Thank you, that is great to hear!!! I got a shock when my own email appeared on my screen and I realised what I had done - a bit like coming out without meaning to. But you are right - these are really hard issues to grapple with and so few to have a good conversation with about it. Like you I am in the wrong part of the world to pop in for seminars that draw like minded people. But this connection already makes it feel different :) !! >>> Racine Guylaine <[log in to unmask]> 05/31/07 3:01 PM >>> Hi Yvonne, I'm sorry that you are sorry for sending your email to the whole list, because reading your mail this morning made me feel less alone in trying to decide what direction to give to our paper. Taking to a friend yesterday, I was telling her how uncertain I was, talking with her about that "scientific gaze" that you've mentioned being over my shoulder, looking at me when I'm writing and making comments all along :) So your email was a blessing for me ! Au plaisir, Guylaine Guylaine Racine Professeure agrégée École de service social Université de Montréal C.P. 6128, Succ. Centre-ville Montréal, Qc. H3C 3J7 Tél.: (514) 343-6111, poste 3762 Télécopieur : (514) 343-2493 Courriel : [log in to unmask] -----Original Message----- From: Performative Social Science on behalf of Yvonne Sliep Sent: Thu 2007-05-31 08:50 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: A lengthy inspired response Dear all, I accidently send a response to Kip to the general list - so sorry about that. Yvonne Prof. Yvonne Sliep, PhD School of Psychology University of Kwa-Zulu Natal South Africa ph: 031-2607982 >>> Yvonne Sliep <[log in to unmask]> 05/31/07 2:01 PM >>> Dear Kip, I found your introduction and invitation to contribute to the special issue of FQS very inspiring, affirmative and immediately opening spaces in me that help me breathe and work better. I am feeling a bit like a child let loose in a world that only existed in my imagination * not knowing which of the work I want to respond to. Then writing and feeling the "scientific gaze" determine the direction which instinctively I know is wrong. The attached abstract sounds boring and does not capture the rich context of the work and the challenges we wrestle with in trying to bring to light the effect of the work: What is the evidence we are talking about - how can it best be taken back to the communities of concern where the practices are developed in? How do you do what you are doing is good enough * do you listen to how counsellors dealing with war trauma suddenly talk with a different energy and commit themselves far beyond the normal call of duty? Do you look at whether there is a change in the social web over the time the work has been done in the area * if people have an idea what contributed to these changes if any (try and imagine ways in which this can be done "scientifically" in geographical places where the are no streets and home numbers, where war is now waged over the geographical boundaries that used to help identify boundaries and where Suspicion and Mistrust have become well known neighbours since the war and are managing to perpetuate a war even closer to home. Or do I take Malawi as an illustration * where HIV counsellors no longer felt like messengers of death but feeling they were making a personal contribution to the sense of a community changing from descriptions of being helpless victims to ones of communities of courage. Communities who have historically overcome many disasters like drought and hunger. And really interesting is the response of a first world context where the participating group start developing a language of their own like "the shape of listening", 'the image of accountability" and continue to show in very alternative ways what is meant by this. In South Africa we look at a collectively contributed script, produced by community based health workers that is based on real life experience. It primarily deconstructs notions of Stigma and Discrimination. Then we look at what preferred stories and experiment interactively through drama how you can get these preferred spaces. Or do you give out hundreds of questionnaires that can help measure change in social capital because that will be seen as more scientific. Well all of those were done but it would be great to have some feedback on what would be a good approach for the article in this specific issue. I will talk to some of this work during a presentation which is going to happen during the conference in Bristol in July where I hope to meet you personally and maybe we can continue a conversation from there. Should I submit the abstract as is on-line or adapt it a particular direction? Warm regards, Yvonne >>> Kip Jones <[log in to unmask]> 05/14/07 3:04 PM >>> A personal invitation to contribute to the FQS Special Issue on Performative Social Science from Kip Jones, co-editor A while ago, Mary Gergen emailed and asked me to contribute to a presentation that she was giving by discussing my experience of "being on the margins", how this may have affected my career over time, how I have felt about this status when it is happening, about how I define marginality at all and changes over time in my experiences of marginality. I don't think I ever really answered her question. When someone brings up a topic, particularly one that excites me, I tend to think tangentially. That is, the question leads to other questions, then to other places, concepts and ideas, spawning creative connections, reminding me of experiences and stories, and sending me reeling into the outer spaces of the unknown. If Mary had been with me in the room, she might have tried to "reel me in", get me back "on message" and perhaps extracted a more precise answer to her question. Left alone, I was left to my own devices. Instead, I started thinking about "the edge" and "going to the edge" and what that means to me tangentially. Tangential thinking is, in my estimation, the basis for the development of the World Wide Web and its popularity. Take a subject, do a search and eventually you will end up in some interesting place that you never planned to go in the first place. This is the nature of scientific discovery (and social science research would benefit from more of this approach too). There are people "going to the edge" on the web without even knowing what is happening to them, participating in French educator Pierre Lévy's concept of a web that does not have a unique centre and no right place to start. The 'web has permanently various centres that are mobile luminous pointers, jumping from node to node. Each centre creates an infinite network around it, defining an instantaneous map' (Lévy 2003: 6). What is marginality or the edge? * the cutting edge or the abyss? It is probably a bit of both, in my estimation. Having spent my life (creative and academic) exploring boundaries in order to map new territory, I am aware that dissatisfaction with the status quo compels us into unknown territory, which, in turn, often creates misunderstanding around our activities*the price we pay for going to the edge. Much of my work is guided by the principle that creativity is the uncanny ability to change boundaries while, at the same time, working with them. Creative efforts push and shove at the edges. Like a child's first wonderment at her/his artistic use of excrement, this creativity needs to be shared. There is a compulsion to return from the edge or margins and convince others of our great discoveries/creations. Often, like the creative child, our efforts are received with horror or embarrassment. Thinking about this, I remembered George Kubler and his Shape of Time (1962), required (suggested?) reading when I went to art school. Kubler was the art historian and archaeologist who described the history of art as a vast mining exercise with innumerable shafts, most of them closed down long ago. Each artist works on in the dark, guided only by the tunnels and shafts of earlier work. We arrive at our work on the continuum or series of works extending beyond us in either or both directions. When a specific temperament (edginess?) interlocks with a favourable position, the fortunate individual uncovers forward movement in the field. This achievement is sometimes denied to others as well as by others. An artist can not/would not/should not paint the Mona Lisa in the 21st Century just as, hopefully, social scientists would not want to retreat to mid-20th Century "laboratory experiments" and studies that used college freshmen (sic) as guinea pigs. Both the artist and the social scientist are, first, recorders of the time in which they live and must reflect their place on a historical continuum of work. It may be painful at times to be where we are, but we cannot go backwards (and shouldn't want to, either). That's why I often respond to negativity around or distrust of the post-modern with, "That is all we have. This is where we are". Does it "hurt"*this going to the edge? Being misunderstood is probably what hurts most. I was part of a dinner party recently where the participants were criticising contemporary art (the "a child could do it"' argument). Because one of the dinner guests was a former chorister at Convent Garden, I reminded her of Bizet's experience with the premiere of Carmen and how reviled this now extremely popular opera was in its time. In fact, Bizet died six months after the opening, disappointed in the extreme and exhausted from his misunderstood efforts to produce a masterpiece. The chorister seized upon my argument and followed it with an animated discussion of Bizet's plight and death. I am still not sure that she got the connection to the earlier discussion, however. As frustrating as these conversations can be, we must have them. We must come back from "the edge" and begin to incorporate our "data" from the perimeter into the fabric of community dialogue. This is where relational art and relational scholarship begin. Creativity is a process of invention, but the knowledge gained from these 'uncovered forward movements' (Kubler 1962) is a negotiated discursive construct that is created between people and agreed locally, opening up one or two obstructed passages (Bourriaud 2002), and connecting our discoveries from the margins back to the very community that motivated us to explore. Within the recent turn to a performative social science, surely, our current 'temperaments interlock with a favourable position' (Kubler 1962). This position is available to us through the opportunity of a Special Issue on Performative Social Science for the online, qualitative journal, FQS. Won't you join us in our adventure in forward movement at this pivotal time in social science? The issue promises to be seminal and foundational, exciting and innovative. I personally invite you to contribute because of your current work and interest in this emerging field. To respond to the Call for Abstracts, please see: http://www.qualitative-research.net/fqs/fqs-e/CfP_08-2-e.htm. The co-editors and I look forward to working with you on this collaborative effort. Cheers, Kip Bourriaud, Nicolas (2002; English version) Relational Aesthetics. Dijon, France: Les Presses du Reel. Kubler, George (1962) The Shape of Time Remarks on the History of Things. New Haven: Yale University Press. Lévy, Pierre (2003) 'Education and Cyberspace'. Available at: http://www.siliconyogi.com/andreas/2003/doc/2003-1454.htm Dr Kip Jones Reader in Qualitative Social Science Centre for Qualitative Research Institute of Health & Community Studies Bournemouth University United Kingdom ************************* Website: www.kipworld.net ***************************************** To join the PerformSocSci newsgroup go to: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=performsocsci&A=1 ___________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Answers - Got a question? 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