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 prolonged action research is discussed. My use of
naturalistic enquiry is outlined. The chapter concludes with a discussion of
the processes I used for data analysis, the steps I took to ensure
trustworthiness, and the theoretical perspectives I used in carrying out
this research.
When I started this thesis I sensed
that I was an insider looking in, and that I had people’s trust. Since the mid
1980’s I had special insider knowledge that an outsider may never be given
clearance to know. I had access to relevant people, and I had had a massive
amount of access to Neville. I sensed that I had a feel for what Neville and
the Laceweb were all about. I knew a lot. When I
started disciplined data gathering towards the PhD in July 1998 I had a concern
that I may be 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, presuppositions and prejudgments to the
task. An outsider may never find out about the Laceweb.
People involved are in remote places and go quietly about their work. Laceweb is difficult to recognise even if you are
surrounded by it. Outsiders would have potentially even greater difficulty than
I did in determining Neville’s and Laceweb process.
Outsiders would also have had issues with bias, and what to include and
exclude. It could be said that as an insider, I would be interested in
promoting virtues and downplaying shortcomings. 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 ‘legitimising’ value. To address
these issues I endeavoured to be simultaneously close and detached. Neville
specifically worked with me on attachment and detachment. Before July 1998 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). After July 1998 this ‘insider looking in’ issue became a
matter of degree and being mindful of the issues. I had a strong drive to have
the thesis methodologically sound; the topic deserved this. It turned
out that I was not the insider I thought I was at the start of this research. I
did not at first realize I had scant knowledge, understanding, or feel of
Neville’s or his father’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 writings outlining Laceweb action did not convey the texture, the feel and the
tentativeness – I was being too definitive. (As examples, Neville’s poem ‘Inma’ starts with ‘There seems to be’ and ends with ‘I
guess’; his poem ‘On Where’ starts with ‘Perhaps’.
For many of the early months of this
thesis I was overwhelmed. There appeared to be a dozen or more possible theses.
Which one was I doing? Focusing on my potential theses, 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 it emerged through contemplative action, persistence, and a
lot of challenging work.
I was very aware that everyone I
spoke to who had worked closely with Neville said that his way of working was
incomprehensible. All that they would
say was that he was so fast, that he was way ahead of everybody, and that they
could not fathom how he did it. He would tell me stories about what happened in
the past. However, when I would seek information on how he did things Neville
would not explicate his way. When I would ask him, he would get me to do things
and tell me to read his father’s books.
My challenge was how to explicate
the inexplicable; on this, Martin Heidegger wrote:
To the common
comprehension, the incomprehension is never an occasion to stop and look at its
own powers of comprehension, still less to notice their limitations. To common
comprehension, what is incomprehensible remains merely
offensive – proof enough to such comprehension which is convinced it was born
comprehending everything, that it is now being imposed upon with a sham. The
one thing of which sound common sense is least capable is acknowledgement and
respect (Heidegger 1968, p. 76-77).
I had to move beyond my common sense
and evolve respect for the incomprehensibility I was experiencing in entering
Neville’s strange realities. David Silverman in writing about Castaneda’s
account about entering into a Yaqui Indian, don Juan’s reality, wrote:
Here we have an
account, written in English, which seeks to make a replica of how a Yaqui Indian himself understands his knowledge. Yet the
problematic of the book can in no way express don
Juan’s concerns. For Castaneda must seek to explicate an ‘order of
conceptualisation’ which to don Juan is not at all in need of explication (Silverman 1975, p. 88).
Beyond conceptualising, I was
seeking to understand subject, act and object as a melded phenomenon – Neville
as subject, Neville using his process and the interconnections between all of the vast array of social things he evolved through
action with others. I sense Neville sensed not only that his way was not at all
in need of explication, but also that explication would fail to embrace his
way. His way had to be embodied to be understood and appreciated and once
embodied, would not need explicating. How these challenges were faced unfold in
this research.
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 (timing the internal recall of piece of
writing of known length) 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 well in
excess of 150 hours of discussions with Neville, and many hours with other
interviewees, the most appropriate method was note taking rather than tape
recording. As my method, I followed Minichiello, Aroni,
Timewell & Alexander (1995) in relying on memory aided by the briefest 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 were recorded verbatim. I used my own shorthand in note taking. I
always wrote up my notes on a computer within an hour of an
interview/discussion as Minichiello et al recommend (1995). They quote Bogdan and Biklen,
‘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 note taking enabled recording, coding, analysis,
interpretation and emergent design of my research 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’s
benchmarks for this note taking mode (1995). It was ‘fair’ to me and interviewees, the data gathering was valid and
effective, and it did aid in analysing the data.
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
counselling skills training I had received from Terry O’Neil and Neville’s mentoring,
I had well-developed interviewing and attending competencies. I had been
trained to para-professional status in counselling
and interviewing skills by O’Neil at the La Trobe University Student
Counselling Unit, and had completed 18 months of work as a para-professional
student counsellor at that unit. Terry had modelled his counselling 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.
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) 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 1967; 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. This
notwithstanding, some things I took a long time to comprehend, namely -
community being the therapy, Cultural Keyline, and
that Neville was involved in evolving global epochal transition.
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 talk unless it was networking related. In fact for
social exchange, Neville preferred the company of others, not me.
Minichiello et al (1995, p. 81) 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.
My use of in-depth interviewing is
consistent with my naturalistic inquiry frame and use of grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss 1967).
Before I began the research, prolonged interviews were held face-to-face
with Neville when I stayed with him firstly, in Bondi
Junction, New South Wales (1988-89), secondly in Yungaburra,
Queensland (Dec in 1991, 1992 and 1993, and July, 1994) and thirdly, in Rapid
Creek, Darwin (Feb, 1993). 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
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
was dependent on Neville’s pain levels from his bladder cancer, and during this
period, we generally had discussions one or two nights a week. During 1999
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. It emerged that thematic discussion was a fundamental
aspect of Fraser House change process (Yeomans, N. 1965a, Vol
. 4, p. 50 - 54). My notes referred mainly to discussion themes rather than
specific questions and answers.
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,
interdependent and inter-related (Minichiello, Aroni
et al. 1995, p. 152).
I was endeavouring to enter
Neville’s socially constituted 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. This in turn has
resonance with Gergen’s writing about meaning being
jointly negotiated. ‘Its meaning and implications are open to continuous
reshaping as relationships proceed (Gergen 2005).’ This is the way Neville and I related, and it was also a
frame I used throughout the research.
Often Neville would initiate a new
theme. During a December 1991 Yungaburra
conversation, Neville mentioned that he had adapted his father’s Keyline in evolving Fraser House and extending Fraser House
ways into the wider community. During that conversation Neville referred to his
Keyline adaptation as ‘Cultural Keyline’.
In December 1992, Neville told me
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. I had not heard of these
aspects being related to Neville’s psychiatric work before. Even then, from
December 1993, with so much storytelling and discussion going on, 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 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 was still
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 what was the real change
process? I was a slow learner.
Neville never spoon-fed me with him
telling me, as ‘fount of all wisdom’ what to do. He would set me challenges and
tasks.[1]
When Neville and I were together in Laceweb contexts
he would never do something if I could do it myself. I now know he was creating
contexts for me to embody learning. 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 with support’.
Sometimes he could have told me things. Instead he let me find things out from
my interviewees and then he would respond to my crosschecking with him about
what I had found out from others.
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 further interviews with each of them in March, June and
July in 1999. Chilmaid was a Fraser House head
charge-nurse who continued at
I commenced my first two interviews
with both Bruen and Chilmaid
with a series of questions that focused on 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 interview I had with each
of them that many of my questions were based on incorrect or 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 Behaviour 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. That ‘experiencing and reconnecting in new
ways with a peculiarly ‘total’ community’ was the reconstituting process was
not initially conveyed by my reading of Neville and Alf Clark’s book. At this
time I had not read the
I cannot pin point the time when I
realized that in Fraser House ‘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, but I
had just not sensed it.
Once I had this understanding about
socio-therapy and community-therapy and that Neville viewed Fraser House as a
complex self-organising living system, it became clear that all that Neville
had said about his father’s interest in living systems was central and not
peripheral. Neville had told me many times that he modelled 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. These are discussed later. This gave me a new framework for
the third interview with Bruen and Chilmaid in June 1999.
It became apparent during the June
1999 and the July 1999 interviews that I had some understanding that Bruen and Chilmaid did not have.
They had little idea that Fraser House was, for Neville, a pilot for exploring
global cultural and intercultural transition with a time frame of possibly more
than two hundred and fifty years. Neville talked about this epochal transition
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
(April, 1999) and Stephanie Yeomans (Jan, July, Dec, 2002).
After my increasing understanding, my following engagements with Bruen and Chilmaid shifted from
question and answer to a more conversational exchange with increased
storytelling.
Apart from Neville, Bruen and Chilmaid, I interviewed
six other people linked to Fraser House, namely, Margaret Cockett,
Alfred Clark, 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 Fraser House patient after leaving
Fraser house changed his focus from bank robber to having a career as a
research assistant to a leading Australian criminologist. Some of the feel of
Fraser House, especially the Big and Small Groups from a patient’s perspective,
was obtained from the former patient (June 1992) and the former outpatient
(July 1994, July 2001, July 2002 and December 2002).
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 and was practicing from Neville’s Bondi Junction house when we had the eighteen months of
monthly gatherings during 1986 and 1987. I first met her then (though Margaret
did not participate in the Sunday gatherings). Chilmaid,
Bruen and Cockett each
facilitated Fraser House Big Group and Small Groups on many occasions and
conducted research into aspects of Fraser House.
Another interviewee was Terry
O’Neill. He was a psychologist at
Another person I
interviewed (Jan, 2001, July, 2002 and Dec, 2002) was Neville’s sister-in-law,
Stephanie Yeomans (Neville’s younger brother, Ken’s
first wife). She had been a psychiatric nurse at
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 ninety 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 potentially embodied this extensive action
research, and may have this embodied experience to draw upon, as well as
interviews, archival research, narrative, autobiographical material and
storytelling - all enriched potentially by my own prolonged action research
that I am continuing to be involved in. I did not know it at the time that I
had been adopting and adapting Neville’s ways both in action research and in
action in everyday life in the social life world.
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 latter role – being immersed in
the action and regularly taking an initiating and enabling role (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 cast me in the Big
Group enabler role. Through the Nineties I have enabled over 200 experiential
gatherings with between 40 and 180 people attending during bush camp-out
conference-festivals.
In keeping with indigenous
influences on Neville’s modes of action reseach he
involved me many types of actions that were resonant with Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s twenty five Indigenous Research Projects (Smith 1999, p. 142-167) namely – creating, democratising, discovering, envisioning,
negotiating, naming, networking, reframing, remembering, restoring,
revitalizing, sharing, storytelling, and enabling and fostering proactive
action research, structural change and cultural change
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 fractal, merging,
synthesising and iterative. Action, monitoring, evaluation, adaptation and
modification all took place in a merged holistic way appropriate to emerging
and 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 – a way of living. 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. Neville’s way was to have
people aware of their own body’s responses to unfolding experience (especially
what Neville called micro-experiences) of wellness generating action – what Neville
called ‘embodied understanding’. Head knowing without embodied understanding
was for Neville, of little significance.
The prolonged continuous action
research that Neville pioneered in Fraser House and Fraser House outreach has
resonance with what Deming termed ‘a culture of continual improvement’ (2005).
There is also resonance with what Senge calls, the
‘learning organization’ (1992) and what Bateson called deutero-learning
(1973). 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 everyone’s context role specific behaviours. While
Neville monitored the unfolding context, he stayed in his own meta-context (his
personal context in the 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’ what was there - responding in a resonant way, noticing the unfolding
action and flexibly altering and responding to responses as a natural
spontaneous flow. It was an integral aspect of his way of life – his ‘culture’.
While I had been told and shown so
much over the years I had known Neville, he only told me of his collected
papers in the Original Manuscripts Collection in the Mitchell Library within
the NSW State Library in
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’s collected papers in the Mitchell Library 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 Fraser House 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 researcher’s 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 and it is
not all in one place in the ‘Original Manuscript’ 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
brothers, Allan and Ken, and Neville’s second wife, Lien.
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 each
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 the principles of my emergent design, i.e. contextually
determined, rather than presupposed and prescripted.
Some small bits of Neville’s handwritten scribbling 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, N. 1971b). I had not had the title’s significance reach me - the
culture’s margin is where social change starts. I spotted this document 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 in July 2000 after Neville’s
death (30 May 2000).
Dr. Ned Iceton
had archival materials at his home in Armidale in
N.E. New South Wales relating to the 1971 to 1973 Aboriginal Human Relations
Gatherings facilitated by Neville. 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
perused these in Canberra) (Aboriginal Human Relations Newsletter Working Group 1971a; Aboriginal
Human Relations Newsletter Working Group 1971b). I had two interviews with Iceton
on consecutive days. My questions
focused on the processes used to start and sustain group process at the Human
Relations 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. I was
given the archive to copy. The key document, ‘On Global Reform and
International Normative Model Areas (Inma)’ (Yeomans 1974) was in this archive; as well, there were materials relating
to Neville’s Lake Tinaroo Mediation Workshops.
This research is in the style and
mode of the naturalist paradigm following Lincoln and Guba’s
book, ‘Naturalistic Inquiry’ (1985). I used this approach because Neville himself engaged in naturalistic
inquiry and helped pioneer this method in
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 (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 (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
(1985, p. 56) – refer Table 1 below adapted from Lincoln and Guba
(1985, p. 56).
I will show in the three sections of
this research that Nevilles and his father’s work is
consistent with the new paradigm’s beliefs and principles and that both men
helped evolve new paradigm action research in
Neville was well
aware of the holographic quality of his action research in interaction between
Cultural Keyline processes and social systems. 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 (1985, p. 59).
The quote aptly describes the holographic and fractal quality of the way
Neville interacted with connexity in a two-fold
sense.
My definition of ‘connexity’ is as follows:
Connexity’ embodies the notion that everything within and
between natural contexts and everything within and between people and context
(culturally and inter-culturally) is inter-dependent, inter-related,
inter-connected, inter-linked and interwoven – whether we recognize it or not.
New Paradigm Basic Belief |
Associated Principle |
|
Complex Heterarchic Holographic Indeterminate Mutually causal Morphogenetic Perspectival |
Real-world
entities are a diverse lot of complex systems and organisms. Systems and
organisms experience many simultaneous and potentially dominant orderings –
none of which are ‘naturally’ ordered. Images of systems
and organisms are created by a dynamic process of interaction that is
(metaphorically) similar to the holograph. Future states of
systems and organisms are in principle unpredictable Systems and
organisms evolve and change together in such a way (with feedback and feedforward) as to make the distinction between cause and
effect meaningless New forms of
systems and organisms unpredicted (and
unpredictable) from any of the parts can arise spontaneously under conditions
of diversity, openness, mutual causality, and indeterminacy Mental processes,
instruments, and even disciplines are not neutral |
Table 1. Basic Belief and Associated Principles of the New Paradigm
Neville maintained connexity perception 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 endeavoured 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 criterion,
‘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
cultures. 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)’. 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. (As discussed in Chapter Twelve, in
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) call ‘detached wonder’. I also engaged in persistent
observation to add salience so as 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. E. G. 1981; Lincoln and Guba 1985, p. 304).
These two forms of engagement
enabled me to come to terms with what Eisner calls the ‘pervasive qualities’ (Eisner 1975), in this case the ‘pervasive qualities’ of Neville and his
social action, and to sort out what really matters. In my writing I have
endeavoured to specify in detail the exploring I carried out, and how I sought
out salience.
Another aspect of my method to
ensure trustworthiness was the use of triangulation. Following 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, 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.
I engaged in peer debriefing (Lincoln and Guba 1985) with a number of people who were disinterested, though
resonant. I also carried out ongoing member checks with 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). 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
to give them an opportunity to give an assessment of overall adequacy (Lincoln and Guba 1985).’
My method was resonant with
Neville’s own research methodology outlined in the next two segments.
When I first met Neville one of the
first things he did was to discover that we shared some of the same theoretical
perspectives. We were both informed by a study of phenomenology, hermeneutics
and the sociology of knowledge. I had had sociology of knowledge as my
substantive topic in each year of sociology for my social science degree. For
both of us, meaning emerged out of our shared relational inter-subjectivity.
For Neville, re-constituting and mediating relational meaning was a core
activity of the Fraser House community re-socializing process (Gergen 2005).
A part of my theoretical stance was
using Neville’s way of action research. I have used qualitative methods from
within Neville’s worldview to provide some glimpses and feel of his way.
Neville’s primary focus was on the ‘action’ part of action research. From a
research point of view, Neville was not into critique of society as in
‘critical sociology’. While Neville assumed a social basis for mental illness,
he was neither into criticizing society nor promoting his own solutions. If
anything his work was in the general area of cultural studies, and within that,
the study of ‘cultural emergence’ and ‘intercultural connexity’.
His work is wider than cultural science (geistwissenshaftlich);
his action was linked to many of the ‘disciplines’.
Neville engaged marginalized people
in inter-subjective awareness (living experience) of the shared act of working
out in everyday life how to live together well. The way of life they were
co-re-constituting together was:
Neville fostered emergence by
creatively utilizing the liminal (at the threshold)
tension between the actual and the possible.
The fluid freeness in Neville’s
methods mirrors the fluid freeness in the ways of living Neville was enabling
through cultural emergence.
Neville’s way embodies a paradigm (Kuhn 1996) fundamentally different to the logical positivist and
similar paradigms pre-occupied with categorisation, universal prescriptive
inter-contextual algorithms - and manipulative knowing (so we can predict, and
control) (Pelz 1974; Pelz 1975). Anyone looking through the filter of a logical positivist
and similar paradigms at Neville’s tentative connexity
way perturbing self-organizing systems typically find little that makes sense
in Neville’s life work. It may appear a confused uncontrolled mess.
The typical responses to Neville’s
actions from those within the above paradigms have been to intervene to have
their paradigm applied through negation, denigration, condemnation, subversion,
imposition and control (typically through imposing a fixed predetermined
agenda). Some examples are firstly in organising the NSW festivals (authorities
seeking to curtail location and energy); secondly, at both the 1992 gathering
at Geoff Guest’s place (Petford Working Group 1992), and at the 1994 Small Island Gathering on the Atherton
Tablelands (where non-grassroots oriented people sought to impose top down
control through imposing fixed agenda (Roberts and Widders 1994); and thirdly, all the above responses happened constantly
in relation to Fraser House.
Neville’s way and Cultural Keyline has to be experienced and embodied from deep within
the associated paradigm, value and behaviour system; mentoring is valuable. Neville
in no way wanted to answer my questions about Cultural Keyline
when he first mentioned the term in Decembr 1991;
rather he mentored me and set up a stream of micro-experiences. Cognitive
‘head’-based knowing will never lead to a substantive understanding of
Neville’s way; it has to be embodied. Neville’s way survives and thrives in the
lived-life experience of natural nurturers and those who are continuing living
their caring human values in supporting wellness action. The above is the
reason I mirrored Neville’s way in carrying out this research
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; for example, from Indigenous and grassroots life-worlds
throughout East Asia, Australasia, and
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 be in three parts, Fraser
House, Fraser House Outreach and the evolving of the Laceweb.
Recall that 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 be both a stimulus and guide
for 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). Consistent with Neville and his father I was letting the
archive tell me what to do.
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 moist pliable 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 to have the latest
version ‘in my head’ all the time. As I
gathered more data and reflected, I was constantly looking for where things
fitted and whether they still had a place.
In making sense of, and writing
through 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; Neuman
2000) 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’ (1985, p. 205).
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 (1985, p. 204-205) refer to Schwartz and Ogilvy’s (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’ (1985, p. 204-205). 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’ (1985, p. 204-205). Chapter Five discusses the fractal quality of the Keypoint) where information distributed in land topography
is present at the Keypoint where the three main
landforms meet. Chapter Nine discusses the fractal quality of Cultural Keypoints.
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.
The ‘base of information’ that is
appropriate for holographic generalization is suggested by Lincoln and Guba as Geertz’s ‘thick
description’ (1973). I have endeavoured 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 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 the
particulars in the general, and the general in the particulars.
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 themes below (1994, p. 245-261):
·
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
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 onwards, and increasingly using them during this
thesis research. Naturalistic inquiry was for me, becoming a way of being.
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’ (1993, p. 38). These aspects were used to increase trustworthiness along with
carrying out ongoing member checks (Lincoln and Guba 1985, p. 314) with all of my interviewees. I also checked and confirmed
my ‘central meanings’ – such as ‘Cultural Keyline’, ‘connexity’, and ‘emergence’ - 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 ‘typification’ (1967) in looking for what Eisner calls, ‘structural collaboration’ -
‘recurrent behaviours 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 (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 (1991, p. 230).
In exploring diversity - seeking Bateson’s ‘patterns that connect’ (1980) in respect of each of Eisner’s three aspects mentioned in the previous
paragraph, I endeavoured to continually improve my capacity to engage what
Eisner (1991, p. 63) calls
‘connoisseurship’, defined by him as ‘the ability to make fine-grained
discriminations among complex subtle qualities’. Connoisseurship is ‘the art of
appreciation’. A fundamental aspect of connoisseurship is ‘allowing the
situation to speak for itself, that is, to allow for an emergent focus’ (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 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’ (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’ having, as
one of its meanings, ‘a mood that attunes’ (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. I
also explored attuning moods in group contexts (in both senses – that is
exploring constituting stimmung and notice its spontaneous
emergence).
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 questions were, ‘How
did he do that?’ and ‘How did he come up with that?’ To this endeavour I
brought my understanding of ‘understanding’, honed by my three years of study
of the sociology of knowledge with sociologist Werner Pelz.
He speaks of a contemplative mode of knowing that has some resonance with
connoisseurship, where, Pelz’s (1975, p. 232, 238) ‘contemplating as mode of knowing’ is:
a kind of intellective-emotive
compound of seeing-hearing-smelling-tasting-feeling. It is appreciative and
savouring. 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, and 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.
Following Pelz
‘contemplation’ as a mode of knowing, I have endeavoured to use the German
concept ‘kennen’ - not a ‘provable’ manipulatable knowing (the German concept ‘wissen’), rather kennen implies a
knowing to become better acquainted with Neville’s way – to become even
more familiar with it – ‘to kennen’ following Pelz is ‘denoting something personal [and inter-personal],
subjective, unfinished and unfinishable, involving me
and interesting me’ (1974, p. 80-83). It is relational knowing (Gergen 2005).
Allied to this is a process Jeremy Narby calls defocusing (1998). As a metaphor for defocusing, Narby speaks
of those stereo pictures where the three-dimensional image only appears
suddenly with the relaxed defocused gaze. Examples of defocusing approaches are
daydreaming, nocturnal soliloquies, and following Pelz,
contemplation. Pelz (1974, p. 80-83) 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
inform us more thoroughly concerning the reality of that situation than any
number of statistics or objective descriptions.
One of the challenges in writing was
what Eisner called ‘the untranslatable’ – ‘there is no verbal equivalent for
Bach’s Mass in B Minor’ (1991, p.235). Prose cannot encapsulate the co-reconstituting lived-life
emotive richness of Fraser House. Since an aim of this thesis is to reveal, I
endeavoured 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 cannot represent’ (1991, p.235). I endeavour 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’ (from a 1978 discussion with Werner Pelz) - that is, conveying an impoverished representation
of the multidimensional; I was constantly challenged by making sense of rich
interwoven complexity.
There
is a German expression that links to connoisseurship, ‘Dichter
und Denken’ (Pelz
1974). As an example, some
very talented creative people are called 'dichter und
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. In doing the
research I contemplated Neville as Dichter und Denken. I endeavoured to enter into a threefold mode of
understanding, intermingling three views of Neville, for example, in the guise
of evolver of community psychiatry, secondly, Neville in the process of
evolving community psychiatry, and Neville’s
version of community psychiatry – and then inter-subjectively linking with all
of that.
As
another example, merge Neville, as community wellbeing innovator, 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. Note that it is easy
to think about any of the three aspects of the above sets’ 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).
Another
resonant process for subtle sensing I endeavoured to use was Wolff’s twin
concepts of ‘surrender’ and ‘catch’ (1976, p. 20). For Wolff, ‘surrender’ involves ‘total involvement, suspension
of received notions, pertinence of everything, identification, and risk of being
hurt’. In surrendering one leaves oneself open to ‘catch’ - meaning ‘the
cognitive or existential result, yield or harvest, new conceiving or new
conceptualising – a new being-in-the-world’. Werner Pelz
introduced me to surrender and catch during 1978 and I have explored this ever
since. Suspension of received notions is a major experiential shift.
Wolff refers to Tolstoy’s writing of
the character Levin being with his beloved Kitty in Anna Karenina:
Then for the
first time, he clearly understood...that he was not simply close to her, but
that he could not tell where he ended and she began (Wolff 1976, p. 20).
Wolff uses this quote in making the
point that ‘in surrender as in love, differentiation between subject, act and
object disappear - an example of the suspension of even essential categories
among our received notions (Wolff 1976, p. 22).’ He is talking about realizing connexity. Wolff refers to ‘subject, act and object’. These
are the three aspects of dichter and denken. Wolff’s undifferentiated surrendering merges the
richness of perceiving subject and act and object in an undifferentiated
melding.
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 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 more sense of it all, including
his death; I had busied myself in the meantime with reading more extensively
about qualitative methods and the Keyline literature.
As well, I reviewed the the following literature
areas - Prigogine & Stengers,
‘Order out of Chaos’ (1984); secondly, on fuzziology, commencing with Dimitrov (2002); thirdly, on deep ecology commencing with Arne Naess
(1998); fourthly, on emergent properties commencing with Fritjof
Capra (1997); fifthly, on holistic open systems commencing with Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1950) and Fred Emery (1969); and sixthly, on self organizing systems and autopoiesis
commencing with Maturana (1970). Insights from this literature review are interspersed throughout this
thesis.
Beveridge (1950) 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 its solution, abandonment of the work with
the attention on something else, then the appearance of the idea with dramatic
suddenness and often a sense of certainty.
I did have clarity and sudden
insights ‘out of the blue’ after this long break. Other sudden insights
occurred unexpectedly 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.
Neville was right when he said that
my Laceweb writing was, ‘like a scientific detective
story’. Neville in no way did things 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 mirrored nature; these actions and ways were
pervasively inter-connected, inter-woven, interdependent and inter-related – what
I have defined as having connexity. 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. As
well, 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. As well,
Neville never mentioned either of the terms 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. However, Cultural Keyline is
implicitly present throughout Neville’s writing if one understands the term and
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 laboured 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 Lien. 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 my 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 December 1993 Yungaburra conversations, 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 thought incorrectly that the
thesis was essentially finished. Even then, resonant with Neville’s scrupulous
writing, 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. 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 file notes 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.
A final period of writing entailed
weaving everything together in a tighter, finer weave – so it was appropriately
web-like. This phase lasted another eighteen months. My Aboriginal interviewee
Marjorie Roberts told me:
It has to be a
fine weaving; anything less than that would not reflect Neville’s life work.
Consistent with Neville and his
father’s ‘letting nature tell them what to do’, in the
final months my thesis was ‘telling me what to do.’
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. My theoretical perspectives and Neville’s research methods were
detailed. 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 psychosocial
being and action, and their emergence and adaptation from the joint work Neville
did with his father and brother Allan in evolving Keyline
sustainable agriculture practice, and the family’s drawing from Australian and
Oceania Indigenous ways.
[1] Milton Erickson the therapist would
also use assignments of tasks and challenges Hanlon, W. D. (1987). Taproots:
Underlying Principles of Milton Erickson's Therapy and Hypnosis. London, W.W. Norton & Co..