Spinning Warm Stories: The Whole-hearted Scholarship of Arthur Bochner

Douglas Flemons
NCA, New Orleans, 11/22/02

Flemons, D. (2004). Spinning warm stories: The wholehearted scholarship of Arthur

Bochner. American Communication Journal, 7.
https://ac-journal.org/journal/vol7/iss1/index.htm

In the quiet of our eye contact, I’ve learned that without silence, words
would be meaningless; without listening, speaking loses its capacity to
heal; without empathy, fear becomes consuming.
—Arthur P. Bochner

A tear is an intellectual thing.

—William Blake

A story is a little knot or complex of that species of connectedness which

we call “relevance.”. . . [The] connectedness between people [is related
to the fact] that all think in terms of stories.
—Gregory Bateson

A little over ten years ago, I was mucking about, looking for truth—well, at that

moment, I guess I was more looking for interesting readings for a course I called “The

Logic of Structured Inquiry”—when I came across an article by Art Bochner (1981)

entitled, “Forming Warm Ideas.” In this piece, which began its life as a talk delivered at a

1979 conference honoring Gregory Bateson, Art artfully synthesized a Batesonian

“perspective on social science inquiry” into six “rules of thumb1 for imaginative and

catalytic thinking about the scientific study of social phenomena” (pp. 76-77):

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Some people have claimed that the phrase, “rule of thumb” originates from a
purported rule in English common law that made provision for a husband to beat his wife,
providing that the circumference of the stick didn’t exceed that of his thumb. Legal
scholars have questioned the existence of the law itself, and etymologists have
established that, regardless, the phrase did not originate in legal practice.
 (1) Study life in its natural setting being careful not to destroy the historical and

interactional integrity of the whole setting.

(2) Think aesthetically. Visualize, analogize, compare. Look for patterns,

configurations, figures in the rug.

(3) Live with your data. Be a detective. Mull, contemplate, inspect. Think about,

through, and beyond.

(4) Don’t be controlled by dogmatic formalisms about how to theorize and research.

Avoid the dualisms announced and pronounced as [maxims] by particularizing

methodologists and theorists. (They’ll fire their shots at you one way or the other

anyhow.)

(5) Be as precise as possible but don’t close off possibilities. Look to the ever larger

systems and configurations for your explanations. Keep your explanations as

close to your data and experience as possible.

(6) Aim for catalytic conceptualizations; warm ideas are contagious. (p. 76)

In the 23 years since writing this piece, Art has developed a body of work that

gives life to these rules, save perhaps for the latter elements of number 5. Having become

more interested in “telling,” (or, better, “showing”) than “explaining,” he has devoted

himself to spinning contextually rich narratives, rather than to developing explanatory

principles.

That Art has taken this Batesonian path demonstrates great courage. He made the

point in his 1979 talk that despite the importance of Bateson’s ideas, they had had little

impact on the “education and indoctrination of American social scientists” (p. 77). This

wasn’t surprising, Art mused, for if social scientists were to “begin to think and theorize

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in a Batesonian fashion,” they risked “suffer[ing] a psychotic break, be[ing] denied

tenure, or end[ing] up radicalizing scientific work on communication” (p. 77).

Luckily, instead of suffering a psychotic break, Art found Carolyn, and, happily,

he nailed tenure early on in his career. He thus chose doorway number three: In the last

twenty five years, if not longer, Art has been busy radicalizing the field of

communication, spinning warm stories that have opened the hearts-and-minds of young

scholars and have inspired dialogue with older ones.

Does this mean that Art has made a sizable impact on his field? This is the sort of

question we usually ask when we want to “measure the amount of success” someone has

enjoyed in academia, but in its present form, it is wrongly posed. As Bateson pointed out,

metaphors of quantity and mass—words such as sizeable, impact, measure, amount—

create muddled thinking when they are applied to the world of mind. Since Art has

worked so hard and effectively to sort through the misguided assumptions of social

scientists, I feel an ethical responsibility not to muddy the clarity and importance of his

contribution in the very moment of honoring it.

So to keep us all thinking straight (or, better, from a cybernetics point of view, to

keep us thinking in circles!), I’d rather ask the question in Batesonian terms: “How has

Art made a significant difference to his field?”

This query more usefully and less confusingly sends us looking for indications of

change rather than mythical quantitative effects. What or who has transformed in

response to Art and his work? I could start with me, for I have certainly changed; or with

you; or with the authors of the articles which cite him. But I think it would be more

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fascinating, more auto-ethnographically revealing, more cybernetically reflexive, to

wonder how Art’s work has folded back to change itself.

The perception of change depends on the recognition of difference, which, in turn,

requires some sort of comparison. But what to compare?

I briefly considered asking Art to come up with six new rules-of-thumb for social

science inquiry that he would be willing to presently endorse. With these guidelines in

hand, I could have then highlighted the ways his thought and practice have shifted in the

last quarter century.

A good plan, but I didn’t want to impose on him. Surely, I figured, he’s busy

enough as it is. And, quite frankly, I worried that instead of coming back to me with a

list, he’d write me a story. What on earth would I do with a damn narrative?!

So instead of trying to get something from Art, I, presumptuously enough, took up

the challenge myself. What follows is my (ahem) state-of-the-Art list of six Bochnerian

rules of thumb for how to conduct compelling research, a list that I hope captures

something of Art’s current approach to scholarship. If I’m even partway right in my

sketch, you should be able to juxtapose each new rule with its earlier counterpart, thereby

bringing stereoscopic depth to your recognition of the evolution of Art’s work.

I guess I should warn you before getting started that I ended up needing a seventh

rule. If the first six mark Art’s inspired traveling along and then bushwhacking beyond

the Batesonian path he originally charted, the seventh is a Batesonian meta-cairn that

simultaneously erases the preceding markers and erases itself, such erasure allowing the

un-erasure of them and itself, which makes possible the re-erasure of them and itself.

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How else could I grab hold of Art’s mischievous, cybernetic, Zen mind? Here then are

the six-plus-one guidelines:

(1) Study life in its narrative form, implicating your emotional, first-person,

contextually-situated self in your craft and recognizing that making sense always

means making it up.

(2) Think compassionately and empathically with, not only about, narratives. The

link between life (experience) and narrative is poetic—aesthetic and dialectic—

and reflexive. We can only investigate our relationship with whatever we’re

investigating, be it others or ourselves.

(3) Live with your lover (and your dogs). And then write about them. And yourself.

Data is really capta. Think about but also within. Always within.

(4) Don’t be shut down by competitive methodologists who naively demand objective

Truth, neutrality, and the inductive generation of abstract categories. But don’t

bother shouting down their shutting down. Celebrate difference and multiple

perspectives!

(5) Learn the precise and demanding art of writing inspired, engaging accounts, but

don’t close off possibilities for experimenting with new forms of expression.

Look to poets, novelists, filmmakers, performance artists, journalists, and

dramatists for inspiration. Keep your stories as close to your heart as possible.

(6) Aim for believable, ethical, engaging, even therapeutic narratives (and counter-

narratives!); warm stories create community and inspire conversation.

(7) Avoid the creation of lists such as this—it is better to break rules than to follow

them (which means you’ll also need to break this rule about breaking rules).

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 ***********

I am delighted to be here today, not only because Art’s scholarship so obviously

deserves the sort of recognition a panel such as this can provide, but because Art deserves

it. I read a book recently that quoted the poet David Whyte, who said, “The opposite of

exhaustion is not necessarily rest. It is wholeheartedness” (O’Hanlon, 2003, p. 43). Art is

the most wholehearted man I know. When I read his work, my exhaustion disappears; I

come alive in the warm embrace of his words.

My mother died a few weeks ago, and while I was living through, and with, her

dying, I read Art’s piece on his mother dying, and it brought tears of compassion—a

“feeling together”: tears of communion. Social science doesn’t typically have this effect

on me.

One of the criticisms leveled at autoethnography is that it is self-absorbed, and

I’m sure you’re all familiar with the cartoon of the post-modern ethnographer who says to

his informant, a few minutes into their first interview, “Well, enough about you, let’s talk

about me.” Despite Art’s autoethnographic explorations and his post-modern sensibility,

his participation in personal and professional relationships contradicts these stereotypes. I

know him to be a generous, curious, respectful, deeply feeling, loving human being.

These qualities have allowed Art to put community back in communication. Most

social scientists would still consider “wholehearted scholarship” an oxymoron. Not Art.

His work speaks with emotional-and-intellectual depth and expanse, with body-and-mind

openness and wisdom. He moves people; he moves me. He spins us in circles and sends

us on our way, no longer exhausted, enlivened by his wholehearted, wholeminded,

wholestoried approach to asking questions of himself, his experience, his field, his world.

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 References

Bateson, G. (1979). Mind and nature. Toronto: Bantam Books.

Bochner, A. P. (1981). Forming warm ideas. In C. Wilder & J. Weakland (Eds.), Rigor
and imagination (pp. 65-81). New York: Praeger.

Bochner, A. P. (2002). Love survives. Qualitative Inquiry, 8(2), 161-169.

O’Hanlon, B. (2003). A guide to inclusive therapy. New York: W. W. Norton.