research
Research can be considered as the generation of thoughtful discussions about thinking, feeling, and doing in our own lives and in the lives of others. The educational work of Crafting Gentleness is supported by research in the following areas:
Gentleness
Blending sociology, anthropology, education, folklore, social psychology, ethics, and the medical humanities, this work seeks to identify the dynamics of gentleness as a powerful politics of everyday life. Thematic areas dealt with in this research include nonviolence, affect, presence, 'being with', ethics of closeness, compassion, kindness, friendship, altruism, and transformative engagement.
If there were a systematic theoretical framework to justify the social and political relevance of gentleness as a form of political action, what might it look like? What room, if any, has there been for a politics of gentleness within orthodox social or political theory, and, therefore, in the more obviously political spaces of our everyday lives? If we were to start from an assumption that gentleness is a baseline possibility for being human-in-relationship, how might that effect our understanding of who we are and how we relate to each other? Is it possible to develop a social-theoretical basis for the political relevance of gentleness?
Might a baseline of gentleness foreground the study of hope, optimism, transformation, community, and social justice in social and political theory? Through a politics of gentleness, might it be possible to retain the power of grounded political optimism without the excesses of de-peopled, dissociative, and often divisive utopianisms? Must attitudes of gentleness be equated with political quietism? Might more systematic social and political understandings of gentleness lead to more effective responses to violence and conflict? Might a politics of gentleness open up opportunities for the transformation of local and national governance and policy formation?
Is it possible to identify clear social and political principles for the everyday application of gentleness within education, work, politics, healthcare, self-care, and relationships? How might a politics of gentleness contribute to transformative understandings of bullying dynamics in schools and workplaces? Is it possible to redress evidence-based critiques of the Gentle Teaching approach in crisis healthcare, in order to formulate a more robust theoretical basis for the advocacy of gentleness in clinical practice? How might a systematic politics of gentleness contribute to discussions about de-escalation, humanistic nursing, caring, and institutional practice in healthcare?
Might more systematic understandings of gentleness provide insights into the challenges of institutional religious practice? Might a politics of gentleness provide insight and guidance in practices of resistance against oppression, so that violence does not have to always beget violence? Might there be a difference between a politics of gentleness and a politics of non-violence? Are there local and powerful non-institutional traditions of gentleness around the world unrelated to the strong association of gentleness with religious and spiritual institutional practices? How might a politics of gentleness contribute to pre-conflict and post-conflict studies? In the localised, lived invitations of a politics of gentleness, experienced in and through relationship, might there be the seeds of a truly international ground for understanding and cooperation?
crafting
The notion of crafting is often associated with activities like pottery, knitting, woodwork, quiltmaking and so on. Engaging in these sorts of crafting can be a great way to remind ourselves that we can make a difference, to remind ourselves that we can learn to listen more carefully to how we make the differences that we make. Crafting materials can be a way to align ourselves to think more in terms of the consequences and effects of what we do, to consider that helpfulness and appropriateness might be friendlier values to live by than rigid rules of right and wrong. By sculpting, shaping, moulding, guiding, building, and by listening and responding as we go, we can become more aware of how we make a difference.
At Crafting Gentleness we have taken opportunities to study literature on the experiential practice and pedagogy of craft and crafting. We have been inspired here, for example, by the work of Richard Sennett, Mary C. Richards, Carla Needleman, David Pye, and David Gauntlett. In our research, crafting activities aren't just promoted as opportunities to experience empowerment. Crafting activities are understood as reminders that we can become aware of how we always-already make a difference, at any time, in any situation. We are always-already sculpting, shaping, moulding, guiding, building. We always-already have an influence on how we and others experience life. We can become more aware of how we always-already matter.
This project takes some of the central principles behind feminist, anarchist, and other attempts to explore how the personal can be the political, and allies them to an exploration of key paradoxes of political and personal engagement. How might we craft our sense of agency in the world in the face of the dynamics of violence, the dynamics of enclosure? For example, if we always-already make a difference, how might we understand the character of the differences we make in a more subtle manner, so we might craft more, rather than less helpful political, social, and personal dynamics, in the environments which shape us as we shape them. Moving beyond the concept of 'craft' as a mere metaphor, then, various schools of thought related to 'craft' and 'crafting' are used in this work as doorways to more helpful and appropriate understandings of the role of affect, power, and transformative participative agency in the social interactions of our lives.
Other Stories: Traditions of Resilience, Heritages of Peace
Other Stories is a programme that invites people to tell 'other stories' about Northern Ireland. People often speak of the last forty years in Northern Ireland as 'The Troubles' or 'The Conflict', as if this was a continuous experience of intense conflict. By doing this we may pay the high price of blocking out many other aspects of our lives during that time. Our retellings of history in Northern Ireland tend to place the emphasis on hostility, trauma, and violence. Because we usually don't speak about them openly, more helpful aspects of everyday life over the past forty years have been rendered invisible and, as a result, politically irrelevant.
The Other Stories programme invites people to remember and explore the histories of resilience, friendship, family, community, nonviolence, and helpful relationship that have sustained our lives over the last forty years in Northern Ireland. Through workshops and ethnographic research, Other Stories seeks to redress the balance of social imagination, making our helpful experiences more available for future generations.
The research programme which we propose for Other Stories programme seeks to combine insights from the performing arts and humanities with insights drawn from the social science disciplines of anthropology, sociology, folkloristics, psychology, social ecology, and ethnomusicology. There are three elements in the proposed programme:
1) Reframing conflict narratives through ethnography. We can helpfully identify a field of 'ordinary ethics' that challenges our biases in the writing and rewriting of Northern Irish history. Through ethnography we have an opportunity to recognise the histories of peaceful, sustainable, and nonviolent relationship in our communities. Key themes include:
- Multiple vocabularies: ethnographic and oral history exploration of the multiple vocabularies of ordinary ethics in everyday life, as experienced in English, Irish, and Ulster-Scots languages;
- Ordinary spaces, uncommodifying relationships: ethnographic and oral history exploration of people's experiences of 'good company' and 'being with' as expressed through lived traditions of song, music, story, and humour;
- Being-in-common, difference-in-common: ethnographic and oral history exploration of those times when sectarian (Protestant/Catholic) considerations were superseded by a concern for common humanity and respect for difference.
2) Theoretical reflection, analysis, and synthesis. Ethnography will provide us with a rich source of insight to consider the politics of sustainable relationships in everyday life. Ethnography can challenge the historiography of conflict through the chronicling of peace. In what ways can it also enhance our theoretical understandings of power, agency, resistance, conflict, and social healing in Northern Ireland? Key themes include:
- 'Sensitive Presence': although much guidance will be drawn from methodologies within the social science disciplines mentioned above, we believe it is possible to develop new methodological approaches that calibrate even more closely to the emotional textures of contexts of ordinary ethics, based on the key concept of 'sensitive presence'.
- Multiple vocabularies: Theoretical reflection tends to concentrate around singular keywords. In this project one of the working principles of theoretical exploration is the notion that the words we use may be less important than the character of relationship to which they refer. By directly addressing the multiple vocabularies of ordinary ethics we can come to a clearer understanding of the experienced quality of relationship that people seek to articulate.
- Agency, Structure, and Possibility: with this project we will explore the role of local agency and sustainable relationship as juxtaposed with contexts of structural violence, in ways that open up new understandings of possibility and hope.
- Tradition and Ordinary Ethics: this project will allow for new understandings of tradition and traditions, as we explore the power of memory, generational legacies, family, and community, through the personal experiences of ordinary ethics.
3) Redressing the silencing, retelling histories. Bringing forward alternative histories of 'ordinary ethics' redresses the legacy of silencing which we perpetuate. Historiographic and theoretical insights drawn from this programme of ethnography can be incorporated and tested among community-arts practitioners, educators, and the peace-building community. Collaborative endeavours will match social science research with projects in theatre, storytelling, and dance.
pedagogy and education
One of the specific notions that we are exploring at Crafting Gentleness is a 'pedagogy of gentleness'. Pedagogy is often taken to mean "the science of teaching". Here we simply mean a more thoughtful and analytic approach to the "how" of my teaching. From this research we have drawn the following principles for our own contribution to a learning environment, among others:
- 1. There is nothing more personal, political, or relevant than attending to the character of own own emotional attitude in our role as educators. How we feel on the day will have a major influence on the character of our teaching. This is what Teresa Brennan referred to as the "transmission of affect". As Brennan outlines: "By the transmission of affect, I mean simply that the emotions or affects of one person, and the enhancing or depressing energies these affects entail, can enter into another" (2004:3). This is consistent with the later work of critical pedagogist Paolo Freire and his insistence on the importance of "being with" (Freire 1998). We also find it important to note Megan Boler's insistence that: "A pedagogy that recognizes emotions as central to the domains of cognition and morality need not preclude intellectual rigor or critical inquiry" (Boler 1999:110).
- 2. It is important for us not to seek to prescribe the outcomes or direction of a classroom. The character and quality of the interaction in the room is of greater importance to us than a clear trajectory, and the quality we am seeking to foster is consistent with Mark Smith's characterisation of "local education" practices: "Instead of aiming for particular changes in individuals, we look to the nature of the interactions we foster - we move from a focus on product to a concern with process and praxis" (Smith 1994:36). The emotional climate we seek to foster in our teaching and learning is very much a conversational one, with an openness to detours and divergences in direction: "The specific goal may not be clear at any one time, either to educators or learners, yet the process is deliberate. Educators in these situations seek to foster an environment in which conversation can take place" (Smith 1994:63). Derrick Jensen has written something that resonates with our approach:
"I cannot control what my students want or are able to learn, and I have no desire to. Nor can I control whether the students like the class, and I have no desire to do that either. Nor can I control whether they are at a place in their lives to learn from anything I have to offer. ... What I perceive as the direction they need to head may bear no relationship to the direction they actually need to head, the direction they're capable of heading, or the direction they indeed end up heading. And I need at all times to defer to that uncertainty, that mystery" (2004:109-110)
- 3. Confusion can be fruitful. In our teaching we offer people an invitation to "trust your confusion" in expectation of the conversational quality of the interactions. This can be unsettling at times, but it can also facilitate a space of creativity and opportunity; Megan Boler speaks of a "pedagogy of discomfort" in which students are invited "to leave the familiar shores of learned beliefs and habits, and swim further out into the "foreign" and risky depths of the sea of ethical and moral differences" (Boler 1999:181).
Boler, M. (1999). Feeling Power: emotions and education. New York: Routledge.
Brennan, T. 2004. The Transmission of Affect. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Ellsworth, E. (1994). "Why doesn't this feel empowering? Working through the repressive myths of Critical Pedagogy." In The Education Feminism Reader. Lynda Stone, ed. 300-327. New York: Routledge.
Freire, P. (1998). Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage. Transl. Patrick Clarke. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.
Hern, M, ed. (2008). Everywhere All The Time: A New Deschooling Reader. Oakland: AK Press.
Illich, I. (1971). Deschooling Society. New York: Harper & Row
Jensen, D. (2004). Walking on Water: Reading, Writing, and Revolution. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing.
Luke, C. and Gore, J. (1992). Feminisms and Critical Pedagogy. New York: Routledge.
Marsick, V. and Watkins, K. (1990). Informal and Incidental Learning in the Workplace. London: Routledge.
Smith, M. (1994). Local Education: community, conversation, praxis. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Stone, L, ed. (1994). The Education Feminism Reader. London: Routledge.
emotional climate/register
At Crafting Gentleness we are currently doing research within scholarly conversations around 'emotional climate'. One of the key entry points for our work in this area is an extension of the sociolinguistic concept of 'register'. This concept has been a tool for sociolinguists to assess differences and similarities and differences between situations. This is very important for making sense of things like social change. Sociolinguists tend to use the term 'register' to refer primarily to situational variability in language, how we use difference terminologies or taxonomies depending on the circumstance we find ourselves in (e.g. a doctor's surgery, a classroom, at home). A very important consideration here is the notion of 'appropriateness-to-context'. Instead of focusing just on words and language, we focus on variables of affect, our relationship to uncertainty, and the character of influencing we experience. The key variable, we suggest, is how our relationship to uncertainty plays out in different circumstances, and whether a consistent character of that relationship emerges over time. It is hoped that future work on 'emotional registers' will lead to more helpful understandings about spirals of violence, acclerative unhelpful change, and more subtle responses to such dynamics in the cause of helpful transformation.
The core of this work seeks to address research questions relating to disposition, power, agency, conflict, and social structure that have previously been discussed by various theorists in terms of 'structures of feeling' (Raymond Williams), 'habitus' (Pierre Bourdieu), 'psychogeography' (Guy Debord), 'chronotopes' (Mikhail Bakhtin), 'the transmission of affect' (Teresa Brennan), 'listening' (e.g. Erich Fromm, Les Back, Herb Lovett), the commodification of emotion (e.g. Arlie Hochschild), the anthropology of the senses (e.g. Paul Stoller), and 'presence' (e.g. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Senger et al.), among others.