An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments: Conflict and Change through Insight 9780228009672

Citation preview

a n a n at o m y o f e v e r y d ay a r g u m e n t s

32523_Jull.indd 1

2021-10-12 16:54:18

32523_Jull.indd 2

2021-10-12 16:54:18

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments Conflict and Change through Insight

M a r n i e Ju ll

McGill-­Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Chicago

32523_Jull.indd 3

2021-10-12 16:54:18

©  McGill-Queen’s University Press 2022 ISBN ISBN ISBN ISBN

978-0-2280-0844-6 (cloth) 978-0-2280-0845-3 (paper) 978-0-2280-0967-2 (eP DF ) 978-0-2280-0968-9 (eP UB)

Legal deposit first quarter 2022 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Title: An anatomy of everyday arguments: conflict and change through insight / Marnie Jull. Names: Jull, Marnie, author. Description: Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210285435 | Canadiana (ebook) 20210288876 | IS BN 9780228008446 (hardcover) | I SB N  9780228008453 (softcover) | IS BN 9780228009672 (P DF ) | IS BN 9780228009689 (eP U B ) Subjects: LC S H: Interpersonal conflict. | L CS H: Conflict management. Classification: L CC HM 1121 .J85 2022 | DDC 303.6—dc23

This book was typeset by Marquis Interscript in 10.5/13 Sabon.

32523_Jull.indd 4

2021-10-12 16:54:20

For Georgine, always

32523_Jull.indd 5

2021-10-12 16:54:20

32523_Jull.indd 6

2021-10-12 16:54:20

Contents

Acknowledgments ix Introduction 3   1 Autoethnography  11   2 Intersubjectivity, Conflict, and Change  18   3 A Methodological Preface to the Cases  36   4 Intransigent Conflict  42   5 Outrage  59   6 Listening to Another Mind  78   7 Tension in the Group  95   8 Implications for Inquiry  116   9 Implications for Conflict Analysis  125 Conclusion 140

Appendix: The Insight Loop – A Model of the Flow of Consciousness 157

Notes 161 References 167 Index 175

32523_Jull.indd 7

2021-10-12 16:54:20

32523_Jull.indd 8

2021-10-12 16:54:20

Acknowledgments

Many wonderful relationships have inspired and supported the creation of this book. Dr Cheryl Picard, as a stellar “pracademic” and galvanizing mentor, gave me tools and inspiration that have transformed my life. Dr Janet Siltanen was my perceptive, compassionate, and protective midwife into scholarship. Dr Ken Melchin’s gifts to this work were his brilliance of mind and his heart. I am grateful to the participants in the case studies, who leaned into the challenge of conflict and were generous in their spirit of mutual inquiry as well as their delight in discovery. They dispelled for me the illusion of the isolated researching mind. My beloved friends and colleagues Jamie Price and Vieve Price have helped me immeasurably through their foundational, creative, and spiritual pathfinding. My mentor Garry Powell provided me with the treasures of emotional and intellectual support, helping me to balance the demands of research with the process of living a complex life. John Radford has influenced me deeply with his skills as a master practitioner and a humble, courageous soul. Dr Megan Price, with her luminous intelligence, has given me clarity and warmth, and the growing community of Insight practitioners, professionals, artists, and scholars gives me hope for the future. My colleagues at Royal Roads University have created a supportive and stimulating context in which to learn and grow. In particular, the students in the university’s Conflict Analysis and Management program have challenged and inspired me to keep evolving as a companion in their learning journeys, and I frequently marvel at the many ways that they show up for this difficult work.

32523_Jull.indd 9

2021-10-12 16:54:20

x Acknowledgments

My mother, Helen, gave me the gifts of her superb writing, wit, and constant cheerleading, and my father, Will, provided me with an early foundation in rigorous thinking. My siblings, Carolyn, David, and Grace, helped me to learn in childhood the benefits of a good fight when the prize is reconciliation, which has matured into the inseparable bonds of family. Moneca Kaiser’s creation of a writing group and loving friendship was instrumental to this work. Alison Van Rooy’s extraordinarily intelligent and sensitive reading of the manuscript made it possible to complete. I would not be at this place in my life without Andrea Lorient’s place in my heart, and Ellen Travis has been a gentle harbour for me since I was a young adult. Khadija Coxon at McGill-Queen’s University Press saw and supported the potential of this book, and editor Julie McGonegal made it a more readable text. Dr David Peddle richly influenced the evolution of the manuscript with his Insight wisdom, humour, and editorial acumen. My daughters, Sage and Roma, are the delights of my heart, inspiring me and teaching me the lessons that only deep love can provide. And my partner, Georgine – intelligent, beautiful, generous, and strong – is truly my other half, building the boat for us to row, doing most of the rowing, and keeping us warm with the sunshine of her love. Thank you.

32523_Jull.indd 10

2021-10-12 16:54:20

a n a n at o m y o f e v e r y d ay a r g u m e n t s

32523_Jull.indd 1

2021-10-12 16:54:20

32523_Jull.indd 2

2021-10-12 16:54:20

Introduction

A conflicted working group is involved in a lengthy, high-stakes ­decision-making process. During one meeting, there is a heated exchange among three participants that threatens to derail the entire process. The tension is discussed, the participants become less confrontational, and the discussion moves on, with the group generating ideas that had not been imagined previously. A consultant is angry with a colleague because she refuses to work with another associate. During a conversation with an attuned listener, the consultant changes from judging the colleague harshly to developing a plan to speak with her more compassionately about her concerns. A mother is preoccupied with her hostility toward the hockey association that will likely exclude her deserving daughter from a competitive hockey team. In discussing her concerns with a skilled confidante, she changes from deliberating hostile actions to considering nonconflictual options. Two life partners have a chronic dispute about a household matter. Although it is a seemingly trivial issue, their argument escalates very quickly. The helpful momentary intervention of a friend enables a radical and enduring dissipation of the dispute. Human beings are complex. We – some of us more than others – get into polarized conflicts with people around us, and we get out of these conflicts, too. What is happening, really, when someone shifts away from polarized interpersonal conflict with another person? This question is significant because these conflicts happen often and plague most of us. Not only do we become embroiled ourselves, but we can also be affected by others’ polarized stances. These antagonisms

32523_Jull.indd 3

2021-10-12 16:54:20

4

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

can arise in ordinary work meetings with many participants or in everyday activities between two people, thereby preventing progress toward hoped-for futures for organizations, groups, or individuals. Because they are so common and can have considerable impact, these kinds of conflicts are important to study in order not only to improve individual dynamics but also to benefit the workplaces, families, and communities that they affect. There are many ways to research interpersonal argument. Although useful information about conflict and change can be gathered from quantitative methods as well as qualitative interviews, the results of this research can sometimes feel sterile or impersonal. But interpersonal struggles are by definition personal, messy, and often dramatic. So instead of a detached dissection, this book offers an anatomy of interpersonal conflict that emerges from the inside through theory, story, conversation, and practice. I use the tools of theory to explore, with as much precision as I can, how conflicts happen and how they can be changed. Although I use some difficult concepts, like “intersubjectivity” and “operations of consciousness,” I discuss them with care. What really matters to me is how to develop the skills of everyday connection that can foster larger shifts in our relationships, our organizations, and the communities where we live. If you are a reader who prefers story before theory, then you may find it helpful to begin your reading of this book at chapter 4 before returning to the earlier chapters for more theoretical or methodological depth. As an anatomy, this book explores the structure and dynamics of conflict in a way that is sometimes personally intimate, occasionally humorous, and fully grounded in theory. I experiment with a flexible, reflective method that investigates the interiority (or the inner process of decision making), relationality (or interpersonal dynamics), and sociality (or systemic context) of interpersonal argument. I think that this parallel method of personal and analytical examination of the details of interpersonal argument is crucial. I believe that our theory and practice need to be grounded in the messy details that reveal the uncertainty, emotional intensity, relief, and discovery that interpersonal conflicts can evoke. In addition to their messiness, interpersonal arguments are diverse. The conflict behaviours enacted in arguments can range from frozen silence to rageful violence. Because of my training as a conflict practitioner, particularly in the Insight approach (discussed at length

32523_Jull.indd 4

2021-10-12 16:54:20

Introduction

5

below), I use the term “conflict behaviour” very purposefully.1 Whereas “conflict” is a more abstract term, conflict behaviours are concrete and specific. As I show throughout the cases, conflict behaviour is something that we do, or enact, even if we are immobilized by anger or run away out of fear. Recognizing conflict as behaviour provides a way of looking at a wide range of actions that may not appear overtly antagonistic, such as silence or flattery, as well as those that feel more overtly conflictual, such as fighting or manipulation. The term “conflict,” as I use it here, denotes a more dynamic interaction of conflict behaviours. I also use the term “arguments” interchangeably with “conflicts” to enliven the writing and vary the text. Just as conflict behaviours are diverse, the changes in conflict interactions can range from profound reconciliatory gestures to a grudging agreement to refrain from further attack. Because the possibilities for change in conflict are so varied, terms like “conflict resolution” or “transformation” – common in the literature – are limited notions because they indicate a predetermined goal. Although disagreements may be resolved and significant transformations may take place, a focus on outcomes can get in the way of understanding the process of change itself. As a seasoned mediator (and participant) in interpersonal conflict, I find it does not take much reflection to recognize that a sense of antagonism can linger past an agreement and that a profound transformation is not required to get along more peaceably. Sometimes it is enough to make a tired effort to talk, instead of sulk, in order to create a small but welcome shift in troubling interpersonal dynamics. In this book, I use the term “dissipation” to indicate a reduced intensity or less retaliatory impulses, which I show to be the precursor of the discovery of new options for change. My focus is on the process of change in addition to the outcome. I also recognize that conflict behaviour is not in itself “bad” and therefore to be erased, nor is the absence of conflict necessarily “good.” There have been many exemplars of ethical conflict – individuals who have engaged in righteous struggle against degenerative social contexts (Keane 2016). Conflict behaviour can be a mindful resistance motivated by a desire to flourish. Sometimes conscientious conflict behaviour is the best response to injustice and wrongdoing. Frequently, however, conflict behaviour is a rash reaction that truncates relationships and causes regrettable damage. My hope in exploring interpersonal argument is to create more conscientious engagement with what threatens us.

32523_Jull.indd 5

2021-10-12 16:54:20

6

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

t h e i n t e r s u b j e c t i v i t y o f e v e r y d ay a r g u m e n t s : q u e st i o n s

To create more conscientious engagement, this book slows down complex incidents to explore “what just happened” in moments where conflict behaviours occurred and to understand more clearly how the interactions changed. Arguments between people involve a dynamic intersubjective process that is enacted in spaces of encounter within complex social contexts, an idea explained in greater depth in chapter 2. Throughout this anatomy of everyday struggles, I focus on an individual decision maker – a self – situated in relation to other individuals within these complex systems of interaction and meaning. When “self-in-system” is the unit of analysis for investigating conflict behaviour, a series of other questions can emerge. How can individuals change their minds to alter their conflict behaviour within the context in which they are situated? How does “understanding differently” come about, and what is its impact on everyday interpersonal arguments with others? How might a self make different decisions in relation to others? What is a useful investigative method by which “changing minds” among individuals involved in interpersonal argument can be explored? What conceptual tools can illuminate an investigation into the subjectivity of self in relation to others within these complex social contexts? au t o e t h n o g r a p h y : a st u dy o f s e l f i n   r e l at i o n t o ot h e r s

How to study the phenomenon of interpersonal argument has interested scholars in a variety of disciplines for many years. In sociology, Harold Garfinkel and his students in the 1960s investigated the violation of taken-for-granted norms and the interpersonal disputes that often ensued, inspiring generations of sociologists to take up ethnomethodology, or the study of how ordinary people make sense of the world. This microsociological focus on everyday interactions became a fruitful way to investigate important questions of the self in relation to another in complex social contexts. The microfocus in this book takes the form of autoethnography, a way of studying self-in-system through reflection, narrative, conversation, and analysis. The investigative core of this anatomy is four case studies of various conflicts, from the first case of a common household

32523_Jull.indd 6

2021-10-12 16:54:20

Introduction

7

disagreement to the final case of an argument that took place within an organization’s high-stakes meeting. The cases illuminate the complexities of research while exploring the possibilities of change through curiosity, reflexivity, and compassion. The discussion of the cases touch other knowledge domains, such as leadership and organizational development. They also relate to topics of decision making, social science research, and studies of conflict that go beyond interpersonal argument. One of the challenges of writing a book like this one is to maintain the narrative while recognizing the wider systems of meanings that affect how this narrative takes place. Maintaining focus while attuning to complexity is also a useful practical skill of conflict engagement explored throughout this book. a n ov e r v i e w o f t h e c h a p t e r s

To explore these cases of everyday arguments, I present a set of methodological and conceptual tools. The research method, autoethnography, is discussed in chapter 1. This research process explicitly investigates individuals as both the subject and object of knowledge, and I consider critiques of the method and criteria for evaluating its quality before outlining the method that I developed to undertake the research in this book. In chapter 2, I explore the wonderful conceptual richness generated by placing distinct literatures – on intersubjectivity, conflict, and the anthropology of ethics – in “creative conversation” with each other. I understand intersubjectivity as involving three distinct and mutually influencing processes: one process of intersubjectivity takes place within individual minds through cognitive engagement with partially known others; another is constituted in our interactions with others in dynamic spaces of encounter; and a third is carried, or shaped, by the social systems of meanings that affect what our minds engage with as well as the interactions that we have. I suggest that new possibilities can emerge when we attend to, and alter, these intersubjective activities in their respective domains of consciousness, encounter, and social systems of meanings. This approach to intersubjectivity is deeply influenced by my engagement with the Insight approach to conflict. The Insight approach (Melchin and Picard 2008; Picard and Jull 2011; Price and Bartoli 2012; Jull 2018; M. Price 2019) contends that conflict

32523_Jull.indd 7

2021-10-12 16:54:20

8

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

behaviour and change involve individual cognition, patterns of interaction, and complex social contexts. The Insight approach further asserts that conflict behaviour is the result of decisions that are oriented to defend because of a discernment of threat (Melchin and Picard 2008; Sargent, Picard, and Jull 2011; M. Price 2018). Framing conflict behaviour as a process of decision making by individuals within patterns of interaction amid wider social structures, the Insight approach provides a powerful way to explore how everyday arguments can emerge and dissipate. In examining how interpersonal argument can change, Keane’s (2014a, 2016) studies on everyday interactions in a variety of cultures supplements the analytical framework. In exploring how ordinary conversations are sites of account-giving encounters, Keane (2016, 20) shows how they can instigate “ethical reflexivity,” or a heightened inner awareness of “how one should live and what kind of person one should be.” This heightened awareness can have the effect of producing, reinforcing, or changing a judgment or decision. Keane’s work recognizes the importance of culture in shaping meaning and also recognizes that ethical reflexivity is a crucial part of individual change, regardless of culture. The Insight approach also stresses the importance of reflexivity as a precondition of change (Garrido-Soler 2017; Jull 2020). Reflexivity – the practice of paying attention to how our minds are working – can address the constrictive effect of threat and more expansively animate the operations of consciousness (Jull 2018; M. Price 2018). Reflexivity can afford new opportunities to know, value, and decide, thereby offering the occasion for new possibilities to emerge in conflictual patterns of interaction. Just as conflict behaviour is an intersubjective process of knowing, valuing, and deciding that takes place in spaces of encounter amid systems of meanings, I demonstrate in this book that researching interpersonal conflict is also an intersubjective process. I explicitly refer to the three dimensions of intersubjectivity in order to produce reflexive autoethnographic research that focuses on my subjectivity while also being accountable to the research participants. In chapter 3, I account for the selection and presentation of the case studies, recognizing that writing itself is a form of research through which analysis is performed. I describe the process of eliciting and incorporating feedback, a process that also acknowledges and responds to the research challenge of representation of self and other. The chapter

32523_Jull.indd 8

2021-10-12 16:54:20

Introduction

9

addresses the complexity of this kind of research and the importance of determining when “enough” has been addressed. I also introduce the device of “quality notes” (Marshall 2004), a series of more conversational in-text reflections that recognize and account for research as a dynamic, reflexive, iterative process of inquiry. Chapters 4 to 7 present the four cases. Chapter 4, “Intransigent Conflict,” looks at a dispute with my beloved life partner involving a spontaneous change that happened through an unexpected chat with a helpful friend. It sets out and applies key concepts about intersubjectivity, conflict, and change by tracing the dissipation of polarized argument through a fresh realignment of significance that I discerned in my partner’s behaviour. Chapter 5, “Outrage,” develops the concepts of conflict, intersubjectivity, and change more fully through an examination of an impending argument between me and decision makers in a hockey association. Through my inquiry into a mind-changing conversation with a skilled confidante, I explore the role of questions in eliciting ethical accounts that can provide opportunities for change. I discern a significant concern that dynamizes2 the conflict for me, and in doing so, I recognize that hockey-mom fight behaviour is less preferable to me than other courses of action. Chapter 6, “Listening to Another Mind,” explores my role as a “listener”3 while I talk with my consultant friend about his conflict with a colleague over her refusal to work with another associate. This case further advances the concepts of intersubjectivity, conflict, and change insofar as our intersubjective account giving leads him to change his polarizing sense of argument to a more collaborative attitude by which he comes to know his colleague differently. As I struggle with being a “good friend” and “responding well,” this case also explores the everyday, ethical valuing of “the good” as well as the microprocess of intersubjective ethical negotiation that can take place in (conflictual and nonconflictual) spaces of encounter. Chapter 7, “Tension in the Group,” inquires into an interpersonal argument that arose during a group process that I facilitated. In this case, I work with the concepts of intersubjectivity and conflict in a much more complex context to reflect on how the meeting became blocked by a conflict that then dissipated, allowing new possibilities to emerge. I explore my discomforts and resilience in addressing a disagreement that does not lead to conflict behaviour, before examining what happens when a conflict eventually erupts and then subsides.

32523_Jull.indd 9

2021-10-12 16:54:20

10

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

This case study acknowledges the multiplicity of decisions that were involved in effecting change. Chapter 8 is a summative reflection on the research process itself as an intersubjective process of inquiry through which the autoethnographical cases were produced as distinct and interdependent investigations. It highlights some of the implications and future potential of this multireflexive method. Chapter 9 reviews the conceptual arc of the research, discussing the cumulative application of the analytic frameworks on intersubjectivity, conflict, and change in each of the case studies, and points to further areas of potential study. The Conclusion recapitulates the intellectual journey of the book and identifies important implications of this work for the skill development of conflict practitioners and participants. Throughout, my intention is to contribute to an understanding of conflict behaviour from its interiority to its enactment in complex social contexts. I aim to encourage practices of reflexivity toward ourselves, curious engagement with others, and creativity in our patterns of interactions. I invite you, the reader, to consider how your knowing, valuing, and deciding may align or diverge from mine, and I hope that you will find yourself curious, discerning, and critically engaged. My aspiration is that we can contribute to the emergence of more just and peaceable possibilities in the threats and struggles that we encounter (and sometimes create!) throughout our everyday lives.

32523_Jull.indd 10

2021-10-12 16:54:20

1 Autoethnography

Interpersonal arguments are often complex and chaotic, and it can be hard to figure out what is taking place amid them. Autoethnography has a unique capacity to illuminate what the researcher knows, values, and decides as a participant or practitioner in conflict and change making. As a method, autoethnography has multiple definitions and a variety of names, including personal narratives, narratives of the self, self-ethnography, and radical empiricism (Anderson 2006; Ellingson and Ellis 2008). Wall (2006) observes that some authors use an autoethnographic method without labelling it as such; others characterize a wide range of writing under the umbrella of autoethnography.1 Reed-Danahy (1997, 4) highlights that an autoethnographical researcher draws “on her own lived experience to connect the personal to the cultural and place the self and other within a social context.” Other researchers value autoethnography for highlighting the explicit relationship between the knower and the known (Holman Jones 2005), the multiple forms of knowing and representing that are possible in academic texts (Ellis 2000), and the importance of context in the production and circulation of knowledge (Anderson 2006). Through my four cases, I experiment with and progressively develop a flexible, critical autoethnography. The cases are presented as vignettes through which I reflect on and systematically investigate my own subjectivity in relation to that of others. I explore the microprocesses of knowing and deciding that activate my actions in my roles as a partner, mother, friend, colleague, and so on. This capacity to investigate interiority and sociality makes autoethnography uniquely suited to studying interpersonal conflict and change, especially considering the rising interest in reflexively oriented approaches to research that has emerged over the past few decades (Denzin and Lincoln 2005b).

32523_Jull.indd 11

2021-10-12 16:54:20

12

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

ac c o u n t i n g f o r t h e r i s e o f au t o e t h n o g r a p h y a s a m e t h o d : reflexivity

Numerous scholars attribute the contemporary surge in reflexive and autoethnographical approaches to the convergence of several profound influences: the recognition of the problematically intimate relationship between social science research and colonialism; an interest in rhetoric and how social science constructs its object and authority; and a critique of epistemology based on the objective observer (Davies 1998; Holman Jones 2005; Maguire 2006; Atkinson et al. 2007). These influences produced what Holman Jones (2005, 766) calls “crises of representation, legitimation and praxis.” The reflexivity inherent in autoethnography and other contemporary methodologies is part of a widespread response to these convergent “crises.” Lynch (2000) and May (1999), in their surveys of reflexivity, observe that the contemporary imperative to “be reflexive” is so widespread that for a scholar or text to be labelled “unreflexive” is essentially synonymous with “inadequate” (May 1999, para. 1.1). Instead of sketching an author’s biography or social position, which is sometimes presented as reflexivity (Brigg and Bleiker 2010; Collins and Gallinat 2010), autoethnography demands a reflexivity that is much more explicit, sustained, and focused on subjectivity itself as an object of inquiry. In this way, the “subjectivity of the knower needs to be worked through rather than merely alluded to if a scholar is to adequately grapple with the ambiguous placement of humans as both the subject and object of knowledge” (Brigg and Bleiker 2010, 784). r e f l e x i v e a n d e p i st e m o lo g i c a l p r e o c c u pat i o n s i n au t o e t h n o g r a p h y

There are widely shared epistemological preoccupations across the autoethnographical spectrum that highlight researchers’ efforts to investigate questions of knowing and subjectivity. Holman Jones (2005, 766) contends that autoethnography is primarily preoccupied with asking, “What is the nature of knowing, what is the relationship between the knower and the known, how do we share what we know and with what effect?” Because autoethnography attends to the subjectivity of the knowing self, it makes the process of knowledge production explicit, thereby opening it to investigation. Since the

32523_Jull.indd 12

2021-10-12 16:54:20

Autoethnography

13

researcher is illuminated as a producer, consumer, and disseminator of knowledge in these texts, autoethnography affords “more systematic attempts to understand how knowledge is constituted through the self” (Brigg and Bleiker 2010, 780). This kind of autoethnographic writing requires persistent attention to the subjectivity of the researcher and to the process through which knowledge is produced.2 The interest in the knowing subject’s relationship to what can be known has been a preoccupation dating back to the early philosophers. May (1999) traces the rise of reflexivity in sociology through some of its foundational thinkers’ contributions, including Alfred Schutz’s insistence that pre-reflexive everyday knowing and sociological knowledge be compatible in order to be judged as adequate, Harold Garfinkel’s argument that everyday sociological knowing cannot be understood without situating it within social contexts, Anthony Giddens’s recognition of the interactive dynamic between everyday knowledge and sociological knowledge, and Pierre Bourdieu’s call for the social location of the researcher to be highlighted as a significant factor in the production of sociological knowledge. The turn to self-reflexive ethnography, intimately connected to the rise of reflexivity within sociological thought, can also be traced to the Chicago School’s development of fieldwork-oriented interactionism, to David Hayano’s introduction of the term “autoethnography” in the mid-1970s in order to heighten methodological focus on the role of the investigator’s interiority, and to the more generalized “crisis of representation” (Denzin and Lincoln 2005a, 3) that generated autoethnography as an experimental methodology (Anderson 2006). assessing quality i n au t o e t h n o g r a p h i c a l r e s e a r c h

There is considerable debate among practitioners of autoethnography about how to evaluate the reliability or quality of the method. Some scholars accept socially sanctioned criteria applied to qualitative methods and seek to demonstrate autoethnography’s capacity to meet these criteria through a translation of the standards (Hughes, Pennington, and Makris 2012).3 Other scholars reject the established social scientific criteria that focus on validity and credibility, instead proposing alternative criteria such as aesthetic merit or evocation of emotional response (Ellis 2000; Richardson 2000).4

32523_Jull.indd 13

2021-10-12 16:54:20

14

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

Instead of arguing for or against established criteria – such as sources of evidence or aesthetic merit – to evaluate the quality of research, I align with the scholars who recognize the importance of context in the process of judging the merit of specific autoethnographical work, whereby research is acknowledged as situated within the relevant practices and intentions of particular “knowledge communities” (Brigg and Bleiker 2010) or “ecologies of understanding” (Altheide and Johnson 2011, 590). Schwartz-Shea and Yanow (2012, 19) recognize research as situated in an “epistemic community” that is shaped by theoretical and methodological commonalities in defining research questions and generating knowledge. Recognizing the contextual practices and norms in which the autoethnography is situated means that the focus on quality shifts away from demonstrating compliance with established criteria and toward providing “evidentiary narratives” (Altheide and Johnson 2011, 587) that demonstrate quality by identifying investigative challenges and accounting for researchers’ choices in their research. These narratives provide evidence of quality as they account for the process of acquiring, organizing, and interpreting data related to the specific purpose and context of the research. This reflexive accounting is “tied to practices and intentions and ultimately to ‘our justifications’ for using this method” (588). It is grounded in the context of the epistemic community and its inherent discursive, epistemological, and professional norms. It is another way that autoethnography seeks to make explicit the production of knowledge, situating it reflexively within the context of the social circulation of knowledge. critiques and responses

There are a variety of critiques of autoethnography that target the method’s attention to individual subjectivities as the focus of investigation. Some authors consider the method’s self-referentiality to be problematic in its reproduction of Western individualism’s potential to obscure our relationality (Bishop 2005; Kamboureli 2008; Lai 2008). Others argue that inequitable social structures may be overlooked in overly personal narratives (Scott 1991; Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992; Hill Collins 1997). From a postmodern perspective, the method can problematically present a unified stable self (Gannon 2006), whereas other sociologists are concerned that some auto­ ethnographies reveal phenomena like trauma without delineating how they contribute to sociological knowledge.

32523_Jull.indd 14

2021-10-12 16:54:20

Autoethnography

15

For example, Delamont (2009, 61) is critical of the confessional, self-revelatory nature of some autoethnographic narratives, arguing that these narratives reveal experience or emotions without offering any “analytic or pedagogic power.” Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992, 72) argue against both the “self-fascinated observation of the observer’s writings and feelings” and attention to individual interactions. Instead, they advocate an examination of the social conditions that make certain interactions possible, particularly those that produce a social concept or category, such as that of “profession” (243). Hill Collins (1997), in her reading of feminist standpoint theory, also highlights the importance of the group, rather than the individual, as a level of analysis. In this reading, individuals are not a proxy for groups, and a focus on individual experience will not yield the insights necessary to transform oppressive social relations that are structured in fundamentally inequitable ways. Scott (1991, 779) argues against the concept of self-knowing subjectivities and their foundational experiences, contending that the privileging of experience “precludes analysis of the workings of [a] system and of its historicity,” thereby reproducing, rather than contesting, given ideological systems. Instead, she argues for an examination of historical contingency and critical scrutiny of explanatory categories usually taken for granted, including the category of “experience” (780). From another theoretical perspective, autoethnography does not sufficiently problematize the multiple, contradictory, embodied self that characterizes postmodern texts. Gannon (2006, 491), for example, critiques autoethnography by stressing the (im)possibilities of writing the self, advocating instead the textual strategies of Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, and Hélène Cixous, who highlight their unreliable and contradictory multiple narrative selves through discontinuous fragments that are informed by memory, the body, and others. These criticisms are directed toward autoethnography in general, and the generality of the critique can overlook the specific texts and contexts in which an autoethnographical text is produced and circulated. A selfreferential method might not be appropriate for research questions that address a variety of transpersonal, macrosocial, or other phenomena, but it is well suited to address other topics, such as interpersonal argument and change. Even though some personal accounts may obscure another’s subjectivity or fail to account for structural social relations in which the account is situated, these limitations are a product not necessarily of the method itself but of its implementation. As I show in the following case studies, it is possible to create multireflexive

32523_Jull.indd 15

2021-10-12 16:54:20

16

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

autoethnographies that recognize others’ subjectivities as well as the social relations that structure these intersubjective dynamics. Furthermore, it would be a mistake to claim that first-person texts cannot address or analyze oppressive social relations. Consciousnessraising circles of feminist scholars, in the 1960s and beyond, demonstrated that working critically with the personal can be of profound political consequence, and first-person accounts have been instrumental in effecting wider social change (Keane 2016). Similarly, first-person introspective accounts can be a postcolonial tool for social justice when they are used to interrogate researchers’ privilege and oppression as part of socially engaged inquiry (Cann and DeMeulenaere 2012).5 Through these accounts, it is possible for first-person researchers to identify themselves as change agents, even as they seek to question change and agency. In this way, a stable and coherent self can be interrogated without entirely undermining a sense of social learning or transferability of knowledge claims. This interrogation does not erase the subjectivity of the other but instead advances the notion that the self and other are mutually constituted (Marshall 2004). critique of introspection and presenting i n t e r i o r i t y a s d ata

There are additional critiques of autoethnography related to the rendering of interiority as data. Throop and Murphy (2002, 193) highlight Pierre Bourdieu’s and Edmund Husserl’s skepticism toward introspective accounts of experience because they require a kind of attention that alters or destroys the experience being observed. Similarly, Hurlburt and Schwitzgebel (2007, 263) argue that reports of experience are likely to be influenced and distorted by pre-existing theories and biases, both cultural and personal.6 Considering these concerns about the bias, distortion, or lack of trustworthiness of introspective accounts, it becomes clear that there are different kinds of introspective methods, various applications of these methods, and diverse research questions that animate their application. Unlike a more positivist approach to introspective inquiry, autoethnography does not claim results reproducible by an objective observer (Ellis and Bochner 2006). A positivist researcher may be concerned about presuppositions as distortive bias, whereas an autoethnographical researcher recognizes presuppositions to be part of a dynamic interaction between the individual’s current cognition and previously

32523_Jull.indd 16

2021-10-12 16:54:20

Autoethnography

17

acquired implicit and explicit knowledge. Evaluating the quality of autoethnography, then, does not depend on the corroborated “trustworthiness” of the data. Instead, the criteria of accountability and reflexivity are the more salient criteria for assessing quality, particularly among the epistemic communities to which an autoethnography is addressed. Evidentiary narratives in autoethnography are thus important in accounting for the presentation of self in relation to other, as well as for the conceptual frameworks that shape the levels of analysis undertaken in the research. t h e au t o e t h n o g r a p h i c sta n c e in this book

As I discuss in greater detail in chapter 3, this flexible autoethnography develops through multiple layers of investigation. Each case begins with a story – one that includes both recollection and analysis – of my encounters with interpersonal everyday conflict behaviours. In addition to exploring thoughts, these vignettes describe feelings, like shame or affection, that can animate interpersonal argument as well as lead to its dissipation. Following each first-person account is a reflexively theoretical, third-person analysis that situates the vignette within broader, more abstract conceptual contexts of intersubjectivity, conflict, and change. As an additional tool of reflexivity, I have inserted “quality notes” that further account for some of my challenges and choices as a researcher. Situated within each case, the notes add an additional layer to the evidentiary narrative by permitting the researching self to comment on the analysis, respond to additional questions, or provide further explanation or elaboration. The cases conclude with a debriefing inquiry involving selected conversation partners that explores the subjectivity of the researcher through engagement with others, thereby producing a multifaceted reflexive account involving self and other. Through this extensive investigation, I make many discoveries about the intersubjective process of interpersonal argument and how it arises and changes in sometimes surprising ways. These discoveries are made possible through an understanding of intersubjectivity as a complex phenomenon, a subject explored in the following chapter.

32523_Jull.indd 17

2021-10-12 16:54:20

2 Intersubjectivity, Conflict, and Change

In considering how polarized argument among individuals can dissipate in order to allow new possibilities to emerge, I characterize interpersonal argument as a dynamic intersubjective process of knowing, valuing, and deciding. In the previous chapter, I discussed how autoethnography is a useful investigative method for exploring the subjectivity of the self in relation to another within spaces of encounter and the complex social contexts where they are situated. To support this autoethnographical inquiry, I set out below several conceptual resources related to intersubjectivity, conflict, and change by engaging three distinct bodies of literature in “creative conversation.” I connect a thematic survey of intersubjectivity with key concepts from the Insight approach to conflict and provide supplementary ideas from the anthropology of ethics. I thereby propose a three-part analytical framework for understanding interpersonal conflict and change as intersubjective processes. This framework subsequently guides the investigation of my cases of everyday arguments and their dissipation, embracing the nonlinear complexity of individual, interactive, and social dimensions of conflict and change. intersubjectivity

“Intersubjectivity” is a complex term, with the prefix “inter” expressing connection and the root “subjectivity” simultaneously conveying consciousness and autonomy. The study of intersubjectivity spans diverse knowledge communities such as psychology, philosophy, sociology, education, and neurobiology. Recognizing the breadth and depth of these literatures, I take a strategic approach to adapting

32523_Jull.indd 18

2021-10-12 16:54:20



Intersubjectivity, Conflict, and Change

19

and applying conceptual resources on intersubjectivity to the study of interpersonal conflict. My point of departure is Bohleber’s (2013) summative review of intersubjectivity literature. Situated within the epistemic community of psychoanalysis, Bohleber relates the rising interest in intersubjectivity to greater recognition of the “subjectivity of the analyst as an instrument of knowledge” (799).1 He reviews how intersubjectivity has been extensively examined and applied, noting the lineage of the concept through Georg Hegel, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Martin Buber, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jürgen Habermas. He also acknowledges the influential empirical research on the development of intersubjectivity, particularly the way that infants and caregivers exert mutual and reciprocal influence to the extent that “another person is needed to experience our own self” (800).2 Extending Werner Bohleber’s Tripartite Framework After recognizing a multiplicity of perspectives, Bohleber (2013) summarizes three broad thematic approaches to intersubjectivity, noting that they do not necessarily allow mutual integration. He characterizes these three themes of intersubjectivity as interactive activity between autonomous subjects, mutually constituting spaces between self and other,3 and a system that is the “contextual precondition” for individual experience, formed by complex intersections of “fields” or “structures” of experience (823).4 As I studied Bohleber’s compelling summary, several questions arose in my mind. If intersubjectivity is an activity of individual subjectivities, what are the minds of subjects doing when they encounter another, or how is intersubjectivity done within individual subjects? If intersubjectivity is a mutually constituted space of encounter, what is the process of constituting? How are “self and other” mutually constituting in encounters? If intersubjectivity is also a complex intersecting system of meanings, how is this system of meanings manifested concretely as individuals encounter each other? I then became aware that these questions equally apply to interpersonal conflict as a site of intersubjectivity in action. If interpersonal conflict is interactive activity, what are subjects doing with their minds when they engage in conflict with each other? If conflict behaviour is enacted in a mutually constituted space of encounter, what is happening when parties are constituting conflictual dynamics in their mutual

32523_Jull.indd 19

2021-10-12 16:54:20

20

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

space? How might change be accounted for? If conflict behaviour is embedded in systems of complex meanings, how does this “contextual precondition” shape the enactment of a particular conflict between subjectivities? These questions became very useful in considering a deceptively trivial argument with my spouse and the other conflicts that I identified for study through this research. What was I doing with my mind when I felt outrage and blasted my partner with a disparaging comment? How did her response co-create a dynamic of hostile exchanges between us, constituting us in a mutual space of encounter? How did the context and social structures in which we were situated shape the meanings that we discerned and the actions that we took in the emergence and dissipation of this argument? Reading Intersubjectivity Theory in Relation to Conflict Theory Asking questions in this way is significantly shaped by the Insight approach to conflict. The Insight approach identifies the interconnections among individuals’ cognition, their conflict behaviours, and the social interactions and structures that contextualize them (Melchin and Picard 2008; J. Price 2013; Madrid Liras 2017; Jull 2020; M. Price 2020b). The Insight approach pays attention to individual decision making as a focus of analytical attention, recognizing that conflict behaviour is an enactment of a decision made by individuals that takes place within the social roles that we enact (M. Price 2019; Peddle 2020). Instead of attending only to the question “What is this conflict about?” – a focus on the content or result of conscious activity – the Insight approach contends that an additionally useful question is “What are we doing when we use our minds to lock ourselves into conflict with each other?” (J. Price 2013, 110) – a focus on the process of the conscious activity itself.5 In other words, to explain conflict and change, we need to pay attention to empirical evidence of what our minds are doing when we move in and out of interpersonal arguments with each other, as well as the way that these interactions are shaped by narratives, roles, and social meanings and structures (Sargent, Picard, and Jull 2011; Picard 2017; Jull 2018). Reading Bohleber in relation to the Insight approach, I have adapted his three-part framework to propose that intersubjectivity involves operations of consciousness, mutually constituting spaces of encounter, and complex systems of meanings. The three distinct and interrelated aspects of this framework are set out below.

32523_Jull.indd 20

2021-10-12 16:54:20



Intersubjectivity, Conflict, and Change

21

F i rs t as p e c t o f t h e f r a m e wo r k : O p e r at i o n s o f c o nsc iou s ne ss. In examining the phenomena of knowledge production and decision making inside and outside of conflict, the Insight approach calls attention to the interiority – the process of conscious activity – of our minds as we know and decide. Applying Lonergan’s (2001) insight theory to the study of conflict, the Insight approach identifies distinct and related operations of consciousness (J. Price 2018). These operations are identified as knowing, which is composed of experiencing, understanding, and verifying; valuing, which is the cognitive affective process of discerning significance (J. Price 2018; M. Price 2019); and deciding, which consists of deliberating, evaluating, and deciding.6 My research throughout the cases progressively explores the meaning and application of these operations of consciousness in considerable depth. The process of knowing involves noticing data, generating understanding, and verifying accuracy or fact. To use a hypothetical example, if I notice sounds coming from a colleague’s office in my workplace, I might understand that she is playing music on her computer and verify the accuracy of my supposition by turning my head toward my open door. The process of valuing involves registering feeling and discerning meaning. I feel dismay about the disruptive noise and my colleague’s possibly inconsiderate behaviour, discerning a gap between my preference for office quiet and the presenting conditions of noise. My deciding involves deliberating options, evaluating courses of action, and committing through decision.7 What could I do in response to my dismay? The options I deliberate include asking her to turn the volume down, closing my door, or doing nothing. I evaluate my best option to be closing my door, as the other options are less preferable in the context. I decide to act, walking across my office to close my door, and notice my colleague smile at me across the hall before my door closes with a bit of a slam. She, too, is knowing, valuing, and deciding in relation to me. My knowing, valuing, and deciding are operations of consciousness insofar as they are activities that my mind is performing. However, these operations are not necessarily self-conscious but are often prereflective, taking place outside of my awareness. If I am inattentive to what my mind is doing, I might hear the music and close the door without recognizing that I have felt a twinge of dismay, considered options, and made a decision. Although knowing, valuing, and deciding can occur pre-reflectively, the operations can also be noticeable. It is possible for me to notice and direct my knowing, valuing, and deciding

32523_Jull.indd 21

2021-10-12 16:54:20

22

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

as they occur. In this short vignette, I was aware that I was considering three options before I decided to act. Paying attention to the operations of consciousness – our knowing, valuing, and deciding – is what the Insight approach means by reflexive self-awareness (J. Price 2018). In the case of the hallway music, I reflexively wondered about my best option for responding to the sound but without being explicitly selfaware that I was performing the operation of deliberating. By identifying the elements of knowing, valuing, and deciding as the operations of consciousness, the Insight approach provides a useful model with which to investigate the first aspect of intersubjectivity involving subjects whose minds know, value, and decide. These interactive operations of consciousness are the process whereby selves come to (partially and contingently) know the other, register the significance of this knowledge, and make responsive decisions in relation to this knowing and valuing. Second aspect of the framework: “Spaces of encounter .” The second aspect of the analytical framework addresses the mutually reciprocating influence that selves and others exert upon each other. Keane (2014a, 7) identifies a space, or scene, of encounter as one where “participants interactively define themselves and each other,” a process subject to ongoing construction and transformation that entail enactments of power and meaning in complex and contingent ways. Keane (2016) mobilizes the concept of spaces of encounter to describe how the self and the other reciprocally influence each other in combining, expressing, and enacting complex meanings that are often of an ethical nature. The interaction that I have described between my colleague and myself with regard to the music, each of us relationally situated by our roles in our work and by our physical proximity, involved a process of mutual influence as we encountered each other. The space of encounter is a useful concept insofar as it articulates particular interactions among individuals as well as indefinite junctures of meaning between them. These spaces of encounter are constituted, or co-created, by the involved individuals at the same time that the spaces also dynamically constitute the individuals in relation to each other within contexts of meaning.8 In interacting with my colleague and the music in her office, we were mutually enacting ourselves in roles. My closing the door and her smiling were part of a dynamic exchange of action and meaning through which we situated, and were situated by, each other as selves in our roles as colleagues, professionals,

32523_Jull.indd 22

2021-10-12 16:54:20



Intersubjectivity, Conflict, and Change

23

office dwellers, and so on. Keane’s anthropological usage of the term “space of encounter,” which refers to a physical or virtual space that mediates the social and the individual, denotes a mutual, reciprocating influence that can reinforce or alter knowledge and decisions. Third aspect of the framework: Complex systems of mea n ings. I use the term “systems of meanings” as carefully as I use the word “encounter” because both are laden with significance within various epistemic communities. As I use it here, the term “systems of meanings” embraces the vast complexity of cultural values, narratives, linguistic practices, institutions (and more) through which power and significance are socially circulated, taken up or modified by individual minds, and enacted or negotiated in encounters (Gillespie and Zittoun 2013; Keane 2016). In the scenario with my colleague, the systems of meanings that shaped how our encounter took place included our workplace norms, our specific expectations of each other, the significance of music to her and to me, and more. There were ethical dimensions in this scenario of how good colleagues should treat each other, the space in which they work, and what should be done when music is played. These complex systems of meanings generate, and are generated by, our spaces of encounter as well as by our individual operations of consciousness. In their complexity, systems of meanings exert influence beyond first-person awareness, yet they can be investigated reflexively by individual minds. My framework for conceptualizing intersubjectivity relates self, other, and the social through interactive cognition, dynamic encounter, and complex context in relation to the study of interpersonal argument. The framework is flexible and contingent; it does not make claims against the intersubjectivity theories of other epistemic communities, nor does it engage deeply with the ontological and epistemological questions of self and other with which many scholars of intersubjectivity wrestle. The intent is to identify robust conceptual resources of intersubjectivity for use in investigating the phenomenon of interpersonal argument through critically reflexive autoethnography. Supporting Conceptual Resources from Other Literatures I find intriguing points of resonance among the diverse epistemic communities of neurobiology, education, psychoanalysis, and sociology that use concepts of intersubjectivity attuned to different units of

32523_Jull.indd 23

2021-10-12 16:54:21

24

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

analysis in this framework. The way that neurobiologists like Rock (2006) and Siegel (2012) explore intersubjectivity as an interactive cognitive activity resonates with the first aspect of my three-part intersubjectivity framework. They attend to the effect of interaction on the physiology of cognition through which a self seeks to know the other. Siegel (2012) identifies the role of the neural activity of the brain, or the limbic region, in appraising meaning and integrating emotion, while recognizing that consciousness (of self and other) is also an activity of the mind, which is differentiated from the brain.9 The educational epistemic community, moreover, has generated rich  scholarly conversations that relate to spaces of encounter. Intersubjectivity has been significantly explored as dynamic spaces of interaction that influence an individual’s cognitive performance of learning (Matusov 1996; Stahl 2006; Nathan, Eilam, and Kim 2007). Because an individual’s learning is seen as an intersubjective process of “building collaborative knowing” (Stahl 2006, 324; see also Matusov 1996), a researcher’s focus in these contexts is on the joint activities that can impel or impede individual cognition and learning (Stahl 2006). A more sociological interest in intersubjectivity illuminates the relationship between intersubjective systems of meanings and individual cognition or decision making (Crossley 1996; Prus 1996). Gillespie and Zittoun (2013), as prominent sociocultural psychologists, provide a metaphorical analysis of the relationship between consciousness and intersubjective systems of meanings. Personal meaning is generated by individual minds as they encounter “the vast universe of cultural values, narratives and human accumulated experience” (528), as well as other selves, within these complex contexts. They use metaphors of architecture and movement to express a dynamic interconnection whereby individual “consciousness flows” through “trajectories of meaning,” much as a canal guides the flow of water through its passages (524–5). With regard to the vignette involving my colleague, this metaphor of flow illuminates how my knowing, valuing, and deciding were shaped or guided by narratives and experiences related to workplace norms, collegial etiquette, and so on. Whereas Gillespie and Zittoun (2013) propose the metaphor of architecture and canals through which consciousness flows (or is carried) more passively, Keane (2014a) suggests that individuals afford themselves a complex variety of materials – from physical objects to teachings to internal states – with which to make cognitive evaluations

32523_Jull.indd 24

2021-10-12 16:54:21



Intersubjectivity, Conflict, and Change

25

and decisions. The concept of affordance means that individuals combine and draw upon these complex materials in spontaneous and deliberate ways to generate meaning, structure interactions, and make decisions. Keane builds on George Herbert Mead’s observation that although the chair invites you to sit, it does not determine that you will do so. The presence of a chair may predispose you to sink your body onto it, but you may also use it as a ladder, firewood, or a decorative object (7). In this way, a self affords itself complex meanings and materials, combining them and recombining them actively and passively, aware and unaware that it might be doing so. Consciousness can be passively carried by these systems of meanings and individuals can also (reflexively) actively afford themselves varieties of meaning. In the scenario with my colleague, there were extensive meanings and potential actions available that I could draw on to interpret the sounds of music and form a response. I explore these ideas in much greater depth in each of the cases that follow. This brief survey highlights that scholars from various epistemic communities mobilize concepts of intersubjectivity to analyze phenomena or to advocate for particular approaches to their focus of inquiry. Because these notions of intersubjectivity may be more oriented to consciousness, spaces of encounter, or systems of meanings, the usefulness of a flexible tripartite framework that allows for a multidimensional approach becomes apparent. A more elaborated articulation of my approach is that intersubjectivity can be understood in one aspect as a dynamic movement of cognition by which a self grasps the intelligibility of others and their actions, as Rock (2006) and Siegel (2012) explore. In a second aspect, intersubjectivity can be understood as a space of encounter of mutual and reciprocating influence that is dynamically created among actors, as Matusov (1996) and Keane (2016) depict. In a third aspect, intersubjectivity involves complex systems of meanings generated from complex social and cultural patterns, as Gillespie and Zittoun (2013) and Keane (2016) advance. c o n f l i c t t h e o ry a n d c h a n g e

Interestingly, many influential accounts of interpersonal conflict theory and practice do not explicitly use the concept of intersubjectivity, although they might implicitly address one or more aspects of intersubjectivity identified above. Although a comprehensive exploration of intersubjectivity in interpersonal conflict theory is beyond my scope

32523_Jull.indd 25

2021-10-12 16:54:21

26

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

here, a cursory overview reveals promising corroborations with my approach. With regard to the first aspect of intersubjectivity, interpersonal argument can be understood as a process through which an individual can use cognition to realize interests (Matusov 1996; Fisher, Ury, and Patton 2003) or meet personal needs (Burton 1990; Rosenberg 2003). Resonating with the second aspect of the framework, interpersonal argument has also been defined as a crisis or rupture in interpersonal interaction, remedied by attuned responsive interactions (Stolorow and Atwood 1992; Stern 2004; Bush and Folger 2005; Siegel 2012). In relation to the third part of the framework, other accounts of conflict focus on contesting discourses involving the circulation of power and resistance through complex systems of meanings so that the production of alternative narratives can change the trajectory of conflict (Winslade and Monk 2000; Brigg 2007). Similarly, accounts from the field of communication studies recognize the intrapersonal and systemic dimensions of interpersonal conflict (Hocker and Wilmot 2014) and explore how selves are constituted through communicative spaces of encounter (Wood 2010, 39–49).10 Although these approaches place varying emphasis on the importance of meaning, agency, interactions, context, and complexity in conflict’s emergence and change, they do not explicitly address the concept of intersubjectivity in the integrated fashion that I propose in this book. Despite their merits, these approaches lack the explicit idea that interpersonal argument can also be understood as an intersubjective process involving consciousness, spaces of encounter, and complex systems of meanings. Conflict Behaviour: A Decision to Defend Based on the Valuing of Threat The Insight approach’s recognition of conflict behaviour as an action based on a decision calls attention to the process of conscious activity, or what we are doing with our minds as we engage in conflict. The approach illuminates the way that deciding to engage in conflict behaviour is predicated on what one knows to be accurate and discerns to be significant. For example, in the vignette involving music in the hallway, I decided to close (well, slam) the door based on knowing that the music was coming from my colleague’s office and the dismay that I felt at the potential loss of focus. My deciding to engage in conflict behaviour (i.e., slamming the door) was based on what

32523_Jull.indd 26

2021-10-12 16:54:21



Intersubjectivity, Conflict, and Change

27

I knew to be true (i.e., my colleague was playing music) and the meaning that I discerned (i.e., loss of focus and concerns about sound in the hallway). As I explore throughout the following cases, the operation of valuing – the process of discerning significance – is integral to conflict behaviour. More specifically, the Insight approach identifies that a discernment of threat is a key driver of conflict behaviour (Melchin and Picard 2008; J. Price 2013; Picard 2017; Jull 2020; M. Price 2020b). A sense of threat and a decision to defend are what distinguish friendly disagreement from antagonistic dispute or teasing banter from contemptuous clash (Peddle 2020). If I had not discerned some form of threat, the sound in my office hallway may have led me to decide to chat about shared musical passions instead of prompting me to slam my door. Instead, my concerns about loss of focus, as well as my colleague’s seeming disregard for my unfortunate distractability and our shared habit of silence, led me to defend myself, my work, and our customary quiet with a slam instead of a chat or even a softened door click. This small example shows that threat can be discerned as an affront to one’s sense of self, as a sense of risk to the practical way that one’s life functions (involving time, work, money, health, or other concerns), or as a violation of social norms (J. Price 2018). More specifically, threat is registered as a gap between what is hoped for and what is rejected: it can be discerned as a difference between a preferred and undesirable practical future, as a disjuncture between an esteemed and aversive social behaviour, or as a gap between an affirmed or unwelcome sense of self (Jull 2018, J. Price 2018).11 Threat is registered through “affect,” which is a term that I use interchangeably in this book with “feeling” and “emotion” (although I recognize that there are more precise and differentiated ways to use these words). Because threat is discerned through feelings, an unwelcome gap can be registered through aversion, fear, shame, or outrage. The converse is that an affirmed fulfillment is registered through feelings of pleasure, contentment, or pride (Melchin and Picard 2008, M. Price 2016b). Another feature of threat is that it tends to contract other possible interpretations and thus to constrict available options. Price and Bartoli (2012, 167) explain, “When we feel threatened, it is very difficult to make peace because our apprehension of threat sharply narrows the framework that we use for interpreting our experience and choosing our response.” An assessment of threat can cause the mind

32523_Jull.indd 27

2021-10-12 16:54:21

28

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

to move spontaneously to responsive options, including defence. The constrictive effect of threat means that consciousness is more likely to be carried into making seemingly choiceless, hasty decisions rather than imaginative or reflexive ones. In addition to understanding that interpersonal conflict is animated by a discernment of threat, the Insight approach identifies the decision to defend as another defining feature of conflict behaviour. The effort to defend can take the form of fight, flee, freeze, or fawn (Price and Price 2015). More concretely, the defensive conflict behaviours can include combative confrontation, rageful silence, frantic retreat, or camouflaging servility. Melchin and Picard (2008) point out that when parties make decisions to defend, their conflict behaviours can be perceived as attacks by other parties, leading to reciprocating responses. These spaces of encounter – in which parties enact conflict behaviours oriented to defending against threat – are what characterize the more general concept of conflict. J. Price’s (2013) example of a conflict in a school between a vice principal and several students helps to illustrate the intersubjective dimensions of conflict. In this scenario, several students have skipped class and stand in stubborn silence as the vice principal confronts them in the school office. All of the individuals are making decisions in this conflictual encounter based on what they understand of the situation and what matters to them about it. Their knowing, valuing, and deciding in this space of encounter also take place within a social context that is shaped by the “roles, tasks, responsibilities and patterns of cooperation that constitute [it]” (120). Recalling that threat can be discerned as a personal, practical, or social gap between the desired and the rejected (M. Price 2016b; Jull 2018), one can surmise that the vice principal discerns an aversive gap between what she considers to be an appropriate response to her authority and the students’ stubborn silence. The students might discern an unwelcome gap between their preferred sense of selves as autonomous and the vice principal’s treatment of them as subordinate.12 The students’ defensive decision to remain silent in the face of this threat is shaped by their constricted discernment of available options in the space of encounter in the context of complex social meanings. Considering this standoff through the lens of intersubjectivity, it is clear that cognition, encounter, and context all shape the way that the students and the vice principal discern threats and defend against them.

32523_Jull.indd 28

2021-10-12 16:54:21



Intersubjectivity, Conflict, and Change

29

e v e ry d ay e t h i c s

At the end of this chapter, I will return to the silent class-skipping students and their frustrated vice principal in order to explore the possibilities of change. But first, I add Keane’s work on everyday ethical deliberation to this unfolding “creative conversation” about intersubjectivity and conflict. Enriching the discussion of how conflict emerges, an understanding of everyday ethics helps to set the stage for how its dissipation can become more possible. Keane (2015) and other anthropologists of ethics such as Lambek (2015) and Laidlaw (2013) make the observation, verified across cultures, that human minds evaluate and that this evaluative action is fundamentally oriented to discerning the “good” or the “bad,” however they are culturally defined. Keane (2015, 127) contends that the everyday activities of human beings “are saturated with judgments and values,” particularly interactions that involve decision making or discussions about others’ decision making. Although Keane (2014a, 7) does not focus on operations of consciousness, he recognizes that “cognition and affect are manifested tacitly and explicitly in everyday interactions.” He implicitly recognizes the functional relationship between valuing and deciding, with decision making dependent on assessments of the “good” or the “bad” – the desired or the rejected – and how they are conceived. Keane argues that everyday interactions such as arguments are crucial sites for studying and understanding ethics. He recognizes that ethics do not take place solely in individual, reasoning minds or in cultural injunctions about moral behaviour. Instead, ethics emerge in dynamic spaces of encounter where people find themselves account giving: accusing, arguing, justifying, praising, or blaming the behaviours and characters of themselves and others. Everyday arguments are ethical insofar as they mobilize ethical notions of the “good” or the “bad” in condemning or praising one’s own or others’ intentions, decisions, and behaviours. These ethical notions, mobilized in interpersonal interactions, are drawn from and contribute to a social “reservoir of concepts” or affordances (Keane 2014a, 12) through which ethical notions are defined and debated to determine whether an action is selfish or caring, responsible or reprehensible, affirmed or rejected. Keane highlights that there are distinct historical and cultural influences that shape the discernment of significance or valuing. Although the discernment of good or bad can change, the act of

32523_Jull.indd 29

2021-10-12 16:54:21

30

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

valuing, or discerning the ethical, is a feature of human consciousness itself (Keane 2014b, 452, 454). Laidlaw (2013, 2), too, notes that the foundational stance of an anthropology of ethics “is not an evaluative claim that people are good; it is a descriptive claim that they are evaluative.” This understanding of ethics resonates with the Insight approach’s recognition that valuing is integral to human consciousness, is enacted in spaces of encounter, and is situated in social contexts. The Insight approach recognizes that the operation of discerning threat – or registering an aversive gap between what is and what is preferred or desirable – can orient someone to responsively defend with conflict behaviour in a space of encounter with another. Conflict behaviour – whether attack, avoidance, servility or immobilization – is an enactment of what an individual has evaluated to be the best thing to do under the circumstances. When operating under the contractive effects of threat, these defence-oriented conflict behaviours may not correlate with one’s more conscientious ethical aspirations. Instead of skilfully addressing what threatens us, we might find ourselves spontaneously, seemingly choicelessly, engaged in reactive argument, costly avoidance, insincere flattery, or frozen silence. Keane and the Insight approach, then, share the recognition that everyday arguments are sites of ethical interactions where the self knows, evaluates, and behaves in response to another while eliciting a response from the evaluating other. These interpersonal conflicts are intersubjective, dynamic spaces of encounter where individuals discern an (ethical) significance that is shaped by the complex systems of meanings that affect how they are situated. h ow c a n e v e ry d ay a r g u m e n t s c h a n g e ?

Having set out the conceptual tools to understand the emergence of interpersonal argument as an intersubjective process involving ethical discernment, it also becomes possible to explore the dissipation of conflict by using these same three dimensions of intersubjectivity. The research that I undertake in the following cases explores how interpersonal arguments can dissipate through changes to operations of consciousness, spaces of encounter, and complex systems of meanings. In other words, I explore how everyday arguments can be altered when we change what our minds are doing, how we interact, and the meanings afforded to these complex dynamics.

32523_Jull.indd 30

2021-10-12 16:54:21



Intersubjectivity, Conflict, and Change

31

Changing What Our Minds Are Doing: Reflexivity and Threat In relating Keane’s work to the Insight approach, it becomes possible to explore how eliciting reflexivity and diminishing the constrictive effect of threat can alter the trajectory of a conflict. For Keane (2015, 2016), ethical reflexivity is the process of becoming aware of and reconsidering one’s discernment of ethical significance. Ethical reflexivity can cause new affordances to be contingently recombined so that new meanings emerge and other conclusions become possible. In other words, providing explanations and making claims can make it possible for one to become more reflexively aware, thereby enabling the discovery of aspects that had not been noticed or considered relevant before. This opportunity to re-evaluate, through account giving and other means, can provide new possibilities to discern another “good” and act toward its realization. For Keane, account giving and other behaviours are interactive processes through which accusations and arguments can be enacted and dissipated. They offer the opportunity for new affordances to be made that change the knowing, valuing, and deciding that are enacted in the space of encounter. The Insight approach’s focused attention on operations of consciousness further helps to identify the possibility for change through reflexivity. The Insight approach recognizes the constrictive effect of threat on our performances of knowing, valuing, and deciding (M. Price 2016b). Registering threat makes our cognitive performance more truncated, incurious, and rash. When the restrictive impact of threat is lessened, more expansive or reflexive knowing, valuing, and deciding take place. More expansive cognitive performance can be instigated through reflexive attention to the operations of consciousness. We can notice whether our verifying is more careful or critical than hasty. We can also be aware of when our valuing is more expansively discerning than condensed, primal, or elemental. In recognizing a more truncated performance, it is possible to become curious about it, thereby affording the opportunity for a more expansive performance (M. Price 2018). There are numerous practical strategies for eliciting change through more expansive knowing, valuing, and deciding. These strategies can take many behavioural and communicative forms, including questions. For example, questions directed toward the operation of knowing

32523_Jull.indd 31

2021-10-12 16:54:21

32

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

include “What happened?” and “What did you say?” Wondering about valuing takes the form of questions like “What mattered to you about that?” and “How did that make you feel?” Inquiries about deciding can entail “What other options were possible?” and “What could be the disadvantage of that?” These kinds of questions activate the relevant operations of knowing, valuing, and deciding to discover new meaning or to identify further options. It is these changes of mind – such as noticing different information, discerning further meaning, or deciding that other actions are preferable – that precede changes in conflict behaviour (Jull 2018; J. Price 2018).13 Change in action depends on change in the mind of the actor. What about changes to the spaces of encounter? How can changes in these spaces facilitate the dissipation of interpersonal argument? Recall that in spaces of encounter, we are situated in relation to others by our roles as well as by the patterns of interaction through which we pursue what we deem to be good. The term “good” in this context refers to what we desire, affirm, or prefer – whether it is to meet a need, pursue an interest, or reach a goal. The roles that situate us in relation to the other can be formal or informal, such as co-worker, conversation partner, pedestrian, and customer. These roles are connected to our identity or, more precisely, to our contextual sense of self (and other). As a white, middle-aged woman, I situate myself, and am situated by others, in relation to these identity markers (or affordances) of social significance, which are fluid and contextual, involving meaning and power. My sense of self as a white, middle-aged woman changes in relation to my other roles, whether as a mother or as a pedestrian deciding where to walk at night. In our roles that situate us in relation to the other, we pursue what we discern to be good through patterns of interaction. Patterns of interaction can vary in their structure and fluidity. Buying a toy for my daughter, for example, situates me as a customer in relation to the store, other customers, and those who work there. The patterns of interaction – such as standing in line and interacting with the cashier – orient my mind and shape what is possible to know, value, and decide in these spaces of encounter. Similarly, in the context of interpersonal arguments, the parties are situated in relation to the other by their (often multiple) roles while engaged in patterns of interaction that are socially carried and dynamically emergent. Considering this intersubjective dimension of interpersonal argument, it becomes possible to discern that changes to spaces of

32523_Jull.indd 32

2021-10-12 16:54:21



Intersubjectivity, Conflict, and Change

33

encounter can also impact the operations of consciousness in ways that dissipate interpersonal argument. Mobilizing other roles or altering interactions in the spaces of encounter where argument is enacted can change the pattern of conflict behaviour. In the cases that follow, I explore various changes that generate, and are generated by, the dissipation of interpersonal conflict. I have recognized throughout the foregoing discussion that cognition is profoundly shaped by the complex social meanings – the narratives, practices, linguistic habits, and more – that inflect spaces of encounter. This third dimension of intersubjectivity shapes the roles and interactions through which we know, value, and decide. Although we are often unreflexively carried by the complex social meanings of the spaces where we are situated, it is also possible to become reflexively aware of these affordances and their impact. If these affordances are changed, it becomes possible for interpersonal argument to be altered as well. This is the concept of change that I explore throughout the auto­ ethnographical research in this book. If interpersonal conflict is an intersubjective process involving interactive cognition, dynamic spaces of encounter, and complex systems of meanings then changes to these dimensions of intersubjectivity can dissipate interpersonal argument – and might allow new possibilities to emerge. Let us return to the moment when the vice principal confronts the class-skipping students and explore different ways that the dissipation of conflict might be instigated. With regard to the first (cognitive, conscious) aspect of intersubjectivity, if the constrictive impact of threat was diminished or if reflexivity could be instigated, then more expansive interpretations and options could be discerned and acted upon. For example, through the process of questioning and refusing to answer, the vice principal may become more enraged. In contrast, if sufficiently mindful of her larger aspirations to administer a just response, she might become more reflexively aware that her own contracted certainty about the students’ behaviour was impeding her ability to respond conscientiously to the misdemeanour. In recalling these aspirations, she may become more discerning and imaginative in responding to the students’ silent refusal to talk. A student, too, may become more reflexively aware that his frozen silence may inhibit him from disclosing what matters to him about the limits to learning that prevail in the skipped class; this reconsideration may prompt him to evaluate the option of speaking out to be preferable to silence.

32523_Jull.indd 33

2021-10-12 16:54:21

34

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

With regard to the second aspect of intersubjectivity, if the space of encounter changed, with peer counsellors or the basketball coach, for example, called in to address attendance infractions, then new possibilities might emerge to dissipate the argument between the students and vice principal. As for the third aspect, if the school’s narratives and practices happened to include religious discourse, an appeal to the healing forgiveness of God might be mobilized by either side to change the operative narratives and dissipate the argument. In a more secular context, the students or vice principal might mobilize an affordance related to a secular humanist discourse of respect or citizenship. These affordances can affect the other dimensions of intersubjectivity by eliciting fresh discernment of significance (e.g., “the kids are scared” rather than “the kids are jerks”) or by invoking additional roles (e.g., “I’m a citizen of this school with rights and responsibilities” rather than “I’m a tourist in the classroom, coming and going as I please”). Changing the affordances – the complex systems of meanings that pattern the interactions where the conflict is situated – can also alter an everyday interpersonal conflict. summary

Interpersonal argument can be seen as an intersubjective process that has three dynamically related aspects. In its first aspect, intersubjectivity is seen as an act of individual consciousness. It is a dynamic process of cognition by which the self grasps the intelligibility of another’s actions, registers threat, and decides to defend through conflict behaviour. It is also the aspect of intersubjectivity by which a reflexive self can re-evaluate, discover other options, or make different decisions. When dynamized by expansive curiosity rather than constrictive threat, the operations of knowing, valuing, and deciding can be responsively activated to generate new possibilities. In its second aspect, intersubjectivity is understood as a space of encounter of mutual and reciprocating influence that is dynamically created among actors. Interpersonal argument can be generated in spaces of encounter by enacting conflict behaviour, including account giving (i.e., accusations or blame). Spaces of encounter can also be sites where argument is dissipated through account giving (i.e., explanations or stories) as well as through other means of discovering new affordances or enacting alternative behaviours.

32523_Jull.indd 34

2021-10-12 16:54:21



Intersubjectivity, Conflict, and Change

35

In its third aspect, intersubjectivity is a complex system of meanings generated from social and cultural patterns. These linguistic habits, practices, narratives, and institutions through which power and significance are circulated are taken up as affordances in everyday interactions. These affordances support the generation of conflict and provide the resources for conflict to change through re-evaluation of significance or discovery of other options. These frameworks and concepts about intersubjectivity, conflict, and change thus form the foundation for an autoethnographical investigation of interpersonal argument as a process of knowledge production and decision making. The following chapter introduces the four cases that are the focus of the inquiry and articulates the specific methodological choices and practices of this investigation.

32523_Jull.indd 35

2021-10-12 16:54:21

3 A Methodological Preface to the Cases

The process of research is also intersubjective, taking place in spaces of encounter and involving operations of consciousness amid complex social meanings. This chapter describes the development of my reflexive, iterative, situated method, which emerges throughout the cases and forms a part of the “evidentiary narrative” (Altheide and Jones 2011, 587) of accounting for the quality of this work. As an intersubjective process, research involves a researching self who understands, registers significance, and makes decisions in relation to what is being studied. To explicitly account for the cognitive process of knowledge production in my research, I use “quality notes,” a textual device borrowed from Marshall’s (2004) first-person research. She presents these quality notes in italics as reflexive commentaries within the text to highlight and account for the challenges and decisions in her research process. Through these notes, Marshall succinctly defines and accounts for the core aspects of quality in firstperson research. I borrow this device as well as her identified categories of quality to develop a metacommentary in the text through which to assess and assert the quality of the research being performed.1 The categories of quality that I borrow from Marshall (2004) are the selection and presentation of material, or “writing accounts” (316); the process of interpretation, or “sense-making” (313–14); the connection to more abstract concepts, or “theorizing” (317); the engagement with others’ responses, or “working with feedback” (320); the “representation” of others and the self (321); the arrival at appropriate closure, or “saturating inquiry” (318); and “research cycling,” which means the implications of the discoveries beyond the text (322). The quality notes are sometimes written in the present tense alongside the vignette and sometimes in the past tense looking back at the

32523_Jull.indd 36

2021-10-12 16:54:21



A Methodological Preface to the Cases

37

analysis. They form an integral part of the autoethnography, permitting the researching self to comment on the analysis before checking in with others about their own analysis of what went on. The notes signal the iterative process of research, becoming a cumulative part of the method’s development through the cases. I also situate my research explicitly within an epistemic community. Until this point, I have used the term “epistemic community” to denote a more abstract group of scholars, accessed through various literatures. However, an epistemic community is also embodied in my specific context; my community in this text emerges as individual colleagues, students, conflict practitioners, academics, advisers, and friends with whom I connected during the research process. My epistemic community helped me to elicit and verify insights, participated in discerning points of analytical significance, and provided reflection-inducing advice on key decisions. The intersubjective process of research thus becomes a notable feature in the reflexive commentaries that accompany the cases. case selection

How did I select the cases? There was no shortage of options to consider, including a brewing family dispute about a symbolic object involving an aging relative and his extended family; workplace disputes with recalcitrant colleagues; a property owner stirring up conflict with neighbours through disputatious emails; a neighbourhood friend who neglected to return a needed object; and an enraged confrontation between one of my daughters and me. Through a process of drafting ten vignettes, working with the cases, consulting my colleagues, and eliciting feedback, I selected the four cases presented here as being “the best” according to a set of criteria that gradually evolved: the illustration of distinct aspects of the dissipation of interpersonal argument, the inclusion of diverse spaces of encounter, the manageability of recounting, the interest elicited by telling and reading, and significance and complexity.2 I have come to love these stories, and I enjoy reading, discussing, refining, and wondering about them. Criteria To be chosen for this research, a case needed to illuminate some ­sufficiently distinct shift so that a “before” and “after” could be

32523_Jull.indd 37

2021-10-12 16:54:21

38

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

distinguished. A sense of dissipation is often not easy to discern in the course of complex intersubjective encounters. As I discovered in my final case, it can even be difficult to identify whose change of mind has altered the conflict. I also sought cases that could explore diverse roles for the researching self to take: as speaker, listener, and intervenor; as being listened to and listening to. These cases thus explore a variety of contexts of varying complexity, from a seemingly ordinary domestic dispute to a multiparty conflict. Given the complexity of even an apparently simple dispute, the chosen cases needed to be recountable. In other words, the story had to be sufficiently simple to tell in a few pages and involve parties whose stories were able to be told. Stories of conflict are difficult to recount, as they often contain various layers of context that involve institutions or individuals whose stories a researcher cannot disclose or whose backstory would be too complex to render in the length of a vignette suitable for a chapter in a book such as this one. The case needed to elicit interest from others and to remain significant over time. As an instructor in conflict analysis, I refer to these cases in classroom teaching to illustrate a challenge or to make a point. These cases invariably generate curiosity, elicit lively discussion, or prompt reciprocating illuminating narratives. The cases thus have intersubjective resonance in that they carry diverse minds in similar but not identical ways. In other words, a case merited selection because, although it could be interpreted through my particular theoretical analysis, the story could also elicit a multiplicity of meanings. It is this quality of complexity that was a further criterion for selection: that I could apply my theoretical tools without my analysis being the only one possible. There was a proliferation of possible meanings that I encountered as a I worked with feedback from interlocutors and members of my community. In this way, the structure and purpose of this research project shaped and oriented what became salient “evidence” to consider as data. s u m m a ry o f t h e s e l e c t e d c a s e s

The “Intransigent Conflict” is about an argument between me and my life partner over her use of cleaning products that I consider harmful. It is a case that exemplifies a spontaneous change of mind that is instigated through an altered space of encounter by the inclusion of

32523_Jull.indd 38

2021-10-12 16:54:21



A Methodological Preface to the Cases

39

a friend, whose casual remark evokes in me a fresh discernment of the significance of my partner’s behaviour, which subsequently dissolves the argument and enduringly alters a pattern of interaction. As the first case in my research, it serves both as an initial exploration of the conceptual tools and methodological form that I set out in the previous chapters and as an introduction to their application. The second case, “Outrage,” involves a space of encounter with a confidante where I seek to change my own mind about an impending conflict over the possibility of my daughter being cut from a competitive hockey team. The dissipation of polarized conflict occurs through my insight into an affect that dynamizes my outrage, allowing new possibilities to become preferable to the conflictual options that I have previously considered. The second case was selected because the dissipation of the conflict is instigated through a deliberate and difficult effort to change, enacted through an account-giving space of encounter. By eliciting various accounts about the dispute and its meaning, my interlocutor helps to facilitate an altered discernment of its significance, thereby dissipating my impulse toward conflict. The third case, “Listening to Another Mind,” takes place in a space of encounter with a friend who is in an argument with a colleague. In a process of mutual account giving between him and myself, he is able to know his colleague differently. In doing so, he moves from annoyed ruminations about the argument to wondering how he can speak to her in a way that addresses both of their concerns. The encounter described in the third case was chosen because of its heightened focus on the researching self’s role as a “listener” during a conversation with a friend involved in an emergent conflict. The dissipation of his argument takes place through a process of our interactive account giving, with the result that existing affordances are recombined in such a way that he comes to know his colleague differently, thus altering his conflictual stance to a more collaborative one. “Tension in the Group,” the fourth case, illustrates a complex, multisubjective space of encounter where an interpersonal conflict arises during a group meeting at which I am the facilitator. In the meeting, a specific relational conflict erupts in a way that threatens to derail the larger process. Through account giving and expansive threatreducing recognition, the conflict subsides, making it possible for the conversation to continue. In this case, many minds – and one in particular – are changed sufficiently for the conflict to dissipate and for new possibilities to emerge much later.

32523_Jull.indd 39

2021-10-12 16:54:21

40

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

s e n s e m a k i n g : ac c o u n t i n g f o r t h e a n a ly s i s

The process of writing – creating narratives, producing analysis – was an integral part of this inquiry (Richardson 2000). Selecting material depended on the conceptual tools that informed my research; what I knew about conflict shaped what I discerned to be significant in the cases, and I reflexively account for these choices. In addition to “what” I present, I am accountable for “how” I present it. In one case, for example, I recognized that an initial version of the case had the serious flaw of disregarding my interiority. Rather than erasing the early narrative by rewriting it entirely, I wrote an additional narrative that foregrounded my interiority. Maintaining the two related but distinct narratives makes explicit the iterative activities of writing and knowledge production, thereby adding greater depth and nuance to the research process itself. Creating the layered account began with selecting significant aspects of a chosen case and writing a dramatic first-person vignette. I then added a more theoretical commentary on the vignette to explore the concepts of intersubjectivity, conflict, and change. This more theoretical perspective helped me to investigate my own subjectivity so that my researching self could be made explicit as both a subject in my narration and an object of inquiry in my analysis. Working with Feedback and Representation The cases also incorporate the perspectives of others through debriefing inquiries.3 These loosely structured conversations involved others who were directly involved in the incident of change. I was mindful of the perspectives of these individuals as I wrote the vignettes and analyses, and each later provided feedback on the text. Although my goal was not “objectivity,” others’ perspectives helped to advance the accuracy and accountability of my first-person research. The conversations challenged me to engage more deeply and directly with the complexity of others’ perspectives. A specific challenge arose through the debriefing interview in the case of “Listening to Another Mind.” My conversation partner told me that the account did not fully represent his experience of the conflict, which concerned me as a possible reflection of poor-quality research on my part. I then developed further clarity about the

32523_Jull.indd 40

2021-10-12 16:54:21



A Methodological Preface to the Cases

41

selection and presentation of my case, which I subsequently confirmed with him. I also account for the representation of “myself” throughout this research. This self is presented as complex, learning, indeterminate, purposeful, and reactive. The reflective commentary highlights moments when the presentation of self is interrogated and exposed. I was frequently aware that I was writing a partial story of knowledge, which highlighted my subjectivity as a producer of knowledge. This recognition of subjectivity did not invalidate the research but made it more transparent. a p p r o p r i at e c lo s u r e a n d i d e n t i f y i n g i m p l i c at i o n s o f t h e r e s e a r c h

Coming to appropriate closure is another significant aspect of quality in research. As a researching self, I had to refrain from overworking a text to the point that the insights were repetitive, the tone was too certain, or the emergent complexity became obscured by the imposition of a linear narrative. Coming to appropriate closure also meant that I could not prematurely close off lines of inquiry by settling for an analysis that failed to recognize important dimensions of the cases’ conceptual potential (as I recount in chapter 6). Conversely, appropriate closure necessitated setting aside related pathways of inquiry, such as an investigation into shame in chapter 5 that would have taken the research too far outside the scope of the investigation. The structure and dynamic complexity – the anatomy – of ordinary struggles are revealed in these multilayered cases. In parallel, the process of research, like conflict itself, is shown to be intersubjective, messy, and dramatic. Because of the partiality and complexity of research, the method itself is also part of the story of context, contingency, emergence, and indeterminacy.

32523_Jull.indd 41

2021-10-12 16:54:21

4 Intransigent Conflict

This is a text about a conflict between me and my life partner where a polarized argument is spontaneously and enduringly changed through the unexpected and brief intervention of a helpful friend. Conceptually, I recognize the three aspects of intersubjectivity: distinguishing operations of consciousness, spaces of encounter, and ­complex systems of meanings. I also explore the operations of consciousness to differentiate “knowing” from “valuing” and to identify their impact on interpersonal argument. I investigate the concept of “threat” in conflict behaviour, noticing it as a gap between what is affirmed or rejected. I account for the quality of this research through my quality notes; in this first case, these notes attend more specifically to the writing of accounts (or what and how to present) as well as to sense making (or the process of interpretation) inherent in writing as a process of inquiry (Richardson and St Pierre 2005). I also introduce the practice of working with feedback in my production of the text and discover that my partner’s interpretation of the event was (very!) different from mine. the vignette

My partner, Georgine, and I have struggled for years to reconcile our divergent preferences regarding cleaning products. She prefers germfighting cleaners with strong chemicals. I prefer (and I prefer that she use) products that are more environmentally friendly. She values dish soap that is bubbly and cuts through any grease. She likes cleaners that visibly demonstrate their eradication of mould with a strong scent that announces that clean has triumphed over dirt. I can accept

32523_Jull.indd 42

2021-10-12 16:54:21



Intransigent Conflict

43

what seems to be inferior performance in exchange for (what the company tells me about) environmental impact. We have fought this battle for many years and on many fronts: laundry soap, household cleaners, dish soap, and toilet paper. It is hard to talk to our friends about it because they most often go straight to deliberating options, depending on where they have settled in their own evaluation of good products: some recommend environmental products that they have found useful; others suggest ways to mitigate the smell and health impact of strong cleaners that fight harmful bacteria; some contest Georgine’s appraisal of the inferior performance of eco-friendly brands; and others commiserate over the lack of bubbles in eco-friendly dish soap. In these conversations, I have come to realize that the well-meaning discussions about product choice are not actually helpful. There is something else going on in our argument, something about the meaning of the products and our relationship to them and something about our relationship with each other that gets worked out in the bickering over cleaning products. Part of me is astonished. How is it possible that we have been bickering about this for a decade? We seem to reach an agreement, and then something happens. For example, we agreed that Georgine would use strong cleaners only on dirt or mould that would pose a threat to our health – a greater threat than the toxic chemicals applied. Otherwise, she would use vinegar. The Argument One Saturday, I come around the corner to discover Georgine industriously applying a harsh-smelling chemical to the mirror. I have felt an uneasy acceptance of our agreement, and now here she is, using a strong cleaner on a smudged mirror! My annoyance erupts. “Why aren’t you using vinegar?” I reproach her in an accusing tone. “What do you mean?” she retorts. “If you want to use vinegar, go ahead. But I’m the only one who does any cleaning around here!” “I do plenty of cleaning,” I rejoin, “and when you clean, use the stupid vinegar, like you said!” I look at her. Annoyance is not really the word for how I feel. I am tight in my chest and throat, a churning feeling rising inside. She is missing my point – about the cleaner and how I thought it would be used – and she is accusing me of slothfulness, laziness, and ingratitude all at the same time. I am defending in a very attacking sort of way.

32523_Jull.indd 43

2021-10-12 16:54:21

44

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

The phone rings. I grab it, relieved at the intervention. “Hi. It’s Rebecca.” She’s our long-time friend, who knows and loves us both. “Hello Rebecca!” I say, immediately followed by a plaintive, “Why does Georgine use toxic chemicals to clean our house?” There is a pause as she absorbs my abrupt launch into complaint. “Well … I’m kind of with you on that one,” she begins. I can hear the smile and measured response in her voice; the way that she says “kind of” means to me that she is emotionally holding a place for Georgine while offering me some recognition. Georgine has heard my outburst and gets on the other line to add her bit. “Rebecca, why am I the only who cleans around here?” I feel ridiculous now, like we’re two kids tattling to a mother. But I cannot help it. I talk through the phone to Georgine. “Yes, you do a lot of cleaning, but not all of it!” I say. “And Rebecca, I don’t get this! Georgine is a toxicologist! She’s studied that stuff!” I can hear Rebecca smile, pause, breathe. “Yup,” she says, and her tone is accepting, almost resigned. “It’s that family of origin shit, you know,” she says to me. Georgine quickly responds. “Yeah!” she says pointedly, as if she and Rebecca have scored a point against me. “I got in big trouble if things weren’t spotless.” The term “big trouble” in Georgine’s family of origin mostly meant someone got hit hard. Surprisingly, my frustration dissolves, even though Georgine is trying to score some kind of point. I knew this information before. But there is something in the way that this conversation flows that makes my frustration dissolve. The Change Before the call with Rebecca, my narrative went something like this: “Georgine is a toxicologist, dammit, and her family of origin stuff keeps taking over around cleaning, and she hasn’t been able to change after all this time.” There was an aggrieved condemnation in my narrative, namely that she should be different and that she was problematically weak for not being able to change. After the call with Rebecca, my narrative is almost the same, but instead of grievance I feel tolerance: “Although she’s a toxicologist, her family of origin stuff keeps taking over around cleaning and she can’t help it.”

32523_Jull.indd 44

2021-10-12 16:54:21



Intransigent Conflict

45

I have no new information, but my consciousness is carried by a different narrative. Instead of being carried by a moralizing judgment of her as deficient, I find myself extending kindness to her. I still think that the cleaning products that she uses are toxic, but I feel less aggrieved when she uses them. Although I “knew” that she was not using them “against me” but rather using them to feel that she was vanquishing dangerous dirt, I now know that in a different way. I was not lacking information, but something else has changed. Georgine’s deciding, for the time being, remains the same, and she continues to use the toxic chemicals, but my impulse to fight with her about it has diminished significantly. Recently, she decided that the new eco-friendly dish soap that I had purchased was inadequate to cut grease, and we have again reverted to our grease-fighting dish soap until a mutually acceptable one can be found. r e f l e x i v e c o m m e n ta r y

What happened in the encounter? Where does the response to this question reside? Described in objectivist terms based on what can be known as fact and verified by the senses, the conflict began when I turned a corner to see my partner using a nonvinegar cleaning product, then we exchanged a few sentences, and my friend in turn spoke with both of us, directing the conflict toward more collaborative interactions. These are the facts, the known and provable data of sense, or what can be seen, heard, and touched. It is in the realm of meaning, the data of interiority, and the examination of consciousness that the clues for changing this conflict can be found, not through the senses. In this scenario, my mind shifted away from a constricted, outraged reactivity (which had led to polarized argument) and toward a more expansive tolerance of the differences between us (which had always brought more harmony than discord to the complex fabric of our twentyplus years together). It is by paying attention to what happened in my consciousness that I can trace the way that the conflict began and transformed. Having made the point that meaning and the interpretation of meaning in this vignette reside in the realm of consciousness, how do I account for the complexity of a moment of consciousness? How do I account for an incident that lasted, in a series of split seconds, for less than a minute? Like recounting a dream that happens

32523_Jull.indd 45

2021-10-12 16:54:21

46

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

in a moment of “real time,” accounting for a moment of reacting or dialogue can sometimes take pages. This account was written over days and weeks of recollection and reflection. I recognize that the selection and presentation of material are complex. What I recollect and what I decide to foreground are shaped by many factors: my role as a scholar, the conceptual tools through which my understanding is generated, and the tone and style that I seek to achieve. My recollection and crafting of the vignette and analysis, then, are shaped by complex systems of intersubjective meanings. I acknowledge that there is a lot going on beyond my awareness that gets missed. Recognizing this complexity, I am not seeking positivist accuracy but a qualitative rendering that creates a partial account. Ultimately, you as the reader use the empirical data of your own consciousness (shaped by the epistemic communities in which you are situated) to contingently and critically assess the worth or value of this text. In my encounter with Georgine, I noticed and registered the significance of her use of cleaning products; these operations of noticing and registering the significance are operations of my consciousness. At the same time, my mind was carried, without a sense of volition, to register the significance of the event through a felt response of annoyance. My Annoyance Indicates Significance The annoyance was how I registered the significance of the sight of Georgine cleaning. The annoyance arose on its own in response to the scenario in front of me. I could feel it in my tightening chest, speeding heart, and flushing cheeks. These were the emotional and physical parts of the response. It was also cognitive. Reflecting more on what the annoyance signalled and finding clues in what spilled out of me as I complained to Rebecca, I can now discern that the annoyance registered a violation of some socially normative roles (or complex social meanings). That is, the violation of these normative roles registered in me as a felt sense of annoyance. Put another way, the meaning of violated social norms related to Georgine’s role as a partner, who normatively “should” honour my preferences and uphold vague agreements rather than pursuing her own preferences willy-nilly; I also seem to have been annoyed by the violation of (my sense of) her role as a toxicologist, who, armed with knowledge about toxicity, should make unconstricted decisions about

32523_Jull.indd 46

2021-10-12 16:54:21



Intransigent Conflict

47

cleaning with products that do not damage human health or the environment, according to me. Another way of articulating the observation that a norm had been violated is to describe it as a gap between how a good partner should behave (i.e., account for my preferences) and her chemical-spraying behaviour or between how a good toxicologist should behave (i.e., refrain from applying toxic chemicals) and what she had just done. My felt response of annoyance signalled this gap, or violation of the social norms of these roles of partner and toxicologist, norms that are both social and idiosyncratic in my apprehension of them. In addition to the gap, the violation of social norms, or my expectations, the annoyance signalled something more. Personally, I registered a diminished sense of myself: I felt unimportant and helpless to change her mind. There was a gap between an expanded sense of myself as significant and my contracted unwelcome sense of myself as unimportant. Practically, I also had concerns about the impact of the cleaners on our family’s health as well as the ecosystem that would be receiving the chemicals as they were washed down the drain. These concerns are registered through the operation of consciousness that the Insight approach calls valuing (Jull 2018). Registering these gaps – these unwelcome, undesirable threats – my mind generated the seemingly choiceless choice of defending through fighting, and I used contempt as my weapon of defence.1 There was no space between the split seconds of registering intense annoyance and the accusing tone that spilled out of my mouth. I was not able to consider options or measured responses. Instead, I rashly demanded that she conform to my wishes (and to my memory of our agreement). Her Response Georgine’s response was a defensive attack: “I’m the only one who does any cleaning around here!” Her mind was working quickly, too. In a more equanimous state, I might have wondered more what her mind was doing. Despite my training in de-escalating conflict, “wondering” was not accessible to me then. My righteous certainty was running the show. Now, as I reflect through this writing, her words and tone point to a similar affective response of outrage related to my violation of roles: the person who does the cleaning should get to choose the cleaning product, and the person who does the cleaning is deserving of

32523_Jull.indd 47

2021-10-12 16:54:21

48

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

appreciation, not criticism, so the noncleaning person who criticizes the industrious cleaner is violating several social norms, and these violations give rise to annoyance. And more than annoying, the violation of social norms is a threat that must be defended against. So she acted to defend herself against my criticism, the threat of disrupted social norms (and perhaps her own diminished sense of self that my accusing tone engendered) by criticizing me back – a criticism targeted at my failure to live up to the normative role that partners should pull their weight in the chore of cleaning and at the yawning gap between that norm and my pitiable performance of it. My (truncated, rash) response was to defend my record as a cleaner and to make an authoritative demand of her. Threats In sum, the threats that were evoked by our interaction were personal, practical, and social. For me, I discerned many threats: a contracted personal sense of self as insignificant, practical threats about family and ecological health, and social threats related to the shortfall between a desired enactment of roles and actual ones. For her, the threats were registered as a gap between the desired and actual enactment of my role as a partner, practical concerns about the ever-present danger of mould, and the personal threat of a contracted self that my shaming tone had targeted. Gaps are not necessarily threats given that sometimes these shortfalls can be registered with neutral affect or even affectionate resignation. But in this dispute, the gap was unwelcome and dire, emerging from and generating contracted operations of consciousness and degenerative patterns of interaction. Context is important because on a different day and at a different hour, I may have registered a less intense response of annoyance or had a more collaborative communicative tone available to me. Intersubjectivity is complex. In the rapid flow of mind encountering others in complex social contexts, we do not swim in the same river twice. The encounters are different, the consciousness is more or less expansive, and the complex meanings are not necessarily stable. Intersubjectivity Intersubjectivity means that individual subjectivities are shaped but not necessarily determined by the spaces of encounter and complex

32523_Jull.indd 48

2021-10-12 16:54:21



Intransigent Conflict

49

systems of meanings that pattern how they are situated. Although these concepts of intersubjectivity are related, they can also be differentiated in an analysis of this vignette. Complex systems of meanings. With regard to intersubjectivity as complex systems of meanings, this conflict includes the meaning of partnership, housekeeping, health and safety, and the environmental impacts of cleaners. These are broad social, cultural, institutional patterns and meanings that exceeded our specific enactment of our roles as partners, housekeepers, and consumers. We enacted our specific knowing and doing within these systems that shape the horizons of the knowing and doing that are possible. In other words, these horizons of meaning shape the availability and foreclosure of certain interpretations and decisions. For example, if our conflict had taken place within the institutional structure of a daycare where we were both employees, our conflict would have been shaped by the institutional meanings enacted in that setting. In terms of the family system in which we enacted our roles as partners, women, consumers, and cleaners, there are profound levels of meaning about how partners should enact consideration, consumers should enact responsible consumption, and housekeepers should enact cleaning. If my partner had been a man, I might have attributed his environmental insensitivity to some sort of gender-related approach to cleaning. In our specific family dispute, our divergent valuing was connected to our different family upbringings, to our previous experiences of what “good” cleaners do and say, and to innumerable other factors that shaped the specific conflictual interactions that we experienced. Intersubjectivity as complex systems of meanings supports an analysis of this specific conflict by orienting the analysis to the complexity of social affordances available to me in this context. Intersubjectivity as a space of encounter. With regard to intersubjectivity as a space of encounter, my partner and I found ourselves engaged in a pattern of mutual, reciprocally influencing, and increasingly unpleasant interactions. The product of the activity was not reducible only to us as participants, but it was not separate from us either. The pattern of the interactions also shaped the knowing and doing that were possible in this conflict. Our previous interactions – about cleaners, housekeeping, and shared decision making – had

32523_Jull.indd 49

2021-10-12 16:54:21

50

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

contributed to shaping the pattern of interaction that carried this specific conflict along. In mediating individuality and sociality and in shaping the space of encounter, the concept of role has an importance to which individual minds attend. In reflecting on the conflict with Georgine, I saw that our roles had situated us in relation to each other and had shaped our individual knowing, valuing, and deciding. Our roles as partners shaped our space of encounter in our expectations of each other and in the way that we spoke – just as her role as a toxicologist impacted the significance, to my mind, of her use of toxic cleaning products. Rebecca’s part was also important: her role as our shared friend shaped the horizon of what was possible for her to say, our willingness to enlist her, and her willingness to engage. Intersubjectivity as a space of mutual encounter shaped by roles is also a helpful tool in this analysis. I n t e rs u b j e c t i v i t y as o p e r at i o n s o f c o n s c i o u s n e s s . Considering intersubjectivity as operations of consciousness or interactive activity of minds, I came to know Georgine’s mind as expressed through her actions and her words. The intelligibility that I grasped was that she had decided to use toxic cleaners despite my expressed preference for vinegar. Her decision was significant – threatening – insofar as it appeared to discount what mattered to me. I rashly chose to defend through criticism, which she registered as an affronting threat before deciding to robustly reciprocate. Registering significance and deciding to defend are operations of consciousness whereby the other is known intersubjectively. I “knew” her to be someone who ignores her partner’s preferences, just as she “knew” me to be a noncleaning person who criticizes hard-working cleaners. More deeply, I “knew” her mind as ignoring, and she “knew” my mind as condemning. Although these operations of consciousness are shaped by our encounters and by broader social meanings and narratives, they are not determinative. At any point, one of us could have made the decision to refrain from defending, or one of us could have become curious about the all-too-familiar pattern of nattering that was carrying our consciousnesses along in a way that felt choiceless and compelling. Constricted Certainty and Incomplete Knowledge In considering intersubjectivity as an activity of consciousness, I can (now) see that my own constricted certainty produced my sense of

32523_Jull.indd 50

2021-10-12 16:54:21



Intransigent Conflict

51

“knowing” her intention to disparage. I could have known her mind differently because clearly there was a lot more to know. But in that moment, I was disabled by faulty knowing. It is not that I was wrong; she was, in fact, disregarding my preference. What was faulty about my knowing (and valuing) was that they were constricted and incomplete. In this specific conflict, I was not able to access what I know and value about her good nature and her general disposition to accommodate my preferences. Instead, my certainty was a caricature of her as not caring, which in the context of a relationship of twenty-plus years was faulty knowing, indeed. I needed an expanded horizon to be able to know more – about her consciousness, as well as my own – than was available at the time. In this way, I recognize that although they are profoundly integrated, it is possible to differentiate operations of consciousness from the spaces of encounter and the social meanings that carry them. What Changed? When Georgine spontaneously joined my conversation with Rebecca on our second phone, it gave us the opportunity for a three-way conversation, changing our intersubjective space of encounter. Rebecca’s intervention enabled us to change the pattern of interaction: we had a different configuration in the way that our minds were oriented to understand, value, and decide. My immediate complaint to Rebecca was met with her equanimous response; she “kind of” agreed with me but not fully. I could sense that her tone acknowledged my grievance, so I did not need to convince her or to defend myself against her judgment. She was able to acknowledge the significance to me without inhabiting it herself because she did not bolster or reinforce my annoyed reactivity. Another way to express this idea is to say that she registered the significance to me without taking it to be fact; she was able to differentiate facts (or knowing) from significance (or valuing). After Georgine’s complaint had engendered a bickering reply from me, the transformation was sparked by Rebecca’s intervention – “It’s that family of origin shit, you know” – followed by Georgine’s “Yeah!” This response to my complaint was significant both in the content of what Rebecca said and in the feeling with which she said it. Somehow her response “fit” with Georgine enough that she could agree with Rebecca and feel aligned with her, perhaps sparking an insight in Georgine. Rebecca was able to understand and register Georgine’s

32523_Jull.indd 51

2021-10-12 16:54:21

52

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

unspoken concerns as worthy. In the intersubjective mutual space of our three-way encounter, Rebecca’s knowing and valuing carried mine insofar as her intervention instigated a change of my mind that dissipated the polarized dispute. Quality note: Writing accounts and generating insight. For several months, I have referred to this case, telling it anecdotally as a way to illustrate how significance or meaning can change spontaneously. I have always described my change of mind as originating with Rebecca’s comment “It’s that family of origin shit, you know.” It is only after writing the paragraph above that I realize that Georgine’s presence on the phone – her accompanying “Yeah!” – was an important contributor to the change as well, which I explore in greater depth below. In recognizing the insight that my writing has produced, I have a deeper appreciation for writing itself as a form of research or inquiry. Writing requires an articulation of understanding that necessitates an ongoing process of verification. Is what I say accurate enough? Is it critical enough? Noticing that my mind was changed by her intervention leads to a spontaneous question: What may have contributed to the change? Rebecca’s comment about Georgine’s “family of origin shit” was vague, but it registered in such a way that I could glimpse that Georgine’s past was carrying her present decision making. Georgine’s agreement with Rebecca’s statement, followed by the detail that Georgine “got in big trouble if things weren’t spotless,” was said lightly, almost cheerfully. But it provoked in me a sense of Georgine as an industrious cleaner scrubbing busily with her cleaners to maintain order, harmony, and safety in the house, and instead of annoyance, a well of compassion opened in me. I revalued that her decision making did not signal pointed disregard for me but was instead protective industriousness. That is what Rebecca’s “family of origin shit” signified to me. Quality note: Sense making. Writing this segment has amplified my sense of compassion even more deeply. Transforming feelings and reactions into words is an effective process of sense making: the significance becomes clearer as I articulate a point of view, verify it internally with myself, notice an altered awareness, modify my articulation toward greater precision, and repeat. Having acknowledged that greater clarity becomes possible through writing, I am cautious about making the story too clear, too tidy, for I am aware that the complexity of intersubjectivity is not tidy, not reducible to a single narrative or interpretive frame.

32523_Jull.indd 52

2021-10-12 16:54:21



Intransigent Conflict

53

Revaluing On our own, Georgine and I knew each other as threats against which to defend. Because Rebecca was not constricted or threatened in the same way, she knew us both as complex subjectivities who care passionately about each other as well as our own points of view. Rebecca was able to affirm that I was right without making Georgine wrong, and she was able to affirm Georgine in a way that Georgine could affirm. In this space of encounter, Rebecca’s mind was able to differentiate two states: our contracted knowing of each other in conflict and what we know of each other in our more expanded states of connection. Neither Georgine nor I was curious or mindful, and Rebecca helped us to be more so. My incomplete, contracted valuing of Georgine as one who disregards changed into my more expansive valuing of her as one who cares and is preoccupied with something else. The intersubjective space of three-way encounter precipitated an intersubjective revaluing of her whereby an alternative intersubjective meaning was made. This revaluing had an impact on my behaviour and our conflict. The critical tone dropped, we disengaged from the defensive-attack conversation, and we have not had the same conversation since. The lengthy pattern of bickering has been changed. Quality note: Sense making. During my research process, sometimes I would tell this story to students or friends in order to illustrate how an argument can spontaneously change through revaluing. One of the ways that I discern that the story is of high quality is that it often elicits responsive sense-making stories from my listeners, like the teaching story that my friend recounted to me in response to my tale: “Imagine you are standing in a very crowded elevator with little room to move even an elbow,” he says to me. “You feel a poke at your back, and another one. And a few seconds later, another one. You’re feeling very annoyed with the inconsiderate guy behind you, until the elevator clears enough for you to turn around to see that the person poking you was an elderly blind woman with a cane. Does your feeling change?” “Yes!” I say. “Compassion rather than annoyance. Or if my back was still stinging, it would probably be annoyance plus compassion!” This perspective then sparks a new curiosity in me. “But what is compassion?” I wonder. He mentions a few definitions, “feeling with” being one of them. My attention is directed inward, sorting through my own sense of compassion.

32523_Jull.indd 53

2021-10-12 16:54:21

54

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

“For me,” I say, “compassion is expansive. I was really constricted in that argument, focused on what that mean Georgine thing-person was doing to the dignity of moi (so dignified that a French word is needed to convey it). Georgine had become a caricature, and I had forgotten all the other things that I know about her – that she is good and kind, and mostly aware of my preferences, even when she doesn’t follow them. In that three-way conversation, I became more mindful of her complexity, aware that she might be making a choiceless choice that was a response to her past rather than a response to me. Talking about this case with one friend elicited musings on compassion that I had not previously generated on my own, revealing that the possible sensemaking interpretations of this story can be diverse and co-created. Revaluing as a reorienting of relative significance. What is also interesting about this encounter is that I knew all the relevant pieces of information about Georgine’s family of origin and its relationship to her cleaning choices. Georgine had told me that she preferred her cleaners because her mother was “neurotic” about cleaning and the consequences of things not being clean were serious. Our three-way conversation radically reoriented the relative significance of these “facts.” Although I knew these things, I realized (after the conversion in the conversation) that I had felt that in her roles as partner and toxicologist, Georgine should have been able to transcend her past and realize my point of view. From Contraction to Expansion I was annoyed because of my own contracted valuing, which interpreted Georgine as unethical or “bad” in her decision making, aware of the gap between my sense of what she should be doing and what she was actually doing. After the change of my mind, I was touched, rather than annoyed, by her apparent contraction in this area – and perhaps by my own. My contracted operations of threatened knowing and valuing were incurious and hasty. My expanded operations of more compassionate knowing and valuing were more curious and critical. Our roles and history as intimate partners shaped the intensity and significance of my affective response to her ethical “breach” (as I saw it), as well as my compassionate response when her struggles became more apparent to me. Quality note: Theorizing. One of the dangers of recounting stories like this one is attributing too much linearity in cause and effect.

32523_Jull.indd 54

2021-10-12 16:54:21



Intransigent Conflict

55

Intersubjectivity, as I conceive of it, embraces the concepts of complexity and interdependence. This characteristic means that something of which I am not aware may have shaped the outcome significantly. I want to be careful not to overclaim agency – Rebecca’s, Georgine’s, or mine – or to attribute cause and effect with a misleading certainty. Although I can say with confidence that I felt less contracted in my interactions over the cleaning products, I can only cautiously attribute what generated the more expansive state. Throughout this discussion, I have attended to the way that my mind changed with respect to evaluating Georgine’s behaviour as rash and assessing my personhood – and hers – to be diminished as a result. However, my mind has not changed regarding my aversion to bleachy cleaners. I continue to dislike them for their harm to the environment and human health. A change in our argument, in this case, was not about my compromising on principles of what makes a good cleaning product based on my discernment of public good. Although I revalued Georgine’s intentions, I continue to hold the environmental products in high esteem. A second and perhaps even more significant insight in this case, facilitated by the help of a colleague during a discussion of this text, is that although I esteem environmental products, my contracted criticism or shaming of Georgine did not change her mind and cause her to align with my valuing; quite the opposite. Instead of changing her mind, my criticism generated in her more contracted knowing, valuing, and deciding. In this case, our simultaneously contracted operations of consciousness did not produce an expanded result; it produced bickering. More expansion with Rebecca produced more expansive possibilities. Quality note: Working with feedback. I completed this vignette and a first draft of my analysis, recognizing that I was presenting my own perspective on a three-person encounter. How could I incorporate Georgine’s and Rebecca’s perspectives into the text? What would be meaningful to me in including their perspectives in this account? I had a sense that it was important but was not yet able to articulate what made it so. Working with the intersubjectivity of research became a stimulating challenge. the debriefing inquiry

Georgine, Rebecca, and I sit together next to the activated recording device with the intention of talking about the vignette and their

32523_Jull.indd 55

2021-10-12 16:54:21

56

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

responses to it. This intentional conversation is different from the spontaneous encounter that sparked the creation of the vignette. Because of its intentionality, I find myself nervous in complex ways: unsure of their reaction to my writing, vulnerable for having asked this “favour” of them, uncertain how my exploratory method of soliciting feedback will be useful to my overall project, and unsure how I might manage to incorporate their feedback into the text. In this encounter, we are amicably chatting in a nonconflictual space of encounter where the intersubjective processes are still enacted. I am using my mind to know, value, and decide in a context of complex meanings in a mutually reciprocating space of encounter. In this peaceful encounter, too, my mind is in pursuit of change insofar as I am seeking to learn. Quality of Accounts In soliciting feedback from Georgine and Rebecca, my interlocutors, I realize that a primary concern of mine is the quality of the account. So my first question in our dialogue is addressed to their felt responses to the text. After hearing their appreciative comments, which calm my vulnerability about my writing being exposed, I recognize that I want to verify the extent to which they recognize the account as “accurate.” They consider it accurate, although neither of them registered the event as significant to the extent that I did, so their memories of the encounter were dim until they read the text. Georgine considers the vignette to be funny and well written but finds the analysis rather “dry” (my apologies to other readers who may share the same sentiments)! Rebecca’s response is to feel gratified that she facilitated a change in the dynamic between Georgine and me. She also feels affirmed for having been a “safe person” with whom we could speak. Others’ Interiorities In responding to their felt responses to the text, I find myself becoming curious about their interiorities of the encounter. What was going on in Georgine’s mind when Rebecca said, “It’s that family of origin shit”? I realize that this curiosity about Georgine’s interiority is activated only when I am sitting with both of them in this amicable postvignette encounter. The (obvious, in retrospect) question has not occurred to me before now, even after writing all this analysis!

32523_Jull.indd 56

2021-10-12 16:54:21



Intransigent Conflict

57

In prefacing my question to them both, I say that it strikes me as significant that Rebecca’s comment – about Georgine’s family of origin – did not seem to shame Georgine, as it might have, eliciting a potential vulnerability. Instead of responding defensively, Georgine said, “Yeah!” in a triumphant tone, as if scoring a point of some kind. What was going on for her? Georgine responds by recalling that when Rebecca referred to her “family of origin shit,” it felt to her that Rebecca recognized that there was more to Georgine than I had acknowledged – that Georgine was more than a “bad toxicologist” and that my characterization of her as such was limited. Rebecca’s recognition of Georgine’s family of origin was only one part of a possible expansive view that could include other aspects of herself. So it was not so much the compassionate recognition of a difficult past that Georgine was affirming but a recognition that I, her partner, had gotten her somewhat wrong and was being corrected. This explained the triumphant tone that I had registered but not found intelligible. Interestingly, through Rebecca’s comment, my consciousness was oriented to compassionate recognition, even as Georgine was attending to something else. We did not need to have the same understanding for the argument to change. Our conversation turns to Rebecca’s interiority. She recalls being aware of her concern that she was “being put on the spot to say the right thing” since Georgine and I had both made appeals to her adjudication of the dispute. Even as she recognized that she was being called into an awkward role, she also felt appreciated as a person with whom we felt safe enough to let our less than perfect selves be expressed. After reading the vignette and analysis, Rebecca recognizes that she could sense that each of us was right and that neither person had to be wrong. She affirms that in a more expansive state, I became open to revaluing, which enabled my mind to change and the conflict to transform. Quality note: Working with feedback. In our collaborative reflection on the encounter, Georgine and Rebecca verified that my understanding was accurate – that I had represented the encounter in a way that matched their understanding of it. This affirmation was important to me, illuminating something of the intersubjectivity of shared understanding in a mutual space of encounter. I also learned about their interiority, which was not accessible at the time. Their interiority, like mine, was not generated independently but was expressed in relation to the text, generated reflexively within our amicable space of encounter, and shaped by the complex meanings available to us. It was

32523_Jull.indd 57

2021-10-12 16:54:21

58

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

another example of how individual knowing and valuing are deeply connected to other aspects of intersubjectivity, understood as a space of mutual encounter and complex systems of meanings, even as they can be distinguished, like the way that a face’s cheeks, nose, and lips are distinct and constitutive. This “interview” with them was my first research encounter of its kind. By writing about it, I gained a clearer idea about my lines of inquiry for the debriefing interview of my next vignette. I wanted to ask more questions about the other person’s interiority: what that person understood to have happened, what was significant about it, and what the implications for action were. I wanted to ask what had happened from their perspective and how it connected to mine. As for this vignette, I intentionally chose to represent their feedback through a summary rather than more detailed quotations. I wanted to create an accurate representation through a brief presentation because the length and detail of the case was a concern. Quality note: Saturating inquiry. How do I know when an inquiry is “done”? There is an inner sense that many relevant insights have been narrated and that few questions are left to dynamize my consciousness. More precisely, the questions that remain are not as vibrant as the previous ones. I am less animated in my curiosity about this case, more settled with its sufficiency, judging the account to be critical and conscientious enough for the time being.

32523_Jull.indd 58

2021-10-12 16:54:22

5 Outrage

This is a text about a brewing conflict between me and decision makers in a hockey association about my daughter’s tryout for a competitive girls’ hockey team. Because I am troubled by my outrage and want to avert the conflict that I seem intent on creating, I seek a space of encounter with a skilled friend in an effort to discover new possibilities other than the conflictual ones that I am currently considering. Methodologically, I maintain a focus on the interiority of the process of research, particularly on writing accounts (or the selection and presentation of material). I include a reflection on “recollection” and “recording” as different research processes of collecting data. I identify the importance of saturating inquiry in closing off certain lines of inquiry that take me too far beyond the scope of the current research. In discussing the second aspect of the intersubjectivity of research, I continue to reflect on and develop the relational process of working with feedback in spaces of encounter with members of my epistemic community, as well as my conversation partner. Conceptually, I build on the insights of the previous case to consider in more depth the intersubjective aspects of operations of consciousness, spaces of encounter, and complex systems of meanings. I discern and differentiate operations of consciousness – knowing, valuing, and deciding – more clearly. I explore the role of questions in generating “ethical accounts” in spaces of encounter, exploring how particular questions provide conflict-changing opportunities for new affordances from complex systems of meanings to be recombined (or not). I also explore “knowing the other’s mind” as part of intersubjectivity and reflect on the emergence of love as an expansive affect that can open new possibilities.

32523_Jull.indd 59

2021-10-12 16:54:22

60

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

the vignette

I arrive at Sophia’s house and get settled in one of her chairs while she serves tea. My inward attention tracks the jumble of my feelings and thoughts as we make pleasant conversation about her family’s upcoming vacation. Sophia has agreed to be my co-inquirer as I explore a situation that has surprised me in its impact. My grade-school daughter, Sage, is trying out for a competitive hockey team. Last year, she was cut from a similar hockey team, an event that generated significant internal conflict for me and altered important relationships. The Argument This year, I am getting the signal from my interpretations of the coaches’ behaviour that Sage will likely be cut again. I am aware of my inner tumult and the conflict behaviour that I am considering if she is cut. I am contemplating a jumble of conflict behaviours: complaining, mobilizing support from other parents, withdrawing her from hockey, or maybe some kind of appeal. I do not like that I am considering these options, as I want to be as serene as my accepting friend, whose daughter was also cut last year, yet I find myself fully immersed in my hostility. I am aware that the inner tumult and the potential for conflict could provide an illuminating site of inquiry for my research. I find myself deeply angry with the coaches, certain that they have been unfair and uncaring. Saying that “I find myself deeply angry” is accurate in one sense but not in another. In the sense that “I find myself,” it is accurate in that I have little agency over the feelings and thoughts that preoccupy me. At different times of the day, such as while eating breakfast and parking my car, I notice my angry narrative about last year’s cut in anticipation of this year: “And they actually had the nerve to write that she would benefit from another year in recreational house league. They know that the league lacks the intensity and frequency of practice, so it’s not a benefit. Who came up with that two-faced crap? Do they expect me or Sage to buy it?” Another narrative: “Oh no, oh no. What will happen to Sage? She’ll be left behind. And hockey has been so important to her sense of self. What will being cut do to her? How will she manage? Oh no, oh no.” So although it is true that I find myself feeling and thinking, it is incomplete to say that I find myself (only) deeply angry. Saying that I am angry is accurate but incomplete, as

32523_Jull.indd 60

2021-10-12 16:54:22

Outrage

61

there are many narratives like the ones above: the snorting contempt, the sinking dread, and so on. My feelings are complex, to say the least, and varied in how they show up. These feelings are entwined in the narratives like the melody and lyrics of a song that keeps running through my mind. Sometimes I am aware of dread without remembering why I feel this way, almost like humming a tune without remembering the lyrics. I puzzle for a moment, “What’s this dread about?” Then I remember that the hockey tryouts are underway, and the narratives resume their busy occupation of my mind. Other times one of the bitter phrases seems to randomly pop into my mind – “They actually had the nerve to write that she would benefit” – and then the feelings surge in resonant response. I feel unsettled about the frequency and relentlessness of the feelings and narratives. I want them to go away. I do not want to be bothered by hockey tryouts; I do not want to be bothered period. Quality note: Writing accounts – Crafting a compelling narrative. As I note in case 1, the process of selecting and presenting material is difficult, contingent, and partial. In this note, I recognize the challenge of articulating the messy intensity of particular felt moments. Through my crafting of the text, I want to create a cognitive, affective space where the reader can (intersubjectively) engage with – encounter – this vignette and my subjectivity through descriptions of messy affect and recurring ruminations, as well as moments of greater cognitive clarity. Attending to the quality of writing as an art, as part of the research process, means that it can sometimes take a lot of crafting to depict spontaneity and to articulate insight. My hope and my worries. My hope for this conversation with Sophia is that together we can find a way for my mind to change. I know that I do not want to be feeling and thinking this way. I am afraid of seeing myself as a mythically crazed hockey parent who “damns the torpedoes” to bully or manipulate others into advancing their child as a superstar athlete. I am also worried that I might damage relationships with other parents as I contemplate whether to pursue or avoid conflict over these tryouts. Last year, after Sage was cut, I did not maintain many of my hockey-related friendships that had been built the year before. When I saw parents whose girls had been chosen for the team, I found myself avoiding them or saying hello in an overly friendly manner as a way to mask my feeling of wanting to run away. So I do not want that to

32523_Jull.indd 61

2021-10-12 16:54:22

62

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

happen again either. I want to find a different way of dealing with the situation between fighting and fawning. My hope for this conversation with Sophia is to avoid these unwelcome futures and to find a way to change my mind, shift my behaviour, and move toward equanimity. As I settle into the conversation with Sophia, she starts the recording device, as we agreed. We talk about a few things before we begin to talk about the hockey tryouts. I describe, with some details about the event, that I was distressed when the cut happened last year and am worried that it is likely to reoccur this year. Quality note: Writing accounts – Recollection and recordings. The previous vignette, “An Intransigent Conflict,” was written entirely from recollection, as no recording was possible. This encounter with Sophia is based on a digitally recorded and transcribed conversation that lasted over an hour and covered several topics, including the hockey tryouts. As an experiment in autoethnographic reflexivity, I had written a draft of this account from recollection two months later, before first listening to the recorded conversation. I had a recollected sense of the conversation’s significance to me, a feeling about the “narrative arc,” and an awareness of the turning points, among other things. In comparing my recollected written account with the recording, I recognized that the recording was limited in its capacity to convey the significance of the encounter through my interiority, with the result that my recollection was of much greater value for the purposes of this vignette. The recording was useful in that my recollected account was overly simplified and was not entirely faithful to the choice of words, the imprecision of responses, the lengthy or circuitous responses, and the doubling-back. As part of ensuring the quality of the research process, I decided to rewrite the vignette in order to align the recollected account more closely with the recorded interview, so the quotations in this vignette are all taken from the recording. This is an experiment with the autoethnographical form where I foreground the interiority of a narrative arc while including traces of the recorded interview. The Conversation Sophia’s professional work and training have developed her listening and communication skills; she is a skilled listener. She pays careful attention to what I say about last year’s cut, restating some key points, and responds with a question framed as a sentence: “And Sage learned something?” In this moment I can feel that her response does not quite

32523_Jull.indd 62

2021-10-12 16:54:22

Outrage

63

“fit,” although it is not irrelevant. I notice that her question does not elicit a responsive energy in me; in this moment, I do not seem to be interested in Sage’s learning, which is not quite the point. I respond at length and then say that my fear is that Sage might internalize the cut to mean, “It doesn’t matter what I do, I still won’t make it onto the team.” I explain that my partner, Georgine, and I have started to explore soccer as a venue for Sage to experience connection and competence. Sophia listens and then responds by asking another question, “And where is the conflict really lying for you?” I can feel a responsive curiosity in my own mind: what is the conflict about? It takes me a long, circuitous time to respond that the coaches are making decisions that prevent Sage from engaging in this expression of competence and connection. Sophia asks me to expand on this idea. I tell another lengthy story about the cuts from the previous year. Then, realizing that I am not responding to her question, I ask myself the question aloud again, “Where is the conflict for me?” I try again with the theme that Sage is being “prevented,” but my response does not feel quite right, as it does not match my feelings. The words are too distant; they are not gritty enough to express the bursts of upset and the worry that I have been feeling. I try to focus so that I can articulate something of the feeling that has arisen in response to her question about the conflict. The conflict, I sense, is related to “shame … and I don’t know what the shame is about,” I say in a wondering tone. We spend some time talking about shame – mine and my daughter’s – and about where it might be coming from. I reflect more deeply on my feeling about my daughter not getting picked, my shame about not getting over it quickly, and my worry about my daughter being left behind. Sophia affirms that this worry matters to me very deeply. She recalls from my earlier response that my shame also seems to be related to my inability to “protect.” She then asks, “What is it that you are protecting her from?” It is a wonderful question because it is not within the horizon of the questions that it was possible for me to ask myself. It is beyond an internal horizon; it is not a question that has occurred to me. And paradoxically, although I do not know the answer to this question, I do; I have a sense that the response will emerge with sufficient attention and curiosity. In Sophia’s company, I struggle to understand what I am protecting my daughter from. “Loss,” I say, and the realization

32523_Jull.indd 63

2021-10-12 16:54:22

64

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

dawns that “I’m also protecting myself from the unbearable experience of helplessness, of witnessing her suffering and not being able to do something about that.” I pause as the feeling and words match, connecting me to myself in a different way and connecting me to Sophia, too. I do not know where this shame comes from or where it gets activated in me. There is no particular image or memory – although there are plenty of possibilities – that makes this shame so intense. I try to convey a sense of the helplessness that I feel in this shame by recounting to Sophia a phrase that someone told me that I found illuminating: “The ability to transfer shame interpersonally is one of the roots of power. If you can make someone feel bad about themselves, you have power, you can carry their mind to a yucky place.” I pause, absorbing the sense of what I just said. We talk more about the tryout process and my concern about the coaches’ judgment of my daughter. Sophia then asks, “Who are they judging? … They’re judging her. And are they judging someone else as well?” This is a question that feels like it half-fits. I can sense that Sophia is wondering whether I’m feeling judged. “Sort of but not really,” I vaguely respond. It seems that my response, too, does not quite “fit” with her sense of what constitutes an answered question, that I have not really responded, and she asks me the question again. I try to respond to what I think she is implying. People say that parents should not judge themselves by their child’s success or failure. In this narrative, a parent should not feel bad if her daughter does not make a hockey team; a daughter’s success or failure should be independent from the parent’s sense of self. But my experience is that this supposed separation between mother and daughter is very complex. How do we separate these roles and the acts of mothering and daughtering when they are deeply interrelated? My sense of her vulnerability to being judged for not “doing well” at something that she loves is excruciating to me. There is a way that the evaluation of Sage’s hockey is connected to an evaluation of me as a parent, a role that is profoundly important to me. In this hockey tryout, “Sage has a part and I have a part,” I explain. “They are judging” what Sage and I have “co-created.” My mind spontaneously starts thinking of all the hockey history that she and I have created together, ever since she was a tiny player in big gear many seasons ago: all the driving, all the conversations, all the pleasure that we have shared in this hockey passion of hers, which in my

32523_Jull.indd 64

2021-10-12 16:54:22

Outrage

65

previous life, before her, did not interest me one bit. A surge of tenderness arises, a powerful expansive love, that is somehow related to the vulnerability but feels paradoxically strong. Something has shifted in me. When Sophia asked whether the coaches are “judging someone else as well,” I started my response feeling that the question did not quite fit. In answering her question, however, I found myself telling her about how deeply connected Sage and I are, that my mothering and her daughtering are integral to this experience, and that evaluations of Sage are connected in a complex way to my parenting. Most deeply, I have become aware of my vulnerability in relation to my self-concept as a parent, how contracted I feel in this situation about Sage’s and my vulnerability, and yet how powerful I feel knowing that this vulnerability is shared in (aha!) a kind of solidarity. So the question has elicited a complex response that relates deeply to my own sense of being evaluated, or judged, just as Sophia asked. And it has also affirmed a deep sense of connection with Sage. Almost an hour later, after we finish the conversation and I drive home, I notice that I feel differently toward the coaches. I have moved from thinking about a jumbled range of conflict behaviours to wondering how I can respond to my own helplessness and vulnerability. I do not feel like fighting “them” anymore. My mind has changed. Quality note: Writing accounts – Ending. What a tidy ending! Although it is true to say that my mind has changed, the actual process was much more untidy. The expansive sense of love was compelling, but it was fleeting; and it was not truly where the story of my conversation with Sophia ended. So I privilege this sense of love in ending the vignette partly for dramatic effect but mostly because it did have a role to play in changing my mind that I want to explore. r e f l e x i v e c o m m e n ta r y

Why this case? This vignette is compelling to me and to others with whom I have worked. I and some colleagues have used this vignette as a teaching case through the summative statement “I can’t believe my daughter was cut from the hockey team!” What makes the statement compelling is that it is an expression of ethics, or valuing, that holds a multiplicity of possible meanings and reactions. The statement evokes valuing from listeners who relate to different aspects of the difficult parental role of watching a beloved other’s

32523_Jull.indd 65

2021-10-12 16:54:22

66

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

exposure to a negative evaluation, the unwelcome experience of falling short that many of us have endured, and the sense that the process for selecting players for a team did not seem transparent or fair. To my mind, the case is interesting for the many meanings that it elicits, the everyday ethics that it invokes, and the questions that it continues to provoke. In a discussion with colleagues about whether to include this case in the research, one person asked a question about the appropriateness of this case as one of conflict: since there was no conflict partner with whom I was actually fighting, was there really a conflict? It was another wonderful question because it stimulated more clarity in the way that I could articulate the significance of the case. The question also influenced how I narrated the story, with the result that I highlighted the “fight” behaviour that I had considered, such as complaining or withdrawing. But there were other behaviours that I was enacting that, although not aggressive, were definitely conflict behaviours in that they were decisions to defend or protect myself against a felt sense of threat. I had fled to avoid some parents and had fawned, being defensively friendly toward others, to manage my sense of threat. Thinking about conflict in its concrete intersubjective manifestation expands an understanding of conflict beyond one of mutually aggressive interactions between subjects; it takes me to an exploration of conflict behaviours that are produced from cognitive responses to, and decisions to defend against, a felt sense of threat registered in consciousness and enacted in spaces of encounter. Understanding conflict to be a result of threat and defensive decisions, regardless of how choiceless these decisions might be, qualifies this story as a case of conflict that contains an illuminating instance of changing my mind. An Intention to Change and an Inability to Do So Whereas the change of mind in my first vignette about the cleaning products was spontaneous and unanticipated, in this case I deliberately sought help in changing my mind. Because of the repetitively arising unwelcome thoughts, feelings, and options for retaliation, I realized that I could not change my mind on my own, even though I wanted to. I even asked myself “curious questions,” wondering what was bugging me. And I could not answer these questions in a way that seemed to fit or that released some of the bewildered tension that I felt when I noticed my reactions. My mind continued to be contracted

32523_Jull.indd 66

2021-10-12 16:54:22

Outrage

67

in its narratives of frustration and repetitious unactualized plans of retaliatory action. In terms of everyday ethics, I “knew” that the coaches were unfair, unjust, and uncaring based on the evidence of a few conversations that had left me feeling frustrated, as well as the preferential treatment that seemed – in my estimation – to be given to some players. I was aware that my moralizing judgment conflated my knowing and valuing in a way that characterized them negatively. Even though I recognized that I was contracted in my judgment and perceived that there was probably more to the story than I could see, I could not expand my knowing of the coaches and the situation on my own. I had no access to a fuller story or to their interiority. My moralizing judgment of their “uncaring unfairness” generated the sense that a defensive struggle against “them” was necessary, whether it meant an active (attacking) complaint or a pointed withdrawal. I had the hope that changing my mind would be preferable to engaging in conflict. So I sought the help of a trusted friend who, through our own intersubjective encounter, could help me to know differently. Meaning Making I was intrigued by the process of meaning making between me and Sophia because it was a deliberate quest undertaken by both of us to understand the significance of the situation to me. Two of her questions revealed distinct aspects of cognitive operations, prefacing the possibility for my mind to change. Sophia’s first question – “And Sage learned something?” – evoked a particular quality of response in me, very distinct from her question “And where is the conflict really lying for you?” Articulating the difference between these two questions requires a short exploration of questions as carriers of consciousness. T h e ro l e o f q u e s t i o n s . One of the ways that Sophia and I were known to each other was through the questions that were asked and the responses that were generated. Her questions shaped the flow of my consciousness by shaping the parameters of what I could respond to.1 The structure of a question is enormously important to the answer that consciousness will produce. For example, the question “What time is it?” sets the criteria that the answer requires a reportage of hours and minutes. Consciousness identifies the conditions according

32523_Jull.indd 67

2021-10-12 16:54:22

68

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

to which intelligibility is to be discerned through the asking of questions. Insofar as a mind that changes is one that discerns an altered intelligibility, questions are an important precursor of a changed mind in an intersubjective encounter. Q u e s t i o n s as v e r i f i c at i o n s o f h y p o t h e s e s . Sophia’s question “And Sage learned something?” was structured in such a way as to require a verification of her hypothesis. I imagined that she had asked the question as a possible strategy for facilitating a change in my mind; that is, if I affirmed her hypothesis that Sage’s learning was significant, then perhaps my sense of threat would be less all-­ encompassing and I might revalue the everyday ethics in the tryouts as a good learning opportunity, thereby changing my mind about the coaches or the necessity of fighting them. Her invitation to verify her hypothesis regarding the salience of Sage’s learning required in my consciousness an oscillation between the criteria for determining the correctness of her hypothesis and an evaluation of the degree to which these criteria were met (Cronin 2001, 201). Verifying is an operation of consciousness that assesses the sufficiency of evidence, makes a link between the evidence and conclusion, and affirms the rational necessity of positing the conclusion as certain, probable, or merely possible (Cronin 2001, 224–41; Melchin and Picard 2008, 69). In my case, the question “And Sage learned something?” set the criteria that if Sage’s learning was to be judged as salient, then evidence related to the importance of Sage’s learning must be present. Sophia’s question established the scope and set the terms for verifying the answer. And although it was true that Sage learned something, it was not salient in my valuing of the situation. Sophia’s question about Sage’s learning did not change my mind and therefore did not alter the intelligibility that I discerned in the situation. Questions as facilitating new understanding. Sophia’s subsequent question – “And where is the conflict really lying for you?” – generated a different process and facilitated a change in my mind. Whereas her first question was related to verifying a hypothesis about Sage’s learning (or is it so?), the second question oriented me to a different quest, one of intelligibility (or what is it?). I had to give Sophia an account of what the conflict was about. In making this

32523_Jull.indd 68

2021-10-12 16:54:22

Outrage

69

account in our space of encounter, I had a sense of an internal reordering taking place and new affordances being activated in my mind. Whereas beforehand I was certain about the coaches’ unfairness, her question and her tone prompted me to try to articulate much more complex relations, meanings, causes, ideas, and patterns. What was bothering me? How could I make sense of my feelings and reactions? My response to Sophia’s question began with what I thought I knew as a judgment of fact: I was mad that the coaches were preventing Sage from experiencing competence and connection. Account Giving In the space of the encounter with Sophia, as she elicited an account from me, I could feel that my contracted response – my sense that the coaches were thwarting Sage’s well-being – was not quite enough. I was not only angry; something else was bothering me that required a fuller explanation. There was something additional contracting my consciousness, but I did not know what it was, despite having asked the question of myself. In Sophia’s company, with the space to provide an account shaped by our mutual curiosity, I could ask myself the question “What is it about?” and reflect on a variety of personal, socially available complex meanings. Something new arises. In making my account (co-created with Sophia), I became aware of something new in my cognitive experience. The insight generated in response to her question and in my subsequent efforts to make an account was that I discerned a sense of shame. The word “shame” emerged as a good fit to convey the intensity and complexity of my response. I was able to connect my current experience with previous situations that I had registered as shameful or shaming. The shift from knowing myself as angry to knowing myself as angry and ashamed was a significant change in my mind. Following this insight, the situation took on a different intelligibility to me. The sense that I was mad at the coaches was a part of it, but shame was also a salient emotion in the dynamic. Registering the shame enabled further relevant questions to emerge, including “What gave rise to the shame?” There were many possible responses, so once again our minds quested together to seek intelligibility in generating an account. I referred to a quotation that I had

32523_Jull.indd 69

2021-10-12 16:54:22

70

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

come across related to the interpersonal transfer of shame as the root of power, so the recognition emerged that something significant about shame and helplessness was at stake. Quality note: Saturating inquiry. I would love to explore more about shame, as I find it a fascinating topic. One of the challenges of writing is to continue evaluating what is inside the scope of inquiry and what is outside it. Exploring the topic of shame in a conceptual way would take me too far away from the main thrust of this discussion, so I set the topic aside to pursue my main line of inquiry. I elaborated my account more fully. Sophia reflected her understanding of what I said. We started to talk about shame as signalling the threat of something unwelcome or dire from which I was protecting Sage. Sophia’s subsequent and pivotal question was again directed at discovering intelligibility through a reordering of the significance: “What is it that you are protecting her from?” The question had not occurred to me. In the space of our encounter, her curiosity carried mine, and her question oriented my attention to seek a reordering of data that led to a change of mind. Discerning significance, identifying threat. My mind then became attuned to discovering the intelligibility of inner data so that I could discern what I was protecting Sage from. Was I protecting her from a dire future without hockey? Not really, as a noncompetitive team was a viable alternative. So a practical threat was not salient. Was I protecting her from the realization that supposedly fair competition can sometimes be unfair? Although the violation of social norms of fairness was disturbing to me, this reason for protection did not offer a fully satisfactory explanation. It then came to me – the click, the grasp, the insight that I was protecting her from “loss.” I recognized that my efforts were directed to protecting her from a contracted sense of self and shame. It was through my knowing of Sage – and my imagined sense of her loss – that I recognized how deeply painful it was for me to imagine her suffering a loss. This understanding quickly generated the next insight, namely that I was “also protecting myself from the unbearable experience of helplessness, of witnessing her suffering and not being able to do something about that.” This altered discernment of intelligibility allowed for my new apprehension that the situation had evoked in me a sense of shameful helplessness at not being able to protect Sage. In my intersubjective space of encounter with Sophia, where I rendered an

32523_Jull.indd 70

2021-10-12 16:54:22

Outrage

71

account and where we were attentive, curious, and critically reflexive together, my mind was changing. After a few more minutes of conversation, during which we elaborated on the insight of protection, Sophia asked another question that generated transformative insight: “Who are they judging? … They’re judging her. And are they judging someone else as well?” This question, too, evoked a verifying reflexive insight – a response to her hypothesis. Although my first response indicated that the answer was no, my consciousness nevertheless flowed toward an inquiry about being judged myself. I surmised that there was something in my response that did not satisfy Sophia’s verifying criteria, leading her to conclude that the question had not been answered, so she asked it again. Intersubjectivity: “Reading” Sophia’s Intentions In a complex intersubjective turn, I responded to what I thought Sophia was implying; that is, my mind responded to a sense of the trajectory of the intelligibility implicit in her question. I believed that her hypothesis was as follows: if I recognized that I did feel evaluated by the coaches in the tryouts, it could open a recognition that the coaches were not actually evaluating me as a hockey player, and the recognition of this distinction could open a cognitive space between evaluation of Sage’s performance and my own, thereby freeing me from the contracted sense of shame that I was describing. This was another move that could have opened a change in my mind. But it did not do so, at least not in the way that the question was oriented. I was more resistant than open to the change toward which I surmised Sophia’s consciousness was inclined. I responded by contesting a narrative that I imagined might be carrying her evaluating. The narrative that I resisted was that parents should not judge themselves by their child’s success or failure – that a parent should not feel bad if her daughter does not make the hockey team. I resisted this narrative because I was feeling bad that my daughter might not make the hockey team, and I could not help it; moreover, I did not consider it wrong that I felt bad. In my mind, the evaluation of Sage’s hockey skills was connected to my sense of myself as a parent, and through my account giving, I affirmed the connection, namely that I am deeply connected to Sage through our mothering and daughtering – our co-created influence on each other.

32523_Jull.indd 71

2021-10-12 16:54:22

72

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

Love Sophia’s question enabled an insight that led to further intelligibility about the hockey tryout. My connection to Sage – my knowing something of Sage’s vulnerability in trying and possibly failing – was shaping my valuing of the situation. I could recognize that I felt vulnerable and evaluated as her mother, as one who loves her and helps her move through the world. This awareness generated in me an expansive sense of love – a sense of a powerful alignment with her. This awareness generated the paradoxical insight that Sage’s vulnerability and my vulnerability were so deeply connected that it somehow made both of us less vulnerable. In the presence of this love and powerful attunement, my mind could expand. I could start to wonder how I might respond to my vulnerability and hers more directly rather than attempting to manage my vulnerability by engaging in face-saving conflict with the coaches. This was a profound reorientation in my knowing and deciding. My mind had changed, and the conflict dissipated. Conflict Is Not Necessarily “Bad” The point of this vignette is not that all conflicts should be resolved through an introspective realignment that can alter the decision to engage in conflict. Sometimes I need to stand up to bullies and fight for what I believe to be good. In this vignette, it is possible to imagine a very different scenario with a very different outcome. In my intersubjectively expansive quest with Sophia, I might have had the insight that the unfairness of the tryouts was sufficiently disturbing to me that an official complaint was the best course of action. If so, conflict behaviour might have been the best, most authentic response to the situation. What matters is that a decision to fight or not is made mindfully, conscientiously, and freely rather than contractedly. It seems that through my account giving in the space of encounter with Sophia, I recognized that my sense of social ethics regarding my concern that the coaches were not acting right was less salient than my sense of personal ethics related to my diminished sense of self. I also recognized the difference between a diminishing shameful vulnerability that is isolating and an expansive vulnerability that connects me to others – a vulnerability of solidarity. Quality note: Saturating inquiry. I have a settled sense of writing this reflexive commentary, a satisfaction that enough has been said,

32523_Jull.indd 72

2021-10-12 16:54:22

Outrage

73

and a pleasure in having articulated difficult concepts in a nuanced way. I am ready to open my account to feedback. Quality note: Working with feedback. Preparing for my conversation with Sophia, I am aware of a few questions for her. I wonder what she remembers of the encounter and what was significant to her. I wonder what she thinks of the vignette and how she feels about it. I wonder what she thinks of the segments where I respond to what I think she was implying. These questions are going to structure our conversation. It took some time to decide whether to send her my analysis at the same time as the vignette. Part of me wanted her feedback on the vignette before introducing the analysis. She will be leaving for a month, so two conversations are not possible. I decide to send the analysis for us to discuss at the same time. the debriefing inquiry

After settling into the same seats as before, finishing up our small talk, and starting the same recording device, Sophia and I orient ourselves to the conversation about my recollection and analysis of our encounter. The first thing that she says, before I have even spoken, is how well she feels that the analysis is written, especially in comparison to other academic papers that she has recently read. I am pleased; it matters to me that this text is clear and accessible to nonacademic readers. I am particularly pleased because I was worried that the section on the structure of questions might be too technical. When we talk about this concern at greater length in the debriefing, she mentions that as a theory-practice piece, my analysis was interesting but adds that it is not likely to make much difference for someone sitting in the listener’s chair. This observation stimulates my curiosity to wonder how I can make an account like this one more accessible from the listener’s chair – a topic for the next chapter. I ask what she recalls of the conversation. Her first response is on the topic of shame. She thought that we had underexplored the significance of shame for me, but in relistening to the recording in order to prepare for our conversation, she recognized that it seemed that we had discussed it to the fullest extent possible in the context of our conversation. Quality note: Sense making. In the company of Sophia, in our first conversation, it was possible to have a certain kind of conversation, one that generated a particular insight and an altered intelligibility. If

32523_Jull.indd 73

2021-10-12 16:54:22

74

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

I had been with someone else, I wonder whether another conversation would have emerged. If I had been speaking to my daughter’s teacher about my conflict with the coaches, for example, maybe our space of encounter would have carried my mind differently. I might have been more curious to discover “Sage’s learning,” to which Sophia’s mind had been oriented, or I might have been more constricted by what I know of the teacher’s concern about the risk of concussion in hockey. Context matters – a lot. She sensed a resistance in me, which I confirmed. She says that one of the primary features of the conversation was its complexity and that she might have narrated the account differently. I ask how she might have narrated it. She pauses and than says that she does not know, before adding that it does not really matter how she would have narrated it; the focus of the inquiry was on me and my subjectivity. I agree with this assessment. In my conversation with Sophia, I wonder whether she recognizes the account to the extent that it rings true for her, and she says that she does, although she has not made a page-by-page comparison. This exchange leads to a mutual reflection on the challenge of writing a text like this one, and Sophia notes that because I am tracing the movement between the interiority of my mind and the exteriority of our dialogue, a page-by-page comparison would be irrelevant. In my vignette, it was clear that a few sentences between us had generated felt responses in my consciousness that the recording could not capture. So although the account is not an exact account, I did not “make it up” either. Sophia can read the text and affirm that it is “accurate.” Changes of Mind Are Nonlinear Sophia appreciates the analysis, finding that how I articulate and trace the micromoments of dialogue has generated insights for her, a sense of intelligibility that she has not recognized before. She also points out the limitations of narrative linearity that my form imposes. I ask her what she means. She says that, as I describe it in the vignette, her question “And Sage learned something?” did not have immediate resonance for me, and in some ways, I claim that it did not change my mind. However, once the question was asked, it did not go away. It may have influenced subsequent insights, becoming a question to which my mind generated responses in the weeks to come.

32523_Jull.indd 74

2021-10-12 16:54:22

Outrage

75

Complex Systems of Meanings and Partial Texts Sophia then points out the surplus of meanings and the unexplored areas in my analysis. One example is the complex intersubjective fields of meanings related to my being a (nonhockey-playing) female in relation to hockey-cultured men who were making decisions about my daughter. More than that, my hockey-loving daughter has two moms, which puts us in the small but visible (and occasionally vocal) minority of same-sex hockey parents. And my narrative leaves out how Georgine’s and Sage’s knowing and valuing also featured in the ways that I knew and valued the coaches’ decisions and intentions. I agree with Sophia that my narrative is partial. It recognizes the complexity and multidimensionality of the encounter but is necessarily incomplete. Nonetheless, the intelligibility that it conveys is significant. She agrees with my assessment of the vignette, at the same time pointing out that these dynamics figured implicitly in the conflict and therefore shaped the conversation that she and I had. Sophia’s Interiority I am curious about what was going on in Sophia’s mind as she read the vignette and listened to the recording. She says that her predominant recollection was her inner (incurious) assessment that “Marnie shouldn’t be thinking like that; why is she thinking like that?” I wonder what she means, and she explains that she had to “bracket her own response” in order to follow mine. This admission leads to an interesting exploration about “bracketing.” As it turns out, Sophia’s son had been cut from a hockey team over a decade ago in similar circumstances. Sophia had actually complained to her son’s hockey association with little effect. But more than being shaped by her previous experience, Sophia considers her role as a parent to have shaped her response to me. In her life, she has come to understand that a parent’s role is to prepare her child for difficulties in life, to support resiliency, and to allow a child to suffer, learn, and adjust in order to meet new challenges. Sophia remembers assessing that my reaction to the potential cut might lead me to make decisions that would ultimately both frustrate me and inhibit Sage’s development of resiliency. Sophia was aware of registering her own response, which she chose not to express directly while she was listening and responding to me.

32523_Jull.indd 75

2021-10-12 16:54:22

76

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

Intersubjectivity as Intention Reading Sophia’s response leads to an exploration of what I imagine were the unarticulated knowing and valuing that predicated her decision to ask the question “And Sage learned something?” I wonder whether Sophia decided to ask this question because she had made the hypothesis that asking me about Sage’s learning might carry, might reorganize, my valuing toward an appreciation of the experience as a resiliencebuilding one. She verifies that I “knew” her intentions correctly. I also ask her to verify my hypothesis related to her question “And are they judging someone else as well?” In the above vignette, I write, “I try to respond to what I think she is implying. People say that parents should not judge themselves by their child’s success or failure.” I ask Sophia whether she indeed discerned my worry to be problematic in that she saw me as insufficiently able to detach Sage’s potential disappointment from my sense of self and whether she perceived that I was mistakenly conflating our two selves or that my “failure” to differentiate our two selves could harm us both by inhibiting Sage’s capacity to grow or my capacity to appropriately support her. Sophia confirms that I am correct in my understanding of her knowing and valuing. She explains that her approach to parenting was developed while raising several children, who now have children of their own. I understand more fully that I was responding both to her explicit question and to the implicit knowing and valuing that were expressed in her question through its phrasing and intonation. I also find myself affirming the difference in the way that Sophia and I knew and valued my response to the cut. Rather than negatively appraising my insufficient differentiation, I affirmed the importance of the co-created influence that my daughter and I have on each other. My ability to affirm Sage’s vulnerability enabled me to recognize my own vulnerability, which was coupled with an expansive sense of love and a sense of a powerful alignment with her. In the ordinary ethics of this space of encounter, I became mindful of my own vulnerability in a way that was expansive rather than constrictive, with the result that rather than generating a set of options oriented to protecting myself by face-saving conflict, I could consider other options. The previously unstoppable, annoyed interior monologues were no longer compelling. Quality note: Saturation of inquiry. I am reaching the completion of this inquiry; the quest for intelligibility is subsiding, and the

32523_Jull.indd 76

2021-10-12 16:54:22

Outrage

77

satisfaction with the articulated intelligibility is settling. I feel satisfied with my rendering of the dialogical quest for significance articulated in the vignette, with Sophia’s enthusiastic verification of both the vignette and the analysis, and with my incorporation of her feedback and the further reflection that it generated. I am pleased that I was able to depict the co-created emergence of meaning between Sophia and me. I think of McShane’s (1975) observation that paying attention to how meaning emerges can help a person to become more skilled at making meaning emerge. In completing this chapter, I am aware of the threads of inquiry latent in it. Among the many possible threads, the one that interests me most is my wondering about the acts of being a “listener” in a dialogue about conflict – or what is happening when I listen to another mind in conflict. It is this inquiry that forms the focus of the following chapter.

32523_Jull.indd 77

2021-10-12 16:54:22

6 Listening to Another Mind

This is a case that involves a consultant, my friend, who is engaged in conflict with a colleague over her refusal to work with another colleague, as well as her resentment at him for having suggested that she do so. After eliciting an account from my friend and recounting a version of it back to him, I witness his change from a stance of hostility to one of curiosity. Methodologically, I discover a flaw in the first part of my research account, where I neglect to explore my interiority. I rectify this flaw by writing a subsequent account that builds upon the first. I encounter another research challenge, related to representation, insofar as my conversation partner (kindly) tells me in our debriefing interview that I have not addressed an aspect of the conflict that was salient to him. I respond to this challenge by accounting for my selection, presentation, and analysis of my material in the context of my project, thereby examining and affirming the quality of the research as it unfolds. Conceptually, I build on the application of my framework of intersubjectivity by attending to the space of encounter and the operations of consciousness that are elicited in the process of account giving. I pay particular attention to the aspect of everyday ethics that I discern in the microprocess of negotiation over what a “good” friend should do. In a process of co-inquiry with my interlocutor, I differentiate “self-referenced” and “other-referenced” curiosity. This distinction builds on the investigation of intersubjectivity as “knowing the other” and the complexity that this undertaking entails.

32523_Jull.indd 78

2021-10-12 16:54:22



Listening to Another Mind

79

the vignette

My friend Gabriel, a consultant, calls me one afternoon for a chat. During the course of our conversation about a number of his projects, he mentions that he has had a difficult encounter with one his colleagues, Felicity, related to an issue between her and another colleague, Abby. Gabriel is responsible for delivering a large contract with a big company that requires that Felicity and Abby, as highly skilled colleagues, deliver training on a technical topic specific to their expertise. Several other projects that he had launched were also developing well. I say, “Wow, there are some amazing things you’re doing in your work, and it seems that the conversation with Felicity was troubling to you?” The Argument He responds that he met with Felicity earlier that week to discuss work planning. As he outlined the timing of the training segments, he asked Felicity to work on the needs assessment in conjunction with Abby’s work. Felicity said sharply, “But we’re not actually working together, right?” Gabriel was taken aback by Felicity’s pointed, abrupt tone, as well as by the realization that, although he was aware of some friction between them, the conflict was more active than he had believed. He found himself very annoyed with Felicity, and they exchanged a few tense words. Recognizing that he was shutting down in frustration, he ended the meeting shortly after the interchange so that he could collect his thoughts. “What upset you about the conversation?” I ask. He responds at length, while I absorb snatches of significance. “I felt that I’d messed up … like I should have known better … which I hate feeling … And this thing with Abby has been going on for a long time, and I don’t know when it’s going to end.” “You didn’t like that sense of yourself as messing up?” I ask. “That’s right,” he confirms. “And you’re upset? Angry? About the thing between them not changing?” “Worried. We need to deliver this contract, and if this thing between them gets worse …” “What might happen?” “Well, we could lose the contract, I suppose, or we could not get another one.”

32523_Jull.indd 79

2021-10-12 16:54:22

80

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

“So there’s a practical concern about the future of this project, a gap between how you want things to go and how they’re playing out?” “Yes, but as I talk it through, that doesn’t seem to be what’s bothering me because I know we’ll pull the contract off, and it will be fine.” “The practical future isn’t the biggest concern, then? … There’s also your interaction with Felicity, a gap between how you want to be treated and how she treated you, how colleagues should treat each other?” “You know, it’s not even about what colleagues should or shouldn’t do. What bothered me was a gap between how I want to see myself – as sensitive to my colleagues – and how I ended up feeling about myself after the conversation – as a jackass.” He pauses. “And it’s so hard, how long this thing has been going on. Felicity has talked to me about it a bit, but it’s almost like she can’t figure out what’s going on herself … Abby hasn’t mentioned it. I don’t know if she just wants to avoid the whole thing or if she’s just not aware of what’s going on.” “What is going on, as you understand it?” “Well, they were pretty good friends and colleagues for several years. Then Felicity went through a messy divorce about two years ago. Around the same time, Abby got engaged and then was married last year. Felicity has rebuilt her life and is generally happy in her own terms, but there’s something about Abby’s life that just seems to affect Felicity in a way that she struggles to deal with, even finds hard to talk about. And I know she’s trying to get over it, but she can’t, and that seems to really bother her. Felicity actually likes Abby from a distance, but when they work together, Felicity really struggles. And Felicity doesn’t have any trouble working with other people who are happily married. But with Abby, it’s happened a few times when they worked together last year. Felicity has said that she’s almost incoherent in front of a client group or shuts down.” I respond, “So Felicity is struggling. She’s pretty happy in her own life, but it’s hard for her to be reminded about the divorce when Abby shows up happy and oblivious. Felicity is an accomplished professional, but when she works with Abby, she gets grabbed by her feelings and shows up as some person that she doesn’t want to be. She’s worried about showing up as a subpar consultant and is also bothered that she’s showing up as someone who hasn’t been able to get over personal feelings in her professional life.”

32523_Jull.indd 80

2021-10-12 16:54:22



Listening to Another Mind

81

The Change There is a long pause. I sense that Gabriel is moved. It is like I have given him back what he gave to me, but it is completely new. “Felicity is struggling,” he repeats. “I’ve been stewing about Felicity being difficult. When I see her as struggling, I can see that she’s trying to maintain our relationship with our clients, and with Abby, I guess, and with herself, maybe, buying time until she can figure things out more. I wonder how I can talk with her in a way that we can talk about that.” Quality note: Writing account – Selection and presentation of material. This is a polished draft, written over a period of several months. In reviewing it again, I have the insight that my interiority is absent. With this insight, I suddenly see the flaws in what previously seemed like an adequate account. This encounter is supposed to be about intersubjectivity – mine, his, ours – and I have not captured a crucial dimension of the intersubjective process: my operations of consciousness. Although I realize that I could easily rewrite the whole account, thereby erasing the traces of the process of production, I decide to keep the original in order to illustrate a research process, the effects of insight, and the iterative nature of knowledge production. I continue. Another Account, Same Scenario, More Interiority My friend Gabriel calls me. I am pleased to hear from him; I feel more expansive in his presence, appreciating his warmth and intelligence. We catch up on some details of our lives and describe a few projects that we are working on, and he mentions, among other things, that he has had a difficult conversation with Felicity related to his contract. My mind is alerted; I register his felt sense of dismay through his tone. Something is significant here. I am aware that I am considering my options. Should I ask him more about it? Change the subject? Reassure him? I feel myself hovering in two roles that relate me to him. I am a friend – who enjoys his company and respects his privacy – and I am a conflict professional who can sniff out conflict and has developed some skills to address it. I do not want to apply the conflict tools if he does not want them, but I do not want to withhold them if they would be useful.

32523_Jull.indd 81

2021-10-12 16:54:22

82

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

Quality note: Writing account. Now this feels more real, more complex. I am already intrigued by this account. What is going on in my mind as a listener? My curiosity about my own interiority is piqued, and I am energized by the challenge of writing this complexity. What should I do? I hear his cheer yet also his dismay: he is happy about his projects, yet his conversation with Felicity was difficult. My inner dialogue went something like this: “Should I mention the conversation with Felicity? But would I be prying? Would he think that I’m prying? It’s a sensitive topic, and I don’t want to highlight his vulnerability if that’s what he’s feeling. Or should I celebrate the smooth outcomes? But would that be insensitive, ignoring what’s bothering him? I want him to know that I care about him, but what’s the best way to do that? Celebrate, commiserate, what?” For a moment, it feels like only one option – either celebrate or commiserate – is possible, and then the idea of “both” comes to mind. So I say, “Wow, there are some amazing things you’re doing in your work, and it seems that the conversation with Felicity was troubling to you?” I breathe out, registering a sense of being more settled by this response to his complexity. He responds by describing more details about the encounter with Felicity. Since he talks about his difficulty rather than his satisfaction with work, I follow that he is giving us implicit permission to talk about this more sensitive topic. His description, through tone and language, expresses feelings that I can imprecisely name in the moment as “upsetting.” As a mediator, I have been trained to follow the feeling expressed by my conversation partner in order to more fully understand his process of valuing, so I ask, “What was upsetting about the conversation?” 1 The question generates a “thick,” multilayered response from him about his unacknowledged effort to be a good colleague, the negative impact of her comment on his sense of self, and his vague concern about some kind of awkwardness or unwelcome future if the situation between the two women does not get resolved. He is producing a lot of data. My attention is directed toward making sense of what matters to him, and I get a nebulous feeling that many significances are at play: something about messing up, perhaps concern about what a client thinks of his company, and possibly anger – at Felicity? How can I respond to all of this complexity? What should I do now?

32523_Jull.indd 82

2021-10-12 16:54:22



Listening to Another Mind

83

I follow him, using words that he has spoken, with the addition of an affect, or value: “You didn’t like that sense of yourself as messing up?” Quality note: Representation of self. In reporting my response, I realize in retrospect that there are many other ways that I could have responded to him, and I wish that I had said something that better reflected the complexity that he presented. I would like to represent myself as a more attuned listener, but I recognize that the integrity of the account depends on revealing my limitations as well as its strengths. These limitations become more obvious in the next chapter, “Tension in the Group.” Gabriel agrees with me that he does not like the feeling of messing up, but my question does not elicit much more from him. The nature of my verifying question is such that he acknowledges that I am ­correct and that our understanding is (somewhat) shared, but his self-­ reflexivity has not been piqued. In retrospect, I could have asked more about the “messing up,” but I respond to his other feelings by asking whether he is upset or angry. He corrects me, stating that he is worried. I notice that I am untroubled by this correction, as it does not diminish my sense of self with regard to my being a “good listener” but quite the opposite; I have a sense of being adjusted, of being adjustable, which I appreciate. I press on, knowing (through my training) that if he is worried, there must be something at stake. “What might happen?” I wonder aloud. In the process of saying that a lost contract is a possibility, he is able to reflexively evaluate that it is an unlikely future. At this point, he is wondering with me, so despite his negation, his tone conveys curiosity: if he is not upset about the contract, then what is bothering him so much? I wonder whether part of his (ethical) concern is that “Felicity shouldn’t have acted that way.” “Not really,” he says. Then he provides a complex expression of the significance of the encounter for him, explaining that he feels like a “jackass,” that he is troubled that Felicity cannot really articulate what is bothering her, and that Abby is unaware of what is going on. There are three nodes of significance – or many affordances, as Keane (2016) would say – that could be followed, resulting in more complexity. Again, what would be “good” to do? How should I respond? Aware of complexity, too much to discern directly, my mind flows in the direction of seeking a more concrete understanding of the situation because I still have no clear sense from him about the significance

32523_Jull.indd 83

2021-10-12 16:54:22

84

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

of his difficult conversation with Felicity. “What is going on, as you understand it?” I ask. He explains Felicity’s divorce and his understanding of how Abby’s marriage relates to Felicity’s sense of self. I become attuned to his account of Felicity’s valuing, especially when he uses the word “struggling” with a heightened tone. As I paraphrase what Gabriel has said, I find myself suddenly delivering an imaginary account of Felicity’s interiority that animates his description of her struggling. “So Felicity is struggling … Here I am, Felicity. I’m pretty happy in my own life, doing lots of things I love to do. It’s a good life. I’ve made peace with the way things worked out – not peace exactly, but being okay, feeling okay with my decisions, but not okay that I had to make those decisions … And then there’s Abby, who’s a good person, she really is, but there’s something about her that just twists me up because it’s been so easy for her, and I’m happy that it’s been easy for her, I really am, but it’s so hard for me – to be reminded about the divorce, how lousy it was, how painful. And it’s okay that some people are happily married, but when Abby shows up happy and kind of oblivious, it just drags me down. And I want to get over it, but I can’t, and I’ve tried. I’ve been doing this work for years. I’m a professional! But when I work with Abby, it’s like I get grabbed by all those messy feelings, and I show up as some twisted-up, incoherent person, and I just don’t want to be that person. I’m worried about showing up as a subpar consultant as well as someone who hasn’t been able to get over personal feelings in her professional life.” My monologue goes on for longer than that; it may be about a minute of me “performing” Felicity.2 There’s a long pause, and in that pause, I sense that Gabriel is moved, reflecting. “Felicity is struggling,” he repeats. “I’ve been stewing about Felicity being difficult. When I see her as struggling, I can see that she’s trying to maintain our relationship with our clients, and with Abby, I guess, and with herself, maybe, buying time until she can figure things out more. I wonder how I can talk with her in a way that we talk about that.” The argument has dissipated. No longer considering hostilities with Felicity, he wants to have a conversation that will be different from the ones that they have been able to have previously. r e f l e x i v e c o m m e n ta r y

In this case, it is not my consciousness that is constricted but my friend’s. So in the space of encounter that he and I co-create, I have

32523_Jull.indd 84

2021-10-12 16:54:22



Listening to Another Mind

85

the opportunity to attend to his knowing and valuing of Felicity (as well as of himself and me). Gabriel has referred to this conversation between us as very positive, and it therefore merits inclusion because of its endurance as a mind-changing, although not completely transformative, conversation. “I don’t recall the details of the conversation,” he says to me in another exchange before he has read the vignette and our debriefing interview. “What I remember is the feeling before I called you and after we talked, and I really remember the space that got opened up.” “What do you think opened?” I wonder. “You were able to know her in a way that I couldn’t, on her own terms, as you might say,” he explains. “I think that made the difference. And it changed a lot, but it didn’t change everything. There’s still tension, but it made a difference.” Quality note: Theorizing. What might it mean – in an analysis like this one – that I knew her “on her own terms” or that I knew her in a way that he could not? I explore these questions in more detail below, as these elements made the mind-change significant for Gabriel. In my process of responsive decision making, my mind is simultaneously carried and choosing. My mind is carried by my training as a “good” mediator and by my notions of how to be a good friend. I am also making moment-to-moment choices – ask, reflect, share – that respond to him (and my own interiority), framed by this training and these notions. As I discuss below, this encounter reveals the “everyday ethics” of ordinary conversation, negotiated in our mutual attunements and disjunctures with each other. Quality note: Pointing to implications beyond this text. Also on my mind as I write this analysis is a recent conversation that I had with a senior leader in an organization. The purpose of this conversation was to develop a business strategy. The conversational dynamics in this meeting were similar to the ones that I had with Gabriel in that she was simultaneously guarded and forthcoming as the conversation went along. The meeting with the senior leader was an ongoing process of my being attuned to the subject matter and to our mutual intersubjective knowing, valuing, and deciding in relation to each other and in the context of the dynamics between us. I had been drafting this vignette before I met with her, so I was particularly attentive to these dynamics. The conversation with the senior leader went particularly well since we discovered new possibilities for the business strategy as we dealt

32523_Jull.indd 85

2021-10-12 16:54:22

86

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

with very sensitive organizational issues. I recognize that there is significant value in paying attention to my knowing, valuing, and deciding in nonconflictual encounters. As in the amicable debriefing with Rebecca and Georgine in the “Intransigent Conflict,” I can see that decision making of all kinds involves the same process of knowing, valuing, and deciding. Everyday Ethics An illuminating moment of everyday ethics emerged in my decision making as I wondered how to respond to Gabriel’s mention of a difficult encounter amid his description of success. It was a pivotal shift in the kind of conversation that was taking place, a shift that moved us away from fairly straightforward affirmations of success and into an exploration of the more difficult, complex, sensitive, and uncertain topic of conflict. As recounted above, I am aware of my rapid inner dialogue – deliberating and evaluating options with varying affects – in response to Gabriel’s dismay and celebration: ethically, I want to do good by respecting his privacy while helping him if he wants help. The desire to be a good friend in all of its complexity carries my consciousness and frames my decision making. I also want to avoid being seen, by him as well as by me, as a bad friend who is guilty of prying or ignoring. These narratives of what it means to be a good friend (and what it means to avoid being a bad one) are carriers of complex social and personal meanings. “Good friends respect privacy” and “good friends help each other” are equally valid social narratives, leading me to wonder by what criteria I can evaluate which of the two is the best. Although I think for a constricted moment that I can choose only one option – celebrating or commiserating – the insight that both are possible feels freeing to me. In my formal debriefing inquiry with Gabriel, I wonder about his interiority in that moment, mentioning my own concerns of not prying and wanting to help. “It wasn’t prying,” he says, quite definitively. “Prying is like using a wedge, forcing something ajar, pushing open a closed mind. What you did was invite an opening. I could feel that you weren’t asking me about it for your own titillation or for feeling special that I would let you in. There was a lot of space in the way you asked about the thing with Felicity.” “What does space mean?” I wonder.

32523_Jull.indd 86

2021-10-12 16:54:22



Listening to Another Mind

87

Eliciting Gabriel’s ethical reflexivity. “It felt like many options were possible,” he responds. “I got the sense that you would have been fine to talk about it or to leave it alone. You didn’t have an agenda.” I recall a therapist friend of mine who is fond of saying that “people change when they have the sense of being accepted.” In the sophistication of our intersubjective knowing of one another, we can often discern the other’s intentions. In the previous chapter, I defensively resisted Sophia’s question about Sage’s learning because I sensed that the implicit goal of the question was to change my mind in a certain way. In contrast, Gabriel says that he discerned in me an unconstricted curiosity about his difficulty, which generated a responsive curiosity in him. He started to talk about Felicity, and our conversation shifted to his encounter of conflict. In that conversation about his conflict, I found myself aware of my capacities as a friend and as a professional mediator. As a mediator, my mind was carried by a theoretical framework and practical strategies that guided my decision making. For example, as a mediator, I recognize that when an individual is invited to give an account of feelings – “What was upsetting about the conversation?” – a person often gives an account of the valuing through which the feelings are expressed. Gabriel did that by talking about being a good colleague, maintaining a positive sense of self, and achieving a desired outcome. Giving an account of valuing is often an opportunity for new affordances to be made, as Keane (2016) claims, or for more expansive valuing, as Price (2013) contends. So in his account, Gabriel recognized that the lost contract was not the concern that dynamized his annoyance with Felicity; instead, he became somewhat clearer that what mattered was his diminished valuing of himself as well as his concern about the lengthy, uncertain conflict between the two women. In reaction to my question “What is going on, as you understand it?” Gabriel described his understanding of Felicity’s interiority: how her distress about her own divorce had shaped the way that she was able to know and respond to Abby. In my response to him, I found myself realizing that as a mediator, I might ask him more questions to generate his self-reflexive accounting and thereby enable him to discover new possibilities. However, as a friend, I might share something of my own knowing, valuing, and deciding by recounting my own tales of difficult colleagues, by offering advice, or by suggesting solutions about how Abby and Felicity might divide the work. The role of a friend and mediator carried my mind

32523_Jull.indd 87

2021-10-12 16:54:22

88

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

in different ways to consider options and identify the best one. Giving advice might be an option in the role of a friend, but in the role of a mediator-friend, it was not my best option. Differentiating between self-referenced and otherr e f e r e n c e d c u r i o s i t y. In our debriefing interview, Gabriel and I discuss two different conversational moves: either maintaining a focused attunement to the other’s sense making or expressing my own interiority (or advice) to him. In a co-created insight, we recognize that if I had responded to my own knowing, valuing, and deciding rather than to what Gabriel had expressed about his valuing, my move would have been “self-referential” – that is, oriented more to my own consciousness than to his. An example of more “self-referential” curiosity might be if someone tells me about an interaction over a car purchase, and I respond by asking for the name of the dealer, as I am considering purchasing a similar car. In this case, I am curious about something of significance to me that is not significant in the narrative described. Similarly, as Gabriel recounted his difficulties with Felicity, a (more) self-referential move on my part might have been to defend her (e.g., “But she seems like a nice person”) or to condemn her (e.g., “People like that can be so difficult!”) based on my own valuing. In our interview, Gabriel notes that my invitation for him to talk about his dismay was more transcendent than self-referencing because it oriented my attention away from myself and toward him. There is nothing inherently “bad” or “wrong” with a more selfreferenced conversational move. Sometimes the more self-referenced accounts of a friend are welcomed as we intersubjectively share our specific knowing, valuing, and deciding. Hearing someone else’s mind at work often stimulates new possibilities to emerge in my own mind or helps to create shared understanding. I self-reference frequently with people in my life – share my experiences, suggest solutions, and impart advice – even when it is not solicited, as I was eager to do in the exchange with my partner in the vignette of “The Intransigent Conflict.” However, as I was acting more in the role of a mediator-friend with Gabriel, my decisions were oriented specifically to eliciting his self-reflexivity rather than to expressing my own. Quality note: Theorizing. Through an intersubjective framework of  analysis, it is difficult to discern where “self-referenced” and “­other-referenced” curiosities begin and end. I believe that there is a

32523_Jull.indd 88

2021-10-12 16:54:22



Listening to Another Mind

89

continuum of attunement from self to other, a moment-by-moment discernment of self and other in intersubjective relation. In its more extreme forms, self-referencing can be recognized when I respond to something that another person says (e.g., “I swam a mile today”) by recounting something of my own (e.g., “A mile? I swam three miles yesterday. Outdoors! In the freezing rain!”). In contrast, understanding someone “on their own terms” is the effort to elicit and respond to the other’s knowing, valuing, and deciding (e.g., “You swam a mile? How was that for you?”). In understanding someone “on their own terms,” my effort is to understand more fully what that person knows, values, and decides rather than referencing my own knowing, valuing, and deciding. Having said that, it is not possible to be completely attuned to someone’s mind as though my subjective frames of understanding and valuing can be absolutely set aside so that I might be fully absorbed in and by the other’s consciousness. Again, the self-other attunement is a moment-by-moment continuum in the complex dynamics of consciousness, encounter, and fields of meanings. E l i c i t i n g e t h i c a l r e f l e x i v i t y t h ro u g h e x pa n s i v e attention and curiosity. As a way of elaborating on Gabriel’s self-reflexive articulation of his knowing and valuing of Felicity, I find myself “performing” an interior monologue of Felicity. I have not made this conversational move before, either as a friend or as a mediator. Although it may exist, I am not aware of a conflict resolution approach that would advocate “performing interior monologues” as a strategy of intervention. Nor have I done a monologue like this one in the context of a conversation with a friend. So what I do is spontaneous, appropriate, attuned, and undertaken as a friend who is a mediator in this specific space of encounter. Gabriel narrated his account of Felicity’s concerns in the third person (e.g., “Felicity went through a messy divorce”), whereas I animate her valuing in the first person (e.g., “I’m feeling okay with my decisions, but not okay that I had to make those decisions”). Gabriel tells me in our debriefing interview that this performance of Felicity in the first person was particularly significant to him. It felt that through my performance of Felicity, he could listen to her without his own self-referenced concerns inserting themselves to “distort” the way that he knew and valued her. So instead of self-referentially valuing her as the “difficult” colleague who made him feel like a “jackass,”

32523_Jull.indd 89

2021-10-12 16:54:22

90

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

he found himself valuing her as the “struggling” colleague who was trying to deal with her difficulties. His valuing of her actions changed. Once his valuing changed, his mind spontaneously went to deliberating options – that is, to wondering how he could talk to her about her struggles rather than only enacting his annoyance. At the beginning of my conversation with him, I wanted to be a good friend, and I wanted him to see me as a good friend, but I was not sure what the best actions to be a “good friend” would be in that moment. I discovered that “being a good friend” does not exist as some absolute ethical code of conduct (e.g., “respect privacy” or “help with difficulty”). Instead, what it meant to be a good friend was subtly, intersubjectively, negotiated in the moment as I offered to celebrate or commiserate as a friend and as he responded in turn. On another day and in another context, our everyday ethical negotiation might have determined that respecting privacy was the best “good friend” thing to do at the time. Another dimension of the curiosity that Gabriel experienced from me was related to my having “no agenda.” The choice that I offered – celebrate or commiserate? – was not constrained by my own preference or self-referenced valuing of what would be the best choice for him as a friend to me. In other words, my mind was not carried by more self-referenced (ethical) narratives of what he should do, such as good friends don’t burden others with their troubles, so he should focus on celebrating accomplishments, or good friends enact intimacy by sharing their sorrows and commiserating, so he should talk about his difficulties with Felicity. He reports that my more unconstricted offer in the conversation invited an expansive response from him. In a similar fashion, my “performance” of Felicity had an expansive effect on Gabriel. In rendering my performance of Felicity, I had no access to her interiority; my only sense of her was what he had told me in the conversation and the affect with which he had told it to me. Dynamized by my animation of her knowing, valuing, and deciding – my enactment of her affect – Gabriel had the sense that I “knew” Felicity in a way that he could not and that this knowledge was closer to Felicity “on her own terms” than he was able to achieve. The Change How does the interpersonal argument dissipate and allow new ­possibilities to emerge? Gabriel reports that by knowing Felicity

32523_Jull.indd 90

2021-10-12 16:54:22



Listening to Another Mind

91

differently through the space of encounter between him and me, he was able to have a different conversation with Felicity in their next meeting. Knowing her as “struggling” – which paradoxically was both the word that he had used himself and the word that he had come to see differently through my depiction – he could attend to her struggles as well as his own. Although difficult, their subsequent conversation was not conflictual. They were able to talk more explicitly – albeit imperfectly and impermanently – about their personal disquiets and practical concerns. Ethical Negotiation As I describe, in the moment-to-moment space of encounter, I realized that my ethical concerns about being a “good” friend were being intersubjectively negotiated. I also have come to see that a “good” response – question, narrative, monologue – is similarly intersubjectively discerned. Reflecting on the previous vignette, I see that Sophia’s first question – “And Sage learned something?” – was not a “poor” question but merely a question that did not generate an energizing insight in me at the time. In response to my lack of energized reply, Sophia asked a question that turned out to be more salient: “And where is the conflict really lying for you?” This process of knowing, being known, and mutual reciprocating influence is continually underway in the complex, intersubjective, ethical negotiations that we enact. Another example of this “ethical negotiation” occurred when Gabriel corrected me by saying that he felt “worried” rather than upset or angry. In response, I did not feel devalued as a bad listener, as I might have been. On the contrary, I felt valued as an “attunable” listener. If he had used another tone or been situated in a different context, I might have had to reckon with a diminished sense of self arising spontaneously in response to his comment. This practice of recognizing my own interiority even as I seek to respond to the interiority of another entails differentiation and integration as well as paying attention inwardly and outwardly in complex moves of attending, understanding, valuing, and deciding. Satisfied with the articulation and insights in this part of the sense making of my inquiry, I turn to another issue of quality in the research process: representation. Quality note: Representation. When I ask Gabriel about his felt response to the draft vignette that I have sent to him, he responds

32523_Jull.indd 91

2021-10-12 16:54:22

92

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

– very kindly and thoughtfully – that the text does not address the considerable role-related tension that he experienced in the conflict between the two women. In other words, much of the intensity of his distress in the conflict was related to his differing roles with them, and these roles are not mentioned in the text. I agree with his assessment that the text does not attend to the particulars of their differing roles and expectations, and I start wondering about this gap. Is this a “bad” or “poor quality” text because it does not adequately capture his interiority related to roles? Or is it perhaps “bad” or “unethical” to have represented him in the conflict differently from the way that he would tell the story? I can account for my decision to exclude the aspect of “roles” in this conflict: I did not want to reveal identifying information about the institution and context where he and the women are situated. Based on this valuing, which he shares, I make the decision not to add the roles to the vignette. I judge that excluding his role-related dilemmas maintains a sense of the significance of the conflict without describing the details of the conflict. Context matters here: these texts privilege my interiority, so my decision to exclude his roles and to account for their exclusion is “ethical” and “good quality” research. Gabriel and I discuss the options of what and how to write this encounter, focusing on the text both as a piece of scholarship in my epistemic community and as a moment in our friendship. Ultimately, as a strategy of accounting for my representation and its limitations, I produce the revised text above to convey his support as well as his dissenting concern. I then need another debriefing interview with him to discuss the questions of representation so that I can create a betterquality account. Quality note: Saturating inquiry. Recognizing that I have unanswered questions about representation, I highlight that this inquiry is not yet saturated (as the previous two chapters have been at roughly this point). This recognition also heightens my awareness of additional paths of inquiry and more questions to ask him: what is his felt response to the text now? Is there anything more that I could include about the dissipation of the argument with Felicity or between Felicity and Abby? In asking questions this way, I illuminate that knowing, valuing, and deciding are integral to this method of social science research. This illumination points to other paths of inquiry, which I address in the final chapter.

32523_Jull.indd 92

2021-10-12 16:54:22



Listening to Another Mind

93

debriefing inquiry

Gabriel and I speak on the phone after he has read the entire vignette and commentary. He considers my representation to be more “adequate” and my depiction of our conversational moves to be more “right.” When I ask him about what makes the account more adequate or right from his perspective, he tells me that he is impressed by the effectiveness of the second, more interior, vignette; he says that in representing more of my interiority, I represent more of his. The dialogical, more nuanced text of my interiority necessarily relates to and evokes his interiority, too, he says. Not only does the revised text enable him to remember and recover the encounter more clearly as one who experienced it, but he also believes that it commendably illuminates the intersubjective complexity into which I am inquiring so deeply. I ask him more of what he remembers and recalls, particularly about how the polarized argument dissipated for new possibilities to emerge. He says that his polarization was multiple: he was sharply critical of himself for not being more sensitive, and he was also critical of Felicity. His criticism of Felicity related to how she processed her pain about her divorce and to how this pain expressed itself as blame, making him a target of her criticism. He felt reproached for not having adequately “read her mind” when he had arranged for Felicity to work with Abby, even though she had indicated earlier that she was feeling better about her relationship with Abby, and he felt that he had been “led on.” “How did our conversation make a difference?” I ask. “Hmm, you’ve covered it pretty well already,” he responds. “But you say that it changed a lot, but it didn’t change everything, that there’s still tension.” “Well.” He pauses and then responds, “It wasn’t a moment like Newton getting hit by a falling apple and realizing the principles of gravity. But it set up a greater probability of being changed, particularly because I wanted it. I still do. And this affects Felicity and Abby, too. I don’t mean that Felicity is going to get all ‘kum ba yah’ with Abby,3 but I can tell you that she is more likely to change with Abby when she is not getting attacked by me.” Something about his reflection is settling to my inquiring mind. Our conversation ends with an “Aha,” the relief of having generated a

32523_Jull.indd 93

2021-10-12 16:54:23

94

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

meaningful insight. The idea of probability, of setting up conditions for the emergence of probable outcomes, sits well with my sense of complexity and uncertainty in intersubjective encounters. Probability, as a word, has a nice weight to it; it leans into a moment, not determining it but inclining toward an eventual, sooner-or-later outcome that may never arrive. With that, I prepare for the complexity of the following account of a large group process that goes awry.

32523_Jull.indd 94

2021-10-12 16:54:23

7 Tension in the Group

In this case, I was in the role of a group co-facilitator when an argument arose in one meeting that had the potential to derail an extensive deliberative process that had preoccupied the group for several months. The argument dissipated insofar as one, and then many, participants decided to engage more collaboratively rather than to defensively block the conversation from continuing. This vignette features both complexity and clarity, so although the change is partial and incomplete, it is clearly discernible. Methodologically, because of its many aspects of complexity, this case presents significant research challenges, particularly in relation to Marshall’s (2004) activities of sense making and representation of self and others. I recognize that my processes of knowing and valuing are iterative and emergent, particularly in such dynamic contexts. I also encounter oversights in my practice and learn through the process of writing about them. A further point of accounting for quality in research is my choice of conversation partner for the debriefing inquiry and its additional layers of significance. Conceptually, I pay careful attention to the intersubjective complexity of this space of encounter and consider my role as a leader in shaping but not determining the way that a group can know, value, and decide. I delve again into the issue of “intention reading,” looking at how I make sense of what others are thinking, even when they are not speaking. I reflect on some moment-by-moment operations of my consciousness – my knowing, valuing, and deciding. In doing so, I am able to discern moments where conflict does not arise despite the presence of threat, as well as moments of response to the conflict behaviour that actually takes place. I consider how change can occur

32523_Jull.indd 95

2021-10-12 16:54:23

96

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

in a space of encounter where account giving takes place in a group context, noticing that expansiveness has an influence on change. the vignette

I am co-facilitating a meeting for a group that is having a conflict about a difficult decision. Two days before, my colleague and I led the group through a two-hour workshop about strategies to address interpersonal conflict. Today’s meeting is an extension of the workshop to help participants discuss their challenging decision with support from us while practising the skills introduced in the workshop. Maria, one of the leaders of the group, welcomes us all to the meeting and points out the refreshments. She then briefly summarizes her recent meeting with a senior leader of the organization who has indicated a decisive preference for a time frame of several months for the group’s deliberations to be concluded. She turns the meeting over to me and my colleague. As a preface to the meeting, we propose a process and introductory topic: all of the individuals will speak in turn around the circle, expressing their hopes about the decision and what is getting in the way of making it. Threat without Conflict One member of the group, Jack, protests our recommendation; another supports him. I feel a small flutter of dismay and gaps on many levels. A personal constriction: do they discern me to be incompetent? A practical concern: will all of our precious time be spent on setting up the process? I steady my discomfort by focusing more intently on Jack, the intervener, rather than on my own concerns. I listen to his suggestion and watch the others in the room, signalling to them when it is their turn to speak. Then I paraphrase what is significant to them, connecting to possible options, inviting responses, and inclining toward decision. The group deliberates several options and, with facilitation, eventually agrees to a modification of the topic that is very similar to the original one, incorporating the recognition of the senior leader’s preference. I feel a release from the tension of uncertainty; we have settled on a process. I feel that their sense of confidence in me, us, and each other has expanded and that the decision making about process has been energizing for the group. As my colleague and I agreed previously,

32523_Jull.indd 96

2021-10-12 16:54:23



Tension in the Group

97

at this point I take the role of the lead facilitator, while she maintains an actively silent presence in the group, available as needed. Individuals begin to speak around the circle. The first few speakers express their hopes and concerns about the significance of the decision, and I paraphrase their statements to verify my understanding of what has been said. When it comes time for Jack, the intervener, to speak, he declares that he will pass. Glancing around the room, I sense surprise and confusion in the group, and I ask him, “Can you say a little more about your decision to pass?” He explains that he has said a lot already and that he would prefer to listen, adding that if time remains, he will contribute at the end. I glance around the room and, not noticing any heightened signals of distress or desire to intervene, invite the next member to speak. Four or five more individuals speak. When it is the turn of another usually outspoken group member, Lucas, he also declares that he will pass. I register surprise in me and concern in the group. There is a pause as we process this turn of events. The woman next to him, Leila, draws in her breath. I invite her to speak. In a calm but emotionally inflected tone, she says that she is concerned about participants passing. “It makes me feel less secure, less safe, actually, to share my hopes and concerns when there are other people passing,” she says. I note my own relief that she has spoken a concern that I sense others are feeling, but I am also aware that the meeting will not continue until we have moved through this impasse. I am registering this awareness, just as Leila is finishing her sentence, when another group member, Maya, abruptly intervenes, “Yes!” she says sharply. “It’s rude and disrespectful!” The Argument The tension in the room is palpable. My attention is heightened, simultaneously registering discomfort and uncertainty within both myself and the group: a gasp from someone, another person pushing back a chair, many eyes on us, others focused on the interveners and passers. Active conflict has emerged. Responding to my own consciousness, I recognize discomfort as well a deep confidence that I can apply the skills that I have honed for difficult moments such as this one: notice, follow, slow down, make explicit what is implicit, and exude equipoise while attending to threat and seeking to expand around it.

32523_Jull.indd 97

2021-10-12 16:54:23

98

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

I look at the second passer, Lucas. His eyes are downcast, his face distressed and his body tight. In attending to him, I can see and sense his strong emotions, although I am not certain what they are; at the same time, I see and sense some of the impact of his behaviour on the other participants. I open my arms, holding the space, which has become tense. I say, “Here we are! Just like we talked about two days ago in the workshop, this conversation has just become very difficult, and now we have a chance to practise what we talked about then!” I describe the situation carefully: two people have passed, and participants have different responses to the same behaviour. It makes one person feel less secure, and it strikes another as rude, whereas for the individual who has just passed, it most likely means something very different. The two interveners look at me, their nods confirming that I have understood their concerns. The second passer, Lucas, still gazes downward. Having verified with the speakers, I direct my attention to him. I reflect aloud that there is clearly a lot going on for him, and he nods. I say that he looks uncomfortable, and he nods again. I add that I do not know all the details of what is going on but that I can imagine that his decision to pass was based on caring a lot, not a lack of caring. At this observation, he looks up, making eye contact with me, and we can see the distress in his face. I say, “And one of the possible decisions you could have made is to leave the room, but you chose to stay, although it’s really hard, and you’re staying in this hard place rather than running from it.” He nods with what appears to be relief. I glance at the people in the room as they look at him, and I see compassion in many faces, some people who are perhaps annoyed, and others who are hard to read. I turn back to him and say that since it appears that he wants to remain silent in this moment, I wonder whether he would consider contributing at the end of the circle if there is time. He nods again, much more relaxed, and the group, including the two interveners, also appear to relax. I check in with them, taking in the group as I do: “How does that sound?” They agree that it seems okay. The Change, Sort Of I invite Leila to speak again, as it is her turn in the circle. She speaks of her concerns and hopes, incorporating her concerns about conflict as well as the importance to her of everyone contributing. Looking around the room, I can see the signs of concern subsiding. The others

32523_Jull.indd 98

2021-10-12 16:54:23



Tension in the Group

99

in the group speak of their hopes and concerns, including some ideas for the future, with considerable honesty. New possibilities appear to be emergent. There is enough time at the end for the two passers to speak, and once again substantial debate and tension about the decision surface. Although considerable information and ideas have been exchanged, there has been no affirmative decision other than to hold another meeting that they will manage on their own. Immediately after the meeting, I am tired; I have processed a lot of feelings, valuing, and deciding. There is some recalibrating chit chat among us (although I can hardly put a sentence together), and then we all drift out of the room and into the night air. Part of my valuing registers that the meeting was not “perfect” in that it does not appear to have significantly resolved the longstanding concerns of the participants. I feel both discouraged and accepting, discerning a gap between my hope, which is focused on some sort of outcome that both they and I can feel good about, and the sight of the drained tired faces that are around me. There is also a gap between my desired sense of self as efficacious and wise and my current sense of self, which includes a deep, almost disoriented wondering: “What in the world just happened?” I accept that the group is dealing with complexity and that complexity can take time. More expansive valuing helps me to discern that my “not knowing” is a suitable, perhaps even wise, response to the complexity that was encountered. As I reflect on the meeting, what strikes me as significant is the moment when the group was polarized, the conversation was blocked, and the tension was high. Then something happened for the conversation to move on, for information or dialogue to resume, imperfectly, and for possible next steps to surface. What in the world did just happen? Quality note: Criteria for selection. I had written an earlier draft of this vignette, and for several weeks I was unsure whether to include it as a case study. Then I recalled the following segment of the story, which was very significant to the outcome of the process. I thus recognized that this case illustrates a longer-term, significant change of mind. It also illuminates the complexity of nonlinear, emergent change making. I wonder how other participants are making sense of the meeting. I speak with my colleague, and we discuss it briefly, but there is too

32523_Jull.indd 99

2021-10-12 16:54:23

100

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

much to process in a short time, and she leaves the city for an extended period the next day. A day after that, I call one of the group leaders, Maria. We talk about the meeting and try to make some sense together of what happened, both of us trying to puzzle out what might happen next. Another Change A week later, I check in with Maria again. As it turns out, she has had a brief conversation with Lucas and is pleased with how it went. In that conversation, he told her that he is deeply worried that a possible outcome of the group’s decision will be that one part of the group will become disenfranchised by the other. Maria tells me that this was the first time that this worry had surfaced so explicitly or that she had been able to hear it so clearly. She says that now that both of them recognize that avoiding disenfranchisement is important, it is possible to discuss new options, including a future governance structure that would equalize decision-making power for both parts of the group. Months later, I get a celebratory email from Maria that the group has made the difficult decision to implement a new governance structure and is moving forward in a hopeful direction. Quality note: Sense making. The decision by Lucas to share something of significance with Maria, thereby facilitating a larger change, was not a direct effect of my intervention, yet my participation was not irrelevant. I had some influence in enabling that meeting to flow rather than implode, which, according to Maria, was a turning point in the long process of decision making. I am aware that my account is inevitably incomplete because of my partial perspective; it also risks oversimplifying by attributing linear cause and effect. Notwithstanding its partiality, the account is not “wrong.” I can claim that my perspective is valid despite its limitations. I had revised a draft of this vignette, which included a portion of the reflexive commentary below, and presented it to some colleagues for feedback. As I was describing the events and voices in the complex meeting, there was a sense of confusion among us. Even though I had made the case “recountable” and in doing so had differentiated six decision-making minds in the meeting – Jack, Lucas, Leila, Maya, Maria, and me – my analysis was still unclear. How could I account for the de-escalation of conflict in the meeting that enabled the group discussion to proceed, thereby creating conditions for Lucas and Maria

32523_Jull.indd 100

2021-10-12 16:54:23



Tension in the Group

101

to have the transformative conversation that produced a new outcome? It was not clear. From this sense of confusion, bordering on frustration, one colleague asked intently, “But I’m still trying to understand whose mind, exactly, was changed.” The answer burst out of me, in responsive energy to her tone and vigorous wondering: “Leila!” The insight came with a release like a mystery novel’s denouement. My colleague’s question had a structure and tone that generated this transformative insight. I continued, “I can only see this looking back, and of course it’s not this simple, but one way to tell the story is this: Leila reacted to Lucas by refusing to share her concerns, and after I responded to her, as well as Maya and Lucas, she changed her mind, so the group as a whole could move along. That meeting, among many other things, helped Lucas and Maria creatively use their minds to create new possibilities that the rest of the group eventually endorsed. But Leila’s mind made a determining decision in how the meeting proceeded.” With my colleagues, our own little group of complex wondering minds, I had come to an insight. And another mind, such as another participant in the meeting or a reader of this text, might have a different interpretation, recognizing other meanings or points of significance. r e f l e x i v e c o m m e n ta r y

This case exemplifies and raises many questions about intersubjectivity and insight in the context of a group conversation: how can a group of individuals align and change their minds, dissipating argument so that new possibilities can emerge? In applying the conceptual tools of intersubjectivity, what is the role of a facilitator in relation to operations of consciousness, spaces of encounter, and complex fields of meanings? What are the everyday ethics at play in this scenario? The meeting is enacted in the context of, and is suffused with, many inexplicably complex fields of meanings and affordances, including expectations about groups, presentations of selves, appropriateness of emotion, previous interactions with each other, and deference or resistance to authority. Such factors shape our behaviours and provide horizons for what is possible to know, decide, and assess as “good” and “bad” within our roles as participants, facilitators, and racialized, gendered, aged, and embodied subjectivities. I am the temporary leader of the group, with considerable – but negotiable – power. My role, as I understand it, is to help the group’s

32523_Jull.indd 101

2021-10-12 16:54:23

102

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

individual members to align and optimize their operations of consciousness – their collective knowing, valuing, and deciding – by helping to create conditions that enable them to know, value, and decide more effectively. My training carries my consciousness to consider that contexts with appropriate protection, or less threat, provide better conditions for individuals to be curious and creative, rather than incuriously certain or uncreatively positional, so that new decisions are possible. As I discuss below, my role as the leader also involves establishing a process, a pattern of cooperation, through which individual decision making can be aligned. Quality note: Theorizing. I realize that in writing this analysis, I am touching on many topics about which enormous bodies of literature have been produced, including leadership, group interventions, and complexity. My aim in this section is to articulate my own particular, limited, critical understanding of the specific encounter rather than to engage with these bodies of literature. As the meeting gets underway, my colleague and I shape the space of encounter by suggesting carriers – the task, process, and topic – through which the individual minds of the participants can engage. In this way, we direct individuals’ thinking and deciding toward loosely determinate ends. As I discuss in “Outrage,” the structure of questions shapes people’s responses. So the question “What are your hopes and what gets in the way of making a decision?” carries the aggregate of individual minds in a determinate but not determined fashion. Because people contest and revise this question to include a response to the senior leader’s preference, it provides a slightly different frame through which responses are generated. Similarly, the proposed process of speaking in turn orients (but does not determine) people’s deciding about when to speak and when to refrain from speaking. In this way, the patterns of interaction shape the operations of consciousness of individuals and align the collective process of knowing, valuing, and deciding together. My colleague and I invite input on the process and topic through another question to elicit the group’s decision making: “Is this what we should do?” A contradiction arises from a group member, supported by another. “I don’t think that’s the best way to approach this meeting,” he intervenes in what I perceive to be a somewhat aggrieved tone of voice. Internally, I register some dismay at these interventions: a small worry that I might be seen to be “bad,” a poor suggester of process,

32523_Jull.indd 102

2021-10-12 16:54:23



Tension in the Group

103

and that our time will be “wasted” in debating the process. My valuing is expansive enough to intersubjectively register the intervener not as annoyingly disruptive but as helpfully corrective (although somewhat annoying). Perhaps a better way to express this idea is that I am able to value the intervener as not only annoyingly disruptive but also helpfully corrective. My consciousness is sufficiently expanded to hold multiple significations and multiple self-states regarding him (and me). Quality note: Sense making. This insight about the capacity to respond to several kinds of significance in my interiority, as well as that of another person, is resonant with my discovery in the case of “Listening to Another Mind.” With Gabriel, I registered the possibility of both commiserating and celebrating; with Jack, I register his behaviour as both annoying and helpful. I have generated these insights about intersubjectively knowing self and other through the process of making this self-reflexive written account, reflecting, speaking with others, and writing more. These particular insights, generated through this writing, illuminate writing itself as a process of inquiry. And complexity. Because my valuing is sufficiently discerning to acknowledge that his behaviour is both annoying and helpful to me, my deliberating and deciding are also more expansive than contracted. Instead of deciding to be principally engaged in defending myself (and to fight, flee, fawn, or freeze), I decide to focus on further curious lines of inquiry oriented to the group’s evaluation, such as what would be better to do. I focus my attention on and direct my curiosity toward the group’s decision making: if we should not do what was proposed, then what is a better option? Speaking to each other and through me, the group deliberates their options briefly, evaluates a better question, and settles on it. In these interactions with the group, I encounter disagreement with our proposal, even registering a sense of threat, but it does not engender conflict between me and the intervener. Although I apprehend a threat, my response is sufficiently undefended to facilitate a flow of further information: no conflict ensues. The group vigorously debates the best course of action based on implicit and explicit criteria of “the good”; this exchange is an example of engagement with the complex dimensions of everyday ethics in the process of determining the best thing to do in the circumstances both individually and as a group. Quality note: Theorizing. In the complexity of a group discussion such as this one, I cannot overclaim agency in aligning the group’s understanding, valuing, and deciding. Other participants respond to

32523_Jull.indd 103

2021-10-12 16:54:23

104

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

Jack’s concern, voice their own ideas, evaluate the options without engendering further threat, and settle on a decision. This decision is mutually co-created, many minds making microdecisions toward a unified one that is generated in a complex space of encounter. There seems to be a palpable sense of satisfaction in the group when the process has been decided upon. They have co-generated the pattern of cooperation through which the decision will be discussed among members. Another Threat and Its Change We then begin to proceed around the circle one by one. When Jack, the outspoken, annoying-helpful intervener, announces his decision to pass, I am aware of a disruption in the expected pattern of cooperation. Although I have briefly mentioned to the group that individuals can choose not to speak (as part of the freedom and choice necessary for unconstrained participation), it is significant that Jack chooses not to speak. So although it is not a violation of the explicit pattern – anyone is free to pass – there is a dissonance between his outspokenness and his decision not to contribute. Somatically, I sense others in the room reacting. Cognitively, I know there is a gap, although I am unsure of its significance. I am aware that once I register the dissonance, my mind spontaneously generates explanations, seeking intelligibility: perhaps he wants to undermine the process or perhaps he disagrees strongly with what others are saying. Although I can sense that my mind is inclining toward a kind of certainty about him and his motives, I am able through practice to be curious: I ask him to give an account of his decision. What gets elicited is some of his valuing. He says that listening to others is important to him and that he has already spoken a lot. I surmise that there is likely a complexity of meanings motivating his decision, but I decide not to engage my curiosity there. Quality note: Theorizing. Writing this segment of the account reveals significant questions about intersubjectivity. How do I “know” what other individuals in the group are knowing, feeling, and valuing in these complex spaces of encounter? What is my mind doing as I intersubjectively know, value, and responsively decide in these contexts? The concept of “everyday ethics” becomes salient in this intersubjective encounter with Jack. I recognize that my intersubjective valuing is profoundly contextual. Having no knowledge of Jack beyond my

32523_Jull.indd 104

2021-10-12 16:54:23



Tension in the Group

105

less than five minutes of superficial contact with him, I notice that I am inclined to impute (un)ethical intentions to Jack because of a divergence in my expectations of his behaviour, even though he is conforming to the explicit norms established in the group. I am practised enough to (sometimes) notice that when I incline toward premature certainty, some curious questions might be helpful. As I indicate in “Listening to Another Mind” and “Outrage,” questions that elicit the other’s knowing and valuing are likely to elicit a response that might create an opportunity for revaluing to take place and for new affordances to be integrated by the other or myself. I ask Jack about his decision to pass, and he affirms an appreciation of others’ voices. Discerning Others’ Knowing, Valuing, and Deciding I wonder how others are responding to Jack’s account of his decision to pass. I can sense that individuals are not discernably expressing fight or flight responses, and there is a kind of “wait and see” feeling, with many eyes turned to me. I invite the next participant to speak. She expresses hopes and concerns in a way that furthers the conversation, adding more to the aggregate of the group’s understanding of the multifaceted nature of the decision. The next participant expresses a different dimension of the decision; it appears that there has not been a disruption in the flow of meaning with Jack’s passing. We continue. As the conversation proceeds around the circle, Lucas’s decision to pass generates a complex node of reactions. Inside me, I am surprised, dismayed, and mostly curious: is he reacting to Jack, the other speakers, or his own contracted sense of self? I register threats related to an uncertain present and unwelcome future: what is going on? What if everyone passes? The subsequent speaker, Leila, protests Lucas’s decision based on her evaluation that he has not “acted right” insofar as she feels threatened. Deciding that asserting this concern is her best course of action, she expresses that she feels more exposed and more personally contracted in response to his decision. I am touched by her comments; they register in me as reflective of an estimable openness, a willingness to take risks, and an ability to speak about the impact respectfully. As I am processing her comments and considering options of response, another speaker, Maya, intervenes sharply to state that the passers have been “rude and disrespectful.”

32523_Jull.indd 105

2021-10-12 16:54:23

106

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

Boom. Discernments of threat and decisions to defend have caused disruptures and disjunctures in the conversation, but active conflict behaviour has not emerged until this moment. Although Leila in effect has blocked the continuation of the meeting, the way that she has expressed her feeling of threat – as a contracted sense of self – registers in me as offering some potentially expansive, nonconflictual possibilities. In response to Jack’s and Lucas’s decisions to pass, the group could have considered how to communicate more generatively. In contrast, Maya’s intervention has articulated a moralizing judgment: her knowing and valuing are conflated. She has expressed that her felt disdain for their actions is based on a verified certainty that those who pass are “rude and disrespectful.” She has decided, as evidenced by her comment, that her best option of defence is to make a declaration of her disapproval. Knowing, Valuing, and Deciding in Conflict Maya’s intervention illustrates a conflict behaviour: she has registered a threat and has decided to defend by articulating a moralizing judgment.1 It is not clear what is at stake for her, whether it is a diminishment of her sense of self, fear of a jeopardized process, unmet expectations of appropriate group behaviour, all of them, or other concerns. In discerning threat(s) and deciding to defend, she makes a moralizing judgment that elicits threat in me as well as in others. My particular sense of threat is related to the process. I recognize that this moment is an excellent point of tension for the group to engage with their conflict in a way that can move their system forward, and I wonder about the design of the process to come. I also wonder whether others will make defended decisions to fight (i.e., attack Maya or join her in condemning Jack and Lucas), freeze (i.e., shut down), or flee (i.e., leave the room). I have not registered Maya’s comment as disvaluing my own sense of self, so I do not feel diminished or threatened. I have registered the moralizing judgment to be targeted at diminishing Jack’s and Lucas’s senses of self, so I am attuned to this dynamic. What should I do? In the complex moment, I have plenty of options, most of which I disregard. I can reprimand Maya for name-calling, call a break, revisit the ground rules for interaction, or orient my curiosity in several directions – but which ones? What are the criteria for establishing the best, most conscientious decision at this time?

32523_Jull.indd 106

2021-10-12 16:54:23



Tension in the Group

107

Quality note: Theorizing. I sometimes tell the story of this meeting as a way to teach about some of the facilitation skills that are needed when working with a large group. After briefly recounting the above scenario (to which many participants can relate), I ask them to consider the conceptual tools of conflict that we discuss and to suggest the course of action that they consider to be best. Participants then deliberate a variety of options, which we briefly evaluate by identifying the advantages and disadvantages of a proposed response while making explicit the criteria by which “a good response” is determined. Many suggestions emerge. Some students consider the best course of action to be seeking clarification of the moralizing judgment, or opening a discussion about the ground rules and pattern of cooperation, or directing participants toward the decision at hand, or appealing to the leader, and so on. In evaluating the best response, we recognize that although our theories carry and shape our evaluations, the “goodness” of the response can be discerned only by the contextual response that it elicits in the participants. Does it generate more threat? Does it facilitate curiosity, expansiveness, and inventiveness? For me, as a group facilitator, the criteria for “best response” relate to my understanding that individuals and groups can generate innovative solutions if they are able to know, value, and decide in ways that heighten, rather than inhibit, their wonder, discernment, and creativity. In my case, my (split-second) criterion for selecting my best option is related to my goal of helping group members to exchange meaning and better understand their patterns of interaction. What I do is open my arms, hold space, and breathe. I acknowledge the intelligibility of the situation: “Here we are! Just like we talked about two days ago in the workshop, this conversation has just become very difficult, and now we have a chance to practise what we talked about then!” I have a strong sense of “leaning into” the uncertainty of the moment and being attentive to my own unknowing, aware that my hunches are in need of verification. I articulate what I know. Two members of the group have passed, causing two other participants to register significance in different ways. One feels less secure, another considers passing to be rude, and the people who have passed likely have different feelings about the decisions that they have made. I look at each of the interveners as I offer my brief summary, acknowledging their concerns physically and verbally through my slowed-down speech, my open arms, and my effort to recognize and encompass their expressions – spoken and unspoken – of what matters deeply to them.

32523_Jull.indd 107

2021-10-12 16:54:23

108

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

Leila and Maya nod to me as I look at them with a silent question on my face; in our complex, unspoken interchange, I verify that I have sufficiently understood their concerns and that they have no immediate need to speak. I feel carried in the flow of the moment to turn my attention to Lucas. Account Giving with the Silent Lucas Amid my complex responses to Lucas, I orient my attention to understanding him and seeking intelligibility in his actions. Although he is silent, his reddening, tight face, downcast eyes, and shallow breathing provide a lot of information. Since he has been clear that he prefers to pass, I phrase my questions to generate yes or no answers, which verify my suppositions and orient him to reflect on his interiority. I acknowledge his discomfort, reflecting that there is clearly a lot going on for him. His nods are barely perceptible. Oriented to his process of valuing, I say that although I don’t know for sure what is going on with him, I can imagine that his decision to pass is based on caring a lot, not a lack of caring.2 At this observation, he looks up, making eye contact with me, and his face has changed from downcast closure to more visible distress. I say, “And one of the possible decisions you could have made is to leave the room, but you chose to stay, although it’s really hard, and you’re staying in this hard place rather than running from it.” His nods and his facial expressions are much less contracted and more animated. It seems that my recognition of his ethical decision to remain in the room, even as he is being negatively judged for passing, has made a difference to him. I glance around the room as people look at him, and I see softness in some faces and either concern or disengagement in others. I say aloud that although in this moment he wants to pass, he can consider contributing at the end of the circle if there is time. He nods again, much more relaxed, and the group, including the two interveners, also appear to relax. I sense that we might be ready to move on. Quality note: Representation. “I kept wondering when I was reading this vignette why you didn’t take on Jack. Why did he get off so easy?” remarks one colleague, with a laugh, during our discussion of an early draft of the vignette and commentary. She evaluates that addressing Jack’s decision to pass would have been another good option, based on the criterion of fairness, given that Jack, as the first

32523_Jull.indd 108

2021-10-12 16:54:23



Tension in the Group

109

passer, who may have instigated Lucas’s decision to pass, should have been called upon to give more of an account. In my debriefing interview with Maria, she also mentions her concern about Jack’s passing, and she wonders whether it might have been helpful if I had addressed Jack in that moment. My response is to wish that I were writing fiction so that I could describe myself as doing precisely that (and a whole lot more)! Similar to my encounter with Gabriel, I write myself as limited, partial, and willing to learn. By “learn,” I mean that as I respond to these relevant questions, I expand my horizon of what can be known, valued, and decided upon. Addressing Jack had not occurred to me in that earlier moment, and now I see a more expansive set of options for intervention in future encounters. Although these future encounters will inevitably be different, I have wider horizons of possible options and enhanced criteria on which to base a “good” response. Leila Changes Her Mind I sense that the tension in Leila as well as other participants has diminished and that it might be possible to invite her to speak when it is her turn as we progress around the circle. We look at each other, and I intend for the inclination of my head, my smile, and a gesture of my hands to convey my unspoken wondering about how she is feeling as well as my respect and support, although I recognize that she might be inattentive to my gestures or understand them in other ways. She responds to my nonverbal cues with a small smile. Encouraged by this silent interchange, I ask her explicitly whether she feels comfortable enough to continue. She nods and takes another breath. Leila talks about her hopes for the process as a whole, the importance for her that all voices be heard so that everyone has a stake in the solution, and her willingness to work together in this situation involving risks. Leila’s decision to participate in this way is considerably different from her decision a few minutes before, when she resisted the invitation to speak because of the previous participants’ behaviour. Leila’s mind has changed; she makes a different decision. Importantly, Leila’s opinion of Lucas may not have changed; she could still dislike his decision to pass and his role in the group. But his decision to pass is no longer the “deal breaker” to her that it was a minute before. Instead, she decides to verbally engage with the group. The subsequent participants take up what she expresses and add

32523_Jull.indd 109

2021-10-12 16:54:23

110

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

additional considerations, with the result that more complexity emerges and possible next steps are suggested. In my understanding, Leila’s decision to speak and how she speaks dissipate the conflict for new possibilities to emerge. Her change of mind orients the group’s attention, carrying our minds toward the hoped-for future and the process to achieve it, which will involve challenge and collaboration. Despite the importance of Leila’s change of mind, she does not effect the change alone: Maya decides not to escalate her concerns, Jack and Lucas decide to refrain from defending themselves against Maya’s moralizing judgment, and the subsequent participants take up Leila’s words and build the collective understanding of the issue and its significance. My intervention as the leader has some effect on shaping the conversation, too. Leila and I have several unspoken interchanges where I register an exchange of meaning. I recognize – especially from my first case, “Intransigent Conflict” – that it is possible for two people to know and value interchanges very differently. Nevertheless, I suspect that my “relationship” with Leila and my interactions with Lucas and the rest of the group have effected a change in her mind, with the result that she alters her decision to block and chooses to engage more openly than before. What Happens Next: Nonlinear Change The meeting continues, and there is substantial debate as tension about the decision surfaces. Although the group has exchanged ideas and information, they reach no conclusive decision other than to hold another meeting that they will conduct on their own. A week and a half later, Lucas and Maria speak. He articulates his sense of threat in such a way that Maria can respond by suggesting new possibilities for governance, an opening that paves the way for the decision and the celebratory email that I receive a few months later. Many decisions have created possibilities for a new outcome. Quality note: Choosing and incorporating feedback. Throughout the writing of the case, I wondered about who my interlocutor(s) would be for the debriefing interview that would account for my quality of research. I deliberated many options. I could interview all the participants, only my co-facilitator, solely the participants involved in the interpersonal conflict that I describe, just one of the participants in the meeting, or other possibilities. Selecting the best option was

32523_Jull.indd 110

2021-10-12 16:54:23



Tension in the Group

111

predicated on my valuing and deliberating related to soliciting and integrating feedback. Part of me wanted to consult with all the participants in the conflict in order to illuminate and work with the complexity of multiple perspectives. I discarded this option as too unwieldy. Part of me wanted to consult with only one participant with whom I could engage deeply in a collaborative generation of insight. It was a consultation with my epistemic committee of colleagues, who reminded me of my primary task of accounting for my interiority in intersubjective encounters, that helped me to decide on Maria as my interlocutor. This decision was based on what I know and value about Maria, a thoughtful, seasoned leader whom I knew could reflect on her interiority and use her skills as a listener to help me reflect on mine. As one of the participants in the meeting, she had been present to, but distinct from, the conflict. She was an actor in the game-changing conversation with Lucas. She could also help me to decide, again, whether to include some or all of the other participants in the encounter. I felt that I needed to confirm my decision to interview her rather than the other participants with whom it might be useful to speak. After securing her consent to participate, I completed the draft of this vignette, which I sent to her to read. I also drafted a small portion of the above analysis, mainly to clarify my thinking, as I recognized how complex and difficult it was to recount and analyze this complicated meeting. Prior to my conversation with Maria, I chose to share only the vignette with her rather than the reflexive commentary. I had a feeling that the commentary was only half-baked at the time and that it might have carried our minds toward verifying the commentary rather than discerning intelligibility in the vignette. the debriefing inquiry

Maria and I sit together in one of her organization’s beautiful meeting spaces. I begin the conversation with my thanks for her participation, and she responds with appreciation, saying how much she enjoyed reading the vignette. I ask her about the degree to which she thinks that I should involve other participants in a debriefing interview such as this one. She reflects for a moment and then says that although she appreciates that I want to be accountable for my representations of others, she recognizes that my focus as a researcher is on my own interiority and that consulting many others might detract from the

32523_Jull.indd 111

2021-10-12 16:54:23

112

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

research rather than contributing to it. She affirms that I have scrupulously changed and amalgamated so many details of the participants and context that any identifiable information in the vignette has been thoroughly obscured. She asserts the ethics of my decision to focus on the feedback of a single conversation partner, regarding this choice as “good.” Having addressed this substantial concern, we settle into a conversation about the encounter itself. I ask her, “What was significant about the meeting for you?” Maria’s and Others’ Knowing and Valuing “I was incredibly anxious,” she recalls. “Going into a potentially explosive situation … it felt a bit like walking into a fire.” Maria’s preoccupation was that she had to deliver news from the senior decision maker that she knew would be very controversial. “When I dropped the news,” she says, “I could see the mixed reactions. And something that you didn’t pick up on in your story is the reaction of one usually outspoken member … He threw down his pen and pushed his chair back.” Maria knew that many members of the group would have been aware of this particular participant’s silence throughout the meeting and that his silence affected the discussion in ways that I would not have been able to discern. It is another example of how this encounter has multiple significances; told from Maria’s point of view, the story might barely be recognizable as the one that I have recounted. Similarly, the comments that people contributed during the meeting itself were diverse and multiperspectival. Although my colleague and I decided on carriers to orient attention and behaviour in the form of a task and process, individual minds generated their own accounts, expressed their views, stayed silent, or spoke at length. Maria remarks that the participants in the conversation were well known to each other and that their conversational moves had been activated many times. The participants would have had a sense of what to expect from each other, “almost like dancers completing the steps in a predictable way,” she says. Jack’s and Lucas’s decisions to pass, however, were surprising moves. Having read the vignette, Maria reflects that she, too, had many interpretations of participants’ intentions. For her, Jack’s decision to pass seemed like a deliberate strategy to manipulate the conversation so that he would speak last, giving him the final word. She saw Lucas as overcome with an intensity of frustration and concern that he could

32523_Jull.indd 112

2021-10-12 16:54:23



Tension in the Group

113

not process at the time, making him “afraid that he was going to explode.” She respected Leila’s intervention as naming a concern that Maria thought might have been directed at Jack’s potentially manipulative move. And she noted that Maya’s intervention was characteristic in being forceful and discouraging. Quality note: Sense making and theorizing. As I recounted to another friend the story of what happened, he wondered whether Leila’s intervention had possibly been a relief to me insofar as she named concerns that many in the group, including myself, might have been registering. His expertise in complexity led him to observe that Leila’s intervention, and her change of mind, did not happen in isolation. Maybe she noticed some expressions on key faces around the room and decided to say something. Maybe I looked like I needed help as I took in Lucas’s declaration that he would pass, or perhaps through my silent interaction with her, she recognized an invitation. There are multiple interpretations of these complex moments, pointing to the importance of using theoretical frames that embrace complexity, contingency, emergence, and uncertainty. The Nonlinear Complexity of Change Maria remarks that my “work with Lucas was a watershed moment for him that he would mine only partially then but more so later when we were able to have a conversation. It’s like it started there for him … I’m not sure that he had touched that place within himself that was the root of his real concern … and if he had, and articulated it, I hadn’t heard it, so maybe it was a change in me. Because it was only in that subsequent conversation with Lucas that I finally heard, or maybe he finally said, what mattered to him. I think in that moment, with you, he kind of dug deep.” We reflect together on the nonlinear complexity of the encounter: how meanings and outcomes can emerge in retrospect but are unpredictable in the moment. Maria laughs as she says, “It’s like working with a dream. You can try to interpret it ‘muscularly’ and parse it out, but sometimes you don’t have to understand the dream for it to have an impact you. That’s what we’re talking about. We don’t have to exactly understand that meeting to have an appreciation for what came together to make something profound happen.” She adds with a smile, “But that can be kind of … scary because it’s not immediately reproducible. You just have to learn, through

32523_Jull.indd 113

2021-10-12 16:54:23

114

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

experience, to trust the process, don’t you? And trusting the process doesn’t mean that it’s a perfect process!” We talk more about how, as leaders, we gain practice in recognizing and verifying our perceptions and hunches at the same time as we interpret and respond to those of others. Amid the complexity, she feels that the turning point for Leila as well as the larger group was the interaction that I had with Lucas. She says, “One of your particular gifts in this work is what I would call a nonanxious presence, an ability to be present in an uncomfortable moment … without having to escape the discomfort or take excessive control of it … That’s worth a lot.” Leadership in Spaces of Encounter In response to Maria, I affirm the importance of a leader’s presence, and trust, in the process, noting that although “there are people in the process who are shut down, the process itself is not shut down. It can be possible to expand around contraction.” She takes up the theme of a leader’s importance in supporting a group’s thinking, particularly in my interaction with Lucas. Although this was a group well known to each other, she says that in that moment, “people might have been seeing him again for the first time through your eyes. We were noticing you noticing him and what he was grappling with. Maybe that becomes contagious in the group. So that respectful noticing really matters.” She adds, “The other thing, too, that was really effective, and it just occurred to me. I think you mirrored back to us the willingness that there was in the whole group to move forward. By naming his willingness to stay in the room, although it was difficult for him, you noticed in a subtle way that everyone was deciding to be there … Maybe that’s another function of a leader in a process like that: to mirror back to the group what the group has put out, just like a mother mirrors a child and that’s how the child comes to know herself.” Quality note: Theorizing. As Maria names a foundational concept in intersubjective theory, that of how children come to know themselves through repeated interaction with caregiving others, I also realize that the “coming to know” is not unidirectional. As I discovered in my second case, “Outrage,” the parent also comes to know herself (as a caregiving self) through the interactions with the child, just as the leader exists only in relation to the group that “follows.”

32523_Jull.indd 114

2021-10-12 16:54:23



Tension in the Group

115

Maria sighs with a grin, “I wish working with groups, or working with conflict, could come down to three variables, and we could just tweak those variables. It’s not chemistry, is it?” I respond that “I’m starting to think that maybe putting more compassion into systems like these can often produce better outcomes … but how to do that, that’s the tricky part.” She nods. “When a person believes they are on the receiving end of compassion from another person, suddenly the world becomes a safer place … At their best, I guess, that’s what major world religions are aiming at: compassionate people building compassionate communities in compassionate ways … Imagine what we can do if we believe we’re in a safer place.” On that note, we look at each other and smile. The conversation feels done, our co-inquiry saturated, and our hearts – I can speak confidently for her, even without asking – are a little lighter.

32523_Jull.indd 115

2021-10-12 16:54:23

8 Implications for Inquiry

The preceding four cases are distinct and interdependent studies that cumulatively build on insights and concepts in relation to each other. Researching the dynamics and structures of interpersonal argument is a complex undertaking. Intersubjectivity, conflict, and change are amorphous and shambolic; any account of them is fundamentally incomplete. Recognizing incompleteness, however, does not mean asserting unworthiness or deficiency. On the contrary, I think that recognizing partiality is fundamental to the quality of research into complex subjects. intersubjectivity of research

Starting with the first case’s dispute about cleaning products, I identified and worked with the intersubjectivity of the research process. I did so by paying attention to my flow of consciousness as well as to data gathered through my senses; I also mobilized spaces of encounter to elicit relational feedback through debriefing inquiries and consulted with diverse members of my community. In addition, I noticed and reflected on the complex systems of meanings and patterns of interaction that generate, and are generated by, the research process itself. I became sufficiently practised with this methodological complexity that, by the final case, I was able to competently investigate a group process through my subjectivity as both a facilitator and a researcher. Because of my dual role and the greater number of participants with whom to engage, there was an amplitude of complexity in this space of encounter, making it difficult to select and analyze material without either being overwhelmed by the complexity or imposing a linearity

32523_Jull.indd 116

2021-10-12 16:54:23



Implications for Inquiry

117

that did not exist. But by this point in the research process, I had developed considerable skills. I was able to differentiate and analyze the intersubjective elements of research, namely operations of consciousness, spaces of encounter, and complex systems of meanings. I could engage effectively with the interiority of my conversation partners in the debriefings. I could also identify the complexity of emergent possibilities in my analysis, and I interrogated the partiality of the method and its findings in my quality notes at the same time as I affirmed its validity and conceptual power. I explore these three layers of the intersubjective research process in greater detail below. First Level: Consciousness In my study of interpersonal conflict, I adopted the Insight approach’s focused inquiry into the data of consciousness. I recognized in the first case that my research about conflict could not focus only on sensory information (e.g., seeing Georgine use the cleaning product) but must also be directed toward my consciousness (e.g., my feelings about her use of the product). I further explored this inquiry into interiority through the case of “Outrage,” in which I looked at recollection and recording as different kinds of data collection. Listening to the recording of my conversation with Sophia, I discerned a nonlinear indeterminacy in the actual conversation that my recollection had made problematically smooth. In addition, I discovered with Sophia that recollection (rather than recording) was the repository where affect and significance were to be found. In other words, the recording was not able to capture my interior affective response, which took several pages to recount in the vignette. As Sophia further pointed out, because the vignette traced the movement between my interiority and our spoken dialogue, a page-by-page comparative review of the recording’s transcript would have appeared to show inaccuracies. In this way, I sought to explore the interiority of conflict behaviour through a variety of processes, including recollection, recording, and writing. I developed the substantial power of writing as a process of inquiry, recording moments of emotional spontaneity, feelings of uncertainty, and flashes of understanding. My writing process, including its revisions and refinements, was impelled by Insight-oriented, self-reflexive questions about whether it was accurate, significant, and accountable enough. Through these questions, I sought to verify the analytical validity, significance, and relevance of the research. I also recognized

32523_Jull.indd 117

2021-10-12 16:54:23

118

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

the challenges and limitations of writing as an explicit part of the research process itself. To investigate my interiority in the role of a researcher, I needed the precision of the Insight model’s identification of the operations of consciousness and their functional relations. The model helped me to notice that my decisions flowed from what I discerned to be significant on the basis of what I understood to be accurate. I also identified that when my knowing and valuing changed, my deciding changed, too. This precision helped me to differentiate and relate the operations of consciousness in order to be clearer about what I knew in my role as a researcher and how I knew it. Several quality notes point to the way that I worked with key Insight concepts in my writing to stimulate understanding, evoke related data, improve critical analysis, and move tacit knowing to more explicit assertion and reflective inquiry. In addition to supporting more precise articulations of the process of knowledge generation, these Insight concepts helped me to recognize and describe the “saturation” of my inquiries, or coming to appropriate closure in describing what I knew to be accurate and discerned as significant. In the “Intransigent Conflict,” for example, I recognized a sense of mental satiety as a signal that the case was sufficiently analyzed. I also experienced this satiety as a sense of fewer emergent or relevant questions, which helped me to assess that my understanding had been critically verified (enough) and the interpretive significance accounted for (enough). I subsequently verified my interior measure of “enough,” or sufficiency, with my interlocutors and members of my epistemic community. I also explicitly recognized and corrected, in the case of “Listening to Another Mind,” when an inquiry was not sufficient or saturated. I recognized the flaw of presenting an account that was devoid of my interiority and subsequently presented a more interior-focused vignette. The rewritten version was more precise, making explicit what I knew and discerned to be (ethically) significant in relation to my conversation partner, Gabriel. I also recognized a sense of insufficiency, a lack of mental satiety, in my account of how Gabriel’s conflict behaviour changed. Consequently, I returned to him for a second debriefing inquiry. I recognized that developing proficiency in the critical intersubjective processes of internal verification and external correlation is important in the production of authentic and meaningful qualitative research.

32523_Jull.indd 118

2021-10-12 16:54:23



Implications for Inquiry

119

Second Level: Dynamic Spaces of Encounter My first debriefing inquiry introduced research as a dynamic space of encounter through which I inquired into others’ interiorities while maintaining a focus on my own. I noted that I was uncertain about how to elicit my interlocutors’ response to the research, as well as how this response would be incorporated into the text. I subsequently highlighted my developing capacity to responsively engage with, and present, my interlocutors’ interiority throughout the cases. In recognizing that my interlocutors’ interiority, like mine, was shaped in dynamic spaces of encounter, I became attuned to the relationality of asking questions and sharing perspectives in the debriefing inquiry. I realized that I practised similar cognitive-relational skills in my roles as a conflict practitioner and a researcher, both of which required that I be curious, critical, discerning, imaginative, and conscientious. This task of eliciting others’ knowing, valuing, and deciding, as well as communicating my cognition to them, involves a process of intersubjectivity that takes place in innumerable everyday spaces of encounter and that is vital to the research itself. Another important moment in a debriefing inquiry afforded me the opportunity to explore the challenging and intersubjectively complex concept of “intention reading.” In conversing with Sophia after she had read my vignette, I asked her about her interiority: had I accurately discerned her intentions underlying some of her questions and responses to me? For example, I wondered whether her question “And Sage learned something?” had been meant to reduce my outrage by inclining my mind toward the benefits of the tryout. She confirmed that my intention reading was correct, helping me to recognize more clearly my resistance to being fixed or changed. Through this gentle, critical (rather than hasty) verifying process, Sophia helped me to affirm that spaces of research encounters are part of a complex process of knowing the other, being known by the other, and knowing that I am being known, all of which generated relational responses in me. By identifying the ongoing relational dynamic of knowing and valuing, I highlight the intersubjectivity of the research process. Because the “researching self” and the “researched other” exert a subtle and powerful reciprocating influence on each other, I needed to be accountably aware of my own interiority as I sought to engage with others. I

32523_Jull.indd 119

2021-10-12 16:54:23

120

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

believe that this accountability of self in relation to other is essential to producing quality, ethically attuned research. In the space of encounter with Gabriel, he and I explored this dynamic intersubjectivity of research in two ways. We made the discovery that when I attended to my own interiority in the second, more evocative account, I was able to elicit his interiority more precisely and accurately. This enhanced attunement to our individual interiorities made possible the generative collaborative debriefing inquiry described in the case. This recognition, that high-quality attention to interiority can generate high-quality analysis, is a significant methodological discovery. It mattered to Gabriel that I was not “self-­referenced” in my invitation for him to reflect on his conflict and that I had no “agenda” as to whether or how he would discuss his challenge with Felicity. Thus a critical skill that I discerned, as a researcher and conversation partner, is the capacity to differentiate self and other while being attuned to the interiority and relationality of the encounter. Representation – of self and other – was a continually stimulating challenge that I acknowledged and addressed in these texts. I accounted for my representation of others by recognizing that the vignette and commentary were partial portrayals of complexity, mediated through my subjectivity in my role as a researcher. Although I recognized that a shared understanding with my conversation partners affirmed the accuracy of the account, it was the differences between our perceptions that stimulated my curiosity, prompting me to seek to understand these variances. In each of the cases, I recognized that my interlocutors, despite validating my account, would likely have presented different narratives. I illuminated that, in the absence of threat, disagreement in research can stimulate learning and promote ethical accountability. For example, when Gabriel told me that I had not adequately represented the role-related tension that he experienced in the conflict, I grappled with his concern for some time, wondering whether this was possibly an example of “poor quality” in research. I subsequently accounted for my vignette’s presentation and analysis, particularly by recognizing that the (shared) criterion of anonymity foreclosed a more specific identification of roles in the case. I also unapologetically acknowledged that the account was a partial one, focused on the researcher’s subjectivity, and could not reflect the conflict in all its complexity. In our second debriefing inquiry, Gabriel affirmed the validity of my choice. If he had disagreed with my decision, a subsequent conversation would have been needed. I think that this issue of

32523_Jull.indd 120

2021-10-12 16:54:23



Implications for Inquiry

121

dissension in an autoethnographic account is very important and should be taken up in further lines of inquiry. In this way, I attended to the microprocesses of ethical negotiation in the dynamic space of the intersubjective learning involved in this kind of research. Consulting with members of my epistemic community in several spaces of encounter helped to generate knowledge and to validate my claims. These dynamic encounters provided opportunities to ask and respond to questions (e.g., “Is this a conflict?”) that developed the analytical strength of a case through verification. They also helped me to generate understanding or to deliberate new options. For example, my colleague’s insight-generating question about “whose mind, exactly, was changed” elicited from me a clearer articulation of the argument and its dissipation than I had been able to achieve up to that point, just as the question “Why did [Jack] get off so easy?” elicited in me a more expansive deliberating to identify more intervention alternatives in future encounters. These moments illuminated research as a responsive intersubjective process, thereby highlighting the dynamic interrelationship between individual consciousness and relational spaces of encounter. Third Level: Complex Systems of Meanings I recognized throughout this research that the systemic complexity of everyday conflict presented multiple challenges to writing high-quality autoethnographic research. It was difficult to recount a fleeting moment of emotion, such as annoyance at my partner’s behaviour, that was imbued with complex meanings; it was impossible to account for all the aspects of the encounter of which I was aware, and there were many aspects of each encounter that were beyond my awareness. Recognizing these limits, I accounted for the many factors that shaped the selection of material: the specific context and exigencies of a book such as this one, the conceptual resources of the research, and the pivotal shifts in key moments. In my role as a researcher, I recognized that my knowing, valuing, and writing resulted in research that was both partial and generative. Summative clarity can sometimes mask the fundamental uncertainty of complexity, making it necessary to resist an account that is too tidy, definitive, or conclusive. As noted above, I think that recognizing incompleteness in relation to complexity is essential to the quality of research insofar as it accounts for limits and boundaries in generating

32523_Jull.indd 121

2021-10-12 16:54:23

122

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

and presenting knowledge. Recognizing incompleteness can also be generative by eliciting further relevant questions. Moreover, telling the stories of my vignettes often elicited additional meanings from listeners – such as the reciprocating story of the elderly blind woman with a cane in the elevator – that expanded the interpretive possibilities in the moment. As a researcher, then, I embraced the partial and generative sense making that is integral to the creative, accountable complexity of qualitative research. Working accountably with complexity was a core research skill in this work. For example, in the case of “Outrage,” I acknowledged that the vignette was an excised portion of a long, complex conversation. I accounted for its closure at a midpoint in the conversation, just after the emergence of my expansive sense of love in relation to a shared vulnerability with my daughter. I recognized that I had privileged the emergence of love to conclude the vignette, primarily because of the expansive role that it played in dissipating the conflict. In choosing a point of closure, I recognized the importance of Sophia’s perspective in validating my account and in contributing to the sense making within the complex systems of meanings that patterned our interactions. In addition to recognizing the surplus of meaning in my own flow of consciousness, I worked with my interlocutors to become reflexively aware of the meanings saturating these complex social contexts. Maria, in our debriefing inquiry, recognized the impact of the pen-dropping silent member, which I had missed entirely. Sophia identified underexplored areas in my reflexive commentary, such as the significance of the fact that I was a nonhockey-playing mother responding to hockeycultured men. The contributions of my interlocutors added reflexive depth to each account, asserting additional analytical possibilities and validating the ones that had been accountably presented. As part of this process, I explicitly acknowledged and set aside tantalizing inquiries beyond the scope of my research. For example, although I was intrigued by the role of shame in dynamizing conflict, I recognized that the complexity of exploring this dynamic would obscure the focus of my specific inquiry. I repeatedly affirmed, without belabouring the point, that quality in research depends on a disciplined focus that refrains from pursuing too many lines of inquiry, no matter how interesting. As another aspect of working with complexity, I acknowledged potential connections of this research with other roles and with other domains of knowing and doing. In “Tension in the Group,” I

32523_Jull.indd 122

2021-10-12 16:54:23



Implications for Inquiry

123

recognized with Maria that there were many affordances available to us in our debriefing inquiry, including leadership, organizational development, and change management. We were situated in relation to each other by our specific roles of researcher and interlocutor within our conversation, but Maria and I also availed ourselves of meanings related to our additional roles as leaders, mothers, and citizens. These roles shaped our knowing, valuing, and deciding in our specific context, situating us in relation to vastly more complex systems of meanings. As a researcher, then, I practised the skill of paying attention to the specific roles enacted in the space of encounter while being mindful of the complexity of available roles, thereby being accountable for the partial generativity of the significance that I discerned. Reflecting on the skills to research this book, I recognized the importance of being attuned to my interiority as I engaged with others’ interiority in dynamic spaces of encounter situated in complex social contexts. Understanding research as an intersubjective process afforded me more precision, as I gained clarity on what (and how) I know, value, and decide in my interactions with others in the role of a researcher. Using writing as an introspective engagement with interiority, I sought additional perspectives on the focus of my inquiry. Relationally, the interviewing skills that I used in my debriefing inquiries were closely related to the inquiry skills that I used as a conflict practitioner when seeking to spaciously elicit others’ knowing, valuing, and deciding in conversational spaces of encounter. Understanding the complexity and contingency of these contexts gave me the humility to recognize the partiality of my perspective while opening me to the possibilities to learn. I also affirmed that encountering others involves discerning ethical significance (or valuing) and that recognizing the ethical interplay in the researching process was essential to producing high-quality, accountable research. In accounting for the process of research, I also highlight the product of this research: the multireflexive layered accounts. As a primary layer, the first-person vignette conveyed the interiority of the researcher’s affect and cognition through an experiential narrative. The secondary reflexive commentary then produced more abstract understandings of how interpersonal argument arose and dissipated while situating the vignette within larger contexts of social science research. The subsequent debriefing inquiry provided the opportunity to validate the research as well as to investigate the interlocutor’s interiority in relation to the analyzed.

32523_Jull.indd 123

2021-10-12 16:54:23

124

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

As I retrospectively consider the process and product of this research, several questions emerge for future consideration. Although the self-in-system may not be a suitable unit of analysis to address all phenomena, what are other phenomena that could be usefully illuminated with this investigative attention to the intersubjectivity of research? What refinements would be necessary to adjust the method for new contexts, and what limitations might be identified in doing so? How might one examine more complex social processes, such as the one investigated in the final case? How could power be explored further in these accounts, not only in the vignettes but also in my debriefings with interlocutors? How might this method address contestations – even conflicts – over the researcher’s representation of others? These questions could further explore the intersubjectivity and ethical dynamics of research, advancing an approach that I think is promising in its ability to investigate and account for its theoretically informed and narratively interesting discoveries.

32523_Jull.indd 124

2021-10-12 16:54:23

9 Implications for Conflict Analysis

The questions and discoveries in previous chapters rely on foundational concepts of conflict and change rooted in an understanding of intersubjectivity and the Insight approach. As I fought, wondered, and opened myself to the uncertainties and possibilities of interacting with others, I advanced my understanding of the structure and dynamics of everyday arguments. In doing so, I developed my capacity to engage more authentically with the conflicts that I encountered (and sometimes helped to create). The following case-by-case summaries highlight the cumulative discoveries that contributed to this clearer understanding and to this more authentic engagement. case 1: intransigent conflict

Through my inquiry into a conflict over my toxicologist partner’s decision to use particular cleaning products, I introduced the core concepts of intersubjectivity, conflict, and change. I differentiated my operations of consciousness from the complex fields of meanings that patterned the space of encounter where we were situated. I recognized that my incomplete knowing and elemental valuing of my partner’s behaviour were enacted in a space of encounter where our account giving was accusatory and defensive. In turn, our roles and interactions shaped what I knew and registered as significant in her behaviour, including the social meanings of good partner, consumer, and toxicologist. I subsequently turned my focus to differentiating the operations of consciousness themselves, distinguishing my knowing, valuing, and deciding. This differentiation is important because the argument was

32523_Jull.indd 125

2021-10-12 16:54:23

126

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

not dynamized by my truncated performance of knowing, such as my incurious understanding and hasty verifying. It was a fact that Georgine had applied nonvinegar products, thereby disregarding my preferences. I was not incorrect in this argument; my knowledge was verifiable by an appeal to data that were observable through my sense of sight. What animated the argument was my valuing – how I ­discerned the significance of the products and her application of them – which in turn sparked my unreflexive decision to criticize. Inquiring further into the operation of valuing to discern threats that dynamized the conflict, I focused my attention on the feeling that had registered my discernment of threat. In seeing Georgine using those products, I felt annoyed. This was elemental valuing in that it registered an impact whose complex significance I could not discern until I was less truncated in my valuing. Upon further reflection, I could discern that I perceived several aversive gaps: a personal, diminished sense of self (i.e., “I am unimportant”), practical concerns (i.e., “there are health risks”), and a violation of my expectations of her performance of a social role (i.e., “she is a bad toxicologist who should know better”). At the time, I was not explicitly aware of these ethical narratives; instead, they were registered through my elemental and wordless feeling of annoyance. With curious attention directed to this elemental feeling, I was able to discern that my annoyance signalled these concerns about my unimportance, health risks, and her performance in the role of a toxicologist. This reflexive process of investigation affirmed the significant relationship between affect and cognition, illuminating that my affect registered an elemental significance (i.e., annoyance) that my more mindful cognitive operation of valuing could discern (i.e., I interpreted her behaviour as an expression of her belief that I was unimportant). I subsequently explored this concept of valuing, or “affective cognition,” as the process through which feelings that register significance are discerned. For example, the threats that I discerned in “Outrage” were signalled by anger and shame; the threats in “Listening to Another Mind” were registered in Gabriel as worry and frustration; and the affects that dynamized the conflict in “Tension in the Group” were implicit yet evident in their manifestation of criticism and withdrawal. Affective cognition – the process of valuing – registered threats that precipitated conflict behaviour. The interdependent relations among the operations became a further point of conceptual development in this first case. I recognized how

32523_Jull.indd 126

2021-10-12 16:54:23



Implications for Conflict Analysis

127

the discernment of threat had a constrictive effect on the performance of other cognitive operations; it impelled truncated deliberating, evaluating, and deciding in my interactions with Georgine, causing my decisions to seem more “choiceless” than “made.” My annoyance at Georgine did not generate an expansive consideration of options in responding to her. Instead, my mind was swiftly carried to the unreflexive choice of contemptuous criticism. I recognized, too, that my truncated performance of deciding had a truncating impact on the pattern of interaction with my partner. My rashly worded criticism of Georgine did not cause her to change her mind and align with my valuing but quite the opposite. Instead of changing her mind, my criticism generated threat in her, with the result that in her state of contraction, she lashed out with a critical remark of her own. In this case, our simultaneously contracted operations of consciousness did not produce an expanded result but led to a reactive bickering that was generated by threat and sustained by our increasing efforts to defend. Change In recognizing how conflict behaviour can emerge and be sustained by the constrictive effects of threat – which truncate cognitive performance within spaces of encounter involving complex systems of meanings – this case introduced the conceptual basis for influencing change. Changes to conflict behaviours require changes in the interiority of the parties, which can become more possible when the processes through which the conflict behaviours were decided upon and enacted are changed. Rebecca’s call altered our space of encounter, so our recriminating account giving was altered. Rebecca was able to expansively, affectionately acknowledge my threat without being carried by it herself, and she affirmed Georgine’s interiority in a way that Georgine could more expansively affirm. Because Rebecca recognized our different valuing, each of us could be right without the other being wrong. The effect of Rebecca’s recognition was to diminish the constrictive effect of threat on my operations of consciousness, which then instigated my more expansive cognitive performance. I was able to pay attention to Rebecca’s remark about Georgine and her family of origin in such a way that my valuing became more expansive. I could consider Georgine’s behaviour to be protective industriousness rather than only pointed disregard. The

32523_Jull.indd 127

2021-10-12 16:54:23

128

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

diminishment of threat supported a change in the way that I intersubjectively “knew” Georgine. No new factual knowledge was acquired in the course of the encounter. But in this more expansive space of encounter where a third person intervened to diminish the sense of threat, my change of mind involved revaluing through a recombination of ethical affordances, or available meanings. Becoming curious about the perceived certainty or inevitability of threat enabled me to discern different meanings, thereby altering the defence-oriented conflict behaviours that I was enacting to protect against threat. In other words, diminishing threat in the space of a three-way encounter precipitated my revaluing of Georgine’s behaviour, which subsequently changed my own behaviour. Importantly, my preference for the nontoxic cleaning products remained even as my valuing of her behaviour changed. Similarly, I discovered through our debriefing inquiry that Georgine’s interpretation of the encounter was quite different from mine. This discovery affirmed a key concept: that shared interpretation or “common ground” is not necessary for interpersonal argument to dissipate. In the absence of threat, diverse interpretations can coexist without conflict.1 This is a more precise understanding of what is often called “agreeing to disagree.” c a s e 2 : o u t r ag e

In this case, I explored the intersubjective processes of conflict in more depth and complexity. There were two distinct patterns of interaction presented in this vignette. The focal pattern of interaction occurred with Sophia, where we engaged with each other’s interiority through my accounts and her responses, carried by complex systems of meanings, such as those related to “good mothering.” In this space of encounter, Sophia and I investigated another pattern of interaction involving the coaches and the hockey tryouts. I was certain that the coaches were unfair, and my knowing and valuing of them were contextually shaped by complex systems of meanings about hockey teams, gender, and tryout ethics. The space of encounter with Sophia gave me the opportunity to reflect on my interiority in relation to the hockey tryouts and evoked her own memories of former hockey tryouts. This case revealed the complexity of the systems in which we were interdependently situated. That was also true of “Listening to Another

32523_Jull.indd 128

2021-10-12 16:54:23



Implications for Conflict Analysis

129

Mind,” where the account giving between me and Gabriel offered him an opportunity to reflect on the intersubjective complexity between himself, Felicity, and Abby. I continued to explore the concepts of threat, defence, and intersubjectivity in this case of “Outrage.” As in the first case, because my discernment of threat contracted my knowing and valuing, I found my mind being unreflexively carried by ruminations of anger and recrimination. In this case, the social dimension of threat – the violation of norms – was particularly active since the repetitious narratives of the coaches’ unfair behaviour occupied my mind. Although I knew myself to be outraged, part of me recognized the degree to which I was being choicelessly carried by these fuming narratives. The sense of choicelessness made me want to try to change my mind. It signalled the need to talk to a friend or, in more technical terms, to seek a more expansive intersubjective space of encounter to support a reflexivity that might identify what happened (i.e., the knowable intelligibility) and what mattered about it (i.e., the significance). Although I wanted to change, I noticed that I could not induce my own ethical reflexivity. I was too constricted by the threat and was carried by the repetitious narratives of injustice. I needed someone else’s curiosity in order to attend to my own interiority differently. This case introduced an inquiry into the dynamic interchange of questions and responses through which knowing, valuing, and deciding can be responsively activated or not. I attended to the way that the formulated structure of questions can elicit reflexivity in spaces of encounter. The question “And Sage learned something?” did not induce my reflexivity because I thought that Sophia was trying to change my mind and I resisted her efforts to do so.2 In contrast, the questions “And where is the conflict really lying for you?” and “What is it that you are protecting her from?” did elicit my curiosity to explore what mattered to me. In other words, Sophia’s questions oriented my attention to reflexively wonder about my knowing and valuing. In subsequent cases, I continued to explore how the structure of questions can carry consciousness and elicit reflexive account giving in spaces of encounter. As I noted in “Tension in the Group,” the “best” question is not identifiable as “already existing out there.” Instead, the value of a question can be discerned by the response that it elicits. Does it generate more threat? Does it facilitate reflexivity or curiosity? I discovered in this case that instigating reflexivity can help me to recognize new aspects of an event, to discern other significance, and

32523_Jull.indd 129

2021-10-12 16:54:23

130

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

to make explicit what was previously implicit. After some internal struggle and uncomfortable puzzling, I realized that a sense of shame was a salient affect that was dynamizing my consciousness. The relationship between affect and cognition was further affirmed in this instance. With more discerning, I recognized that the feeling of shame registered my helpless inability to protect my daughter from loss. The diminished sense of myself as being unable to protect her was a constriction-inducing threat that dynamized my preoccupying search for face-saving actions. Once I had discerned the significance of my sense of helplessness, other options became preferable to conflict. Thus reflexivity, induced in a space of encounter, played a role in changing my valuing and deciding that dynamized the conflict. Reflexivity about my valuing thus affected my behaviour insofar as my decision making became oriented to responding to my helplessness rather than to “righting the wrong” of the tryout process. I accentuated in this case that the ethical reflexivity elicited in the space of encounter could have produced a different outcome. It could have generated a clearer discernment of the importance to me of addressing the systemic threat of the coaches’ unfairness, which might have led me to develop strategies to make a complaint or withdraw. The analytic point is not that conflict is bad but that it can be reflexively instigated or choicelessly carried toward behaviours of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Conflict might indeed be the most principled course of action, or it might be hastily, choicelessly enacted. Ethical reflexivity appeared, in this case, to be a salient factor in determining whether I had a sense of being choicelessly carried or more conscientiously responsive. A further salient factor in changing the trajectory of my conflict behaviour was the expansive sense of love that I encountered in recognizing that my and Sage’s mutual vulnerability as mother and daughter produced a powerful intersubjective connection. In the presence of this love and powerful attunement, my mind could expand. I started to wonder how I could respond to my vulnerability and hers rather than how I could teach the coaches a lesson. I recognized that my sense of social ethics – my perception that the coaches were not acting right – was less salient than my sense of a diminished self. I also recognized the difference between discerning a diminishing, shameful vulnerability that is isolating and an expansive vulnerability that ­connects me to others, a vulnerability of solidarity. The impact of

32523_Jull.indd 130

2021-10-12 16:54:24



Implications for Conflict Analysis

131

compassion or love on knowing, valuing, and deciding was a further conceptual aspect that contributed to the analysis of the case. c a s e 3 : l i st e n i n g t o a n ot h e r m i n d

Whereas the first two cases involved my researching self in the role of a conflict participant involved in an actual or potential argument, the third case, “Listening to Another Mind,” explored intersubjectivity through the researching self’s role as a conflict practitioner or listener while a friend recounted a conflict with his colleague. These roles situated me in relation to Gabriel and shaped the horizon of what was possible for me to know, value, and decide within the context in which we were situated. I presented two vignettes to highlight the different layers of inquiry and interiority involved in these roles. In the first vignette, I represented myself as focused primarily on Gabriel’s interiority. I elicited his ethical reflexivity – his curiosity toward his own valuing – by attending to his feelings as indicators of the threat narratives that were animating the conflict. In hearing that he was “worried,” I asked whether the worry might indicate an unwelcome future. I was not correct; rather, what Gabriel discerned was that his worry registered a diminished sense of himself as a jackass due to his lack of attunement to Felicity as a colleague. After Gabriel described his understanding of the difficult dynamics between Felicity and Abby, I produced an affect-rich account of Felicity’s interiority. My animated narrative instigated Gabriel’s revaluing: he recognized Felicity to be (valiantly) struggling rather than (dishonourably) being difficult. This process of eliciting ethical reflexivity through a dynamic exchange of questions and responses contributed to changing his mind about the conflict. The second version of the vignette maintained these conceptual accounts of threat, ethical reflexivity, and change. However, my investigative attention became more attuned to my interiority in the process of everyday ethical negotiation in ordinary conversations. In one part of the vignette, I wondered how to be a “good” friend and oscillated between different options before settling on a course of action. This everyday valuing of how to be a good friend is similar to the ethical negotiations about the “good” that took place in the previous accounts, where Georgine and I disputatiously negotiated what it meant to be a good cleaner or partner and where Sophia and I discussed the

32523_Jull.indd 131

2021-10-12 16:54:24

132

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

concept of “good mothering” and whether I was enacting it. I recognized that how to be a good friend (or partner or mother) was relationally discerned through the valuing mind, negotiated in spaces of encounter, and carried and shaped by complex systems of social meanings. Everyday ethical notions of the “good,” then, can be unthinkingly assumed or reflexively discerned. I explored how to purposefully elicit ethical reflexivity in this case by differentiating my own cognitive performance from Gabriel’s in a way that maintained both my authentic curiosity toward him and a mindful awareness of my own interiority. For example, Gabriel noted that he was more open to talking about his conflict with Felicity because he sensed that I had no “agenda” or particular outcome in mind. He sensed that my goal was to understand him “on his own terms,” which in turn facilitated a more expansive state that opened him to being reflexive. I facilitated ethical reflexivity, then, by attending to him without reference to my own knowing or valuing about the situation. Instead, my curiosity was directed to what he knew and discerned as significant. This approach had the effect of increasing his ethical reflexivity and openness to emergent possibility in our space of encounter. In our debriefing inquiry, Gabriel and I discussed different conversational moves that can heighten or distract from reflexivity. As a listener, when I was attuned to his interiority without my own selfreferencing, I helped him to wonder about himself, too. We also discovered that when I more clearly expressed my knowing, valuing, and deciding in the second version of the vignette, he became more aware of his own interiority as well. However, this attention to interiority was not a technique that yielded predictable results. Sometimes one’s relational orientation to interiority can result in the other’s resistance, as I experienced with Sophia in a significant interchange. As with the “good,” the relational moves that elicit reflexivity are emergent and intersubjectively discerned. Interestingly, I also elicited Gabriel’s self-reflexivity by attending to Felicity’s interiority as presented by Gabriel. As part of our conversational account giving, I briefly performed a monologue of Felicity’s feelings, valuing, and threats. Through my “performance,” Gabriel found himself more attuned to Felicity’s interiority. In this attunement, Gabriel shifted from his “self-referenced” knowing of Felicity as one who made him feel like a jackass to his “other-referenced” knowing

32523_Jull.indd 132

2021-10-12 16:54:24



Implications for Conflict Analysis

133

of her as one who was struggling with threat and acted defensively. Through my performance of her interiority, he discerned a different significance in her behaviour. He changed his mind, which altered his conflict behaviour. This was an emergent moment of change, unforeseen and surprisingly effective. This vignette, then, noticed three strategies whereby ethical reflexivity was heightened: curious questioning, transparent disclosure of my own interiority, and elicitive presentation of another’s interiority. A significant skill in the research process was the ability to maintain awareness of my deciding in these distinct conversational moves and to recognize their impacts on my conversation partner through his responsive engagement with me. An emergent, contingent account of change like this one can be challenging because it does not provide a reproducible technique for effecting change, as Maria noted in “Tension in the Group.” Although I did not discover that there is one “formula for change,” the research in these cases does recognize that paying attention to interiority, which is carried through roles within complex systems, can support an emergent dissipation of conflict. Gabriel highlighted this emergence of change in our second debriefing inquiry. When his threat was diminished – when his sense of himself was not at stake – he was able to know Felicity from a more expansive state of curiosity rather than from a state of constricted certainty about her “being difficult.” Although his more discerning valuing changed his decision making, it did not transform their entire pattern of interactions, as there was still tension between them. Gabriel recognized that his willingness to engage with her and his efforts to appreciate her had a greater probability of transforming his difficulties with her than his contracted annoyance. This discovery underscores a significant theme related to the emergent nature of change in these cases: authoritative demands for change are unlikely to elicit it. My contracted criticism of my partner’s use of cleaning products in “Intransigent Conflict” did not convert her to my point of view but instead generated a constrictive threat that prevented this outcome and produced an argument. Similarly, although Gabriel wanted Felicity to change, he recognized that she was more likely to change her relationship with Abby when she was not being attacked by him. Although change cannot be scripted, conditions can be created that make the dissipation of an argument more likely through the diminishment of the constrictive effect of threat and the consequent inducement of reflexivity about interiority.

32523_Jull.indd 133

2021-10-12 16:54:24

134

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

case 4: tension in the group

In the fourth case, I researched the complex process of a group meeting to investigate the dissipation of an interpersonal argument that threatened to disrupt the group’s crucial decision-making process. I analyzed the nuanced complexity of intersubjectivity, conflict, and change to illuminate the knowing, valuing, and deciding of individual minds, I examined the interactions of individuals in spaces of encounter, including their account giving, and I addressed the complex systems of meanings that afforded, or carried, these subjectivities and interactions. By this stage in the research, a conceptual foundation had been laid that included the differentiated and related operations of consciousness, the dynamic of threat and defend, and the potential to facilitate change through intersubjective processes of eliciting reflexivity, altering spaces of encounter, and enabling additional affordances of meaning to be activated or mobilized. This case explored these conceptual elements more deeply than did the others, especially in its exploration of role. My role in the group significantly shaped what was possible for me to know, value, and decide in relation to myself and the others. As the group’s temporary leader, I shaped the process through which individuals interacted, made decisions, and knew each other and their collectivity. As I summarize below, these functions had an impact on the way that conflict emerged, as well as on the dissipation of conflict when it arose. As a leader, I shaped the conversational interactions by providing carriers or guides that could orient participants’ knowing, valuing, and deciding, such as proposing a topic, directing the flow of conversation, or initiating individual conversations amid the group discussion. In doing so, I shaped others’ thinking and deciding toward loosely determinate ends regarding how and about what they would speak to each other. Although these were proposed guides, the participants made their own decisions: they spoke about what was on their mind, interrupted each other, or stayed silent. They even contested the initiating topic for discussion, which induced a deliberative process to select a better topic. The leader’s actions, in other words, generated potential responses but did not necessarily dictate them. The leader’s intersubjective function of providing carriers that could initiate or regulate the interactions in the space of encounter became salient in the conflict when I mediated Maya’s sharp rebuke through

32523_Jull.indd 134

2021-10-12 16:54:24



Implications for Conflict Analysis

135

a more expansive response. The accused individuals did not have to defend themselves against her attacks through conflict behaviours of their own. Instead, I influenced their interactions by addressing the entire group with my remark that the eruption of this argument signalled an opportunity to practise what we had discussed in the workshop two days previously. Thus, in addition to regulating interactions of the participants in the space of encounter, I performed the function of eliciting more expansive valuing: instead of recognizing (only) a threatening “gap” in the performance of group decision making, I also discerned a more affirming “fit” between the conduct of group members and their desired goal to better address conflict behaviour. By identifying this significance in response to the tension, I provided another carrier, or narrative, that could orient individuals’ own discernment of significance. In addition to shaping the valuing of the group toward discerning the significance of particular instances, I helped the group to intersubjectively engage with each other. By noticing and wondering aloud with frozen Lucas, I elicited a back-and-forth account from him about his decision to remain silent. My emergent knowing and valuing of Lucas’s interiority drew on complex systems of meanings to recognize his behaviour as more caring and overwhelmed than rude and disrespectful. As I came to understand Lucas’s valuing and deciding, the rest of the group came to know and value his behaviour differently, which enabled a different kind of interaction in the space of encounter. In this way, the conversation with Lucas and the other encounters between the participants and myself as a leader were intersubjective processes whereby leader and participant became more expansively known to each other and the wider group. Maria recognized that the participants’ more curious understanding, critical verifying, and perceptive valuing had a significant impact on the dissipation of their interpersonal argument. A further point of analytic importance is the conceptual distinction among the intersubjective aspects of knowing, valuing, and deciding. In the interaction with Lucas, I did not ask him about his knowing of facts but instead focused my attention on the interiority of his operation of valuing. I recognized that he was uncomfortable and that the intensity of his discomfort signalled that something of consequence was at stake for him. I affirmed that by his affect I could surmise that he cared a lot, not a little, about this decision. My attention to the interiority of his valuing had the effect of eliciting his emotionally

32523_Jull.indd 135

2021-10-12 16:54:24

136

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

charged look of confirmation. Since others in the group could see his response, they were offered an opportunity to draw new affordances from the complex systems of meanings that inflected the space where the encounter was enacted. Most participants responded with compassion in their eyes, whereas others looked annoyed. My capacity as a leader to differentiate and elicit reflexivity about salient operations of consciousness played a role in the dissipation of conflict. As a leader, I also helped to intersubjectively orient individuals’ knowing, valuing, and deciding by regulating the patterns of interaction through which they engaged in the space of encounter. For example, when Jack disagreed about the topic for discussion, I sought to clarify his reasoning through a one-on-one discussion, and then I signalled for others to take turns speaking, further rearticulated the significance in their suggestions, and subsequently inclined the group process toward a collaboratively made decision. This was a space where, as a leader, I regulated the encounter to engage and integrate participants’ knowing, valuing, and deciding in a way that would generate new possibilities in a nonconflictual, more expansive pattern of interaction. Several useful conceptual tools about conflict were further developed in this case, particularly the constrictive impact of threat and the expansive effect of its diminishment. There were several instances in the vignette when I discerned threat – in me and in others – yet conflict did not emerge. For example, when Jack contested the suggestion of the topic for discussion, I registered an internal dismay that signalled a practical threat to the group process, even as I recognized and affirmed the merit of his intervention. Rather than choicelessly defending myself or the proposed process with a constrictive rebuke, I was able to reflexively recognize threat and consider options other than defence. In this instance, I spaciously and curiously responded to his intervention. Although threat was present, the decision to defend was not. In the absence of a defence-oriented conflict behaviour, conflict did not emerge. The absence of defended conflict behaviours can prevent or dissipate conflict, as further recognized in Leila’s response to Lucas’s decision to pass. Leila registered the significance of Lucas’s passing as a threat to her social sense of group process and to her personal sense of safety within it. She articulated this threat in a self-reflexive statement of concern about her sense of safety rather than in an otheroriented judgment of the ignobility of his choice. Her intervention

32523_Jull.indd 136

2021-10-12 16:54:24



Implications for Conflict Analysis

137

was an expression of threat without an accompanying decision to defend through fighting, fleeing, freezing, or fawning. Moreover, I recognized that the self-reflexive nature of her intervention had the effect of inducing self-reflexivity in me and the potential to induce it in others.3 Although its outcome was difficult to predict, Leila’s intervention had the potential effect of opening the group to more dialogue about the process. In contrast, Maya’s decision to defend through conflict behaviour rather than through a self-reflexive account, generated a paralyzing moment of conflict. Her moralizing judgment, which condemned “the passers” as rude and disrespectful, instigated a constricted, frozen expression of conflict behaviour in the group. In this instance, because her knowing and valuing had become conflated, others’ passing was regarded with the certainty of fact as an expression of disrespect, a threat to which she responded by defensively condemning it. The defensive accusation that the passers had been “rude and disrespectful” then created in others the defensive conflict response of freeze (and possibly fantasies of flight). Consequently, this case provides an important conceptual development about conflict. It examines instances when the discernment of threat was activated but the decision to defend was not. In these instances, conflict did not emerge, whereas in the instance when both threat and defend were activated, a moment of conflict erupted. In response to this moment of conflict, I leaned into the uncertain, contracted space of conflict, using the conceptual tools about change to respond. I noticed several salient aspects that contributed to the emergence of new possibilities through the dissipation of interpersonal argument. Noticing conflict behaviour, paying attention to interiority, wondering about threat, and influencing the patterns of interactions all contributed to a greater probability of emergent change. I acted purposefully to support this change by engaging with the individuals as they engaged with each other in the space of encounter, by providing an orienting discernment of the significance of the moment, and by eliciting an account giving of Lucas’s valuing in order for the group to “know” Lucas differently, as well as for him to know himself differently, according to Maria. In my role as the group leader, I actively sought to diminish others’ discernment of threat. In holding my arms open, I enacted a more spacious stance to which participants could intersubjectively respond. This gesture was accompanied by an affirmation of the significance

32523_Jull.indd 137

2021-10-12 16:54:24

138

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

of the moment as an ethically “good” moment to practise skills rather than an ethically “bad” moment of degenerative chaos. I drew this notion of the good from the complex available meanings that could have been mobilized in that moment. Thus the strategies to diminish threat were embodied, affective, and cognitive. Enacting other strategies to dissipate the conflict, I attended to the spaces of encounter in order to support account giving and reflexivity. I elicited a reflexive account from Lucas regarding his silent nodding, thereby instigating a broader revaluing of Lucas’s behaviour as ethically “caring” rather than unethically “rude and disrespectful.” I nonverbally interacted with Leila in a way that conveyed my support and elicited a responsive smile from her. It was this micronegotiation that prompted my decision to invite her to provide an account, which she did in an expansive and self-reflexive manner. She spoke about the importance, for her, of participation where all voices are heard. Her threat had sufficiently diminished for her contracted concern about process to be replaced by an articulation of what mattered to her about the group and the decision-making meeting. This case provided additional empirical affirmation that conflict can dissipate by diminishing the constrictive effect of threat and eliciting reflexivity in accountgiving spaces of encounter. A complexity of responsive decisions produced the dissipation of this conflict. This was not a linear cause-and-effect process; it was emergent, co-created, and diverse. As in the first case, “Intransigent Conflict,” where Georgine and I had different interpretations of the event, I did not conflate cooperation with agreement. I think that this is an important point, revealing that it is possible for individuals to maintain different, even contrasting, points of view without conflict if they are not constricted by threat. Leila could dislike Lucas and his behaviour at the same time as she made a decision to be a more collaborative participant in the group. Other influences on the argument’s dissipation were evident, such as Maya’s decision to remain silent and not articulate further criticism, Jack’s and Lucas’s decisions to refrain from defending themselves against her moralizing judgment, and the subsequent participants’ choice to make their individual contributions to the decision-making meeting. Many decisions created possibilities for an emergent new outcome. I observed the emergent nature of change in this case. Although the dissipation of the interpersonal argument enabled the decision-making meeting to continue, it did not effect a resolution of the group’s

32523_Jull.indd 138

2021-10-12 16:54:24



Implications for Conflict Analysis

139

broader decision-making process. Sharp disagreement arose again, and I left the meeting with uncertainty and concern about the future of the process. It took time for the nonlinear emergence of change: Lucas and Maria had a conversation where his (ethical) concerns were more clearly articulated and she was more attuned to the significance of his concerns. Together, they were able to identify a new possibility that subsequently produced a group-endorsed decision. The dissipation of the interpersonal argument made a contribution to a broader change insofar as the group avoided disintegrating and conditions were set for a subsequent expansive conversation between Lucas and Maria. Although identified in retrospect, the process of change was protracted and did not have a certain or predictable outcome. Once the argument had dissipated, different conversations were able to take place, which led to the unpredictable and eventual discovery of a transformative arrangement. Change that is not immediate or direct can initially leave us feeling stymied. Yet a gradual shift toward more collaborative interactions still counts as “success.” Achieving such success can be supported by a variety of strategies: I attended to the space of encounter, mediating interactions among the participants, I was oriented to creating more expansive cognitive space for participants when threat emerged, I discerned ethical significance amid the complexity of key moments, I elicited an account from Lucas that enabled a revaluing of his behaviour from rude to caring, and I engaged with Leila and secured her consent to re-engage. These were discernible aspects of the argument’s dissipation in their many dimensions. In using specific skills and strategies to support a nonlinear change, I relied on the conceptual frameworks of conflict and change to guide my decision making. My actions were the result of what I knew and discerned to be significant. The book’s Conclusion further addresses the conceptual and practical strategies for facilitating change in the context of the complex intersubjective challenge of interpersonal conflict.

32523_Jull.indd 139

2021-10-12 16:54:24

Conclusion

“So what?” was one of the more helpful pieces of feedback that I received during my graduate training in conflict resolution, written by a kind and respected scholar-practitioner next to a few paragraphs in an early essay that I had submitted. I had tried to impress the instructor with my command of many abstract concepts and had lost touch with their practical relevance or application. My instructor then guided me to use concepts in the service of skill development so that I could answer the “So what?” question by showing how the concepts helped me to make sense of the real world of messy conflict. This anatomy has been full of technical vocabulary and “milliondollar words,” as another member of my feedback community told me cheerfully. My aim has been to convey these complex ideas through everyday stories in order to help readers to take more precise and effective action. In a similar way, medical practitioners use the term “synchronous diaphragmatic flutter” to describe an ordinary hiccup. The everyday word is more evocative (and fun to say), but the precise term conveys a meaning that is useful for practitioners when these hiccupy flutters are persistent and disruptive. Articulating the structure and dynamics of conflict behaviour with precision can help us to focus attention and efforts in more effective directions. Although the simplification of language or practices has its place, some techniques that I have previously taught in conflict or communication courses oversimplified complexity. For example, I would advise students to “use open questions instead of closed ones,” explaining that a closed question produces a “yes” or “no” answer, whereas an open question yields a more extensive answer. Unfortunately, the technique of the “open question” lacks complexity, precision, context,

32523_Jull.indd 140

2021-10-12 16:54:24

Conclusion

141

and interiority. For instance, the closed question “Did I understand you correctly?” is an excellent question for verifying, whereas the open question “Why are you such a jerk?” is an expression of valuing but one structured as a question. To play with this idea further, the question “Why are you so stubborn?” could be interpreted as a curious question, an exasperated insult, or affectionate banter, depending on the circumstances as well as on the inner state of the speaker and receiver of the comment. Context is important in deciding what questions to ask and when to ask them. As J. Price (2018) highlights, there is a difference between a technique and a method. A technique is useful for replicating results, regardless of context. A recipe for lentil soup is supposed to work in my kitchen as well as yours. When students ask me for a list of questions to guide their curiosity when they are practising their skills, I sometimes have the sense that they are hoping for a replicable recipe for success. Although examples of specific questions are very useful as guides, such a list is not a recipe that will yield instant change. As the cases revealed, questions often lead to unexpected answers, and a list could become almost irrelevant in guiding an attuned or authentic response. To address the complexity of conflict interactions, a method of discovery is more useful than a series of techniques. In these concluding thoughts, I avoid the temptation to offer a list of techniques or summative pieces of advice. Instead, I reflect further on the analytical and action-oriented implications of this work. emergence of conflict

The cases provided diverse opportunities to inquire into a variety of everyday conflictual interactions, manifested in behaviours of argument, avoidance, freezing, or fawning. These cases featured sharp criticism, icy silence, abrupt endings to conversational exchanges, overly friendly gestures to mask a sense of a diminished self, and many other conflict behaviours. In analyzing conflict behaviour in its many manifestations, I showed how the discernment of threat animated these decisions to defend. In doing so, I explored how the cognitive operation of valuing discerns threat through aversive, sometimes elemental feelings like fear, shame, frustration, annoyance, and worry. These feelings revealed gaps related to unwelcome senses of self, such as unimportance or foolishness; practical fears about risks, such as health concerns or lost

32523_Jull.indd 141

2021-10-12 16:54:24

142

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

contracts; or social concerns about performance of roles and systems, such as selecting hockey players, collegiality, or participation in group meetings. When a more contracted or elemental performance of ­valuing was registered as a certainty of knowledge – “my partner is uncaring,” “the coaches are unfair,” or “the passers are rude” – these moralizing judgments obscured the incomplete, incurious, or hasty knowing and the elemental valuing involved. The cases further revealed how this constrictive effect of threat was connected to truncated deliberating and constrained deciding. For example, my elemental valuing of a diminished sense of self generated contemptuous criticizing, my social concerns about fairness in hockey tryouts animated my fuming ruminations of protest, and a contracted sense of being a jackass instigated a heated exchange between my friend and his colleague. The truncating effect of threat provoked a sense that choices were unreflexively enacted rather than purposefully made. Moreover, when one person decided to defend through conflict behaviour, it had the tendency of evoking a discernment of threat in others, which generated their reciprocally defensive responses and created a pattern of escalating conflict. In one case, my partner protectively lashed out at me to defend against her discernment of threat(s) related to my criticism. In another moment of conflict behaviour, many onlookers in the group meeting responded in frozen silence to Maya’s sharp reprimand, and the decision-making process was at an impasse. The understanding that conflict behaviour involved both components – a discernment of threat and a decision to defend – was reinforced by the recognition of situations where conflict did not emerge despite the discernment of threat. Although Leila discerned and expressed her sense of threat about the “passers” actions, she did not engage in the defensive conflict behaviour of blaming or departing. Several instances of amicable disagreement, such as in the debriefings between me and Georgine and between me and Gabriel, also revealed how differing interpretations can coexist without necessarily generating a decision to defend. Disagreement is not the same as conflict behaviour when threat is not discerned. Further research, particularly on the dynamics of conflict as a discernment of threat and a decision to defend, could explore the limits and strength of this approach. How might this research further connect with knowledge domains like neurobiology to investigate the role of physiology in accounting for valuing, threat, deciding, and cognition?1

32523_Jull.indd 142

2021-10-12 16:54:24

Conclusion

143

How can feelings be discerned and addressed in spaces of encounter where it may not be culturally appropriate to express or recognize certain emotions? How could one conceive of interpersonal argument, and the role of feelings, in disputes involving legal representatives who may not have a personal stake in the outcome? How could this kind of empirical research explore more fully the way that culture (as well systemic biases of oppression and privilege) shape interpersonal conflict and change? How could conflict behaviour that is instigated by greed or narcissistic self-interest be analyzed in terms of a discernment of threat and a decision to defend? To what extent are the concepts of intersubjectivity, threat, and defence useful in understanding largerscale conflicts and change? change in intersubjective processes

The cases explored the intersubjective process of change that took place through consciousness, spaces of encounter, and complex systems of meanings. In the case of my household argument, the change spontaneously occurred through an altered space of encounter that expanded our roles and interactions to include our friend. Because this expanded space set the context for me to revalue, rather than rebut, my partner’s behaviour, my defensive conflict behaviour was not re-enacted. In the case where I consulted a trusted listener, my ethical reflexivity was instigated in our space of encounter, thereby revealing a different threat, one of personal helplessness rather than social wrong. The discernment of this threat did not impel me to rash and constrained conflict behaviour but instead prompted a reflection on more purposeful responses, thus preventing a (probably embarrassing and futile) conflict from taking place. The third case explored a process of account giving that involved my friend’s reflexive revaluing of his difficult colleague, thereby opening the possibility for ­dialogue, rather than avoidance, between them. The fourth case recognized the complexity of elements that contributed to the dissipation of argument. There were numerous moments when the constrictive effect of threat was discerned, with varying responses. Many interactions were proposed, altered, revised, or continued, and many instances of reflexive account giving enabled new affordances amid complex meanings in the space of multiparty encounter. I recognized throughout this book that the dissipation of conflict is emergent, giving rise to unforeseeable new possibilities that can be

32523_Jull.indd 143

2021-10-12 16:54:24

144

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

fluid, complex, and contingent. It is a messier process than the terms “conflict resolution,” “transformation,” and “conflict management” convey. The cases revealed that facilitating messy, imperfect change in conflict behaviour was supported by iterative and responsive intersubjective processes. Below, I briefly highlight these intersubjective dimensions before considering the everyday skills that can facilitate hoped-for and often unforeseeable change. Consciousness Because the knowing, valuing, and deciding that precipitated the conflict behaviour were more truncated than mindful, the process of eliciting reflexivity offered the chance for an individual’s cognitive performance to be more expansive, thereby generating insight that could lead to more peaceable possibilities. There were many instances in the cases when my and others’ truncated knowing, valuing, or deciding became more expansive through a process of eliciting reflexivity or curious attention to interiority. Once the gaps that gave rise to the aversive feelings were recognized, it became more possible to wonder about the perceived inevitability of threat. This curiosity led to insight. The insights throughout the cases were varied and diverse. In some instances, I noted a greater ability to recognize and accept complexity rather than maintaining a sense of certainty and simplicity. With more expansive cognitive performance, I could recognize my partner as both impervious and industrious and could understand the resistant group participant’s behaviour to be both annoying and helpful. Because the operations of consciousness are functionally related, my understanding affected my valuing and shaped my deliberating, evaluating, and deciding about possible options and the best course of action. In a more truncated state – when my verifying was hasty or my valuing was elemental – I discerned threat and decided to defend. In contrast, when my valuing was more discerning than elemental, there was a shift in the significance that was registered. This shift caused my performance of deliberating to become more imaginative than limited, so other options became more apparent or preferable. Because more expansive deliberating led to more conscientious evaluating and to less constrained deciding, the sense of a rash or constrained necessity to defend through conflict behaviour was no longer salient. Instead, more collaborative or nonconflictual options became apparent and/or preferable.

32523_Jull.indd 144

2021-10-12 16:54:24

Conclusion

145

Spaces of Encounter Focusing on spaces of encounter as another dimension of intersubjectivity showed how processes through which individuals engaged with each other could facilitate the dissipation of interpersonal conflict. Various processes of account giving with Rebecca, Sophia, Gabriel, and Lucas facilitated change when these processes called forth different roles. When individuals engaged in a space of encounter where the constrictive effect of threat was diminished or when they conversed with a curiously attentive third party whose cognitive performance was more expansive than truncated, it became possible for these individuals to become more reflexive, too. When I talked with Sophia, her curiosity was able to call forth my reflexivity in a way that I could not produce on my own, just as Gabriel’s valuing became more discerning and expansive by responding to my attention. Moreover, involving a third party offered the chance to alter the pattern of interaction so that participants could become less oriented to directly defend against the discerned threat and more open to other possibilities of engagement. Speaking with Rebecca, and thereby shifting our domestic dyad into a triad, altered our space of encounter in such a way that Georgine and I moved away from our conflictual process of reciprocally hostile accusations and into a three-way process of account giving mediated by her more equanimous responses. In the case of “Tension in the Group,” I responsively engaged in several oneon-one conversations during the group process in order to support an altered pattern of interaction among participants. Changes in the space of encounter, then, affected both the interiority and relationality of conflict by eliciting reflexivity among participants and altering the patterns of interaction through which they decided to engage. In the case studies, roles mattered. Roles shaped what individuals knew, valued, and decided in spaces of encounter. They also shaped how the interactions in the spaces of encounter were enacted. In our roles as collegial friends, Sophia and I implicitly agreed to engage in a pattern of interaction, a back-and-forth conversation, that enabled me to realize my hoped-for outcome of a new perspective on a situation that was difficult for me. In my role as the facilitator in the working group, I explicitly sought agreement to processes that shaped the participants’ patterns of interaction through many different forms of account giving: open discussion, one-by-one speaking, reciprocal conversations, and so on. These patterns of interactions involved dynamic interplays of initiating and responsive actions through which

32523_Jull.indd 145

2021-10-12 16:54:24

146

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

I and others, in our roles, sought to discern what we valued as “good,” desired, or preferable. These discernments of the good depended on our roles, social context, narratives, personal history, and other affordances within complex systems of meanings – the third dimension of intersubjectivity identified in this framework. Systems of Meanings The cases demonstrated that when individuals were able to consider and mobilize alternative or additional socially available narratives or affordances, their patterns of conflictual interaction could change. Throughout the research process, I recognized that the complexity of spaces of encounter made it impossible to become consciously present to all the social influences or affordances that carry them. Although I would not claim that conscious awareness of these social meanings is necessary for change, I recognized that in some instances, such as when I reflected on the role of a mother, friend, colleague, or leader, individuals could become more consciously aware of these multiple affordances and the ways that they shaped consciousness and encounters. In other words, when individuals could mobilize additional or alternative complex social meanings that shaped their cognitive performance and/or the processes through which they interacted with others, it provided them an opportunity to mobilize new affordances of meaning and action. In their performance of specific roles – whether partner, friend, colleague, consultant, mother, leader, or participant – individuals understood their context, discerned its significance, and decided to act in spaces of encounter, drawing on vastly complex available possible meanings. These roles shaped the notions of how good (and bad) partners, toxicologists, mothers, friends, and participants in groups should (or should not) behave. In this way, the socially available, expected notions of role were enacted, negotiated, and contested. When these meanings became more explicit, it afforded the opportunity for them to be examined, altered, or expanded. In the case of the “Intransigent Conflict,” I made the ironic observation that in my truncated valuing of Georgine as an “impervious partner,” I acted imperviously by rashly criticizing her behaviour. In contrast, after I discerned fresh significance in her actions, my own role as a partner became more conscientiously enacted. With Sophia, I was able to reflexively consider the complexity of my mothering role and to

32523_Jull.indd 146

2021-10-12 16:54:24

Conclusion

147

discern a significance of vulnerability that led to other options related to protection, even as she had her own understanding of how to enact a “good” mothering role that implicitly informed her responses to me. Amid the abundance of meaning in spaces of encounter, individuals were able to consider and mobilize affordances that shifted their enactment of their roles so that additional affordances of meaning and action could emerge to alter conflict behaviour. In addition to illuminating how an individual’s roles and contexts shaped what they cognitively discerned to be good or desirable (as well as bad or aversive), the cases explored the processes through which discernments of significance were affirmed or contested, drawing on meanings from an individual’s cultural, historical, and linguistic context. These processes, too, were affordances informed by the social context, with Rebecca being drawn into an informal role as peer-mediator that involved particular conversational norms and narratives. Similarly, the interactions that I facilitated as a group leader were drawn from a reservoir of culturally laden protocols of how groups can interact to address conflict and make decisions. Further Avenues of Inquiry Additional research could explore the limits and strength of this tripartite approach in order to study the intersubjectivity of everyday argument. Some scholars might wish to further explore my usage of the richly laden concepts that other epistemic communities have extensively explored, including intersubjectivity, consciousness, values, feelings, emotions, and affects. Others may wish to consider gaps in the study. As one example, I have not explicitly addressed the complex concept or lived experience of “identity,” a rich possible addition to this approach. Further research would be useful in order to explore many of the stimulating themes that emerged throughout this study, including the transferability of this research to other knowledge domains like leadership and organizational development, the impact of specific affects like shame or compassion, the structure of questions to elicit reflexivity, and the design of group processes through which individuals can interact in ways that support more expansive cognitive performance. Additional autoethnographical research could further explore social affordances and their circulation – through culture or power – in shaping the intersubjectivity of conflict behaviour, including consciousness and spaces of encounter. In this way, exploring

32523_Jull.indd 147

2021-10-12 16:54:24

148

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

individual and group bias, social polarization, and systemic oppression using these conceptual tools would be a useful contribution. skills

As well as identifying potential avenues of future inquiry, the research also highlighted numerous skills for conflict practitioners and participants to cultivate. Although an additional volume of research should be devoted to an investigation of these skills, I briefly consider below some of the more significant ones that emerged in these cases – not as definitive techniques for ensuring a linear resolution of conflict but as part of a method to discover new possibilities that can build conflict capacity and facilitate change. Reflexivity: Noticing, Differentiating, and Practising Equipoise The cases developed an approach to the practice of reflexivity that involved noticing what my mind was doing as I fought, ruminated, collaborated, talked, cared, or led. This practice of reflexivity required numerous skills. A focal skill was attending to interiority. I practised the skill of noticing what I was doing with my mind, which meant paying attention to how I was thinking as well as what I was thinking about. As I recognized in my two-part inquiry into Gabriel’s case, this self-observation requires practice and patience. Although noticing what happened between us was important, I enriched my analysis and practice by paying attention to what was taking place within me as I listened, wondered, felt, hesitated, and spoke. More specifically, I practised the skills of differentiating and disaggregating cognitive operations. Differentiating cognitive operations meant, for example, that in the group process, I could distinguish my understanding that Jack had contested my suggestion of a topic from my valuing that I was concerned that his intervention might disrupt the process or undermine my role as a facilitator. In identifying the distinction between understanding and valuing, it also became possible for me to notice their conflation in moralizing statements, such as Maya’s assertion that it was “rude and disrespectful” for others to have passed in the group. Recognizing the conflation, I  could work to disaggregate the knowledge that participants had passed from the significance of the disrespect that Maya had discerned. In contrast, as a conflict participant, I was not able to

32523_Jull.indd 148

2021-10-12 16:54:24

Conclusion

149

differentiate and disaggregate my conflation of knowing and valuing when I asserted my elemental valuing of Georgine’s choice of cleaning products with my moralized certainty, which came across as delivering an incontrovertible truth. An additional skill in this practice of reflexivity, then, was responding to feelings as registering significance in the operation of valuing. In the second case, I was able to discern that my elemental feeling of outrage registered a gap between my expectations of fair behaviour and the coaches’ enactment of it; more mindfully, I could discern that my outrage also registered a complex significance of vulnerability related to potential loss, my helplessness as a mother to protect my daughter, and a resilience that could withstand a setback. The practice of reflexively attending to feelings involved a curious elaboration of them that could carry my response from an elemental expression to a discernment of significance. It follows that another skill of reflexivity that emerged in this research was to recognize the relatively truncated or mindful performance of cognitive operations. Whereas in the first case, “Intransigent Conflict,” I was unaware of my truncated cognitive performance with my partner, in “Outrage” I was able to recognize my cognitively elemental, limited, and mostly rash performance related to the threats that I discerned, even if I could not become more discerning, imaginative, or conscientious on my own. Although the research did not address the array of potentially truncating effects, such as fatigue, stress, or illness, it did illuminate the skill of identifying the truncating effect of threat. Recognizing that the discernment of threat produces (and is produced by) truncated cognitive operations, it becomes possible to seek to become more reflexively aware rather than reactively carried and to expand the performance of cognitive operations – through equipoise, curiosity, and other means. For example, as a leader in the group process, I discerned my aversive feelings related to personal, practical, and social gaps but was able to practise sufficient equipoise to imaginatively consider and enact other options rather than rashly choosing conflict behaviours oriented to defence. This reflexive practice – of holding the tension of threat without deciding to defend through conflict behaviour – is a skill that I continue to cultivate. I believe that developing this capacity to remain curious and conscientious – even while discerning threat – is one of the most significant skills of personal mastery that the practice of reflexivity can yield.

32523_Jull.indd 149

2021-10-12 16:54:24

150

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

Although the research explored how skills of reflexivity could facilitate an expansion in the performance of operations, it is clear that there are many other activities that can carry or facilitate a shift from more truncated to mindful performance, including listening to music, connecting with nature, having a good night’s sleep, enjoyably exercising, laughing, taking part in spiritual practices, playing, relaxing with a pet, and so on. An additional skill of reflexivity, then, is to identify the carriers that shape our cognitive performance. In recognizing the complex systems of meanings through which the intersubjective activities of consciousness and encounter are performed, the research illuminated the importance of the reflexive ability to identify carriers that shaped individuals’ consciousness and patterns of interactions, such as role, culture, narratives, and other affordances. In this particular research, there were several examples of this skill of identifying social carriers within the complex systems of meanings that infused the spaces of encounter where individuals were situated. As the leader in the group process, for example, I recognized the importance of social carriers like culture and role in shaping our interactions and the significance that was discerned. Noticing these carriers afforded me the opportunity to wonder about them and to ask whether other meanings might be available. In the case of “Outrage,” I reflexively recognized that my role as a mother was shaping my feelings of vulnerability and that my enactment of this role was socially shaped. Sophia’s (somewhat different) understanding of good mothering also informed some of her responses to me, such as “And Sage learned something?” She and I recognized that these particular responses did not facilitate change in this case because they were oriented more to Sophia’s evaluation of what I should be feeling in my role as a mother than to an elicitive attention to expanding my own discernment of significance. When Sophia articulated that she had to “bracket her own response,” she named an additional skill of reflexivity: differentiating and relating the interiority of self and other. I practised this skill in my interactions with Gabriel, attending to my interiority while I engaged with his, recognizing the distinctions between my understanding of “difficult colleagues” and his. In the debriefing inquiry, we recognized this differentiation and relation to be a continuum of attunement between self-referencing and other-referencing. As another example, I recognized and responded to the data of my interiority in relation to Jack’s deciding to contest my suggested process; I could differentiate my own

32523_Jull.indd 150

2021-10-12 16:54:24

Conclusion

151

discernment of threat from others’ valuing and inquire into theirs with as much curiosity as I could muster. Thus the practices of reflexivity that emerged throughout this research involved a diversity of skills. By attending to my interiority, I was able to notice, differentiate, and disaggregate cognitive operations; recognize their more truncated performance, particularly in relation to the discernment of threat; discern significance registered in feelings; practise equipoise and curiosity; and identify some of the social carriers of the spaces of encounter where I was situated in order to consider what other affordances were available. These practices helped me to facilitate changes in in the intersubjective dimensions of interpersonal conflict. I also recognized that practising these skills of self-referenced reflexivity also helped me to engage in other-referenced curiosity – that is, to wonder about how others were using their minds to know, value, and decide in our spaces of encounter amid complex systems of meanings. Moreover, the research also explored how to elicit others’ reflexivity through the intersubjective process of account giving in spaces of encounter. Eliciting Others’ Reflexivity: Noticing, Verifying, Questioning Each of the cases recognized that the practice of reflexivity could also be directed to wondering about what others were doing with their minds as they complained, avoided, sympathized, or extended kindness. This practice depended on the skill of differentiating and relating the interiority of self and other. Recognizing that the external manifestation of conflict behaviour is a result of interior cognitive operations, it became possible for me to wonder what Gabriel, Felicity, Jack, Lucas, and Maya were deciding, valuing, and knowing as they engaged in conflict behaviour. In differentiating the interiority of self from other, I could recognize the relatively truncated or mindful performance of operations in self and other. Hearing that Gabriel’s initial description of his interaction with Felicity conveyed a tone of aversive emotion, I was able both to consider my own cognitive performance and to wonder about his. In recognizing that his feelings registered significance in the operation of valuing, I inquired about what was upsetting to him regarding this conversation with Felicity. There were many instances in the cases when reflecting more expansively on feelings, whether shame, outrage, frustration, or pleasure, afforded the opportunity for their significance to be discerned and changed.

32523_Jull.indd 151

2021-10-12 16:54:24

152

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

Sometimes reflection on feelings afforded no change, as my pre-Sophia ruminations on the hockey coaches’ behaviour yielded no insight. Other times, as in the case involving Lucas, I did not directly inquire about his emotion, recognizing the potential threat of the vulnerability associated with expression of feelings in that context. Instead, I responded to his expression of emotion implicitly by offering my own discernment of significance and verifying it with him. Each of the cases, then, explored the importance of the skill of maintaining an orientation to inquiry in order to elicit others’ reflexivity. Looking back at the places in the research where this crucial skill was practised, I discern the needed humility of recognizing my own limits while affirming a possible influence on the other. The research recorded many moments of this subtle and powerful interplay. With Gabriel, I found that my ability to articulate transparently something of my own interiority (as well as Felicity’s) helped to elicit his reflexivity. In contrast, I resisted Sophia’s subtle influence to change my mind and then found myself making an unexpected discovery in response to her more elicitive question. Critical skilfulness in asking questions, then, emerged throughout the research as a foundational tool. In several of the cases, I explored how questioning strategies could help to elicit particular cognitive operations. My question “You didn’t like that sense of yourself as messing up?” elicited in Gabriel the operation of verifying, confirming that I had understood him correctly. In contrast, the question “What upset you about the conversation?” elicited the operation of valuing.2 In this way, the research illuminated the usefulness of being able to differentiate cognitive operations in order to ask an appropriately targeted question. In doing so, it identified the importance of noticing the mutual influence between self and other so that one can recognize the impact of a question, comment, or gesture on another and adjust one’s response. This was a skill of recognizing the way that interactions affected how individuals responded in terms of what they were doing with their minds and the deciding that they enacted. With greater recognition of this mutual influence, a conflict practitioner and participant can attend to the process of interaction itself. Attending to Process Numerous processes of interaction described in this research either contributed to or took away from the effort to achieve the desirable good. Some of these interpersonal processes – such as criticizing and

32523_Jull.indd 152

2021-10-12 16:54:24

Conclusion

153

complaining, which I initiated with my partner to defend against the threats that I discerned – yielded the less satisfactory outcome of mutual, truncating recriminations, whereas others elicited changes in conflict behaviour by facilitating more expansive cognitive performance. Among the questions and responses included in these processes were ethical micronegotiations, a “performance” of another’s interiority, and disclosures of valuing. In most instances, these processes emerged relationally and were shaped by the systems of meanings that patterned the spaces of encounter where we were situated. They featured techniques that were not simply applied but relationally and implicitly generated. In other instances, particularly in the group meetings, some of these processes were more explicit, designed, and intentional. I believe that influencing the process of interaction is a crucial skill that merits considerable attention and practice on the part of conflict practitioners and conflict participants. Whereas this influence on process was sometimes subtle, such as implicitly shifting the way that account giving took place, at other times it involved a more explicit proposal of a specific process. I believe that further research is merited to more fully explore and elaborate on this important practice of process influence and design. Having identified many salient skills related to the practice of dissipating interpersonal conflict, I find myself wondering how (in my role as an instructor) I can help others to develop these skills in formal and informal contexts. What might be the implications of this research, in terms of learning design and delivery, for helping others to practise these skills? What other skills could be further identified and practised? These questions point beyond the scope of this book but reveal promising possibilities for further lines of inquiry. This concluding section points to the importance of developing skills – as conflict participants, practitioners, and researchers – to support the intersubjective processes that can dissipate interpersonal conflict and allow more preferable options to emerge. These skills include practising reflexivity, developing equipoise, engaging curiously and humbly with others, and influencing the processes through which our engagements take place. In doing so, we might contribute in small or large ways to patterns of interaction that support a sense of mutual flourishing rather than the diminishing of self or other that can often accompany conflict behaviour. The cases reveal that these skills are not easy to practise even when we try. Yet they are worthy of being practised. And sometimes, I have discovered, the practice carries me.

32523_Jull.indd 153

2021-10-12 16:54:24

154

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

My five-year-old daughter is (very) angry with me. It’s past her regular bedtime, and I’ve been working on this book while she’s been busy with a colouring project. I’ve asked her to change into her pajamas, giving her the requisite time warnings and negotiating a few extra minutes for “one last thing!” Now it is (really) late, her colouring project is not yet complete (nor is my book), and she clearly has discerned several gaps – personal, practical, and social – in this situation. So have I. Her tone signals that a prolonged and wearying battle is ahead. “I’m not getting into my pajamas. And I’m not going to bed. You can’t make me go to sleep!” She is fully taken over by her anger, and this moment is at risk of becoming deeply polarized. I feel some anger myself, yet I am able to access enough limited kindness to try a technique of reflecting emotion. “You’re angry,” I begin. She swiftly escalates her fight. “I hate it when you say that!” she asserts even more loudly, her tone conveying to me both contempt and fury. I notice that a habitual mediator technique might carry my mind to (incuriously) decide to ask, “What is it about my response that annoys you?” but I refrain. That response clearly wouldn’t correlate with what I discern to be preferable in this context. I wish that I could be more expansively curious, or be playfully accepting, or even remember what my equipoise felt like a minute ago, but I can’t. I’m longing for a preferred state induced by a quiet bath and a tranquilly sleeping child, and there’s a gap that I discern: I’m hurt and angry that her response to my effort to be kind was a belligerent yell (although I’m averse to techniques being used on me, too!). I deliberate my options: I could impose a further technique of power to compel her compliance, like issuing a command, which she would likely ignore, or using my adult strength to pick her up. I evaluate that these are not (yet) my best options, but some swift response seems to be necessary. I decide to ask a question, but it’s devoid of curiosity, another technique, and it’s laced with an annoyed tone and emerges as a lame “What can …?” before she interrupts with “nothing !” Crossing my mind are fleeting images from a television show called Supernanny involving hapless parents and a professionally competent childminder. By accentuating aversive gaps in my performance, these fleeting images further truncate my valuing rather than eliciting more imaginative options. In this now-polarized space of encounter, I notice that I’ve frozen and am on the verge of threat-impelled, agency-erasing fight behaviour. I check it out – yes, my muscles are so clenched that my heart feels surrounded by plywood boards rather than living tissue, and yes, my

32523_Jull.indd 154

2021-10-12 16:54:24

Conclusion

155

breathing is shallow. In this moment of reflexive awareness, I realize that, since I have to breathe anyway, I could try to breathe more deeply. I evaluate that, in the sudden absence of other desirable options, a deep breath might indeed be my best choice. Hoping for equipoise, I do it, audibly exhaling. As it comes out, it’s not a sigh of anger directed toward her, I notice, but a letting-go of tension. More, I recognize that although I’m focused on settling myself, I’m including her, not to control her but to involve her in some sort of effort toward less truncation. She looks at me in what I take to be a wary wondering. I look back at her, noticing her less escalated response, and attend to another breath going in and out of me. Less truncated words spontaneously emerge from me: “Yup, I can’t make you go to sleep.” My tone is surprisingly warm, and in my verifying that she’s made an accurate statement, something happens to shift her. It’s not my words, it’s my tone, I think, through which she registers some kind of complex significance. She responds by compliantly stomping toward her bedroom and the pajamas that await her there, still angry but not enraged. Bedtime is nigh. I really can’t say what she responded to in my tone and my body that effected the change in her conflict behaviour. I don’t even know what I registered in my own elemental valuing that took place. Perhaps I registered a diminished threat, sensing more possibilities related to the time, her preferences, and my limits. Maybe she recognized that I had relaxed some of my conflict behaviour of control, so she discerned less threat and responded less defiantly. I suspect that, in the end, we registered something about compassion, or maybe love, sometimes obscured and surprisingly enduring. Not the sentimental kind, which asserts a kind of certainty, but a messy compassion, a gritty love, that recognizes our deep difference and profound interdependence. And perseveres.

32523_Jull.indd 155

2021-10-12 16:54:24

32523_Jull.indd 156

2021-10-12 16:54:24

Appendix

The Insight Loop – A Model of the Flow of Consciousness

The Insight loop integrates several technical terms as a model of the patterned flow of human consciousness (J. Price 2018). To explain this loop, I identify the locations of these terms, define them, and then explain their functions through my story of a simple encounter in the grocery store between me and a plate of chocolate. The operations of consciousness are indicated in capital letters within the lines, their animating questions are written in sentence case, and their specific performance ranges are shown outside of the lines. The general performance ranges – from truncated to mindful – are written below the title. The wavy lines in the margins of the model represent the carriers of consciousness, including roles, cultural practices, narratives, institutions, and structures, that are part of the complex systems of meanings and interactions through which an individual’s consciousness is oriented or shaped. The loop is a figure eight whose lower half comprises the operations of experiencing, understanding, and verifying and whose upper half consists of valuing, deliberating, evaluating, and deciding. The relative performance ranges – from truncated to mindful – are indicated for each operation. For example, experiencing is the act of encountering data, whether it is data of sense or consciousness. One’s performance of experiencing can range from mindfully attentive to more truncated and inattentive. Because the subsequent operations are defined by the questions that they are oriented to answer, understanding is animated by the question “What could this be?” – with its performance ranging from curious to incurious. A short example from a hypothetical trip to the grocery store helps to illuminate this diagram.

32523_Jull.indd 157

2021-10-12 16:54:24

158

•

•

32523_Jull.indd 158

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

Experiencing. As I push my cart through the store, I notice a waist-high table on which stands a plate of small, cut-up pieces of brown food that the store has provided as samples for its customers. Amid the complex interactions involved in my role as a shopper, I may inattentively not notice the samples. With a more attentive performance, I may notice the brown food. Understanding. Seeing the samples, I might be incurious and move on. I might be curious, spontaneously wondering,

2021-10-12 16:54:30

Appendix

•

•

•

•

•

159

“What could these be?” My understanding generates the hypothesis that they are pieces of cracker. Verifying (or is it so?). If I verify my hypothesis hastily, without further examination, I could assert, “Yes, it is so that they are pieces of cracker.” If I am more critical in verifying, however, I would take a closer look. “No, it is not cracker – too chunky.” I return to an effort to understand. “What could it be?” I realize that they are not pieces of chunky brown cracker but are instead pieces of chocolate. Valuing (or what is the significance of this?). Recognizing chocolate rather than cracker, I may register its significance to me through an elemental feeling of pleasure as I recognize this to be chocolate, discerning a fit between what I like and the food in front of me. Or I might discern an aversive gap between what I like and the samples offered by the store, as it is appears to be a kind of spicy chocolate that I do not care for. Deliberating. Once I have discerned the significance of the samples, the operation of deliberating is spontaneously activated through the question “What could I do?” In a more truncated, tired, or stressed state, I may consider limited options, such as popping it in my mouth anyway. My deliberating may be more imaginative, causing me to consider leaving it or taking it home for my partner. Evaluating. My evaluating – animated by the question “What is my best option?” – may conscientiously determine that I will take it home for my partner. However, I may rashly evaluate that eating the treat is the best option, despite my dislike of spice in chocolate. Deciding (or what will I do?). In my deciding, I may be constrained, unable to eat a sample because the last one was just gobbled by another customer. My deciding may also be constrained if I do not have a means to take a piece of melty chocolate home, despite my good intentions. Or I may be free in my deciding to take the chocolate, put it in a tiny container, and take it home.

This grocery store vignette provides an example of the functional relationships among the operations and their performance ranges. A more abstract account of the loop indicates that the operation of experiencing leads spontaneously – through the question “What could

32523_Jull.indd 159

2021-10-12 16:54:30

160

An Anatomy of Everyday Arguments

this be?” – to understanding by producing a hypothesis. In producing a hypothesis, according to the Insight approach, our minds spontaneously engage in a process of verifying through the question “Is it so?” The operation of verifying may validate the hypothesis (i.e., “Yes, it is so”) or reject it (i.e., “No, it is not so”), thereby spontaneously returning to the operation of understanding’s quest for a better hypothesis. Having confirmed a hypothesis through the process of verifying, our minds are spontaneously animated by the question “What is the significance of this?” through the operation of valuing. In Insight terms, valuing is a process of affective cognition. Feelings can elementally register significance that more discerning valuing can reflexively register as gaps or fits between what is and what is desired or affirmed. For example, feelings of satisfaction or enjoyment may register a fit or fulfillment, whereas feelings of fear or frustration may register a gap between what is and what is preferred. The operation of valuing – in the performance range from elemental to discerning – moves one from the lower half of the loop to the upper half, where valuing, deliberating, evaluating, and deciding occur. The operation of deliberating – animated by the question “What could I do?” – produces a set of options that range from the limited to the imaginative. “What is my best option?” animates the operation of evaluating, which can be conscientious or rash, to identify a preference. The operation of deciding is subsequently animated by the question “What will I do?” These operations of consciousness, then, with their corresponding performance ranges and the questions that animate them, are shaped and oriented by our roles, patterns of interactions, and other carriers that pattern the flow of consciousness.

32523_Jull.indd 160

2021-10-12 16:54:30

Notes

I nt roduct i o n   1 See M. Price (2016b, 84) for a more extensive consideration of the ­usefulness of thinking about conflict in its “specific behavioral form.”   2 I mean “dynamizes” in the sense of animates or energizes.   3 I use the terms “listener” and “speaker” lightly throughout this book to differentiate two roles in a dialogue that can be taken up by both parties. By “speaker,” I mean one whose mind is the explicit focus of attention. A “listener” is one who is attending to the other. Better terms for these roles might be available; if so, I would welcome their discovery.

c ha p t e r o n e   1 The heterogeneity of the method becomes even more complex when the term “autobiography” is considered. Some researchers have identified fifty-two different types of autobiography, ranging from confessions to testimonies (see Brown 2006).   2 Hayden (2009, 81), for example, uses her autoethnographical study to explore the questions “What do people know about us, how do they know it, and how well does it agree with what we think we know about ourselves?”   3 Hughes, Pennington, and Makris (2012) devote their text to identifying how autoethnographies might meet the criteria for evaluating qualitative research established by the American Educational Research Association (A E R A ). These criteria include problem formulation, study design, sources of evidence, measurement, classification, analysis and interpretation, g­ eneralization, and ethics (210). For each topic, the authors identify how autoethnographies

32523_Jull.indd 161

2021-10-12 16:54:30

162

Notes to pages 13–19

can meet the established criteria. These criteria govern the funding of research, thereby exercising considerable power in producing what is recognized as knowledge (Altheide and Johnson 2011, 585; Denzin 2011).   4 Denzin (2009) rejects AERA standards altogether, arguing that the amount and detail of criteria would exclude almost any text. Richardson (2000, 254), too, rejects these criteria and argues for nonfoundationalist criteria that include a substantive contribution to an understanding of social life, aesthetic merit, reflexivity, emotional and intellectual impact, and a clear expression of cultural, social, individual, or communal sense of reality. Ellis (2000, 275) frames criteria as questions: “Does the story have a ­balance of flow and authenticity of experience? … Does the author show instead of tell? … Did the author learn anything new about himself? … Is it useful, and if so, for whom?”   5 As one example, the European-American Collaborative Challenging Whiteness (2002) is a group of “six white scholar/practitioners” who research “what it means to be a member of a dominant group” in order to take more effective action for social justice. They publish under the group name European-American Collaborative Challenging Whiteness (n.d.) to affirm their stance that knowledge production is collaborative.   6 Hurlburt has developed a “science of experience built out of redundant sets of independent reports” (Hurlburt and Schwitzgebel 2007, 263). With this aim, Hurlburt has carefully defined a Descriptive Experience Sampling method and criteria to establish the credibility of reports on inner experience, a method that includes a random beeper that signals a reminder for the subject to record that moment’s inner experience, followed by specific and detailed interview strategies that support a bracketing of presuppositions.

c h a p t e r t wo   1 Characterized in this way, intersubjectivity theory can be seen as a ­confluent development in the rise of reflexivity and the formation of the autoethnographic method.   2 For a foundational review of intersubjectivity as “the emergence and development of ‘self-and-other’ awareness” in infant-caregiver relations, see Trevarthen and Aitken (1996, 3).   3 More specifically, Bohleber (2013, 822) identifies this theme of intersubjectivity as mutually constituting space through which the self comes to terms with “himself” and “undergoes change through his experience.”

32523_Jull.indd 162

2021-10-12 16:54:30



Notes to pages 19–22

163

  4 As a conceptual point of contrast, Coelho and Figueiredo (2003) codify intersubjective theories quite differently from this three-part approach. Animated by the question “How is it possible to know the other, another consciousness?” (196), they summarize and organize theories of “knowing otherness and self” into four different matrices. They identify these four quadrants of intersubjectivity as trans-subjective, traumatic, ­interpersonal, and intrapsychic. Gillespie (2003, 214) contests their framework as a problematic summary of divergent and sometimes incompatible literatures.   5 Applying Lonergan’s (2001) insight theory to the study of conflict, the Insight approach is being adapted to a variety of contexts, including ­policing (M. Price 2016a, 2020a), spirituality (Melchin and Price 2020; Peddle 2020), and theatre (V.R. Price and Obasi 2020). See also Picard (2016) for longer descriptions of the application of the Insight approach in various contexts.   6 In the Appendix, I provide a more extended definition of these concepts, including an infographic of the Insight approach.   7 See also M. Price (2016b) for a clear and succinct explanation of the ­operations of consciousness. For more foundational discussion of Lonergan’s operations of consciousness, Cronin (2006) and McShane (1975) are useful guides. Reading Lonergan’s work directly is a somewhat epic challenge but satisfying in its rewards. Picard (2020) further articulates Lonergan’s work in relation to the Insight approach in terms that are accessible and engaging.   8 The concept of “encounter” is more problematic within the epistemic community of Bohleber (2013, 820), who prefers the notion of “mutually constituting space.” The word “encounter” is a particularly fraught term in psychoanalysis because it involves vigorous debate about the unconscious and conscious processes involved and the extent to which the encounter is a process or product of interaction. Keane’s anthropological usage of the term – as a physical or virtual space that mediates the social and the individual – is better suited to the tripartite analytical framework used here, as it denotes a mutual, reciprocating influence that can reinforce or alter knowledge and decisions. This difference between how Bohleber and Keane understand and apply the word “encounter” points to the importance of working accountably within the specific epistemic ­communities where research is situated. The Insight approach, articulated by J. Price (2013), does not identify “space of encounter” as a unit of analysis, but his articulation of institutions accounts for the roles, tasks,

32523_Jull.indd 163

2021-10-12 16:54:30

164

Notes to pages 22–40

and patterns of cooperation that shape spaces of encounter in relating and orienting the self to the other and to the broader social context.   9 Although worthwhile, this biological account lies beyond the scope of the epistemic context in which my tripartite framework is situated. I do not attend to the physiological foundations of consciousness, which ­operate at a level where we are mostly unaware and over which we have little control. 10 Although Ellis and Bochner’s (1992) work on communication, ­autoethnography, and relationship has had a significant influence on my research, they have not explicitly incorporated conflict theory and change into their work. 11 Neufeld (2017), in her perceptive work on interpersonal conflict, identifies an “onion skin” model of the self. The core of the model is the tension between the wanted self and the unwanted self, which gives rise to what Neufeld calls the emergent self. 12 M. Price’s (2016b) extensive empirical research on the Insight approach in an educational setting is especially precise. 13 The Insight approach has developed strategies through which reflexive attention to the operations of consciousness can support different understandings, altered meanings, or additional possibilities. See Picard (2016) for a variety of skills to support more expansive possibilities.

c h a p t e r t h re e   1 Marshall’s (2004) identification of characteristics of quality in first-person research is congruent with Altheide and Johnson’s (2011) approach of ­evidentiary narratives, as well as to Schwartz-Shea and Yanow’s (2012) discussion of interpretive research. The advantage of Marshall’s (2004) approach is that it is succinct and easily adapted, as she effectively ­exemplifies its application in her text. See also Marshall (2011).   2 Among the many situations considered as potential case studies, some involved recordings, whereas other possible scenarios were spontaneous unrecorded encounters. The chosen case studies were mostly spontaneous encounters. Only one recorded interview, “Outrage,” sufficiently met the criteria to merit inclusion. In that case, I address issues raised about ­quality in data collection, presentation, and analysis through recollection and recorded sources.   3 The process and presentation of the debriefing inquiry evolved throughout the research. In general, the interlocutors were provided with the vignette and reflective commentary in advance, and the conversations addressed their response to the texts and elicited their reflections on what took place.

32523_Jull.indd 164

2021-10-12 16:54:30



Notes to pages 47–108

165

I account for this evolution as part of the process of knowledge production, particularly in the first case, “Intransigent Conflict.”

c ha p t e r f o u r   1 In using the term “choiceless choice,” I aim either to convey that the ­process of deliberating, evaluating, and deciding is so truncated that few, if any, other options are apparent or to convey that one’s sense of agency is so constrained that a choice appears to be necessary or inevitable.

c ha p t e r f i ve   1 I draw heavily on the Insight approach for this analysis, particularly Melchin and Picard’s (2008) account of insight and the role of questions.

chapter six   1 The strategy of following the feeling to elicit the process of valuing is a central feature of the Insight approach to conflict. On the theoretical and practical aspects of this strategy, see Melchin and Picard (2008) and Picard (2016), as well as Jull (2018).   2 Apart from the different paraphrasing used here, the change in point of view, from third person to first person, is a significant difference between the two accounts. As I discuss later in the chapter, it was during my debriefing inquiry with Gabriel that he emphasized the importance of the first-person account in my narrative about Felicity. Rather than changing the point of view in the first text, I chose to retain this dissimilarity in order to highlight working with feedback and the iterative production of knowledge in the text.   3 Gabriel meant that the relationship between Felicity and Abby was not going to be infused with the spirit of peaceful, and somewhat naive, ­harmony that characterizes the campfire song “Kum Ba Yah.”

c h a p t e r s e ve n   1 Maya’s moralizing judgment of the passing as “rude and disrespectful” is very similar to my contracted evaluation of the hockey coaches’ ­behaviour as “unfair and uncaring.”   2 Identifying the presence of caring – rather than a lack of caring – in ­conflict is a concept and strategy taken from Picard (2016) and her ­extensive development of Insight mediation.

32523_Jull.indd 165

2021-10-12 16:54:30

166

Notes to pages 128–52

chapter nine   1 For more extensive elaboration on this idea, see also Melchin and Picard (2008).   2 I noted a similar distinction between kinds of elicitive questions in “Listening to Another Mind” when my question “You didn’t like that sense of yourself as messing up?” generated a verifying agreement from Gabriel but did not elicit reflexivity.   3 This notion that self-reflexivity can elicit a responsive reflexivity in others is a possible conceptual explanation of why “I” statements are advocated as a conflict-reducing strategy.

c onc l usio n   1 M. Price (2016b) has identified some important connections between the Insight approach and the physiology of conflict behaviour, and further work in this area would be fruitful.   2 I think that this is a more precise articulation of “closed” and “open” questions, for it recognizes that the questions are functionally different but equally useful when targeted appropriately.

32523_Jull.indd 166

2021-10-12 16:54:30

References

Altheide, David L., and John M. Johnson. 2011. “Reflections on Interpretive Adequacy in Qualitative Research.” In The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, 4th ed., ed. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, 581–95. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Anderson, Leon. 2006. “Analytic Autoethnography.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 35, no. 4: 373–95. Atkinson, Paul, Amanda Coffey, Sara Delamont, John Lofland, and Lyn Lofland. 2007. “Editorial Introduction.” In Sage Handbook of Ethnography, ed. Paul Atkinson, Amanda Coffey, Sara Delamont, John Lofland, and Lyn Lofland, 1–9. London: Sage. Bishop, Russell. 2005. “Freeing Ourselves from Neocolonial Domination in Research: A Kaupapa Maori Approach to Creating Knowledge.” In The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, 3rd ed., ed. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, 109–38. Thousand Oaks, C A : Sage. Bohleber, Werner. 2013. “The Concept of Intersubjectivity in Psychoanalysis: Taking Critical Stock.” International Journal of Psychoanalysis 94, no. 4: 799–823. Bourdieu, Pierre, and Loïc J.D. Wacquant. 1992. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Brigg, Morgan. 2007. “Governance and Susceptibility in Conflict Resolution: Possibilities beyond Control.” Social and Legal Studies 16, no. 1: 27–47. Brigg, Morgan, and Roland Bleiker. 2010. “Autoethnographic International Relations: Exploring the Self as a Source of Knowledge.” Review of International Studies 36, no. 3: 779–98. Brown, Stephen. 2006. “Autobiography.” In Handbook of Qualitative Research Methods in Marketing, ed. Russell W. Belk, 440–52. Northampton, U K: Edward Elgar.

32523_Jull.indd 167

2021-10-12 16:54:30

168 References

Burton, John. 1990. Conflict: Resolution and Prevention. New York: St Martin’s. Bush, Robert A. Baruch, and Joseph P. Folger. 2005. The Promise of Mediation: The Transformative Approach to Conflict. Rev. ed. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Cann, Colette, and Eric J. DeMeulenaere. 2012. “Critical Co-Constructed Autoethnography.” Cultural Studies 12, no. 2: 146–58. Coelho, Nelson Ernesto, and Luis Claudio Figueiredo. 2003. “Patterns of Intersubjectivity in the Constitution of Subjectivity: Dimensions of Otherness.” Culture and Psychology 9, no. 3: 193–208. Collins, Peter, and Anselma Gallinat. 2010. “The Ethnographic Self as Resource: An Introduction.” In The Ethnographic Self as Resource: Writing Memory and Experience into Ethnography, ed. Peter Collins and Anselma Gallinat, 1–24. New York: Berghahn Books. Cronin, Brian. 2001. Foundations of Philosophy: Lonergan’s Cognitional Theory and Epistemology. Nairobi: Consolata Institute of Philosophy. – 2006. Value Ethics: A Lonergan Perspective. Nairobi: Consolata Institute of Philosophy. Crossley, Nick. 1996. Intersubjectivity: The Fabric of Social Becoming. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Davies, Charlotte Aull. 1998. Reflexive Ethnography: A Guide to Researching Selves and Others. New York: Routledge. Delamont, Sara. 2009. “The Only Honest Thing: Autoethnography, Reflexivity and Small Crises in Fieldwork.” Ethnography and Education 4, no. 1: 51–63. Denzin, Norman K. 2009 “The Elephant in the Living Room: Or Extending the Conversation about the Politics of Evidence.” Qualitative Research 9, no. 2: 139–60. – 2011. “Politics of Evidence.” In The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, 4th ed., ed. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, 645– 58. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Denzin, Norman K., and Yvonna S. Lincoln. 2005a. “Introduction: The Discipline and Practice of Qualitative Research.” In The Landscape of Qualitative Research, 3rd ed., ed. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, 1–44. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. – eds. 2005b. The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research. 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Ellingson, Laura L., and Carolyn Ellis. 2008. “Handbook of Constructionist Research.” In Handbook of Constructionist Research, ed. James A. Holstein and Jaber F. Gubrium, 445–66. New York: Guilford.

32523_Jull.indd 168

2021-10-12 16:54:30

References

169

Ellis, Carolyn. 2000. “Creating Criteria: An Ethnographic Short Story.” Qualitative Inquiry 6, no. 2: 273–77. Ellis, Carolyn, and Arthur P. Bochner. 1992. “Telling and Performing Personal Stories: The Constraints of Choice in Abortion.” In Investigating Subjectivity: Research on Lived Experience, 1st ed., ed. Carolyn Ellis and Michael Flaherty, 79–101. Thousand Oaks, C A : Sage. – 2006. “Analyzing Analytic Autoethnography: An Autopsy.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 35, no. 4: 429–49. European-American Collaborative Challenging Whiteness. n.d. http:// www.iconoclastic.net/eccw/. – 2002. “A Multiple Group Inquiry into Whiteness.” New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education 94: 73–82. Fisher, Roger, William Ury, and Bruce Patton. 2003. Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreements without Giving In. New York: Penguin. Gannon, Susanne. 2006. “The (Im)Possibilities of Writing the Self-Writing: French Poststructural Theory and Autoethnography.” Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies 6, no. 4: 474–95. Garrido-Soler, Salvador. 2017. “Insight Mediation: A Reflective and Pedagogical Model to Address Conflict.” Revista de Mediación 10, no. 2. https://revistademediacion.com/en/articulos/insight-mediationreflective-and-pedagogical-model-to-address-conflicts/. Gillespie, Alex. 2003. “Supplementarity and Surplus: Moving between the Dimensions of Otherness.” Culture and Psychology 9, no. 3: 209–20. Gillespie, Alex, and Tania Zittoun. 2013. “Meaning Making in Motion: Bodies and Minds Moving through Institutional and Semiotic Structures.” Culture and Psychology 19, no. 4: 518–32. Hayden, Bridget. 2009. “Displacing the Subject: A Dialogical Understanding of the Researching Self.” Anthropological Theory 9, no. 1: 81–101. Hill Collins, Patricia. 1997. “Comment on Hekman’s ‘Truth and Method: Feminist Standpoint Theory Revisited’: Where’s the Power?” Signs 22, no. 2: 375–81. Hocker, Joyce, and William Wilmot. 2014. Interpersonal Conflict. 9th ed. New York: McGraw Hill. Holman Jones, Stacy. 2005. “Autoethnography: Making the Personal Political.” In The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, 3rd ed., ed. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, 763–91. Thousand Oaks, C A : Sage. Hughes, Sherick, Julie L. Pennington, and Sara Makris. 2012. “Translating Autoethnography across the AERA Standards: Toward Understanding

32523_Jull.indd 169

2021-10-12 16:54:31

170 References

Autoethnographic Scholarship as Empirical Research.” Educational Researcher 41, no. 6: 209–19. Hurlburt, Russell T., and Eric Schwitzgebel. 2007. Describing Inner Experience? Proponent Meets Skeptic. Cambridge, MA : MIT Press. Jull, Marnie. 2018. “Asking More Than ‘How Did That Make You Feel?’: The Insight Approach to Feeling and Valuing in Conflict.” Revista de Mediación 11, no. 1. https://revistademediacion.com/en/articulos/ asking-more-than-how-did-that-make-you-feel-the-insight-approach-tofeeling-and-valuing-in-conflict/. – 2020. “Aspiring to Change: Insight, Conflict and Change-Making.” Theoforum 50, no. 2: 223–40. Kamboureli, Smaro. 2008. “Politics of the Beyond: 43 Theses on Autoethnography and Complicity.” In Asian Canadian Writing beyond Autoethnography, ed. Eleanor Ty and Christl Verduyn, 31–53. Waterloo, O N: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Keane, Webb. 2014a. “Affordances and Reflexivity in Ethical Life: An Ethnographic Stance.” Anthropological Theory 14, no. 1: 3–26. – 2014b. “Freedom, Reflexivity, and the Sheer Everydayness of Ethics.” Journal of Ethnographic Theory 41, no. 1: 443–57. – 2015. “Varieties of Ethical Stance.” In Four Lectures on Ethics: Anthropological Perspectives, ed. Michael Lambek, Veena Das, Didier Fassin, and Webb Keane, 127–74. Chicago: HA U Books. – 2016. Ethical Life: Its Natural and Social Histories. Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press. Lai, Paul. 2008. “Autoethnography Otherwise.” In Asian Canadian Writing beyond Autoethnography, ed. Eleanor Ty and Chrstl Verduyn, 55–70. Waterloo, ON : Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Laidlaw, James. 2013. The Subject of Virtue: An Anthropology of Ethics and Freedom. Cambridge, U K: Cambridge University Press. Lambek, Michael. 2015. “Living as If It Mattered.” In Four Lectures on Ethics: Anthropological Perspectives, ed. Michael Lambek, Veena Das, Didier Fassin, and Webb Keane, 5–52. Chicago: HA U Books. Lonergan, Bernard J.F. 2001. Phenomenology and Logic. Ed. Philip McShane. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Lynch, Michael. 2000. “Against Reflexivity as an Academic Virtue and Source of Privileged Knowledge.” Theory, Culture and Society 17, no. 3: 26–54. Madrid Liras, Santiago. 2017. “Why a Fourth Mediation Model: Opportunities and Integration of the Insight Mediation Model.” Revista de Mediación 10, no. 2. https://revistademediacion.com/en/articulos/

32523_Jull.indd 170

2021-10-12 16:54:31

References

171

why-fourth-mediation-model-opportunities-and-integration-of-theinsight-mediation-model/. Maguire, Mary H. 2006. “Autoethnography: Answerability/Responsibility in Authoring Self and Others in the Social Sciences/Humanities.” Forum: Qualitative Social Research 7, no. 2: art. 16. https://www.qualitativeresearch.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/106/221. Marshall, Judi. 2004. “Living Systemic Thinking: Exploring Quality in First-Person Action Research.” Action Research 2, no. 3: 305–25. – 2011. “The Practice and Politics of Living Inquiry.” In Action Learning in Practice, 4th ed., ed. Mike Pedler, 173–82. Farnham, UK: Gower. Matusov, Eugene. 1996. “Intersubjectivity without Agreement.” Mind, Culture, and Activity 3, no. 1: 25–45. May, Tim. 1999. “Reflexivity and Sociological Practice.” Sociological Research Online 4, no. 3: 184–92. McShane, Philip. 1975. Wealth of Self and Wealth of Nations. Hicksville, NY : Exposition. Melchin, Kenneth R., and Cheryl A. Picard. 2008. Transforming Conflict through Insight. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Melchin, Kenneth R., and Jamie Price. 2020. “Religion and Politics in the Early Public Life of Sargent Shriver.” Theoforum 50, no. 2: 337–66. Nathan, Mitchell J., Billie Eilam, and Suyeon Kim. 2007. “To Disagree, We Must Also Agree: How Intersubjectivity Structures and Perpetuates Discourse in a Mathematics Classroom.” Journal of the Learning Sciences 16, no. 4: 523–63. Neufeld, Viola. 2017. Grateful for the Fight: Using Inner Conflict to Transform Yourself and Your Relationship. Vancouver: Friesen. Peddle, David. 2020. “Spirituality, Insight and the Sermon on the Mount: On the Saying, ‘Judgeth Not Lest Ye Be Judged.’” Theoforum 50, no. 2: 281–322. Picard, Cheryl. 2016. Practising Insight Mediation. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. – 2017. “The Origins, Principles and Practices of Insight Mediation.” Revista de Mediación 10, no. 2. https://revistademediacion.com/en/­ articulos/the-origins-principles-and-practices-of-insight-mediation/. – 2020. “Lonergan’s Philosophy of Insight and Its Significance for Conflict.” Theoforum 50, no. 2: 193–206. Picard, Cheryl, and Marnie Jull. 2011. “Learning through Deepening Conversations: A Key Insight Mediation Strategy.” Conflict Resolution Quarterly 29, no. 2: 151–76.

32523_Jull.indd 171

2021-10-12 16:54:31

172 References

Price, Jamie. 2013. “Explaining Human Conflict: Human Needs Theory and the Insight Approach.” In Conflict Resolution and Human Needs: Linking Theory and Practice, ed. Kevin Avruch and Christopher Mitchell, 108–23. London: Routledge. – 2018. “Method in Analyzing Conflict Behavior: The Insight Approach.” Revista de Mediación 11, no. 1. https://revistademediacion.com/en/­ articulos/method-in-analyzing-conflict-behavior-the-insight-approach/. Price, Jamie, and Andrea Bartoli. 2012. “Spiritual Values, Sustainable Security and Conflict Resolution.” In Routledge Handbook of Religion and Security, ed. Chris Seiple, Dennis Hoover, and Pauletta Otis, 160–70. London: Routledge. Price, Jamie, and Megan Price. 2015. “Insight Policing and the Role of the Civilian in Police Accountability.” Clearinghouse Review, August. http:// www.insightconflictresolution.org/uploads/1/5/5/0/15508726/insight_ policing_police_accountability_price.pdf. Price, Megan. 2016a. “The Process and Partnerships behind Insight Policing.” Criminal Justice Policy Review 27, no. 5: 553–67. – 2016b. “When Students Misbehave: Student Discipline from the Insight Approach.” PhD diss., George Mason University. – 2018. “Change through Curiosity in the Insight Approach to Conflict.” Revista de Mediación 11, no. 1. https://revistademediacion.com/en/­ articulos/change-through-curiosity-in-the-insight-approach-to-conflict/. – 2019. “Intentional Peace: The Role of Human Consciousness in the Emergence of Peace and Conflict.” In Awakening: Exploring Spirituality, Emergent Creativity, and Reconciliation, ed. Vern Neufeld Redekop and Gloria Neufeld Redekop, 267–82. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. – 2020a. Insight Policing Practice Book: Conflict Resolution Skills for Law Enforcement. https://www.insightconflictresolution.org/insightpolicing-e-book.html. – 2020b. “The Practical Value of Linking the Personal and the Social in Efforts to Change Complex Social Conflict.” Theoforum 50, no. 2: 283–300. Price, Vieve Radha, and Chukwuma Obasi. 2020. “An Insight Approach to Theatre and Artistry: A Journey of Discovery.” Theoforum 50, no. 2: 259–80. Prus, Robert C. 1996. Symbolic Interaction and Ethnographic Research: Intersubjectivity and the Study of Human Lived Experience. Albany: State University of New York Press. Reed-Danahy, Deborah. 1997. “Introduction.” In Auto/Ethnography, ed. Deborah Reed-Danahy, 1–20. Oxford: Berg.

32523_Jull.indd 172

2021-10-12 16:54:31

References

173

Richardson, Laurel. 2000. “Evaluating Ethnography.” Qualitative Inquiry 6, no. 2: 253–5. Richardson, Laurel, and Elizabeth Adams St Pierre. 2005. “Writing: A Method of Inquiry.” In The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, 3rd ed., ed. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, 959–78. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Rock, David. 2006. Quiet Leadership. New York: HarperCollins. Rosenberg, Marshall. 2003. Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life. Encinitas, CA: Puddledancer. Sargent, Neil, Cheryl Picard, and Marnie Jull. 2011. “Rethinking Conflict: Perspectives from the Insight Approach.” Negotiation Journal 27, no. 3: 343–66. Schwartz-Shea, Peregrine, and Dvora Yanow. 2012. Interpretive Research Design. New York: Routledge. Scott, Joan. 1991. “The Evidence of Experience.” Critical Inquiry 17, no. 4: 773–97. Siegel, Daniel. 2012. Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology: An Integrative Handbook of the Mind. New York: Norton. Stahl, Gerry. 2006. Group Cognition: Computer Support for Building Collaborative Knowledge. Cambridge, MA : MIT Press. Stern, Daniel N. 2004. The Present Moment in Psychotherapy and Everyday Life. New York: Norton. Stolorow, Robert D., and George E. Atwood. 1992. Contexts of Being: The Intersubjective Foundations of Psychological Life. Hillsdale, NJ : Analytic Press. Throop, C. Jason, and Keith M. Murphy. 2002. “Bourdieu and Phenomenology: A Critical Assessment.” Anthropological Theory 2, no. 2: 185–207. Trevarthen, Colwyn, and Kenneth J. Aitken. 2001. “Infant Intersubjectivity: Research, Theory, and Clinical Applications.” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines 42, no. 1: 3–48. Wall, Sarah. 2006. “An Autoethnography on Learning about Autoethnography.” International Journal of Qualitative Methods 5, no. 2: 146–60. Winslade, John, and Gerald Monk. 2000. Narrative Mediation: A New Approach to Conflict Resolution. 1st ed. San Francisco, C A : Jossey-Bass. Wood, Julia T. 2010. Interpersonal Communication: Everyday Encounters. 6th ed. Boston: Wadsworth.

32523_Jull.indd 173

2021-10-12 16:54:31

32523_Jull.indd 174

2021-10-12 16:54:31

Index

account giving, 69–70, 78, 108–9 affordances: creation of new, 105, 134, 136, 143, 147; and ethical reflexivity, 31; as identity ­markers, 32; impact of changing, 33, 34; influence on conflict interactions, 35, 49, 101, 146; in interpersonal interactions, 29 antagonisms, 3–4, 5 arguments. See conflict behaviour attending to interaction process, 152–3. See also reflexivity autoethnography: critiques of, 14–17; definition of, 6; dissenting accounts, importance of, 121; evaluating quality of research, 13–14, 17, 161n3, 162n4; firstperson introspection, effect on social change, 16; further areas of research, 147–8; judging ­merits of, importance of context, 14; limitations of, 15; reflexive and epistemological preoccupations, 12–13; rise of, 12; varying applications of, 11 Bohleber, Werner, 19–23, 26 Bourdieu, Pierre, 13, 16

32523_Jull.indd 175

carriers: cognitive performance, shaping of, 150; complex systems of meanings, within, 86, 150; consciousness, shaping of, 67, 134, 150; interactions, shaping of, 150; spaces of encounter, shaping of, 86, 112, 134, 150 change of mind: conditions preceding, 127–8, 133, 143; inability to do so, 66–7; nonlinear nature of, 74, 113, 138–9; strategies for eliciting, 31–2. See also ­dissipation of conflict cognitive operations, 148–51 complex systems of meanings: as a dimension of intersubjectivity, 49, 121–4, 146–7; dissipation of conflict, role in, 30, 33, 34; identifying carriers in, 150; in “Intransigent Conflict” vignette, 127; in “Outrage” vignette, 128; and partial texts, 75; social, 33, 35, 86; in “Tension in the Group” vignette, 134–5 conflict behaviour: as authentic responses to situations, 72; ­definition of, 4–5; emergence of, 141–3; and ethical reflexivity,

2021-10-12 16:54:31

176 Index

130; importance of studying, 4; Insight approach to, 26–8; and intersubjectivity, 8, 19–20, 117; as responses to threats, 66 consciousness. See operations of consciousness criteria for selection, quality notes, 99 curiosity, 88–90, 128 deciding. See operations of consciousness decision making, group dynamics, 102–4, 114–15 Descriptive Experience Sampling method, 162n6 dimensions of intersubjectivity, 7, 8, 144–7 discernment of threat: cognitive operations in, 149; and decision to defend, 26–8, 136–7, 142; in “Intransigent Conflict” vignette, 48, 126–7; in “Outrage” vignette, 128–9, 149; registering significance of, 70, 136; in “Tension in the Group” vignette, 104–6; valuing, 141–2 dissipation of conflict: application of intersubjectivity dimensions, 30, 33; changes to spaces of encounter, 32–3; definition of, 5; emergent nature of, 134, 138, 143–4; as a precursor for change, 5, 128, 133; strategies, 138. See also change of mind ethical negotiation, 9, 90, 91–2, 121, 131 ethical reflexivity, 31, 87, 89, 129– 32. See also reflexivity

32523_Jull.indd 176

ethics and intersubjectivity, 29–30, 130 European-American Collaborative Challenging Whiteness, 162n5 expansive attention, 89–90, 103, 127 feedback, quality notes, 55, 57, 73, 108, 110–11 first-person introspection, 16, 36 Garfinkel, Harold, 6, 13 group dynamics, role in decision making, 101–5, 114–15, 134, 138–9 incompleteness, recognition of, 116, 121–2 Insight approach to conflict: ­application to intersubjectivity, 18; decision to defend in conflicts, 28; discernment of threat in conflicts, 26–8, 31; and interpersonal arguments, 7–8; and reflexivity, 8, 22, 164n13; role of ethics, 30; on valuing as an operation of consciousness, 47 intention reading, 71, 76–7, 119 interiority: attending to interaction process, 152–3; critique of use as data, 16; definition of, 4; Insight approach to conflict, 21; as a precursor to change, 127, 137; of research process, 59, 78; as a research skill, 117, 119–20, 123, 148–52 interpersonal argument. See interpersonal conflict interpersonal conflict: definition of, 26; intersubjective process of, 17,

2021-10-12 16:54:31

Index

18, 20, 30, 33; investigating ­phenomenon of, 4, 23; nature of, 11; patterns of interaction in, 32; study of, 6–8 intersubjectivity: application in other fields of study, 23–5; ­application of Insight approach to conflict, 18; of author’s research process, 36–7, 116–17, 119–21; as complex systems of meanings, 49, 121–4; definition of, 18, 48–9; dimensions of, 7, 8, 49–50, 119–21, 144–7; distinction between aspects of, 135; ethics of, 29–30; group dynamics in decision making, 101; and intention reading, 71, 76–7, 119; and interpersonal arguments, 6, 17, 20, 26; as operations of ­consciousness, 50, 117–18; role in conflict behaviour, 19–20; role in dissipation of conflict, 30, 33; as spaces of encounter, 49–50, 119–21; study of, 18–19, 162nn1–3, 163n4 knowing. See operations of consciousness love, 72, 122, 130–1 meaning making, use of questions in, 67–9 mental satiety in analysis of cases, 118 moralizing judgment, 29, 45, 67, 106–7, 142 operations of consciousness: ­differentiation of, 125–6; as a

32523_Jull.indd 177

177

dimension of intersubjectivity, 21–2, 50, 117–18, 144; Insight approach to conflict, 31, 117–18; and patterns of interaction, 102–3; registering significance, 46; role in account giving, 78 patterns of interaction, 32, 102–3, 127, 128, 136 quality notes: criteria for selection, 99; feedback, 55, 57, 73, 108, 110–11; pointing to implications, 85; recollections and recordings, 62, 117; as reflexive commentaries, 17, 36, 42; representation, 83, 91–2, 108, 120; saturating inquiry, 58, 70, 72, 76, 92; sense making, 52, 53, 73, 100, 103, 113; theorizing, 54–5, 85, 88, 102, 103, 104–5, 107, 113, 114; working with feedback, 55, 57, 73; writing account, 52, 61, 62, 65, 81, 82, 117 questions as a process of inquiry, 67–8, 68–9, 129, 141, 152 recollections and recordings, ­quality notes, 62, 117 reflexive commentary: in “Intransigent Conflict” vignette, 45–55; in “Listening to Another Mind” vignette, 84–92; in “Outrage” vignette, 65–73; as quality notes, 17, 36; in “Tension in the Group” vignette, 101–11 reflexivity: Insight approach to ­conflict, 8, 164n13; as a research skill, 148–52; and threat, 31. See also operations of consciousness

2021-10-12 16:54:31

178 Index

registering significance: in research process, 46–7; in valuing, 50–1, 54, 70, 126, 136, 149, 151 relationality, 4, 119, 123 representation, quality notes, 83, 91–2, 108, 120 research process of author: appropriate closure, 41; methodology of selecting cases, 37–8, 164n2; producing analysis, 40–1; ­summary of selected cases, 38–9; use of debriefing inquiries, 17, 40, 95, 116, 119, 120, 123, 164n3; use of reflexive ­commentary, 123; use of vignettes, 11, 27, 122, 123. See also quality notes research skills for conflict ­practitioners. See skills for ­conflict practitioners saturating inquiry, quality notes, 58, 70, 72, 76, 92 self- and other-referenced curiosity, 88–90, 120, 131–2, 150 self-in-system, investigating conflict behaviour, 6, 124 sense making: accounting for ­analysis, 40–1; quality notes, 52, 53, 73, 73–4, 100, 103 shame, 63–4, 69–70, 73, 122, 130; in registering threat, 27; role in dynamizing conflict, 122 skills for conflict practitioners, 117, 119–20, 123, 148–53 social norms, violations of, 46–7, 48, 70 spaces of encounter: as a dimension of intersubjectivity, 22–3, 49–50,

32523_Jull.indd 178

119–21, 145–6, 163n8; and ­discernment of threat, 28; ­leadership in, 114–15; role in dissipation of conflict, 32–3, 34 systems of meanings, 146–7. See also complex systems of meanings theorizing, quality notes: in “Intransigent Conflict” vignette, 54–5; in “Listening to Another Mind” vignette, 85, 88–9, 102, 103, 104; in “Tension in the Group” vignette, 107, 113, 114 threat. See discernment of threat valuing: contraction and expansion of, 54–5, 87, 103; discernment of threat in conflicts, 141–2; Insight approach to conflict, 47; love, role of, 72, 122, 130–1; as an operation of consciousness, 27; registering significance, 50–1, 54, 70, 126, 136, 149. See also ­operations of consciousness verifying as an operation of ­consciousness, 68 working with feedback, quality notes, 55, 57, 73 writing accounts, quality notes: in “Intransigent Conflict” vignette, 52; in “Listening to Another Mind” vignette, 81, 82; in “Outrage” vignette, 61, 62, 65 writing as a process of inquiry, 117

2021-10-12 16:54:31