or feel of Neville’s Way – even though I
had been talking and working with him for twelve years. Neville told me in
early 1999 he had felt despair with some of my pre-Thesis writing. He said
that my earlier writing was nowhere near tentative enough. I knew of
Neville’s concept ‘Cultural Keyline’. I had no idea what this meant. When I
asked Neville what he meant by ‘Cultural Keyline he said I already knew (I
sense now that he meant that I had already incorporated Cultural Keyline into
my mode of being, though I did not recognize this at the time and did not
need to know this at the time). I had asked him because I had no idea what it
meant. Afterwards I found out that virtually all I thought I knew about
Keyline was incorrect. For many of the early months of this Thesis I was in
overwhelm. There appeared to be a dozen or more Theses. Which one was I
doing? Focusing on my Thesis focus and deciding what I was, and was not doing
was important. One of my challenges in this Thesis was how to write so as to
not lose or overwhelm the reader or myself. Linked to this was how I could
convey the interconnections – how to weave it all together meaningfully. The
Thesis has emerged as something beyond anything I had contemplated and
emerged through contemplative action, persistence and a lot of work. Neville
linked me with many others with whom I also had prolonged and in-depth
research interviews/dialogues. (Kellehear 1993). From 1987 onwards Neville
immersed me in social action contexts with him and on my own (Appendix 02).
These contexts were of matching form with each and every one of the
diverse social actions he had been exploring. While I had
been told and shown so much, Neville only told me of his collected papers in
the Original Manuscripts Collection in the Mitchell Library within the NSW
State Library in Sydney when he knew my Research towards a PhD had been
confirmed. As ever strategic, that Archival collection was put there for
serious academic study. Neville told me where that primary source archival
material was stored as well as the location of other materials. This is discussed later in the Chapter. I wanted
to interact naturally with informants and not have detailed note taking
interfering with my attending. Taylor and Bogdan estimate that one hour of
interviewing generates around forty pages of typed data (Taylor and Bogdan
1984). Most of the time Neville and I talked very fast. At the time I tested
my speed of thought at around 650 words a minute without any sense of rush
and Neville was way faster than me. My guess is that our discussion would
have generated far more than forty pages per hour. Given that I had in excess
of 150 hours of discussions with Neville and many hours with other
interviewees, tape recording was deemed inappropriate. As my method, I
followed Minichiello et al in relying on memory aided by brief note taking.
These notes were also what Burgess calls an ‘aide memoire’ for the next
interview (Burgess 1984). While speaking by phone I would type in key words
and phrases into my computer in my own shorthand and type up my notes more
fully directly the call was finished. In face-to-face interviewing I made
brief notes throughout, concentrating my attention on themes, key words,
incidents, names and ideas. I jotted these down as they emerged in
conversation. Typically I jotted down or recalled the meanings of remarks
rather than verbatim statements. Succinct important comments likely to be
used in the Thesis were recorded verbatim. I used my own shorthand in note
taking. Examples were FH for Fraser House, and BG for Big Group. Neville’s
therapeutic use of tension in Big Group was code ‘Big Group tension BGT’ and
became ‘BGT’. I always wrote up my notes on a computer within an hour of an
interview/discussion (Minichiello, Aroni et al. 1995, p. 134). Minichiello et
al suggest that ‘Researchers who have mastered the above process can conduct
up to two hours of interview without the use of a tape recorder (Bogdan and
Biklen 1982). I found I could do this. During
face-to-face interviews with Neville between 1986 and 1998 I would also take
cryptic shorthand. We would speak for about 40 minutes before a break. I
would then download my notes and recall onto my computer. I would print these
notes as my guide for the next 40 minutes. I found that my notetaking enabled
recording, coding, analysis, interpretation and emergent design (and vice
versa) on the run and gave scope for analysis and interpretation to be
discussed as it emerged with informants. This allowed commentaries about the
mode of discussion, analysis and interpretation to be exchanged then and
there. Links between things were being discussed as they arose. In using
Minichiello et al benchmarks for this note taking mode (Minichiello, Aroni et
al. 1995, p. 134), it was ‘fair’ to me and interviewees, the data gathering
was valid and effective, and it did aid in analyzing of data. I engaged
in writing through rather than writing up. While I would make many file
notes, right from the start of the Thesis I started writing the actual
Thesis. I constantly added and reworked - as if it was a ‘clay statue’. This
is consistent with my emergent design. It did mean constant rereading of the
latest draft, and as it got larger, it meant that I had the latest version
‘in my head’. As I gathered more data
and reflected I was constantly looking for where things fitted. I will return
to this later in the chapter. My
interviewees were telling absorbing stories and describing structure and
process that were very memorable. Listening for key themes and ideas
encouraged my attending. With counseling skills training I had received from
Terry O’Neil and Neville’s mentoring, I had well-developed interviewing and
attending competencies. Recall that I had been trained to paraprofessional
status in counseling and interviewing skills by O’Neil at the La Trobe
University Student Counseling Unit and had completed 18 months of work as a
para-professional student counselor. Terry had modeled his counseling and
group work on his experiences with Neville in Fraser House. Once avid
discussion with my interviewees was in flow, I would use reflecting back comment,
paraphrasing, summarizing, para-linguistics and minimal encouragers in
supporting their flow of consciousness. I had also developed individual and
group psychotherapy competencies through my work with Neville and my work
doing jail group socio-therapy/psycho-therapy and other assignments he teed
up for me. As well,
Neville and others had enabled me to be firstly, proficient in information
gathering using the NLP language metamodel (Minichiello, Aroni et al. 1995,
p. 111) developed by Bandler and Grinder (Bandler and Grinder 1975), and
secondly, competent in using Ericksonian Language patterns (Bandler, Grinder
et al. 1975; Grinder, De Lozier et al. 1977; Grinder, Bandler et al. 1981;
Hanlon 1987) and patterns evolved by Virginia Satir (Satir 1964; Satir 1972;
Bandler, Grinder et al. 1976; Satir 1983; Satir 1988). I used these
competencies in my exchanges with Neville and my other interviewees to
support recall and aid thick description (Geertz 1973). Often Neville and I
would be so attuned that we would have things flow without complete sentences
and we would finish each other’s sentences as confirmation of empathetic
shared understanding. Neville
and I had many overlapping interests. He had competencies I sought to
acquire. During the ten years I knew Neville before commencing this Thesis in
July 1998, I had many hours of ‘discussions’ with Neville that were informal
prolonged in-depth research interviews/dialogues. This was a mutually desired
and supported process. We did little by way of social chitchat unless it was
networking related. In fact for social exchange, Neville preferred the
company of others, not me. Minichiello
(et. al.) define in-depth interviewing as ‘conversation with a purpose – a
conversation between researcher and informant focusing on the informant’s
perception of self, life and experience, and expressed in his or her own
words. It is the means by which the researcher can gain access to and
subsequently understand, the private interpretations of social reality that
individuals hold (Minichiello, Aroni et al. 1995, p. 81.)’. My use of
in-depth interviewing is consistent with my naturalistic inquiry frame and
use of grounded theory – discussed later (Glaser and Strauss 1967). Prolonged
Interviews with Neville face-to-face were held when I stayed with him in
Bondi Junction, New South Wales, Yungaburra, Queensland and in Rapid Creek,
Darwin. These face-to-face interviews were daily and sustained, often lasting
all day and well into the night. A couple of times in Yungaburra I stayed for
a fortnight. I stayed a week in Darwin. I stayed for a week with Neville in
Bondi Junction many times during 1986 and 1987 and traveled up to Bondi
Junction for long weekends monthly for eighteen months during that period coinciding
with the Bondi Junction Dispersed Therapeutic Community Sharing Sundays. I
also held interviews with Neville by phone. When I
commenced the Thesis in July 1998, Neville and I agreed that interviews would
be by phone and typically four times a week. By common agreement we worked
better on the phone. Phone calls were typically around two hours or longer.
In 1999, the holding of interviews were dependent on Neville’s pain levels
from his bladder cancer, and during this period we generally had discussions
one or two nights a week. The discussion length was generally between thirty
to sixty minutes. During the phone interviews I typed on the computer as we
talked. The bulk of the time we would have unstructured discussion and
storytelling themes rather than question and answer. My notes
referred mainly to discussion themes rather than specific questions. Most of
these in-depth interviews were recording Neville’s life history, with
storytelling a large part (Minichiello, Aroni et al. 1995, Chap. 7). These
stories related to Fraser House, Fraser House Outreach and the Laceweb. We
constantly jumped around in time. Neville very much saw his life action as
emergent (Minichiello, Aroni et al. 1995, p. 152). I was
subjectively endeavoring to enter Neville’s socially constructed world’s
through his ‘precariously negotiated subjective views of it’ (Minichiello,
Aroni et al. 1995, p. 152), the stuff of Poole’s intersubjectivity – my
experiencing of Neville’s experiencing of my experiencing of him (Poole 1972).
These discussions did involve a mutual inter-subjective exchange of
information (Minichiello, Aroni et al. 1995, p. 179) - what Neville called
co-learning. Often
Neville would initiate a new theme. For example, up at Yungaburra in 1993
Neville volunteered the story of his being lost as a three year old and his
near death experience. The conversation flowed to his second near death with
the grass fire. This led to a discussion about the evolving of his life
quest. Another theme commenced in 1993 by Neville was the potent relevance of
his father’s, Keyline work and Neville’s adaptation of this as ‘Cultural
Keyline’. I had not heard of these aspects being related to Neville’s
psychiatric work before. Even then, with so much storytelling and discussion,
I did not realize till around mid 1999 that up till that time I had so
filtered my hearing, through my prejudices and preconceptions, that I had
heard and understood little of what Neville was saying. During 1998 and early
1999 I was still seeking to find out the change process that was used
in Fraser House. I still was thinking in terms of, ‘an expert using therapy
techniques on the mentally ill’ frame. Neville had told me time and again
that the change process was ‘self-help’ and ‘mutual help’ and that
‘community’ was the therapy. For all this telling, I was still
thinking – ‘Yes! But was the real change process? I was a slow
learner. Neville
never spoon-fed me with him telling me, as ‘font of all wisdom’ what to do.
He would set me challenges and tasks (resonant with Dr. Milton Erickson’s way
(Hanlon 1987)). When together in Laceweb contexts, he would never do
something if I could do it myself. By the time I started my Thesis, Neville
was in his Seventies and said his memory was failing. However, I suspect that
often he followed his Fraser House protocol, ‘Give the tasks to those who
have no experience, so they learn
by doing’. Sometimes he could have told me things. Instead he had me find
things out from my interviewees and then he would respond to my crosschecking
what I had found out from others. After
reading my first bit of writing for the Thesis in late 1998 he said he wept
because it was so emotionally resonant for him. Thereafter, he refused to
read any portion of my draft till it was finished – so that academic
integrity would be preserved – it would be my work. Neville died
without reading any more of my drafts. Interviews with Bruen and Chilmaid Apart from
Neville, my first Thesis interviewees were ex-Fraser House staffers Warwick
Bruen and Phil Chilmaid. I had an interview with Bruen and Chilmaid in
October 1998, and one in each of March, June and July in 1999. Chilmaid was a
Fraser House head charge-nurse who continued at North Ryde Hospital after
Fraser House closed till his retirement in 1999. Warwick Bruen was a Fraser
House psychologist. After leaving the Unit, Bruen moved on to become
Assistant Secretary in the Community Care Branch of the Federal Department of
Health and Aged Care in Canberra. Both were delighted that I was doing the
Thesis and pleased to help. I met Bruen in Canberra. My first interview with
Chilmaid was at North Ryde Hospital on the Sydney North Shore and the
interview commenced at 11 PM. He was doing the Midnight till dawn Charge
Nurse shift. This was my first visit to North Ryde Hospital and he and I
spoke briefly. He then gave me a tour of the Reception Center as he told
stories. He then took me 150 meters down the hill in the dark to where the
Fraser House buildings are. We had no
access. Even so, Chilmaid identified what in the Fraser House days in the
Sixties was the Administration Block, the room where Big Group was held, the
two large double story dorm blocks either side of the central administration
section, and the lounge/recreation area and the dining room at their
respective ends. The buildings stretch over a quarter of a kilometer so in
circling them it was a substantial walk. I could get a sense of the room used
for Big Group as it was dimly lit by street lighting. During all my time with
Chilmaid we met no one. We talked to about 3:00 AM. The whole experience was
otherworldly. I visited Fraser House two days later and took photos. I was
not given permission to enter as it is now home for disabled adolescents. I
commenced my first two interviews with both Bruen and Chilmaid with a series
of questions that honed in the specifics of the structure and process of
Fraser House. As the interviews
progressed discussion became more unstructured. I realized some time after
the second interviews with both that many of my questions were based on
incorrect and naive assumptions. For example, I had asked a lot of questions
relating to the ‘change process’ at Fraser House. I was continually returning
to asking about the kinds of therapy and change processes that were used.
‘Was it Gestalt? Was it Behavior Modification? The response I kept getting
was, ‘It was not like that’. After the first two interviews with both of
them, I was still confused about the nature of the change process. Neville
had already told me the changes processes many times in many ways.
Therapeutic community was the process. I had not heard! He said to
read his father’s books on sustainable agriculture and read his archival
material. The first reading of the books and archives left me none the wiser.
I cannot pin point the time when I realized that ‘community’ was the
therapy and ‘therapeutic community’ was the process, not a just a name. All
of the patient community governance and work by patients were change
process. Everything was change process. It was there in the archives,
mentioned many times, as discussed in Chapter Four, but I had just not sensed
it. Once, I
had this understanding about socio-therapy/community-therapy it became clear
that all that Neville had said about his father was central and not
peripheral. Neville had told me many times that he modeled his way on his
father’s work and I had not read P. A.’s writings. During 1999 I finally did
read all of Neville’s fathers books so I had a growing understanding of
Neville’s adaptation of his father’s ‘Keyline’ concept into Cultural Keyline.
My Research was naturalistic inquiry, emerging connoisseurship and emergent
design in action. This is discussed later. This gave me a new framework for
the third interview with Bruen and Chilmaid in June 1999. It became apparent
during this June 1999 and the July 1999 interviews that I had some
understanding that they did not have. Bruen and
Chilmaid had little idea that Fraser House was, for Neville, a pilot for
exploring epochal change with more than a three hundred year time frame.
Neville talked about this epochal change meta-frame of Fraser House with me
through the late Eighties and the Nineties. That Neville had this metaframe
in the Fraser House years was confirmed by two other interviewees, Margaret
Cockett and Stephanie Yeomans. Apart from
Neville, Bruen and Chilmaid, I interviewed six other people linked to Fraser
House, namely, Margaret Cockett, Alfred Clarke, Terry O’Neill, Stephanie
Yeomans, as well as a former Fraser House patient, and a former outpatient.
Apart from the outpatient, all of these interviewees were skilled
psychosocial researchers and used these competences in our exchanges. The
patient changed his career from bank robber to having a career as a research
assistant at the Australian Institute of Criminology after leaving Fraser
house. I
had interviews with Margaret Cockett in April, June and July 1999. Margaret,
a psychologist and anthropologist was Neville’s personal assistant at Fraser
House. Margaret stayed on as Neville’s personal assistant in his subsequent
Director of Community Mental Health position and other outreach. Margaret
later went into private practice. Chilmaid, Bruen and Cockett each
facilitated Fraser House Big Group and Small Groups on many occasions and
conducted research into aspects of Fraser House. I
also interviewed Alfred Clark, head of the Fraser House External Research
Unit, and co-writer with Neville of the book about Fraser House (Clark and
Yeomans 1969). During his time at Fraser House, Clark was a senior lecturer
at the University of New South Wales and was completing his PhD on Fraser
House. After leaving Fraser House and the University, he carried out
organizational research with the Tavistock Institute in the United Kingdom.
Then he became a Professor and Head of the Sociology Department at La Trobe
University for fourteen years. Coincidently, I commence my Social Science
degree in 1978 in the La Trobe Sociology Department when Clark was head and I
had got to know him during this period. Shortly after I first met Neville in
1986, I spoke to Clark in Melbourne about his Fraser House experience and
work with Neville. I interviewed Clark for the Thesis late in 1998. As
another coincidence, during this interview I met Alf Clark’s partner and she
had been a student with me in Werner Pelz’s sociology class in the Seventies. Another
interviewee was Terry O’Neill. He was a psychologist at North Ryde Hospital
in the early Sixties and had voluntarily run the Fraser House children’s play
therapy sessions immediately after the Unit’s parent-child play therapy
sessions on Tuesday evenings. Terry went on to be a member, and then head of
the La Trobe University Student Counseling Clinic. Terry taught me
paraprofessional counseling skills in 1977 and I went on to be a voluntary
on-call paraprofessional crisis counselor within that unit. It was because of
this experience that I was permitted to do clinical therapy research at the
psychology honors level. I did not meet Neville till nine years later. Terry
had never mentioned Neville or Fraser House to me. I was absorbed in Terry’s
Way of enabling and it was not until I said to Terry in 1988 that I had met
some one who did things similar to himself that he would probably really like
to meet, mentioning Neville’s name, that Terry said he knew Neville well and
that he had largely based his work on Neville and learnings from Fraser
House. Some
of the feel of Fraser House, especially the Big and Small Groups from a
patient’s perspective, was obtained from a former patient and a former
outpatient. These two are discussed in Chapter Five. Another
person I interviewed was Neville’s sister-in-law, Stephanie Yeomans
(Neville’s younger brother, Ken’s first wife). She had been a psychiatric
nurse at North Ryde Psychiatric Hospital (where I had met Chilmaid) in the
Sixties, although she did not work at the Fraser House Unit so as to avoid
charges of nepotism. Neville had extensive conversations with Stephanie
during their times at Fraser House and later. Stephanie said that when she
was working up the hill from Fraser House in another part of North Ryde
Hospital, Neville would come over and talk with her about Fraser House. They
would also talk at his house. Stephanie had been in her early teens an
informal research assistant for her mother, a geographer. Later she used
these skills when she regularly assisted Neville in University Libraries,
‘devouring’ books on anthropology, sociology, psychology, religion, history
and humanitarian law. Stephanie and Neville’s brother Ken were also very
active with Neville in his Fraser House outreach. In conversations I had with
Stephanie in January 2001, and January and July 2002, Stephanie said that
back in the Sixties and early Seventies, she and Neville had had endless
hours in discussing his way and action. There was evidence among all my
interviewees that they had, to varying degrees, adopted many aspects of
Neville’s Way. Prolonged On-Site Social Action And Research It was in
September 2002 in reflecting upon the social action contexts that I had been
involved in since 1986 linked to this Thesis that I suddenly realized for the
first time that Neville had set up for me an extensive range of contexts that
were isomorphic metaphors (matching form) for each and every type
of social action he had enabled. Appendix 2 is a table showing eighteen types
of social action with over fifty examples of these types that Neville had
been engaged in prior to my meeting him. The third column shows over seventy
mirroring contexts that he set up and/or arranged for me to be involved in.
Many of these were not just for me; large numbers of people were also
involved. This meticulous extensive strategic thoroughness was typical of
Neville. He knew that if ever I started a PhD based thesis, I would have this
extensive experience to draw upon, as well as interviews, archival research,
narrative, autobiographical material and storytelling - all enriched by my
own prolonged action research that I am continuing to be involved in. Gold
(1958) writes of four possible roles for observers ranging from complete
detached observation to complete involvement and participation in the site
context. Neville arranged for me to be in the later role – being immersed in
the action and regularly taking an initiating and enabling role (Gold 1958,
Vol. 36, p217-223). Neville engaged me in enabling
and supporting social-action research a number of times in contexts
approximating Fraser House Big Group with between 100 – 180 people present,
and in these he caste me in the Big Group enabler role. These matters are
discussed in Chapters Four to Ten. He also set up for me a prolonged
experience (eighteen months) in enabling in-service training of a jail
psychologist friend of his, Elsbeth Stephens, as well as enabling small
therapy groups with murderers and sexual offenders within the prison
environment. This experience helped prepare me for supporting Bougainvillian
and West Papuan combatants return to community living as wellbeing enablers
and nurturers (Laceweb-Homepage 2001). Through the Nineties I have enabled
over 200 experiential gatherings with between 40 and 180 people attending
during bush camp-out conference-festivals. This is discussed in Chapter
Eight. Neville involved me in actions resonant with many of Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s twenty five Indigenous Research Projects (Smith
1999) listed in Table 01 below.
Table 1 Examples of Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s Indigenous Research Projects (Smith 1999) In
these social action contexts Neville mentored me in taking on the same
enabler, mentor and ‘supporter of others’ self-help and mutual help’ roles
that he engaged in. This social action had ‘research’ woven into the holistic
emergent action. Actions were being continually reviewed by me and other
participants together. What worked was repeated in similar contexts. What
didn’t work so well was modified and adapted so it did work, or it was dropped.
The process was merged-iterative – action, monitoring evaluation
adaptation/modification all took place in a merged holistic way appropriate
to emergent context, rather than as a linear process. The Prolonged
Continuous Action Research that I have engaged in since 1986 is isomorphic
with the Prolonged Continuous Action Research that Neville engaged in
throughout his life. For
Neville and his ‘Cultural Keyline’ Way, Prolonged Continuous Action Research
became an embodied aspect of being. It is resonant with Indigenous
socio-medicine. It became woven into his every day natural perceiving and
sense-making in relational social-place inter-action. The Prolonged Continuous Action Research that Neville
pioneered in Fraser House and Fraser House outreach has resonance with what
business people describe as a ‘culture of continual improvement’. There is
also resonance with what Senge calls, the ‘learning organization’ (Senge
1992). In some senses we all do this continuous
everyday action research – noticing and adjusting as circumstances change.
Neville did it exquisitely in a way that maximized emergent potential. He
noticed, responded to and supported the positive aspects of context-role
specific behaviors and aspects of others. While Neville monitored the unfolding
context he stayed in his own meta-context. In a June 1999 conversation he
spoke of being ‘context driven’ while maintaining his own metacontext in
these words: ‘I was context driven - if I go
to ‘creative context’ then ‘everything is creative’ - it worked like
that.’ He
attended in a way that ‘soaked up’ all that was there and responded in a
resonant way, and noticed the unfolding action and flexibly altered and
responded to responses as a natural spontaneous flow. It was an integral
aspect of his Way of life – his ‘culture’. Neville immersed me in this
Prolonged Continuous Action Research as an aspect of embodied being and
action in everyday life in the wider and social life world. I adopted/adapted
Neville’s Ways in my own praxis. Neville
told me that archival material was in three places, the Mitchell Library
within the NSW State Library, in a private collection in Armidale in North
East New South Wales, and in his private collection in Yungaburra. Neville
had mentioned to look for his, ‘collected papers’ in the Mitchell Library. It
contained a range of primary sources including Neville’s hand written
jottings and diagrams, photographs, newspaper clippings, meeting notices,
monographs by Neville, Staff and Patients, and Neville and Staff’s conference
papers, research reports and Unit reports, most of it original documents.
Neville was well skilled in research methodology and had created an archival
researchers dream cache. There was a spread of types of archival material and
a spread of authors – Neville, senior staff, junior staff, patients,
outpatients, newspaper reporters and other interested parties. It was not a
large collection though it is not all in one place in the collection. Neville
had obviously given thought to each piece’s strategic significance. I had a
strong feel that this cache was sent ahead specifically for the likes of me.
Additionally, there was a collection of Nevilles father’s materials and three
further collections belonging to Neville’s brother’s Allan and Ken, and
Neville’s second wife, Lein. On
my first visit I did a skim read of the collection to get a sense of what was
there and took some brief notes as a guide for the next visit. At this time I
had no idea what Thesis I was doing or the relevance of what I was looking
at. I had two further visits lasting three days where I ‘poked around’ in the
archive. It was in August 2002 on my fourth visit when I had finished my
first rough draft of the whole Thesis that I scanned, skimmed, and read the
total archive of all family members. By this time I knew what was relevant
and what was cross-confirming and where it would go in my Thesis. Typically,
I only wrote down what I was going to use in my Thesis. As
well, on this visit I saw material that ‘stood out’ that I had never noticed
before. Some small bits were seminal. These I photocopied. While plainly
there all along, I had never seen just how many research papers and
monographs Neville had written. I sense that given the interaction between
me, my interviewees, my Thesis topic and the archive, the timing sequence was
right as to when I went ‘in earnest’ into the archive. The preliminary
archival viewings had given me a feel for the collection. On those early visits the archive was
becoming familiar to me, though I had little sense of what was significant.
My approach and timing in the use of the Mitchell Library archives were
consistent with my emergent design. Some small bits of Neville’s handwritten scribblings
turned out to be potent, for example the personal file-note ‘Mental
Health and Social Change’ which is Neville’s succinct half page early
statement about his thinking on global
transitions (Yeomans 1968). I spotted this on my first look at
the archive and then I had no idea that it was one of two seminal linked
documents. It was the precursor to the paper, ‘On Global Reform –
International Normative Model Areas (INMA)’ which was in Neville’s Yungaburra
Far North Queensland archives (Yeomans 1974). I found this second document
after Neville’s death. Dr.
Ned Iceton had archival materials at his home in Armidale in N.E. New South
Wales relating to the 1971-73 Aboriginal Human Relations Gatherings. I was
able to get a photocopy of all of the relevant material so I could peruse
them at my leisure. As well, Iceton informed me that a collection of the
Aboriginal Human Relations Newsletters was held in the Australian National
Library. I had two interviews with Iceton on consecutive days. My questions focused on the processes used
to start and sustain group process at the Gatherings given the presence there
of both urban and remote area Aboriginals and non-Aboriginal people. These
interviews also soon became semi-structured then un-structured. Through these
interviews I confirmed that the 1971-73 Aboriginal Human Relations Gatherings
were resonant with Fraser House groups and fully consistent with Neville’s
Cultural Keyline, therapeutic community and other socio-cohesion frameworks. By
the time I was able to get up to see the Yungaburra archive, Neville had
died. There was some considerable negotiation about access to the archival
materials as an Aboriginal person close to Neville had received the archive
from the tenant who was living in Neville’s house where Neville’s materials
had been stored. There was initial reticence relating to my access. After
twenty-four hours I was given the archive to copy. The key document, ‘On Global Reform and International Normative Model
Areas (Inma)’ was in this archive. As well, there were materials relating to
Neville’s Lake Tinaroo Mediation Workshops (Yeomans 1974). A crucially important video of Neville in action entrusted to me by
the Aboriginal holder of the archive – the only example of Neville enabling
that I have been able to find – was entrusted by me to a non-Aboriginal local
to get mould removed from the tape while I was in the area so I could return
the tape to the custodian before I left. Somewhere between the non-Aboriginal
local and the tape cleaning firm the tape seems to have been irretrievable
lost. I learned a bitter lesson and caused anger and resentment among local
Aborigines. Steps are being taken to determine if the lost video was a copy
of the original that is being held by someone else. Engaging In Naturalistic Inquiry This
research is in the style and mode of the naturalist paradigm following
Lincoln and Guba’s book, ‘Naturalistic Inquiry’ (Lincoln and Guba 1985). I
used this approach because Neville himself engaged in naturalistic inquiry
and helped pioneer this method in Australia in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Neville
used naturalistic inquiry as the framework for his prolonged action
research/praxis, and engaged others in sharing with him in naturalistic
inquiry as a process for re-constituting locality, community and society.
‘Locality’ here means ‘connexity with place’ rather than ‘place’. Consistent
with naturalistic inquiry, I engaged in prolonged action research in natural
settings and obtained secondary source recollections and archival materials
because, to quote Lincoln and Guba, ‘Naturalistic ontology suggests that
realities are wholes that cannot be understood in isolation from their
contexts, nor can they be fragmented for study of the parts’ (Lincoln and
Guba 1985, p. 39). My guiding substantive theory emerged from, or was
grounded in the data (Glaser and Strauss 1967; Lincoln and Guba 1985, p. 41).
I set boundaries to the inquiry ‘on the basis of emergent focus because that
permits the multiple realities to define the focus…; because boundaries
cannot be satisfactorily set without intimate contextual knowledge, including
knowledge about the mutually shaping factors involved… (Lincoln and Guba
1985, p. 42).’ I followed Lincoln and Guba’s special criteria for
trustworthiness, namely, credibility, transferability, dependability and
confirmability discussed below (Lincoln and Guba 1985, p. 43). Consistent
with naturalistic inquiry, Neville’s way of prolonged action research was
based on the same beliefs and associated principles of the New Paradigm as
detailed by Lincoln and Guba (Lincoln and Guba 1985, p. 56) – refer Table 02.
Table 2 Basic Belief and Associated Principles of the New
Paradigm – From Lincoln and Guba
(Lincoln and Guba 1985, p. 56.) Neville
was well aware of the holographic quality of his Cultural Keyline–social
systems interaction. For example, Lincoln and Guba could well have been
quoting Neville when they wrote: ‘Information is distributed throughout the system rather than
concentrated at specific points. At each point information about the whole is
contained in the part. Not only can the entire reality be found in the part,
but also the part can be found in the whole. What is detected in any part
must also characterize the whole. Everything is interconnected’ (Lincoln and
Guba 1985, p. 59.). This quote
describes the holographic and fractal quality of the way Neville interacted
with connexity in a two-fold sense. He maintained connexity in relating with
the unfolding connexity. I found that Fraser House can be seen in Neville’s
Festivals, community markets, smaller therapeutic community houses, and in
his networking, and simultaneously Keyline can been seen in Cultural Keyline
and both in Fraser House, Fraser House outreach, Cultural Healing Action and
Laceweb Networks. I return to this theme in discussing holographic
generalization below. To ensure
trustworthiness in my research I endeavored to establish truth value by the
test of isomorphism (Lincoln and Guba 1985, p. 294) – namely, that I have
revealed the form, structure and processes of the focal multiple social
constructions adequately in a way that would be credible to the co-constructors
of those multiple realities. In respect of external validity, again following
Lincoln and Guba, I make the assumption that, ‘at best only working
hypotheses may be abstracted’; Neville used to continually exhort me to keep
everything tentative and up for continual review. On another trustworthiness
criteria, ‘consistency’, I use a number of processes set out below to ensure
replicability and dependability. I had
sustained prolonged engagement by investing ample time to become immersed in
the focal milieu. I learned the culture. I have built respect and trust. I
was around long enough to detect the subtle and non-obvious aspects (even
then, with considerable difficulty). I had ample time to detect my distorted
and selective perceptions and misconstructions of what Neville and others
were saying; time to ‘render the inquirer (me) open to multiple influences –
the mutual shapers and contextual factors (Lincoln and Guba 1985, p. 304)’.
This prolonged time also enabled the building of trust in some people who
were extremely cautious about me. Some are still very cautious and hold back
for very good reasons. There are some things I do not need to know.
Similarly, there are many things that I do not tell other Laceweb people for
good reasons to be discussed in Chapter Ten. While
engaged in prolonged action research, I believe that I have never ‘gone
native’; I have never lost what Lincoln and Guba (Lincoln and Guba 1981, p.
4) call ‘detached wonder’. I also engaged in persistent observation to add
salience - to ‘identify those characteristics and elements in the situation
that are most relevant to the problem or issue being pursued and focusing on
them in detail. If prolonged engagement provides scope, persistent
observation provides depth’ (Lincoln and Guba 1985, p. 304.)’. These two
forms of engagement enabled me to come to terms with what Eisner has called
the ‘pervasive qualities’, in this case the ‘pervasive qualities’ of Neville
and his social action, and to sort out what really matters (Eisner 1975). In
my writing I have endeavored to specify in detail the explorings I carried
out and how I sought out salience. Another
aspect of my method to ensure trustworthiness was the use of triangulation.
Following Denzin (Denzin 1978) I used different sources and different
methods. Comments made by one interviewee were crosschecked with the other
interviewees. As well, comments were crosschecked with archival material and
on-site visits and immersion in ongoing social action with me taking on the
enabling and mentoring role for others, with Neville as my mentor. Archival
materials were also crosschecked. In Chapters Four to Seven on Fraser House I
detail findings from this sustained triangulated cross-checking between
interviewees and archival material without constantly referring to
interviewees to avoid being tedious though seminal points are referenced and
archival references are all specified I also
engaged in peer debriefing (Lincoln and Guba 1985, p. 308) with a number of
people who were disinterested though resonant. I also carried out ongoing
member checks with all of my interviewees both formally and informally after
typing up my interview notes and when the first and later drafts were
finished (Lincoln and Guba 1985, p. 314). This was in the early work to
provide, ‘an initial and searching opportunity to test working hypotheses, to
correct for error, to provide them opportunity to ask challenging questions,
probe for biases, question meanings, check the need for further information
or clarification, and giving them an ‘opportunity to give an assessment of
overall adequacy (Lincoln and Guba 1985, p.308 - 309)’. In keeping
with Neville’s use of naturalistic inquiry, my research design was emergent rather
than preordinate (Lincoln and Guba 1985, p.208). Meanings emerged from
unfolded and unfolding contexts and multiple realities. In my prolonged
action research, what I was experiencing and learning was a function of my
interaction with the contexts and the people who had helped constitute them
and were co-constituting them together. There was pervasive indeterminancy.
In many aspects I was in the situation of knowing I did not know. With other
aspects, I did not know I did not know and I found out this by ‘running into
seeming inconsistencies and paradoxes - the bewildering’, and into what I
thought were ‘brick walls’, and Neville making me ‘jump hurdles’. My response
to this was to have an even more open-ended approach (Lincoln and Guba 1985,
p. 209). My design
emerged from continuous data analysis and writing as I went. I was under way
for almost a year before I decided what Thesis I was doing – that it would by
in three parts, Fraser House, Fraser House Outreach and the evolving of the
Laceweb. Initially, I was looking at the archives and not knowing what I was
looking at or for, or what was, and was not significant. Consistent with
emergent design, I allowed the emerging data to guide my review of
literature. For example, it was after realizing the way Neville and his
father worked holistically with emergence in self organizing systems that I
had the literature as a ‘stimulus for thinking’ (Minichiello, Aroni et al.
1995, p. 71) and the emerging data as a stimulus for literature review. In making
sense of, and writing up my research I combined ‘grounded theory’ (Glaser and
Strauss 1967; Lincoln and Guba 1985, p. 204-205), holographic generalization
(Lincoln and Guba 1985, p.125), ‘thick description’ (Geertz 1973), ‘thematic
analysis’/‘narrative analysis’ (Kellehear 1993, p. 38; Miles and Huberman
1994), ‘structure/event process analysis’ (Neuman 1997, p. 433) and Eisner’s
concept of ‘connoisseurship’ (Eisner 1991),. After discussing each of the
above, I outline processes used to support my intuition and being what
Neville called, ‘a scientific detective’. Lincoln
and Guba describe ‘grounded theory’ (Glaser and Strauss 1967) as a ‘theory
that follows from the data rather than preceding them’. ‘The theory that is developed is then said
to be grounded in the data (Minichiello, Aroni et al. 1995, p.
103.)’. Lincoln and Guba make
the point that this is a ‘necessary consequence of the naturalistic paradigm
that posits multiple realities and makes transferability dependent on local
contextual factors’ (Lincoln and Guba 1985, p. 205). I had the advantage at the start of my Thesis of all of my prior
research. I had some sense of theoretical perspectives, though once under way
I had to drop a lot of them as they did not fit the emerging data. Re-cognizing Fractals and Holographs Along with
researching the transferability of Neville’s Way (including Keyline and
Cultural Keyline) between many contexts, a central theme of this Thesis is the
fractal and holographic quality of Neville’s action. Lincoln and Guba refer
to Schwartz and Ogilvy’s (Schwartz and Ogilvy 1979), comment that ‘the
metaphor for the world is changing from the machine to the hologram’. Lincoln and Guba point out that a characteristic
of holograms is, ‘that any piece of the hologram contains in it all of the
information found in the whole.’ While recognizing the limits of metaphor,
Lincoln and Guba make the case that any part or component gathered is a,
‘perfect sample in the sense that it contains all of the information about
the whole that one might hope to obtain; that imperfect (blurred) information
from any source can be improved (clarified), if one has the appropriate
filters or other processes for so doing.’
Space
scientists are able to use knowledge from the study of holograms to correct
blurred images transmitted from spacecraft. The blurred image ‘contains’ the
focused image. If one knows how to correct the blur for a tiny bit of the
image, that information may be used to increase focus for the whole image. A
friend skilled in photo manipulation checked with me that sports shoes in a
photo were in fact white not gray. He made some adjustment to correct the
gray to white and this altered the colors throughout the whole photo.
My friend and the space scientists can do this because, ‘both the substantive
information about an object and the information needed to clarify it are
‘contained’ in the unclarified versions’. The ‘base
of information’ that is appropriate for holographic generalization is
suggested by Lincoln and Guba as Geertz’s ‘thick description’ (Geertz 1973).
I have endeavored to obtain thick description of the many and varied contexts
in which Neville worked. I then used Keyline, Cultural Keyline and other
‘filters’ or ‘lenses’ to focus and clarify what I had found and to help in
form and pattern recognition. These
processes in turn helped clarify the ‘filters’. I found the ‘filters’
permeated through the interstices (small spaces) of the various objects,
events, processes, happenings, and structures that Neville set up and enabled
and their varied contexts. I then started seeing aspects of each of
particulars in the general and the general in the particulars. Using Thematic Analysis/ Narrative Analysis In working with thick description and holographic
generalization I used thematic analysis (also called Narrative
Analysis). In this I was guided by
Miles and Huberman’s list (Miles and Huberman 1994). Look for repetition Note themes and patterns Make metaphors and analogies Check if single variable, events,
experiences, are really several Connect particular events to the
general Note differences and similarities Note triggers connecting
meditating variables Note if patterns in the data
resemble theories/concepts Table 3 Thematic Analysis Process from Miles and Huberman’s
list (Miles and Huberman 1994) Neville
used each of the above processes in naturalistic inquiry. I also recognized
that in large part I had been using each of them in my prolonged Laceweb
action research from 1986, and increasingly using them during this Thesis
research. Like the healing ways of the Laceweb being spontaneously used in
everyday life (discussed in Chapters Nine and Ten), naturalistic inquiry was
for me becoming a way of being. As stated, it was some time before I started
to see the fractal quality in everything Neville was doing and how all the
diverse bits were parts of the whole. In speaking
of ‘thematic analysis’, Kellehear writes that ‘validity is tied to how well a
researcher’s understanding of a culture parallels the way that a culture
views itself’, and that the ‘central meanings the researcher attaches to
objects, actions and relations should reflect the beliefs of insiders’
analysis’ (Kellehear 1993, p. 38). Recall that I carried out ongoing member
checks with all of my interviewees both formally and informally after typing
up my interview notes and when the first and later drafts were finished
(Lincoln and Guba 1985, p. 314). I also checked and confirmed my ‘central
meanings’ with others involved in the focal action. When I had understanding
and meanings that my interviewees did not have, I checked and confirmed the
‘fit’ of these with my interviewees and relevant others. I drew on
Berger and Luckman’s notion of ‘typifications’ (Berger and Luckmann 1967) in
looking for what Eisner calls, ‘structural collaboration’ - ‘recurrent
behaviors or actions, those theme-like features of a situation that inspire
confidence that events interpreted and appraised are not aberrant or
exceptional, but rather characteristic of the situation’ (Eisner 1991, p.
101). I was
guided by Eisner’s references to a number of aspects that all of the social
sciences have in common, ‘the search for pattern in the qualities they
observe, the effort to illuminate and display what has not been previously
noticed, and the attempt to account for what has been seen (Eisner 1991, p.
230).’ In
exploring diversity seeking Bateson’s ‘patterns that connect’ (Bateson 1980)
in respect of each of Eisner’s three aspects mentioned in the previous
paragraph, I endeavored to continually improve my capacity to engage what
Eisner calls ‘connoisseurship’, defined by him as ‘the ability to make
fine-grained discriminations among complex subtle qualities’. So much of what
Neville did was subtle. Connoisseurship is ‘the art of appreciation’ (Eisner
1991, p. 63). A fundamental aspect of connoisseurship is ‘allowing the
situation to speak for itself, that is, to allow for an emergent focus’
(Eisner 1991, p. 176). This involves
enriching perception, the sense and significance we make from all that is
streaming through all our senses. In this I was mindful of the Pelz’s remarks
about the German word ‘erscheinung’ meaning ‘appearance’. This word contains
the German, ‘schein’ that also contains for the social scientist the caution
that appearance may deceive, ‘for schein, because it shines and glitters,
reveals and deceives. It denotes something better and worse, more and
less than appearance’ (Pelz 1974, p. 88). Pelz
speaks of a particular mood in searching for understanding where
appearance can reveal and deceive. In this Pelz introduces another German
word, ‘stimmung’ meaning ‘a mood that attunes’ (Pelz 1974, p. 89). I sensed
that when I was engaged with Neville, Laceweb prolonged action
research and this Thesis, I worked best when I entered this attuning mood. My
capacity for being a connoisseur was enriched through in-depth interviewing,
prolonged engagement and persistently observing someone like Neville in
action. He was a connoisseur par excellence. The observational challenge was
that I only saw the output of his connoisseurship, not connoisseurship per
se. The perennial question was, ‘How did he do that? How did he come up with
that? To this endeavor I brought my understanding of ‘understanding’, honed
by my three years of study of the sociology of knowledge with sociologist
Werner Pelz. Pelz speaks of a contemplative mode of knowing that has some
resonance with connoisseurship, where, Pelz’s ‘contemplating as mode of
knowing’ is a ‘kind of intellective-emotive compound of
seeing-hearing-smelling-tasting-feeling. It is appreciative and savoring. It
leaves things as and where they are.’ ‘It neither proves or disproves, though
it may approve or disapprove. It is the psychic equivalent of eating,
drinking, breathing. Contemplation does not wish to handle its subjects and
need not therefore concentrate on looking for a handle. It is not exclusively
interested in categorizing them according to function and utility within a
conceptual framework designed by and for sectional interests’ (Pelz 1975, p.
232, 238.). Following
Pelz ‘contemplation’ as a mode of knowing, I have endeavored to use kennen -
not a ‘provable’ manipulatable knowing (wissen), rather a knowing to become
better acquainted with Neville’s way – to become even more familiar
with it – to kennen as, ‘denoting something personal [and inter-personal],
subjective, unfinished and unfinishable, involving me and interesting me’. It
is relational knowing (Pelz 1974, p. 80-83). Allied to this is a process
Jeremy Narby calls defocusing (Narby 1998). As a metaphor for defocusing,
Narby speaks of those stereo pictures where the three-dimensional image only
appears suddenly with the relaxing defocused gaze. Examples of defocusing
approaches are daydreaming, nocturnal soliloquies, and following Pelz,
contemplation. Pelz goes on to say that, ‘the fate of one man, one women, one
child, during a vast international upheaval or natural disaster, faithfully
and sympathetically represented, can in-form us more thoroughly concerning
the reality of that situation than any number of statistics or objective
descriptions’. A classic Australian example of this is Henry Lawson’s
powerful portrayal of the culture of poverty in his two and a half page
story, ‘Arvie Aspinall’s Alarm Clock’ about a little boy struggling to
support his mother and siblings when he is close to death (Lawson 1974). The
short story, ‘Ward 6’ by Chekhov (Chekhov 1964) about a remote area
psychiatric clinic director in Russia who is incarcerated by a rival who
craves his director position is another example. In keeping with this, I
endeavor to give the reader a feel for the richness of lived-life experience
and potent vibrancy of Neville, Fraser House and other actions. One of the
challenges in writing was what Eisner called ‘the untranslatable’– ‘there is no
verbal equivalent for Bach’s Mass in B Minor’ (Eisner 1991, p.235). Prose can
not encapsulate the co-reconstituting lived life emotive richness of Fraser
House, or the stimmung of the campfire gathering of the Aboriginal and
Islander women at the Small Island Gathering (refer Chapter Nine) (Roberts
and Widders 1994). Since an aim of this Thesis was to reveal, I endeavored to
understand ‘the limits and uses of the forms used to represent what
connoisseurship makes available’ and to recognize and be mindful of how ‘each
form shapes content – that is by leaving out what it can not represent’
(Eisner 1991, p.235). I endeavor to give at least a pale cast of milieu,
mindful that description and explanation are always inadequate. The
derivation of the word ‘explain’ hints at this – Latin ‘ex-planus’ meaning
‘out of the two dimensional’, that is conveying an impoverished
representation of the multidimensional. I was constantly challenged by making
sense of rich interwoven complexity. Linked into Eisner’s ‘untranslatable’ mentioned above is the
‘de-processing’ effect of the prevalence of using nouns when we may better
use verbs. I understand that the Chinese language contained no nouns up till
a century or two ago. A ‘cup’ would be denoted as ‘containing’. Nouns are
very useful. Turning a verb like ‘failing’ into a
noun like ‘failure’ is called nominalizing (Bandler and Grinder 1975;
Bandler, Grinder et al. 1979). Nominalising may limit our representating of
our world. For example a troubled young man says with great emphasis that he is
a failure. ‘Failure’ is finished. ‘I am a failure’. It is a
claim of fact - a fait accompli. Feel the idea. Change ‘failure’ to, ‘I am
failing’. Feel that idea. Sense the generalizing and the deleting in the
first sentence. We can seek to specify the generalizing and recover what has
been left out of the, ‘I am failing’ sentence. Failing at what? With whom?
When? How are you failing? In what contexts? All this is hopeful. Change is
possible. In my research and writing up I was aware of the
implications of nominalizing. The pervasive linguistic habit of turning
dynamic lived process into static nouns may limit understanding. It may
contribute to and sustain dysfunction. The terms, ‘social movement’, ‘Fraser
House’, ‘therapeutic community’ and ‘network’ are all nouns and noun based
expressions. One says these words and says little. These expressions
generalize and delete. For those unfamiliar with them they have little
surplus meaning. Initially, changing ‘network’ to ‘networking’ has added
little to meaning though it focuses on a dynamic process not a concrete
entity. Denominalizing is a term denoting changing noun to verb.
Denominalizing may reveal some of the dynamic lived life process and
experience. Changing ‘failure’ to ‘failing’ is an obvious shift; the same
with ‘network’ to ‘networking’. Changing ‘social movement’ to ‘social
movementing’ or ‘social moving’ seems novel and meaning is muddied and lost.
The togetherness connoted by ‘community’ is lost in ‘communing’ and may carry
hints of the ideologies of ‘communism’. ‘Communitizing’ is a possibility,
though strange. ‘Fraser Housing’ is also strange though could be a theme
starter. The aim and the challenge in this research was to embrace the
ongoing processing, the processors, and the lived dynamic unfolding social
life world of Neville and his friends and even go beyond embracing to sensing
all of this as an integrated holon for them and the reader. There is a
German expression that encapsulates the foregoing, ‘Dichter and Denken’ (Pelz
1974). As an example, some very talented creative people are called 'dichter
and denken'. When using this term to refer to say a poet, the speaker is
suggesting that the listener merges in his or her reflection the poet, the
poem making and the poem. This is calling for us to engage in a very rich
form of reflective contemplating about process. It is about our
intersubjectively responding to the intermingling of the three elements,
i.e., the poet, the poem making and the poem. While reading this document I
invite you to do what I did during the research and contemplate Neville as
Dichter and Denken. Merge Neville, the evolving and sustaining of Fraser
House processing and Fraser House as an unfolding placed social life world.
Do the same with Fraser House outreaching and the evolving of Laceweb
networking. In the Fraser House outreachings and Laceweb networking contexts,
contemplate the merging of firstly, Neville and his other system
designers/co-reconstitutors, secondly, system designing/co-reconstituting,
and thirdly, the systems as unfolding action; and in so doing, perceiving
these three as a connexity/holon. Note that it is easy to think about any of
the three separately. Thinking of two simultaneously is more 'work', and merging
the three in contemplation towards relational knowing (kennen) is typically a
challenge - though a worthwhile experience into a new (higher?) more
connexity based mode of reflecting/perception (making sense of the senses). Structure/Event Process Analysis With
Structure/Event Process Analysis I was looking for connexity within and
between events and other happenings, and their form/structure and processes,
and the nexus between people constituting these unfoldings. I was looking for
fractals, emergence and mutual-causality (Neuman 1997, p. 433) After the
emotional turmoil of learning of Neville’s impending death I allowed
everything I had done to date to just ‘settle’ inside, to give it all room to
sort itself out. It was nearly a year later when I had a feeling that I was
ready to make sense of it all including his death. I had busied myself in the
meantime with reading qualitative method, and the Keyline literature. As well
I reviewed the literature firstly on chaos and complexity, commencing with
Prigogine & Stengers, ‘Order out of Chaos’ (Prigogine and Stengers 1984);
secondly, on fuzziology commencing with Dimitrov (Dimitrov 2002); thirdly on
deep ecology commencing with Arne Naess (Naess 1998); fourthly on emergent
properties commencing with Fritjof Capra (Capra 1997, p. 28); fifthly on
holistic open systems commencing with Ludwig von Bertalanffy (Bertalanffy
1950) and Fred Emery (Emery 1969); and sixthly on self organizing systems and
autopoiesis commencing with Maturana and Varela (Maturana 1970). Insights from this
literature review are interspersed throughout this thesis. Beveridge
speaks about having a purposeful break in these terms: ‘The most
characteristic circumstance of an intuition are a period of intense work on
the problem accompanied by a desire for it’s solution, abandonment of the
work with the attention on something else, then the appearance of the idea
with dramatic suddenness…’ (Beveridge 1950). I did have clarity and sudden insights
‘out of the blue’ after this long break. Other sudden insights occurred
unexpectantly throughout the research. A key thing I found with the sudden
insights was to write them up immediately they occurred as they had a
tendency to disappear beyond recall as fast as they came. I also found that
not reading my writing for a number of weeks would allow me to see with
‘fresh eyes’. I could far more easily spot things like clumsy expression,
ambiguity, punctuation errors and the like when the material was less
familiar. During all
of the time I was working with Neville drafting Laceweb related material,
especially relating to setting up possibilities for others to take up, he
always opted for using the passive voice form and using ‘soft’ and tentative
language – using words and terms like, possibly, may, maybe and its possible.
To mirror this softness I have often used the passive voice form in this
research. On Being a Scientific Detective Neville
was quite right when he said that my writing was, ‘Like a scientific
detective story’. Neville did in no way ‘dish things up for me’. I had to do
lots of detective work. Complicating my task was that Neville and his
father’s actions and ways were largely non-linear, and mirroring nature;
these actions and ways were pervasively inter-connected, inter-woven,
interdependent and inter-related – what I have defined as having a connexity
relating. Neville and his father were both ‘groundbreaking’ - to use an appropriate
metaphor - World leaders in their separate, though as it turns out, very
related fields. There was scant literature that I could find on links
between, Indigenous wisdom, sustainable agriculture, psychosocial wellbeing
and epochal transitions. A lot of what they were doing was not mentioned in
their writing. For example, Neville and his father were both pioneers in the
evolving studies of chaos, self-organizing systems, emergence, uncertainty
and complexity, and yet none of these themes are mentioned in Neville’s or
his father’s writings. Neville never mentions Keyline or Cultural Keyline in
any of his Fraser House writings. While ‘Cultural Keyline’ is such a central
concept to Neville and his way, I have found no mention of this term in any
of his other writings either directly or indirectly, although Cultural
Keyline is there if one knows how to discern it. Another complicating
factor was that there were fractal forms and other resonant aspects to
everything Neville and his father were engaged in, though these are not
immediately obvious. If this fractal quality and connexity is not recognized,
as it was not recognized by me for halfway through my research, an inquirer
would miss the inter-related essence and inner potency of Neville (and his
father’s) work. Any amount of analysis of the parts that missed their
connexity, or labored to make links when they are already pervasive, would
again miss the essence. Consistent
with Neville’s Way of enabling self-organizing, he would create contexts
where I would discover his Way and the things he had done. For example, the
first time I knew that Neville wrote poetry was when I was handed two of his
poems at his funeral by his second wife Lein. These are included at the
commencement of this Thesis. My sense is that these two poems introduce the
Thesis artistically and succinctly. In some sense they say more than the
first Chapter! They are typical of Neville’s potent minimalism. I found out
from Neville’s son Quan that Neville had written over 2000 poems and he never
told me about them. He knew I would find them if I was thorough and
persistent. As at writing I have not had access to these other poems. In our
1993 Yungaburra conversation Neville said that he was very conscious of not
overloading people. Neville well knew how much lay behind his simplicity,
brevity and strategic precision. He said that if he was linking with an
Aboriginal natural nurturer for the first few times and started talking about
Fraser House and epochal change he would likely overwhelm her and he would
probably never see her again. He very slowly mentioned things over months and
years. The same applied to me. He had very slowly shared aspects with me. I
was it seems, a slow learner. While I
had been writing through rather than writing up, I came to the time when I
sensed that the Thesis was ‘in the can’. Even then, resonant with Neville’s
scrupulous writing, once I sensed I had the Thesis ‘written’, I carried out
sustained reshaping of the manuscript, especially looking at the sequencing
and juxtapositioning of ideas. Creating headings and subheadings helped in
both sequencing and thematic analysis. During this phase I ended up with
around sixty further revisions of each Chapter. At one stage I made good use
of Microsoft’s ‘Outline’ program that allowed me to look at the words at the
start of each paragraph to check sequencing and sense. When I
essentially ‘knew what was in the research document’ I particularly used
Neville’s notion of the ‘survival of the fitting’. As I scoured my filenotes
and musings ‘what fitted’ ‘survived’ and was woven in to the document.
Similarly, what was already ‘in the document’ was tested for ‘fit’ and
placement. If it did not fit it was reframed, repositioned or discarded. We
shall see in Chapters Nine and Ten that this process is resonant with the
passing on of healing ways in the Laceweb. I added ‘gems’ to my ‘final draft’
and found I was 16,000 words over the limit so more rigorous editing was
required. Consistent with emergent design this method section kept changing. ON BEING ETHICAL AND ECOLOGICAL Ethics
approval was obtained from the James Cook University Ethics Committee for the
Thesis, especially for the interviewing. Permission/approval was obtained
from interviewees before their name was mentioned in the Thesis. I
was required to get, and did obtain from Neville a letter of authorization to
have access and to copy all or any of the material including sensitive
restricted material, on the understanding that the restricted material would
not be shown or revealed to anyone and that no people’s names would be
mentioned in any form. As it turned out, it was critical that I had obtained
this authorization before Neville’s death. I based my prolonged social action
research on Neville’s ethical, moral and ecological protocols and processes. This
chapter has described the research methods used in data collecting. The
Chapter commenced with a discussion of my being an insider looking in. My
note taking and interviewing methods were outlined. Data collection using a
combination of interviewing, archival research, on site visits and immersion
in holistic social action was discussed. The Chapter concluded with an
outline of my use of Naturalistic Enquiry, the steps I took to ensure
trustworthiness and the processes I used for analysis. The
following Chapter explores the precursors of Neville Yeomans’ Way of being
and action and their emergence and adaptation from the joint work Neville did
with his father and brother Allan in evolving sustainable agriculture
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