Stories, Storytellers, and Storytelling 3031072332, 9783031072338

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Stories, Storytellers, and Storytelling

Edited by Tom Vine · Sarah Richards

Stories, Storytellers, and Storytelling “Most of us will nowadays vouchsafe that our endeavours are at root narrative projects, which build and depend upon the arts of the storyteller. And any who continue to doubt this can select from a host of texts designed to offer practical guidance on storytelling at work. Yet the practicality of this guidance is very much open to question because so much of what has been written on organizational storytelling is framed by a cognitivist appreciation of the world, which views stories simply as mental models that may be cascaded to achieve the desired managerial effect. This book is different and in being unlike those offered as guides for the management storyteller is, in fact, so much richer and infinitely more practical. It is different and, oh so much better because it adopts a truly narrative perspective and in so doing embraces all that cognitivism tends to efface, namely plurality, difference, ethics and, perhaps uniquely, taboos. This is, in short, a complex, challenging and unsettling text. Buy it!” —Professor David Collins, Northumbria University, Author of ‘Stories for Management Success’ and ‘The Organizational Storytelling Workbook’ “The editors and the authors of this book offer a wide panorama of the power of storytelling in opening windows into the heart of organizations, generating brilliant insights from narratives whose loyalty lies in emotional, lived experience. The book keeps the torch of storytelling as a research approach in the social sciences burning as brightly as ever.” —Yiannis Gabriel, Emeritus Professor, University of Bath, Visiting Professor, Lund University “This timely volume takes a novel and dynamic approach to narrative-based research methods, by focusing on the triadic relationship between the three elements named in the title. Vine and Richards consider the role of critically reflexive storytelling within social science, and helpfully unpick the complex ethical challenges that researchers face when stories and storytelling bring them close to the ‘messiness of life’. Readers will also benefit greatly from the breadth and variety of the case studies contributed by a wide range of narrative researchers. The book is an invaluable resource for scholars interested in how narrative methodologies could enhance their research practice.” —Geoff Mead PhD, Associate Fellow, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford and Associate Professor of Narrative Leadership, Hult International Business School (Ashridge)

“This is a welcome treasure trove of delights about stories, storytellers and storytelling for you to enjoy. A lively core opening essay lays out current critical themes; and this is followed by twelve wide-ranging original essays that put stories to work in human action. This is an important and timely collection that reveals the power of stories to innovate, imagine and inspire.” —Ken Plummer is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex and author of Documents of Life (1983/2001), Telling Sexual Stories (1995) and Narrative Power (2019)

Tom Vine  •  Sarah Richards Editors

Stories, Storytellers, and Storytelling

Editors Tom Vine University of Suffolk Ipswich, UK

Sarah Richards University of Suffolk Ipswich, UK

ISBN 978-3-031-07233-8    ISBN 978-3-031-07234-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07234-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022, corrected publication 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and ­transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Contributor: Maciej Bledowski / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

In memory of Dr Antonella Castelvedere

Contents

1 I ntroduction  1 Tom Vine and Sarah Richards 2 Narratives  in (in)Authenticity: The Early Career Academic 29 Suzanne Albary 3 Women,  Bullying, and the Construction Industry: A Story of Veiled Gender Dynamics 47 Tina Potkins and Tom Vine 4 Clinical  Advance Through Ethnographic Storytelling: Towards an Enacted Organisational Role for the Hospital Visitor 77 Tom Vine 5 Two-and-One:  Discovering My Story in Participants’ Pregnancy Narratives 93 Maureen Haaker 6 Exploring  Polyvocal Stories of Space, Place, Movement, and Migration111 Anna-Leah King, Barbara McNeil, Heather Phipps, and Kathryn Ricketts vii

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7 Whose  Story Is It Anyway? Hashtag Campaigns and Digital Abortion Storytelling145 Reilly Willis 8 Storytime  in the Craft Beer Bar: Narratives, Gobbets and Segments173 David Weir, Daniel Clarke, and Holly Patrick-Thomson 9 Arbitrage  and Autopoiesis in Police Sergeants’ Stories: More Than “Canteen Culture”195 David Weir 10 Restorying  Trauma: Child Sexual Abuse217 Aisha Howells 11 P  ersonal and Ethnic Bildungen: Cross-­cultural Storytelling in Singaporean-­British Writer PP Wong’s The Life of a Banana239 Weimin Delcroix-Tang 12 Telling  Stories, Building Bridges and Constructing Milton Keynes: Storytelling Practice and Research Working Together257 Terrie Howey-Moore 13 The  Personal Statement: A Tool for Developing the Pedagogical Potential of Storytelling in Business Management Education?281 Daniel Clarke and Tom Cunningham Correction to: Whose Story Is It Anyway? Hashtag Campaigns and Digital Abortion StorytellingC1 Reilly Willis

Notes on Contributors

Suzanne Albary  With a PhD in Art History and Theory and then a position as senior lecturer in a business school, Suzanne’s story was never going to be straightforward. She has reinvented and renegotiated her identity many times, and with that comes an interest in researching perspectives on aesthetics, identity, dress and representation. She seeks to understand the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and where we are, and how these stories might change us, and change over time. Daniel Clarke  is Senior Lecturer in Business and Management at the University of Dundee, School of Business. His scholarship centres on issues related to organizational space and place. He studies business management education, customer experience and craft beer, as well as son– father relations and experiences of loss. His interests are framed by a desire to develop evocative forms of understanding through use of imaginative-­creative and expressive representations, including autoethnography and research poetry. In a recent collaborative project with David and Holly for Emerald Publishing, he co-edited Researching Craft Beer: Understanding Production, Community and Culture in an Evolving Sector (2021). His favourite beer is Pilot’s North Sea Stout (Edinburgh). Tom Cunningham is an Academic Development Partner at the University of Stirling. He is the Programme Director for the Postgraduate Certificate in Learning & Teaching in Higher Education (PGCLTHE). ix

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He was previously an Academic Skills Tutor at the University of Dundee. His research interests are primarily pedagogical, encompassing the effective use of assessment and feedback and—more broadly—the use of storytelling in higher education. Weimin Delcroix-Tang  (née Weimin Tang) holds a PhD in English from the University of Oxford. Her research interests focus on transnational and cross-cultural studies of anglophone Chinese literature. Her representative publications include “Borderlands and Cultural Bonds” in Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration; “Echoes from the Borderlands: Transnation and Cultural Identity in Chuang Hua’s Crossings” in Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture; Emergent Literature: Transcultural Metamorphosis in Chinese American Women’s Writings. Currently she is professor and director of the Language and Culture Research Center at the University of Sanya, Hainan, China. Maureen Haaker  is a sociologist whose research centres on constructions of the body, reproductive politics, and qualitative methodology. Maureen lectures in childhood studies at the University of Suffolk in the School of Social Sciences and Humanities. She is currently completing a PhD in sociology at the University of Essex, exploring women’s experiences of pregnancy. Alongside her research, she has also published on secondary analysis of qualitative data and data management. Her most recent projects have included a CLARIN-funded, oral history project on the transcription chain, an ESRC-funded conference on informed consent, and, most recently, a project on GDPR-compliant anonymisation of qualitative data. Aisha Howells  is a mixed heritage Social Work academic, whose love for social work is rooted in people’s stories—both told and untold stories. She is passionate about creative methods, feminist practice and understanding the world through a critical lens. Aisha’s specific research interests are child sexual abuse, domestic abuse and narrative social work. She is currently completing her PhD, which examines experiences of being a mother of a child who has been subject to child sexual abuse in the family. Terrie Howey-Moore  is an oral storyteller and story studies researcher. Terrie founded Red Phoenix Storytelling & Productions in 2007, which

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runs international storytelling workshops and performances, as well as freelance dramaturgical skills and community youth drama facilitation. This eventually led to a PhD in storytelling. Her doctoral research explored storytelling as an intangible cultural heritage which impacts the sense of place of residents of Milton Keynes. This research also informed a collection of Buckinghamshire Folk Tales (2019). More recently, in 2021, Terrie undertook an investigation into the methods used in America and Canada to support and mentor youth and new storytellers through the Winston Churchill Fellowship Trust. Anna-Leah King is Anishinaabe kwe from Wikwemikong Unceded Reserve, Manitoulin Island, Ontario. She currently works in the Faculty of Education, University of Regina, as an associate professor, Chair of Indigenization for the faculty, and Chair of the Indigenous Advisory Council for the university. Her teaching role includes anti-oppressive education, Indigenous art study, Indigenous literatures, Indigenous language acquisition, Indigenous language revitalization, and Indigenous spirituality in education. Her research is in the area of Indigenous literature, Indigenous oral story, and Indigenous language revitalization. Barbara McNeil  is an associate professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina. Curious and passionate, Barbara believes in the open-endedness of agency and hope in relation to the power and value of language, literature, literacy, and cultural/pedagogical sites such as museums, libraries, and art galleries to engender social justice and equity for all. She is committed to using arts-based approaches to work collaboratively, compassionately, and ethically with children and youth of underserved/marginalized communities in the interest of imagining and creating better worlds for self and all planetary others. Overall, Barbara’s research orients towards justice, collective well-being, and the ‘not yet’ of our positive potentialities. Heather Phipps  is Associate Professor of Minority Language Education in the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina in oskana kâ-­ asastêki, kisiskâciwan. Originally from the Peace River area (Treaty 8) in Northern British Columbia, Heather lived in Alberta, Québec, and Ontario before moving to Saskatchewan where she now teaches courses

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in French Education and is learning the Cree language. With experience teaching in diverse contexts from kindergarten to university, Heather is passionate about playful, arts-based learning through multimodal/multilingual storytelling. Heather is fascinated by the role of story to promote social justice, community, and relationships. Heather is an avid hiker, a choir singer, and a proud auntie. Tina Potkins  entered higher education as a mature student while working full-time and bringing up her family. During the final year of her undergraduate degree, she decided to use her dissertation to explore— retrospectively—a particularly difficult period in her professional life while working for a British construction company. Tom was her supervisor and, together, they tackled the thorny issue of workplace bullying. In Tina’s case, the bullying was made all the more challenging by complex prevailing gender dynamics, an experience their chapter in this volume explores. Tina is currently (and happily!) employed by Suffolk County Council where she works as their payroll manager. Sarah Richards works at the University of Suffolk as Head of the Graduate School and Associate Professor of Social Policy Specialising in Childhood Studies. Sarah has extensive teaching experience in higher education. She has taught across a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses and primarily focuses on social policy and research methods. Sarah’s publications feature her work on international adoption policy. She has a longstanding critical interest in methodological and ethical debates on research with children and qualitative approaches more generally. Kathryn Ricketts  is an associate professor in the Faculty of Education in the University of Regina and Director of the Field office. Kathryn has been working for the past 40 years in the fields of dance, theatre, and visual arts, performing and teaching throughout Europe, South America, Africa, Australia, and Canada. Her work in studios, galleries, theatres, and environmental sites focuses on social/political issues through the languages of dance, theatre, text, technology, and visual art. Her doctoral research advanced these interests into literacy, embodiment, and cultural studies with a method she has coined Embodied Poetic Narrative.

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Tom Vine  studied for his first two degrees at Warwick Business School before moving to Essex Business School for his doctorate. He is presently an associate professor at Suffolk Business School where he leads the PhD programme. He is an ethnographer and organization theorist with specific interests in agency, belief, complexity and paradox. When he’s not grappling with Nietzsche, Tom enjoys charity shop crawls, restoring old boats, and cold water swimming in the rivers of East Anglia. David Weir  is Professor of Intercultural Management at York St John University, Visiting Professor at University of Lincoln, and Emeritus Professor at the University of Northumbria. He was once Professor of Whisky at the Université des Eaux de Vie in Segonzac, France. He writes on craft beer from the perspective of a long-time consumer, but his son, James, owner of Upstart Brewery, is the real family expert on this topic. David’s favourite beer is Timothy Taylor’s Landlord. Donning another hat, he has worked since the 1960s with police forces mainly in West Yorkshire, Lancashire and Merseyside but also in the United States. Two of his former students in the United Kingdom became Chief Constables and one in the USA a Police Chief in a small city. With Craig Marsh and Wilf Greenwood, he undertook research into the work practices and culture of police sergeants. Their contribution is gratefully acknowledged. Reilly Anne Dempsey Willis  is Lecturer in Law at the University of Suffolk. She has worked extensively as an advocate for women’s rights, including reproductive rights, both in the charity sector and within the UN system. A highlight of this work was with the Center for Reproductive Rights on the successful case of Alyne da Silva Pimentel Teixeira v. Brazil (CEDAW), the first time maternal mortality was recognised as a human rights violation. She has also worked with the ASTRA (Central and Eastern European Network for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights) in Poland and the Centre for the Study of AIDS at the University of Pretoria in South Africa.

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 The relationship between storytellers, storytelling, and stories 3 Fig. 12.1 Images taken at the four performances of KM:MK. (Image: T. Howey) 262 Fig. 12.2 Graph comparing listener’s knowledge of stories told to new knowledge gained 265 Fig. 12.3 A word frequency search of the themes occurring in the folktales274

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List of Tables

Table 12.1 Matrix of stories performed in each Grid-Square Table 12.2 Participants comments on how the workshops engagement with stories altered their perspective of Milton Keynes Table 12.3 Participants’ comments about engaging with local stories Table 12.4 Workshop participants identifying role of storytelling in the community Table 12.5 Workshop participants’ view on the benefits for the listeners of ICH stories Table 12.6 Response to being confronted with negative commentary about Milton Keynes

264 265 266 266 267 267

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1 Introduction Tom Vine and Sarah Richards

For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn. Six words in length, Ernest Hemingway’s briefest of stories is deeply disturbing. Perhaps more so than anything else, this piece of flash fiction reminds us that storytelling can be devastatingly powerful. The concept of story is, of course, intrinsic to the study of literature, but in this book, we advance the argument that it deserves significantly more traction in the social (and natural) sciences. Academics at the more conservative end of the spectrum are likely to raise eyebrows at this prospect at the very least, and many more will view the scholarly study of stories in these fields as proverbial codswallop, plain and simple. For them, positivism (that is, research frames which take a more conventional attitude to what constitutes ‘science’) must prevail. But does this attitude miss an important trick? Stop and think. What do most of us recall from our encounters with the physics of Sir Isaac Newton? We almost certainly remember the tale of the apple falling on young Isaac’s head, but few of us will remember the equations that Newton developed

T. Vine (*) • S. Richards University of Suffolk, Ipswich, UK e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Vine, S. Richards (eds.), Stories, Storytellers, and Storytelling, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07234-5_1

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to model the concept of gravity that purportedly evolved from this early experience. We remember the story. In this sense—and at the very least— story is a formidable pedagogical device. In any event, Newton’s physics has long been superseded by the relativist approaches advanced by Einstein. In this sense, Newton’s physics (like all physics, and indeed all social and natural sciences) invokes not an absolute truth, but a provisional truth. In some respects, it is therefore not unlike a Shakespearian play or a celebrated piece of abstract art. Nonetheless, rather than present a case for storytelling to compete head to head with positivist methods, in this book, we train our collective efforts on exploring the unique perspectives storytelling affords. Stories are a whole lot more than entertainment. Books, films, and immersive video games are part of the cultural discourses in which we are enmeshed; they contribute to the co-construction of our beliefs about the world around us. Consider, for a moment, how very young children learn about the world beyond their immediate sensory experience; even in an era of interactive electronic entertainment, the bedtime story remains a cherished part of most children’s daily routine. As we have noted elsewhere, ‘Storytelling is the first abstract formal learning method we encounter as human beings. It is also probably transcultural; perhaps even an immanent part of the human condition’ (Vine 2021: 83). Stories mould the way we think about the world from a very young age. Child development researchers such as Wang and Leichtman (2003) have compared the sorts of stories that children in different cultures around the world are read, as well as the sorts of stories the children themselves tell. What these studies tend to reveal is that in Western storytelling, the concept of the individual protagonist or hero is a fundamental trope, while stories in the East (especially China) more usually have plots which emphasize the virtues of social engagement and collective action. The point is that a sense of individualism (both in terms of identity and economic outlook) is cultivated in the West from an early age; contrariwise, a sense of community and togetherness is routinely cultivated in the East. More specifically, narratives (which are, in essence, sequences of events) presuppose and reinforce particular cause-and-effect relationships. They also construct unconscious biases, prejudices, and discriminatory attitudes. Storying (a term we use in this book to encompass stories,

Storytelling

Policised artefacts

Storytellers

A process constrained by me, place, audience and medium

Distinct positionalities and agendas

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Stories

Fig. 1.1  The relationship between storytellers, storytelling, and stories

storytellers, and storytelling) is complex. And it is to making sense of this complexity that this book is dedicated.

Background This edited book emerged from research presented at the inaugural Suffolk Storytelling Conference held at the University of Suffolk in July 2018. The conference was borne of a collaboration between Suffolk Business School and the School of Psychology and Education. Both departments are interdisciplinary in their approach, encompassing scholars from areas such as disability studies, employability, heritage management, history of art, organization studies, social psychology, and sociology. The book is presented in this multidisciplinary vein, not just in drawing together multiple and disparate academic disciplines but in bringing together classically-­trained literary critics with scholars from the social sciences. The book also transcends the practitioner–scholar divide. In our 2018 text on Ethnography (see Vine et al. 2018), we sought to glean common experiences of ethnography, as practised in very different disciplines. In

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the case of ethnography, we noted that despite the variable status the method holds in different fields and the divergent ways in which it has propagated in different subject areas, we identified three transcendent themes: anxiety, identity, and self. These themes were, of course, largely introspective; ethnography seemed to be as much about the researcher as it was about the researched. And this wasn’t to imply that ethnography was self-indulgent (although it certainly can be), but that it held potential for realizing a sense of catharsis and emerging wisdom among those who do it. Could something similar be true in respect of storytelling-as-­ method? Is storytelling as much about the storyteller as it is about the story? Here, then, was our analytical point of departure (or the beginning of our story, if you prefer).

Demarcating Our Unique Contribution to Knowledge In one sense, it is difficult to say something meaningful about storytelling. Much of the extant coverage borders on the banal. Most likely inspired by the discursive framing of Hegelian dialectic (i.e. ‘thesis-­ antithesis-­ synthesis’, or ‘narrative and counter-narrative’), McAdams (1993) suggests that stories ungird our lives. Similarly, Schank and Abelson (1995), for example, suggest—quite simply—that all human experience is storied. More recently, and writing specifically about indigenous writing, Justice (2018: 34) has said, ‘we know ourselves only through stories. The unstoried life is a terrible thing to comprehend, a soul-deep desolation’. Even the most accomplished contributors have fallen into the trap of abstract musing. Moffett (2019: 190, emphasis added), for example, says: ‘Humans turn everything they do into a kind of story, and interpret their lives in light of what it says. Further, that story expands through people’s constant interactions into a society-wide narrative in which everyone plays a part’. This sort of claim about the all-­ encompassing nature of storytelling is rife in the literature despite the fact that comments such as this all-too-often come across as glib. It is not so much that we necessarily disagree with these authors; rather, we intend for our evaluation of storytelling to be more methodical.

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As this point, it is important to ascertain what this book is not. It is certainly not intended as a Storytelling 101 generic overview. Nor is it intended as a guide for using storytelling techniques in academia. Such objectives would most probably undermine the very creative processes that distinguish narrative-based methods in a field dominated by conventional epistemologies. Notably, this introduction chapter was written after the contributing chapters began to take shape. In this sense, we were very much guided by our collective data. Following our formal announcement of our intention to publish at the 2018 Suffolk Storytelling Conference, we received close to 50 chapter proposals. Ultimately, just 12 chapters (in addition to this one) made the final cut. We consciously allowed the chapter contributions to inform our post-hoc understanding of storytelling, and it is thus in this spirit that this chapter is presented. Distilled and digested, this book carves out six distinct objectives: (1) it explores the triadic interaction between stories, storytelling, and storytellers; (2) it explores the thorny relationship between storying and ethics; (3) it explores the degree to which storytelling-as-method appeals to some fields more so than others; (4) it explores the manner in which storying serves a vital role in the construction of collective identity; (5) it explores the ability for storytelling to reveal a sense of the remarkable; and (6) it explores storytelling as a unique pedagogical device. Provisional discussions of each objective are found below.

Towards a ‘Science’ of Storying: A Triadic Rendering More so than anything else, this collection brings to the fore the complex relationship between stories, storytelling, and storytellers. The analytical focus on this relationship (which we refer to, collectively, as storying) allowed our research to assume a pertinence appropriate to the social sciences, as distinct from the more conventional study of literature in the humanities. In order to make some sense of its inherent complexity, we present a triadic analysis in this book: the stories (the object), storytelling (the process), and storytellers (the subject). We therefore recognize that the relationship between stories (as politicized artefacts), storytelling (as a process constrained by time, place, and medium), and storytellers (as

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authors and orators with distinct positionalities and agendas) warrants closer and systematic attention. Social scientists are—or at least should be—interested in people. As we weave together the stories with their tellers and listeners, we demonstrate that the act of storytelling is a distinctly social process which invokes some unusual—and often unanticipated— dynamics. Indeed, as the book began to take shape, it became clear that we would need to engage at a relatively advanced level with what has become known as the linguistic turn. Commentary in respect of the linguistic turn often borders on cliché, but beyond the pretence, its salience becomes clearer. For those unfamiliar with the concept, at its heart, the linguistic turn implies that the author can (or, indeed, should) be decentred from the story, thus allowing the reader to take on a pivotal role. As far as analysis is concerned, it therefore implies that we must endeavour to understand not just the storyteller but the ‘storylistener’; that is, the reader or the audience. ‘Storytelling’, it seems, does not represent a unidirectional flow of information. Furthermore, and as Howells (see Chap. 10) notes, it is the teller that often has the most to learn from their story, not the listener. In the interests of developing a systematic approach to the evaluation of storytelling in social scientific research and by way of foreshadowing the key themes of the chapters presented in this book, we have compiled a list of questions we might ask in respect of each subdivision of this triadic model:

Storytellers: • What is the storyteller’s relationship with the story? • Which of the storyteller’s demographics is significant in respect of the storying process, and why? • What agenda is the storyteller seeking to advance? • Is the storyteller the author or narrator, or both?

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Storytelling: • When is the story told? Why at this particular time? Was this chance or planned? • Where is the story told? Why in this particular place? Was it chance or planned? • Who is the ‘storylistener (i.e. the audience)’? Was this chance or planned? • Is the story read in person or narrated by a third party?

Stories: • What is the purpose of the story? • To what extent is the story co-constructed? • To what extent has story propagated (i.e. developed a sense of agency and taken on a life of its own)? Stories are inevitably and invariably co-constructed. Think about the rookie novelist penning her tome, which her publisher then insists on compromising in terms of style and content in the interests of commercial traction. On a more familiar level, think about how we each mull over, craft, and re-craft anecdotes we plan to tell friends and family at the right moment in the hope that they will entertain or impress in some other way. We invariably have our audience in mind when crafting our stories, even if that audience is imagined. (Interestingly, in Chap. 7, Willis explores the pertinence of stories without audiences, or at least with imagined rather than real audiences.) In one sense, stories only really ‘exist’ at the point at which they are shared. And once shared, they usually take on a life of their own as they are mediated, propagated, translated, disseminated, and re-crafted. The lifecycle of any ancient religious scripture is, of course, a case in point. But perhaps more so than any other medium, contemporary video gaming reveals the intricate relationship between storyteller, storytelling, and story. For example, Friedman (1995) invokes ‘The New Hollywood’ to describe the production process of interactive video games at the time: he notes that as teams of artists,

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animators, and writers are brought together on a single video game project, this renders the content significantly richer than games created by a single programmer. The first Doom video game, for example, was released in 1993. Games such as Doom offered opportunities for players to interact with complex simulations. This was due not only to enhancements in respect of graphics but—crucially—in storylines and gameplay too. Video gamers were increasingly able to directly participate in fictional stories which led ultimately to altered emotional states and behavioural patterns outside of the game world. In many respects, then, the 1990s represented a threshold moment for videogaming. As Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al. (2013) later argued, here was time when gaming consoles had both the mainstream accessibility and the processing power to tell ‘meaningful’ stories which could not just compete with literature and cinema but, crucially, offer something distinctive—in the form of narrative immersion.

Storying and Ethics As this transdisciplinary text began to take shape, two overarching themes emerged vis-à-vis ethics. First, the solicitation of formal ethical approval for narrative-based research (e.g. in respect of autoethnography) is notoriously thorny, and in many cases, paradoxically makes for less ethical research. Second, the contributions demonstrated that while, on the one hand, stories enlighten and empower, on the other, they can manipulate and distort. Each of these themes is provisionally explored below.

The Complexities of Formal Ethics Approval for Narrative-Based Research For Sorensen (2003: 3), ‘the oldest philosophical questions evolved from folklore and show vestiges of the verbal games that generated them’. Folklore—and hence storytelling—is a significant source of intellectual progeny. Sorenson provides an instructive example: ‘The [Ancient] Greeks were fascinated by antagonistic struggle. They admired questions that are sustained by a balance of power between rival answers. The playwrights became adept at smelting the ore of paradoxes’ (ibid.: 5). Many of the

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contributors in this book have long been fascinated by ontological tensions of this nature. David Weir has published extensively on the controversial Arabic concept of ‘wasta’ (Megheirkouni and Weir 2019; Weir et al. 2019; Ali and Weir 2020). Meanwhile, Sarah Richards has explored research topics that are considered taboo (Richards et al. 2015), and Tom Vine has a burgeoning interest in the concept of paradox itself (Vine 2018, 2020). Perhaps these pre-existing fascinations with both conceptual and experiential tensions are the very reason that we have each since developed an interest in storytelling and auto/ethnography. Indeed, it is most likely from this fascination with tension that our epistemological position vis-àvis ethics in this book has emerged. We recognize that ethics is not just a question of wrong and right, but it is a question of how we go about navigating ethical dilemmas. As even the most disengaged philosophy undergraduate will be aware, ethics is rarely, if ever, a case of black and white. For this very reason, the resolution of ethical dilemmas is unlikely to be found by recourse to the sort of moral calculus advanced by either the duty-based ethics of Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative or indeed the ends-oriented ethics of Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarianism. Could it be, then, that a narrative-type methodology is better suited to tackling ethical dilemmas? This sort of approach might resonate with the virtue ethics (and ‘lifecraft’) we associate with Aristotle, an approach that has experienced a resurgence among professional ethicists in recent decades (e.g. see MacIntyre 1981). This approach has some practical implications, too. Take lying, for example. Something that follows from Fine and Shulman’s (2009) commentary, in particular, is that lying is an inevitable human frailty. As they note, we can’t help but lie. To lie is human nature; it is the lubricant that gets us through every single day. And since narrative-based methods such as storytelling and ethnography seek to capture human experiences and interpretations in context, perhaps they will only succeed if they are prepared to lie, too. Howey-Moore (see Chap. 12 ) draws on the work of Wilson (2014: 126) who suggests that ‘Narrative scholars have long since embraced mess, and storyteller-practitioners understand their discipline as being the ultimate in messiness, embracing these two seemingly contradictory properties: (1) To be messy in and of itself. (2) To enable meaning making and clarity where mess exists. Mess to deal with mess.’ Life is messy. Ethics is messy. Storytelling must be messy, too.

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There is, it seems, an undeniable tension associated with the ethics of life and this is something narrative-based methods cannot ignore. Of the numerous conversations we—as editors—had with our contributors (including, of course, those that didn’t make the final cut), the concept of ethics approval came up more so than any other. For academics (who are of course schooled in a fairly linear—if, in practice, iterative—process of research which involves the solicitation of formal ethics approval prior to data collection), we are presented with a major problem in narrative-­ based research. That problem is serendipity. Who is to say when an interesting story will present itself? Storytelling academics cannot usually plan their research in the same way as academics who are reliant on more conventional methods of data collection. Nonetheless, for some of our contributors, the solicitation of conventional ethics approval was appropriate. Willis’s chapter on abortion narratives is one such example (see Chap. 7). Weir’s chapter on policing is another (see Chap. 9). Haaker’s research on stories associated with pregnancy, too, managed to solicit ethics approval, even if it was a rather complex beast (see Chap. 5). For others, however, given the opportunistic nature of their particular projects, ethics approval simply wasn’t possible. This was especially true for those chapters that amount to what can be described as ‘opportunistic auto/ ethnography’. Several of our chapters (i.e. Clarke & Cunningham, Potkins & Vine, Vine, and Weir et al.) fall into this category. We have commented elsewhere on the nature of opportunistic auto/ ethnography (see Vine 2020) and so do not plan to do so again. However, we do wish to comment on this approach in respect of ethics. Formal ethics clearance is expected in the case of orthodox autoethnographic research. However, in atypical contexts, it becomes more challenging. So, for example, in the case of what is becoming known as retrospective auto/ ethnography (see Boncori 2013; Boncori and Vine 2014), formal ethics clearance is not feasible given that data collection has—by the very nature of a posteriori research—already taken place. Formal ethics clearance is comparably challenging in the case of opportunistic ethnography. Although data collection has not yet taken place, the very fact that it is directly contingent on opportunity (and who is to say when those opportunities will present themselves?), the slow and bureaucratic nature of formal ethics clearance is rarely—if ever—practicable.

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However, while opportunistic ethnography typically rules out formal ethics clearance, this very fact can actually yield both epistemological and—notably—ethical advantages. For Kienzler (2001: 325), critical thinking ought to involve risk. But, for the most part, academic research has become rather risk-free, stale, and unimaginative (see Vine 2021). Conversely, methods such as opportunistic ethnography propose an approach which speaks to an ethical position of trust. Such approaches seek to restore that sense of trust in the researcher herself in preference to relying on the abstract machinations of a university ethics committee. In any event, discussions of ethics are notoriously complex. On the face of it, a strict ethics approval process is desirable. Dig a little deeper, however, and this conclusion is difficult to sustain. For example, in their exploration of the practices inherent to ethnography, Fine and Shulman (2009: 177) note that ‘Idealized visions of how professionals should work are difficult to reconcile with ethical compromises that are made in practice’. They further note that full disclosure of research intent rarely ever constitutes a viable research strategy in practice. To this end, the authors explore the inevitability of ‘faux-friendliness’ (to help break the ice) and ‘self-­ censorship’ (to build a rapport) as well as the selective editing of our encounters which invariably involves ‘scene cropping’ (to strengthen our research narrative) and ‘inverse-plagiarism’ (giving credit to those underserving where we can’t recall—exactly—what was said). Of this final point, formal research ethics clearance invariably insists on the transparent and accurate capture of data. But how viable is this in practice? Scholars are expected to realize revealing—and ideally ground-­breaking— data. But to break ground inevitably means challenging the status quo; it necessitates controversy. But will data that challenge the status quo and court controversy be elicited where researchers have ended up using voice recorders to meet expectations in terms of word-for-word accuracy and transparency? It’s unlikely. Of course, some researchers seek to get round the fact that voice recorders are unsettling by dispensing with them in preference of pen and paper. But, in our experience, the frantic scribbling of notes (ostensibly a sanctioned method of data capture) can be just as unsettling for participants as the sight of a voice recording device in their peripheral vision.

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For Rennels (2015), the methodological advantages of immersive, emic techniques rarely gel with political diplomacy. Rennels reflects on the juxstapositioning of descriptive detail (i.e. the cold hard ethnographic data) of white working-class Americans with the stereotypes she was determined to challenge: I knew I needed to honor and remain true to what I observed and what participants shared with me, even if this information reinforced the stereotypes I was trying to debunk. I constantly struggled with what details to share, like Randy’s mullet haircut and Ellen’s kitschy décor. These details were important to the stories I composed but contradictory to my desire to invite readers to understand, not judge, white working-class people. (Rennels 2015: 141)

These examples all hint at ethical dilemmas for which formal ethics approval committees are ill-equipped to deal. Drawing on the work of Miller (1993), Weick (1995: 42) notes ‘organizations seem to drift toward an architecture of simplicity’. University ethics committees are no different. This is expedient and practical. University ethics committees are compelled to take a simplistic—and binary—view of ethics. But, the world-as-experienced is far from simple, particularly in the case of ethics. In their discussion of autoethnography, Bochner & Ellis (2016: 15) advance an interesting insight: our ethical decisions involve struggle and uncertainty. That’s what makes them dilemmas. There are no perfect answers. Sometimes you just have to put your struggle and uncertainty on the pages and invite readers to enter your consciousness as you grapple with writing ethically. Revealing that struggle too is a contribution.

More recently, Vine has theorized these tensions as ‘methodological paradoxes’ (see Vine 2018). Similar conclusions are presented by Thomas et  al. (2019) in respect of what they refer to as ‘wicked problems’. Collectively, this emerging body of work reveals a greater degree of complexity with respect to research ethics than is routinely acknowledged by university ethics approval processes. There are at least three important

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13

points this body of work raises: (1) exercising respect and sensitivity to participants is, ironically, often only achieved by circumventing official ethics documentation and formal solicitation of approval; (2) overly-­ authoritarian ethics approval processes are likely to yield more in the way of “under the radar” operations; and (3) overly-rigid ethics approval processes significantly thwart intellectual creativity and innovation. So where does this leave us in respect of storytelling and ethics? The problem, to reiterate, is that lived experience is messy, complex, unpredictable and—dare we say—all-too-human. We believe that now is the time to develop an ethics of trust, and the book you are reading is presented in this spirit. Indeed, in our view, the opportunistic researcher has a choice: yield to the university’s bureaucrats or generate interesting, insightful, and useful research. Ultimately, it seems, adherence to the requirements that follow from the formal ethics solicitation process is incompatible with the sort of data generated through autoethnographic, storytelling, or other narrative-based methods. Indeed, it is difficult to see how university ethics committees will ever pair productively with these sorts of research projects—unless of course they are prepared to move away from a decision calculus based on rules and contracts (comparable to Kantian or utilitarian ethics) and towards one based on understanding and mutual trust (comparable to an Aristotelian approach). In the meantime, we present this book as a metastory in and of itself. Given the fictive associations of ‘story’, we are (we hope) afforded room for epistemological—and ethical—manoeuvre. The very fact that storytelling invokes a fictive feel, particularly when researchers have deliberately assembled composite characters (see Albary, Chap. 2), secures for itself a distinctive moral legitimacy. As Weir notes later in this volume, (see Chap. 9) ‘the success criteria [of stories] are not merely those of objective, absolute truth, but of utility for furthering [important objectives]’. Indeed, those stories most effective for pedagogical advance are not necessarily those that adhere to conventional expectations of epistemological elegance. As the saying goes, “don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.” In any event, and as Weir goes on to note, ‘what actually happens becomes ethically sanctioned by being situationally-justified. … Thus new norms are created through decisive actions and justified in ways that permit them to be subsequently re-embedded in the justifications for future actions’. In

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this vein, storytelling enables us to challenge common misconceptions about how ethics emerges and how it functions. Ethics is serendipity. As Weick (1995) has so pertinently observed, our lives are characterized by experiential flow, and hence only experiential methods such as story stand any chance of capturing its complexity.

Stories: A Double-Edged Ethics? Storytelling can be touted by its defenders (including those that contribute to this volume) as a noble method; not only as a means of emancipating us from the supposedly ‘dark’ forces of positivism but crucially as a means of lending empirical voice to those who are typically marginalized by mainstream agendas. So far, so good. However, we must also point out that storytelling can harbour a darker side itself: editorial dissection reveals a deliberate (but oft-concealed) rival agenda underpinned by alternative political biases, prejudices and/or calculated scholarly spin. We therefore recognize that the relationship between stories (as politicized artefacts), storytelling (as a process constrained by time, place, and medium), and storytellers (as authors and orators with distinct positionalities and agendas) warrants closer and systematic attention, particularly in respect of the ethics of scholarship. As Weir et al. note (see Chap. 8), storytelling is distinguished from narrative analysis and narrative representationalism in case study research on the basis that the former adds reflexivity to narrative. Whereas the researcher is relatively benign in the case of narrative analysis and narrative representationalism, in the case of storytelling, she becomes more malignant and—potentially—malevolent. And this, of course, is where the implications of the triadic nature of storying (as the complex dynamics between story, storyteller, and storytelling) is so much more interesting than in the case of other narrative-based methods. Our principle concern here, of course, is the potential for malevolence. So where might this malevolence creep in? In this book, our authors have apparently prioritized the marginalized as principle subjects. So, for example, we have the bullied (Chap. 3); we have women who have had abortions (Chap. 7); we have racialized others (Chaps. 6 and 11); and we have child sexual abuse

1 Introduction 

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victims (Chap. 10). On the face of it, these are all worthy subjects of scholarly attention. But are we inadvertently reinforcing bias? What about the bullies themselves? What about anti-abortion conservatives? What about the abusers? What about the racialized majority? It is of course entirely appropriate that we give a badly-needed voice to the marginalized, but in doing so, we exercise a peculiar form of power in deciding who those marginalized are. In telling the stories of the bullied, the abused, and the racialized minorities, do we simply make pariahs out of those much of society already views with suspicion? While our intentions are undoubtedly noble, there is a compelling argument that suggests that potentially more interesting—if highly controversial—stories will be those of the bullies themselves, of the abusers themselves, and of perhaps even the stories of racial majorities who—for whatever reason—are marginalized themselves (the plight of working-class British boys in terms of educational achievement is a case in point). There is of course a fine line between the glamorization of abhorrent practices, and the cultivation of genuinely insightful narratives. But in telling one story, we necessarily obscure another. Whether we choose to accept it or not, telling a story is wielding power. In pedagogical terms at least, the trick must be to build a platform upon which multiple stories can be told alongside one another, irrespective of how palatable the content may be. Of course, this happens in the general public courtesy of social media, but here it amounts to little more than noise. What we’re calling for is narrative polyvocality among scholars. As Howells notes (see Chap. 10), our stories are invariably embedded in the stories of others—and for us—these others must mean those we disagree with as well as those we align ourselves with. Ultimately, an enhanced polyvocality of storytelling will help remould entrenched discourses. And let us not forget that critical discourses can be just as entrenched as discourses that underpin the status quo. Early on in the editorial process, we noticed that many of the chapters (including those we ourselves contributed to) came across as rather saccharine: it felt as though we were all contributing to an overriding message that storytelling is simply wonderful and the elixir for all societal ills and inequities. But donning our editorial hats, we needed to see more evidence of analytical rigour and critical reflection. So, we asked of ourselves and some of our contributors the following two questions: Do you

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really mean to suggest that stories are only ever a force for good? To what degree might stories propagate and/or reinforce prejudices? In response, our contributors typically acknowledged the bias, but suggested they felt so alienated by conventional positivist methods that—for them—storytelling was indeed the elixir. Perhaps this feeling was inevitable. However, it is pedagogically unhelpful as it further entrenches belief systems and reinforces attitudes of them-and-us. Conscious, then, of the inevitable bias that storying elicits (and conscious in particular of this volume’s analytical focus on the triadic relationship between story, storyteller, and storytelling), we encouraged our authors to comment in respect of their own positionality vis-à-vis the story/ies they served as conduit for. To this end, we suggest that how—or where—the author positions themselves in the story represents an important theme. We were therefore keen for our authors to reveal whether they saw themselves principally as observers, scribes, integral participants, and/or co-constructors of the stories they impart. Moreover, it felt important to us to comment on how—precisely—stories help illuminate complex and controversial issues such as prejudice (see King et al., Chap. 6; Delcroix-Tang, Chap. 11), trauma (see Howells, Chap. 10), and bullying (see Potkins & Vine, Chap. 3), rather than obliquely using storytelling as a trite outlet for sympathy. After all, the world of popular literature is plagued by badly-drawn characters and clichéd plots. There is of course no reason why we should not expect the same in respect of ‘real’ stories. We must therefore tread carefully. Polyvocality? Yes. But crap? No. Any old story simply will not do. And it is, perhaps, for this reason that saccharine stories must yield to more controversial ones. The broader suggestion that abhorrent stories should be told alongside more palatable ones is certainly contentious. However, we believe that the ethical tensions that such suggestions arise from must not be ignored. On the contrary, they must be explicitly addressed if we are to stand any chance of advancing narrative-based techniques in an academy still highly suspicious of unorthodox—and intentionally subjective—qualitative methods.

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 torytelling-as-Method Appeals to Some Fields More S So Than Others Related to our concern about ethics and them-and-us attitudes, we note that storytelling seems to remain the preserve of liberal-minded scholars. This begs the following questions: Does this limit its reach? Does this mean that storytelling research amounts to little more than a quaint echo chamber? Are we simply preaching to the converted? We only received proposals from scholars working in fields that are sometimes regarded as the fairer social sciences (e.g. childhood studies, counselling, organizational behaviour, psychology, sociology). In these cases, storytelling typically finds a warm reception. But if we really wish to see storytelling develop into a serious scholarly technique, it needs to find traction beyond these fields. With this in mind, we’re pretty certain that economists, political scientists, and even natural scientists all have significant stories to tell which will advance their fields, perhaps in hitherto unanticipated ways. Future projects, we hope, will address this deficit.

 torying Serves a Vital Role in the Construction S of Collective Identity As our book began to take shape, it became clear that storytelling is inevitably a form of stereotyping. This is something Moffett hints at in his excellent book The Human Swarm. We quote him at length below: The concepts and stories we group up with touch upon many aspects of our identities and guide how we interpret our place in a society and the world …. The vital cultural particulars that people chose to convey—for example, the account of Betsy Ross sewing the stars and stripes on the first American flag—give those details an emotional weight that improves their later recollection and continuity. Such stories resemble stereotypes in that they save us mental effort by cutting through a morass of information to remind us about what is really important in our connections to others …. The stories of a society may tell of the aspirations of the people and accounts of their past …. No origin story is a straightforward recounting of events, however. Creating what amounts to a collective historical consciousness is

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delicate business. What matters isn’t truth but tale, one that conveys a proud past and bravery in a crisis for the sake of the group and its values, where the abiding question that all men and women confront in their lives, “who am I?” turns to “who are we?” (Moffett 2019: 210–211)

In a postmodern world, then, where truth (singular) has rapidly yielded to truths (plural), tale is becoming more important. Besides, truth is largely irrelevant to identity. What matters—as Moffett notes—is how we use stories to transition from individual to collective. Stories—and perhaps nothing else—meld us together. ‘Stories, and the territory they are often anchored to, are the great binders of societies’ (ibid.: 214). And in an argument dating back to at least Toffler’s (1970) concern at the rapidly increasing pace of change in the modern world, it may well be that stories (as artefacts) are the only means of mitigating this pace of change. Think about the preponderance—and dominance—of social media. It provides instantaneous communication, but it does not satiate our need for storying. Attention spans, banner distractions, character limitations, and so on prohibit this. And this observation invites other questions: Do stories grow old with us? Do stories provide us with an anchorage to happy memories? These are precisely the sorts of question that King et al. (see Chap. 6) and Delcroix-Tang (see Chap. 11) are especially concerned with later in this book.

Storytelling as Revelation For Weir (see Chap. 9), ‘Stories are much more than pallid representations’. Storytelling allows us to realize something remarkable. In this collection, the story often confounds expectations. So, in Weir’s case, storytelling among the British police is not as racist or sexist as the author imagined. For Potkins & Vine, women in the construction industry experience bullying at the hands of other women, not men. For Vine, hospital treatment is often more about the emotional and organizational experience than it is about the clinical attention. As part of this confounding of expectations, we note that stories are often distilled into revelatory ‘chopped moments’. Weick (1995: 43) writes: ‘To understand

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sensemaking is to be sensitive to the ways in which people chop moments out of continuous flows [of lived experience] and extract cues from those moments’. Stories are of course about making sense, although not necessarily in the way Weick envisaged. But the parallel extends further: stories are themselves abstractions of lived experience (irrespective of whether that experience is lived or entirely fictive); and hence constitute ‘chopped moments’ in line with Weick’s metaphor. Within the story, we can further identify and ‘chop out’ moments that we deem to be of special significance. Indeed, how many of us lay claim to enjoying an entire story? In reality, we like a story because we are attracted to specific scenes or even fleeting moments embedded within the narrative: ‘I like the bit where ….’ Now, these are of course the sorts of observation that have doubtless been unpicked by scholars in the humanities. Our focus, however, is on the social scientific pertinence of the storytelling method. We might therefore wish to understand exactly how people go about ‘chopping’ moments out of stories. Think about some familiar stories. On one level, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is a story about forbidden love. On another, it is a story about a balcony. On one level, the story of Adam and Eve is about the fall of man. On another, it is a story about a tree. On one level, the story of There’s Something About Mary is about rekindling romance. On another, it is about mistaking semen for hair gel. It is difficult—if not downright impossible—to anticipate what a story will eventually become known for. What makes it remarkable? Of the twelve contributions that make up this book, how many will go on to be celebrated as classics? Perhaps none. However, what is more likely is that some may well be remembered for specific instances, turns of phrase, lucid quotations, and so on. It is difficult to anticipate what will connect a reader with a particular story. Nonetheless, chopped moments—particularly moments that reveal—are much more likely to be celebrated.

Storytelling as a Unique Pedagogical Device Later in this volume, in Chap. 9, Weir draws upon Smith’s (1999) observations noting that there are central opportunities for storytelling in which verisimilitude justifies the storytelling method as appropriate for

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the transfer of knowledge. Certainly the concept of verisimilitude and associated ones such as the deliberate creation of composite subjects or the use of poetic license all hint at the construction of a hyperreality with an overarching pedagogical—and often didactic—purpose. It is the very fictive nature of storytelling that reveals its pedagogical pertinence. In their exploration of the life of the cicerone (or beer server) later in this volume, Weir et al. (see Chap. 8) pose the following question: [W]hat if a customer comes in who wants more [information], we ask? He responds, “These guys are passionate about beer. If you [as a server] are not—make it up!”

The point, of course, is that story embellishes; it brings the mundane to life, often humorously. More so than other method, storying doesn’t just permit but actively encourages researchers to move away from the overly-dry and abstract expectations of conventional scholarship. As most of us will recall from our school days, the best teachers were those who could use humour creatively and constructively to enhance the pedagogical potential of their lessons. Something similar may well be true in the case of scholarship. Humour enables—and enhances—juxtaposition (in Vine’s case, in respect of his discussion of cancer), and it evokes and embellishes scene construction (in Weir et al.’s cicerone encounters). And from here we might ask the following question: does it matter whether or not a story is real (and note we use the word real rather than factual)? In her study of women who have had abortions (see Chap. 7), Willis notes that ‘Some have posited it might not even have been a real story, but from an activist perspective this almost doesn’t matter—the story told was an honest representation of what so many Irish women experience.’ At the heart of storytelling lies a paradox: real stories rarely reflect the broader reality. To teach, to learn, to understand necessitates abstract fiction. And this of course presents an essence vis-à-vis nuance dichotomy. In prioritizing essence, does a ‘real’ story ignore nuance? Clarke and Cunningham (see Chap. 13) present a slightly different take on the story/ pedagogy theme. In their chapter, Clarke and Cunningham quote Bradley & Nash: ‘“Why is it that when we get into an … engaging conversational flow in my seminars my students’ personal self-disclosures and

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unorthodox intellectual insights can be so original and inspiring, yet their writing assignments turn out to be so disappointingly flat, uncreative, and impersonal?” (p. 56). Is the academy’s obsession with conventional methods (and the associated instruction that students must avoid the first person pronoun) at least part of the problem? This, we suspect, is why storytelling—and other narrative-based scholarly research—can help undo so much of the pedagogical ruin that has been committed in the name of ‘progress’ by the academy over the years.

Chapter Synopses The collection of chapters that follows is deliberatively diverse in terms of content, theme, style, and meter. Collectively, however, they reveal commonalities which are pertinent to the study and use of storying in the social sciences. All in some way implicitly, if not explicitly, engage with the triadic rendering of storying we have discussed, that is, storyteller, storytelling, story. However, in each chapter, we detect a predisposition towards one of these three categories. Rather than group the chapters by recourse to thematic, we decided to present those chapters which hinged around the role of the storyteller first. From here, we move on to those that emphasize storytelling, before concluding with those that focus on story. It is, perhaps, no surprise that early chapters display a distinct autoethnographic flavour. As the book unfolds, however, the emphasis shifts away from self and towards the role of the story as an artefact with a distinct agency of its own.

Storyteller—Storytelling—Story In Chap. 2, Albary takes on the role of storyteller in order to ask what it means to look like an academic. She supplements autoethnography with a fictional creation (in the form of Erudite, a composite character courtesy of her interviewees) to tackle this seemingly benign question. Albary is primarily interested in how we ‘story’ dress and presentation. As the author notes, ‘creative works of ethnographic fiction allow for alternative

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approaches to problem solving, pulling to the fore aspects of research that have not and do not fit into the mould of traditional coding and dissemination.’ Her results are remarkable. In Chap. 3, Potkins and Vine explore the experience of workplace bullying. Potkins mines her voluminous diaries from the time of this experience and together with Vine, they assume the role of retrospective autoethnographic storytellers in what makes for a controversial exposé of bullying between women in a male-dominated environment. Ultimately, their analysis suggests that the complex dynamics through which questions of gender and bullying are refracted are not at all what they seem. In Chap. 4, Vine reflects on his experience as a visitor of a terminally ill relative in hospital. In this sense, his story is rather maudlin. However, drawing on techniques associated with both ethnography and autoethnography, he argues that this narrative-based approach generates insights about organizational dynamics which would not have been possible had a more conventional empirics been deployed. Remarkably, he surmises not only that the pastoral aspects of hospital care can be as important—if not more so—than the clinical care itself, but that the visitor is a vital (if informal) resource in hospital settings. In Chap. 5, Haaker uses narrative-based methods for her study of pregnant women. Interestingly, over the course of her research, Haaker becomes pregnant herself and so found herself in a unique position vis-à-­ vis the dynamics associated with the triadic rendering of storying discussed. Prior to her pregnancy, she had explored how other tellers created their own stories, but now had the opportunity to reflect on the degree to which these stories would influence her own experiences of pregnancy, as well as how they would influence the story she would go on to tell. Inevitably, then, the intersection between researcher positionality and participant subjectivity in stories about pregnancy is a primary concern for this chapter. Finally, Haaker demonstrates how the focus of her research evolved as she went through the ethics approval process and was presented with the controversial proposition that pregnant women are, by definition, a vulnerable group. This pre-empts Haaker to examine the concept of vulnerability in research with greater nuance; in doing so, she realizes that narrative data is a less about filling ‘gaps’ in the literature and

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more about mapping ‘intermediate’ spaces in our understanding of the world around us. In Chap. 6, King et al. explore the complex relationship between storytelling and identity. The authors identify as a collective of Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars bringing perspectives from Turtle Island, being cognizant of the Indigenous creation stories. So important is the concept of identity in this chapter, each author presents a personal profile to assist readers in respect of positionality. Perhaps most saliently, however, King et al. explore how stories and places are fundamentally linked. Are stories what distinguish space from place? Do spaces only become places once they are storied? The chapter also touches upon the appropriation of story. However, more importantly, the authors emphasize the polyvocality of place and that it is now time to listen deeply to the diversity of stories that surround us on our journeys of learning to live together well—wherever we are. In Chap. 7, Willis explores digital storytelling about abortions and asks some pertinent questions. Is a disembodied world of the Twittersphere the best place to tell intimate stories of a very physical experience? Do the community-level benefits of telling these stories outweigh the potential risk for online abuse? The chapter draws from five hashtag campaign examples to discuss this—#ihadanabortion, #shoutyourabortion, #youknowme, #twowomentravel, and #precisamosfalarsobreaborto—and in so doing, drills down into the relationship between storytellers and their audiences. Indeed, Willis’s chapter probably illustrates the complexities of the relationship between story, storyteller, and storytelling more so than any other. In her case, the abortion is the story, the woman undergoing the procedure is the storyteller, and the Twittersphere serves as the canvass for the storytelling. Each has a significant bearing on the other. It is most definitely not a linear (i.e. story → storyteller → storytelling) process, not least because story rapidly takes on a life of its own in the digital world. Digital storytelling, it seems, necessitates a near total relinquishing of control on the part of the storyteller. Building on Sobieraj’s (2018) research regarding the potential for re-traumatization in telling the story, Willis notes that sharing a story with the world may be asking too much. And this of course requires us to ask the question: is storytelling via pervasive

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technological media a completely different ballgame with its own set of rules?

Storyteller—Storytelling—Story In Chap. 8, Weir et al. explore the empirical minutiae of storytelling by recourse to a study of the micropolitics of bar work. It is not so much ‘what stories tell us about the craft beer bar, but rather about how the reimagining (or re-fetishization) of craft beer is realized through a storytelling paradigm’. The focus in this chapter is less the stories themselves, but how these stories are told. In part, of course, this is the study of bullshitting. But even bullshit can be creative. In Chap. 9, Weir argues that police work is, at heart, ‘storytelling work’ and is performed within ‘storytelling organisations’. Police are here described as “street-level bureaucrats.” To this end, decisions made on the ground must be conformable to existing legal principle and known precedent, but also open to becoming useful for future instances of similar situations. As the author notes, police must therefore exhibit behaviour which is simultaneously rigid and flexible, fixed and evolving, internally credible and externally legitimate, transparent, and available, and definite but subject to challenge. Given the tensions, contradictions, and paradoxes inherent to this work, the pliancy of storytelling represents an ideal medium through which to articulate and explore it. Whereas many of our contributions use stories to lend voice to vulnerable, underrepresented or minority groups hitherto constrained by prejudice, Weir here uses storytelling to explore a more dominant group. Interestingly, Weir notes police stories in the media tend sometimes to emerge as narratives crafted around an implicit suspicion of police wrongdoing. But, it seems, storytelling allows us to cast a different light on our assumptions, and Weir does just this in respect of policing. In Chap. 10, Howells provides an extraordinary account of the complex world of trauma analysis. The author’s background is in social work and she is currently undertaking PhD research in connection to child sexual abuse. In a broad sense, her research shows that the law, pathology, and trauma

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don’t always mix especially well. More specifically, however, Howells grapples with the ontological elephant in the room: do stories truly reflect people’s experiences, or are our stories so extensively determined by traditional storytelling tropes that their empirical value as a window onto a teller’s world is of limited value? Are we so constrained by convention and structure in ‘telling our story’ the pertinence of our stories is undermined?

Storyteller—Storytelling—Story In Chap. 11, Delcroix-Tang explores the degree to which storytelling serves to restore a subjectivity and voice of their own to a racially discriminated ethnic group. Delcroix-Tang examines how author PP Wong resurrects the silenced and lost histories of the racialized other in the acclaimed story, The Life of a Banana. Set in London, story functions here as a healing process by which banana girl (yellow on the outside and white on the inside) begins to turn from rejection and hatred to reconnection and love for her Grandma. As the author notes, storytelling thus serves as a way of righting wrongs by writing wrongs. In Chap. 12, Howey-Moore ‘re-storys’ Milton Keynes, a so-called New Town in the UK. Designated in 1967, it has frequently been derided as ‘manufactured’; it certainly lacks the extensive history of the vast majority of other British towns. And in an Old World country where heritage is considered such a crucial part of the nation’s identity, this presents a problem. The British are inevitably a backward-looking nation. In no small part, this is due to the fact that the British heyday and dominance is retrospective rather than prospective. Reputation comes with age and tradition in the UK. This is of course in marked difference to newlyemerging economies (which are considered forward-looking) not least because they anticipate that their heyday is still to come. What’s interesting, then, in this chapter is how there is pressure to promote stories that inject a sense of history and heritage into the Milton Keynes narrative. Notably, Howey-Moore is a professional storyteller engaged in doctoral storytelling research. Part of her broader remit, then, is to build a bridge between storytelling scholars and storytelling practitioners.

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Finally, in Chap. 13, experienced pedagogues Clarke and Cunningham lament the fact that storytelling remains an undervalued skill on university curricula. The authors suggest universities somehow—perhaps unwittingly—banish any trace of storytelling ability on their degree programmes. The academy’s predisposition to chastise students for using the first person pronoun or imparting matters of emotion or feeling contributes to the problem. In response, the authors seek out possible means of (re-)cultivating ‘passion-based inquiry’ in their students. Through their own teaching, the authors have developed an extraordinary technique for rediscovering—and reigniting—our students’ latent storytelling abilities. The authors note that almost all undergraduates will have crafted a personal statement as part of their university application. And a personal statement is—or at least, ought to be—a story. We are, therefore, storytellers prior to arriving at University. They argue that the personal statement is a live, dynamic, and autobiographical document that should remain ‘open’—and developing—throughout a student’s degree programme— and indeed beyond. It serves as a story in and of itself, which each of us crafts and co-constructs as our skill set, experience, and aptitude expand. Enjoy the book. Tom and Sarah

References Ali, S. & Weir, D (2020) Wasta: Advancing a Holistic Model to Bridge the Micro-Macro Divide, Management and Organization Review. 16, 3, p. 657–685 Bochner, A. and Ellis, C. (2016) Evocative Autoethnography: Writing Lives and Telling Stories, London: Routledge Boncori, I. (2013) Expatriates in China: Experiences, Opportunities and Challenges, Palgrave. Boncori, I. & Vine, T. (2014) ‘“Learning without thought is labour lost; thought without learning is perilous”: the importance of pre-departure training for expatriates working in China’, International Journal of Work, Organisation and Emotion 6(2) 155–177

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Bradley, D.  L., & Nash, R. (2011). MeSearch and ReSearch: A Guide for Writing Scholarly Personal Narrative Manuscripts. IAP. Egenfeldt-Nielsen, S., Smith, J. and Tosca, S. (2013) Understanding Video Games: The Essential Introduction. Taylor & Francis Group Fine, G. and Shulman, D. (2009) ‘Lies From the Field: Ethical Issues in Organizational Ethnography’, in Ybema S, Yanow D, Wels H & Kamsteeg F (2009) Organizational Ethnography: Studying the Complexities of Everyday Life, Sage: London (pp. 177–195). Friedman, T. (1995) ‘Making Sense of Software: Computer Games and Interactive Textuality’ in Jones, S. (ed) Cybersociety: Computer-Mediated Communication and Community, London: Sage Justice, D. (2018) Why Indigenous Literatures Matter, Ontario: WLU Press. Kienzler, D. (2001) ‘Ethics, Critical Thinking, and Professional Communication Pedagogy’. Technical Communication Quarterly 10(3): 319–339. MacIntyre, A. (1981) After Virtue, IA: University of Notre Dame Press. McAdams, D. (1993) The Stories We Live by: Personal Myths and the Making of the Self, London: The Guilford Press. Megheirkouni, M. & Weir, D (2019) ‘Insights into informal practices of sport leadership in the middle east: the impact of positive and negative wasta’ International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics. 11, 4, p. 639–656. Miller, D. (1993) ‘The architecture of simplicity’, Academy of Management Review, 18: 116–138. Moffett, M. (2019) The Human Swarm: How Our Societies Arise, Thrive, and Fall, London: Head of Zeus Ltd. Rennels, T. (2015) ““You Better Redneckognize”: White Working-Class People and Reality Television”. University of South Florida Graduate Thesis http:// scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/5766. Richards, S., Clark, J., and Boggis, A., (2015) ‘Ethical Research with Children: Untold Narratives and Taboos’ Palgrave Schank, R. C., & Abelson, R. P. (1995). Knowledge and memory: The real story. In R. S. Wyer, Jr. (Ed.), Knowledge and memory: The real story (pp. 1–85). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Sobieraj, S., (2018) ‘Bitch, slut, skank, cunt: patterned resistance to women’s visibility in digital publics’. Inf. Commun. Soc. 21, 1700–1714. Smith, K. (1999). The Role of Story Telling In a Police Probationer Training Classroom. PhD thesis. The Open University. Sorensen, R. (2003). A Brief History of the Paradox, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Thomas, W., Hujala, A., Laulainen, S., and McMurray, R. (eds) (2019) The Management of Wicked Problems in Health and Social Care, London: Routledge, 2019. Toffler, A. (1970) Future Shock, London: Pan Books Vine, T. (2018) ‘Methodology: From Paradigm to Paradox’, in Vine, T., Clark, J., Richards, S., & Weir, D. (eds) (2018) Ethnographic Research and Analysis: Anxiety, Identity and Self, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Vine, T., Clark, J., Richards, S., & Weir, D. (eds) (2018) Ethnographic Research and Analysis: Anxiety, Identity and Self, London: Palgrave Macmillan Vine, T. (2020) ‘Brexit, Trumpism and Paradox: Epistemological Lessons for the Critical Consensus’, Organization 27(3): 466–482 Vine, T. (2021) Bureaucracy, London: Routledge Wang, Q. and Leichtman, M. (2003) ‘Same Beginnings, Different Stories: A comparison of American and Chinese Children’s Narratives’, Child Development, 71(5): 1329–1346. Weick, K. (1995) Sensemaking in Organizations, London: Sage. Weir, D., Sultan, N. & Bunt, S.  V. D., (2019) ‘Doing Business in the Arab World: Unlocking the Potential of Wasta’ in Globalization and Development: Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Business and Policy Insights from Asia and Africa. Faghih, N. (ed.). 1st ed. Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland AG, p. 323–341 19. Wilson, M. (2014) ‘“Another Fine Mess”: The Condition of Storytelling in the Digital Age’. Narrative Culture, 1(2), 125–144. Wong, P (2014) The Life of a Banana, London: Legend Press.

2 Narratives in (in)Authenticity: The Early Career Academic Suzanne Albary

Clothes don’t just contain the body, they are an extension of it, and what we wear is often an intentional expression of how we want the world to perceive us. The transition from PhD student to Early Career Academic is a difficult one—from student to researcher, learner to teacher. For Early Career Academics, the cultivation of this new identity can be challenging—how can we present ourselves as ‘academics’ and ‘successful’, whilst also being authentic to ourselves? What is ‘authentic’? And what would be more ‘successful’? In this chapter, I explore these concepts through two storytelling methodologies: an autoethnographic account of my own experiences in transitioning from PhD student to Early Career Academic, and the fictional account of Erudite, a newly appointed Professor at the Academy for the Arcane Arts. Stories, both autobiographical and fictional, can be used in the processes of sense-making; they are rich empirical materials that embody personal understanding, and can be used for critical reflexivity.

S. Albary (*) Royal Holloway, University of London, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Vine, S. Richards (eds.), Stories, Storytellers, and Storytelling, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07234-5_2

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Prologue How we dress is linked to how we perceive ourselves and others and the opinions we form of them (Feinberg et al. 1992, p. 18). Sometimes this can cause a conflict—wearing clothes to belong (or conform) to a social group (King 2015, p. 73), as one Early Career Academic (ECA) found: “Somehow success comes with older looks … so there I lose [… but] I don’t want to look old? … I notice I have a different style of dressing during term time” (Archer 2008b, p. 393, italics added). These difficulties in knowing what to wear, in how to present ourselves, are heightened when we transition between identities such as when we move from student to researcher, from learner to teacher. How do we stop looking like a student? How can we present ourselves as knowledgeable? How do we, as ECAs, fit in to our professional environment? These questions led me to investigate what it means to ‘look like’ an academic. Done well, autoethnography allows the writer to critically evaluate their own experience, while challenging the concept of the distanced observer (Wall 2008). Distancing yourself from your own experience while ensuring you are communicating an authentic experience is, however, a difficult area of research to navigate. There are political and ethical considerations (Best 2018, p. 156), and it is all too easy to edit oneself to conform to the traditions of academic writing (Pullen 2018). My own journey into autoethnography began in what I had originally assumed to be a more credible, traditional area of research—qualitative interviews with my ECA participants. I was aware that my research stemmed from an interest in understanding my own experience, but in speaking to seven ECAs across the UK, I began to question my own role as ‘researcher’. If someone else was undertaking my project, I would be a prime candidate for participation. So why was I trying to ignore my own voice as research participant, just because I was the researcher? I am an ‘insider’ to my research as I am part of the culture and the demographic: early career, woman, negotiating my appearance and identity, working in higher education. As such, I was prepared to ‘do unto self as I have done unto others’ (Richardson 1997).

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Including my own story in my research made me realise how flat the stories of my participants had become through my analysis. Quoting my participants, and reducing their voices into themes, didn’t adequately convey the emotions they displayed when speaking. Simply writing ‘people make a snap judgement—“oh, she’s got massive tits and long blond hair … she must be a bimbo…”’ didn’t convey the sharp delivery or resentment in one participant’s voice, or the exasperation another showed when she said: ‘people are going to be judging me anyway, whether I dress up nicely or not …’ In trying to get to the meaning and emotion behind my data, I began writing a fictional story encompassing the many voices I had collated. Thus, Erudite was created—a composite figure encompassing the experiences of my seven participants.

Autoethnography and Ethnographic Fiction Autoethnography is a well-established methodological approach to research, particularly in exploring aspects of identity, self and experience in varying contexts. Although undoubtedly still a contested field (Denshire 2013), ethnographers and other researchers have used autoethnography to bring themselves closer to their research context. Traditional academic writing draws researchers apart from their research (Denshire 2013), and creates a ‘distanced observer’ (Wall 2008). Autoethnography allows researchers to accept and embrace the subjectivity that takes place within traditional ethnography, making it explicit in order to better engage with the research material reflexively. As Denshire (2013, 2014) and others (e.g. Ellis et al. 2011) indicate, autoethnography ‘goes beyond the writing of selves’ and is both a ‘process’ and a ‘product’ of research. That has certainly been the case in my own work. Starting out as an investigation into the perceptions of identity and authenticity among early career academics prompted me to consider and better understand my own experiences within this area. As a result, this chapter combines the experiences of my research participants with my own experiences to explore in more depth the challenges in crafting an authentic academic identity.

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Within autoethnography (like many methodologies) there is a spectrum of approaches, ranging from the more traditional/academic to the more literary. It should come as no surprise, then, that Neville-Jan (2003) calls autoethnography ‘an alternative method and form of writing’ that sits somewhere between anthropology and literary studies. However, we should be clear that while ‘autoethnography can take many forms … it is always more than just a story of the self ’ (McLachlan 2017, p. 59). But part of autoethnography is the story. Stories and storytelling allow us to make and find meaning, allowing us to explore concepts and phenomena beyond the self (Lewis 2011). And if we accept that data and facts are the constructions of interpretation, we might agree that absolute truth is a fantasy (Alvesson and Sköldberg 2000). If so, then why don’t we, as researchers, use fantasy as a way of exploring and investigating social and cultural phenomena? Narrative or ethnographic fiction is becoming a more legitimate methodology within qualitative research, as it offers us the opportunity to make sense of feelings and emotions in an immersive way (Kara 2013). It allows us to better represent the experiences of both ourselves and our research participants, without flattening the voices that are present. For qualitative researchers, traditional academic writing threatens to limit the narrative and reduce the writing to mere summary and interpretation, weakening the ‘thick descriptions’ we seek within ethnography (Wall 2006). It also offers academics an opportunity to write in a way that is accessible and meaningful for non-­ academic readers, offering greater opportunities for dissemination and the use of our work in learning and teaching activities without consigning readers to wading through dense, jargon-ridden texts. There is a variety of ways to refer to the use of fiction to represent data gathered in the pursuit of research: ethnofiction (Coates 2019), ‘neo-­ ethnography’ (Varzi 2014), ethnographic fiction (Narayan 1999), narrative fiction (Cohen 1998), critical storytelling (Barone 1992), among other terms. These approaches seek to give a voice to the story that data is compelled to tell (Bell 2015), to reflect how the data ‘speaks’ about the subject (Dourish and Gomez 2018). Ethnographic fiction is being used increasingly in cultural geography (e.g. Jacobson and Larsen 2014), sports and sociology (e.g. Sparkes 1997) and healthcare studies (e.g. Radina 2020) as a means of exploring and

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communicating the experiences of research participants and researchers. Semi-fictional stories grounded in the data taken from interviews, focus groups and individual accounts offer the opportunity to explore some of the ‘messier’ aspects of human emotion and behaviour (Kara 2013). It encourages analysis of how participants talk about themselves to understand the practice of reflexivity towards situations rather than the situations themselves (Edwards and Weller 2012). Ethnographic fiction allows us not only to explore the feelings and emotions of our research participants and ourselves but offers us the chance to invest in our creative practice; to look at both ourselves and our data in new ways. Increasingly, academic publishing is metric-driven, creating environments that can stifle creativity to reduce risk and maximise performance (Pullen 2018, p.  124). Narrative methodologies stand against that conformity to demonstrate the range of experiences amongst researchers and their research. Creative works of ethnographic fiction allow for alternative approaches to problem solving, pulling to the fore aspects of research that have not and do not ‘fit into the mould’ of traditional coding and dissemination. Below, I present two stories. First, the story of Erudite, a newly appointed Professor in Transmutation at the Academy for Arcane Arts. Erudite’s experiences and struggles are representative of the data collected from interviews I conducted with seven ECAs, all who identify as women, and all working within higher education. The other, an autoethnography as an emerging academic, early career, and trying to negotiate my identities within myself.

Erudite Over the summer of 2018, I conducted seven interviews with self-selected early career academics working within higher education. All seven volunteers were women, and while some of their experiences varied, they were all explicit and deliberate in their choices of clothing for their workplace. From these interviews, I have created Erudite, a fictional representation of all their experiences to best explore their thoughts, feelings and concerns about their dress and identity within their work. Where I have drawn this narrative from

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direct quotations from specific interviews, this is illustrated in italics, followed by the pseudonym each  ECA chose (Marian, Jess, Emma, Rebecca, Mia, Charlotte, Amanda, Sally). Erudite feels the knot of nervous excitement and dread in the pit of her stomach as she stands in her room getting ready for her day. She has a new job—a teaching and research Professor at the Academy for Arcane Arts. She gets her own office, her own lab space, and will balance her time between teaching and research. She is well prepared. She knows her stuff. On parchment, she is perfect for this job. She must be, right? They hired her, after all. There is only one problem—Erudite cannot get on with the uniform. It isn’t called a uniform, of course, but there is a sense of foreboding every time her fingers inch towards her everyday, comfortable, familiar clothes. But the other Professors—the ones with grey hair, bemused smiles and an air of authority about them—they don’t wear those kinds of clothes. They wear robes. Long and billowing, their attire makes them appear bigger than they actually are. Within those robes, they can glide knowingly around the halls and corridors of the Academy. Beneath those robes, who knows what is going on? It’s an academic mystery. How else can she judge what to wear, if not from what the others are wearing? (Mia, Amanda). Their robes are clean and well cut, belying the confusion they might feel, or difficulties they might be having with their research. These kinds of clothes earn respect; they mean they are taken more seriously (Charlotte). They are pristine robes that hang down at the wrists and are never— never—pushed up to their elbows in the pursuit of hard work. Academic work for these Professors is easy, it comes naturally, they do not require such things as graft or sweat. The clothes they wore were a form of informal control (Amanda). This is how you should dress. But Erudite looks in the mirror. Really looks at herself. She’s going to stand out among the other Professors, no matter what she does. They’ll judge her no matter what she wears (Jess, Marian). She looks … well … quirky. A bit odd. Her hair, her eyes, her skin … all the things she can’t change make her different from the others. She’s got big tits and long blond hair; they’ll think she’s a bimbo. She’s short too (Jess). She is briefly amused by the irony of being a Professor in Transmutation—the magic of changing one thing into another. She is transmuting. A student into researcher,

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a learner into teacher. She knows what is expected, but she isn’t quite sure how to become, to embody. She understands it academically only, but in practice? All of her training hasn’t quite prepared her for this, no one has ever said anything about what to expect, about what to wear (Sally, Charlotte). And so, it becomes merely a performance. Not real, a poor facsimile. Wearing the robes doesn’t work for her (Emma). They don’t make her feel more confident, more successful. More like she belongs here. She’s young, of an age so similar to her students (Mia). She’s going to blend in, look like a student herself, no matter what she does. What if they mistake her for a student? That would be awkward (Jess). What if her students don’t listen to her? She wants to look serious (Jess). Students don’t want to walk into the classroom and see themselves, mirrored in her dress and appearance. They want proof that there is a divide, that she has authority to be there—they want to see someone more knowledgeable (Mia). Not someone who could have been them last year. It comforts the students to know they are learning from someone who doesn’t make mistakes. What Erudite’s wearing proves that—she’s earned these robes, even if she doesn’t feel like it, even if she doesn’t feel comfortable in them. Never mind that they are impractical. Never mind that she thinks they look ridiculous. She considers darkening her hair, cutting it short (Jess). Dusting it to make it look a little grey, older, more experienced, more serious (Jess)? She sniffs at herself, derisively. She’s going to need to find a way to stand out from her students at least. Heels, maybe? She frowns. She’ll barely be able to totter around, her feet would hurt (Rebecca). She doesn’t want to have to ‘power dress’, it’s just not her (Amanda). She needs to be able to move around the classroom (Jess). And the other Professors don’t wear them. They wear—Erudite cannot fathom this at all—slippers. Light, suede slippers. Perfect for sneaking up on students. Perfect to glide in (hidden by their robes, of course). Not perfect to actually work in. Erudite’s shoes—huge wedge boots (Jess)—are sturdy and crack against the hallowed marbled floors. She makes too much noise when she wears them. People look (down, literally and figuratively) at her, and those looks surely wonder: ‘what on earth is she doing here?’ ‘How dare she draw so much attention to herself.’ ‘How dare she be seen.’ If she wears heels, they’ll think she’s dressing … provocatively or something.

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She sighs and holds up the traditional robe. Well, this is going to … gape in places, anyway, so either she’s practically immodest or she wears a high-necked top underneath and slowly cooks (Jess). At least the black should hide the sweat stains. How do the other female Professors do it? Okay, granted, there are only a couple of them. And they are much older. And they have a stern look to them. (And why are they always referred to as ‘Female Professors’ … the men aren’t called ‘Male Professors’!) The other women dress like the men—robes, slippers, even the accompanying hat. All immaculate, more so than any of the men. Why is that? As if they put even a step wrong, and they’ll be held to account? ‘Did you see? She had a potion mark on her sleeve. Disgraceful!’ But the students skirt around them, they’re just not approachable (Sally). Erudite wants to be a good teacher, to help her students understand and learn. She doesn’t want there to be this big divide, this ‘us and them’. But there is. Perhaps she should just take her cues from the others. Erudite glances at her wardrobe again—two more sets of traditional robes on one side, her everyday clothes on the other. Two completely different sides of her life, but there’s only one her. There is no in-between in her wardrobe. No compromise. She would never wear her robes ‘out’. She would never wear her shirts and trousers and trainers (Jess, Rebecca, Mia, Charlotte) at the Academy. She probably couldn’t even get in wearing those, and even if she did, she wouldn’t make progress. She wouldn’t advance. She would be constantly trying to catch up to this image that she wanted to portray but couldn’t because her face, her clothes, would give her away (Jess). She wanted to be a Professor, she did, but it wasn’t ‘her’ environment, she was the subordinate (Amanda). Not her ‘sphere’. It was theirs, and she needed to prove to them she was allowed to be there, even if she never quite proved it to herself.

An Emerging Academic Female academics still find their appearance scrutinised in ways a male colleague rarely would (Rees 2018; Stavrakopoulou 2014; Abbasi 2013). For ECAs, this experience—of feeling the need to explicitly consider their dress and appearance in the workplace—can sit at odds with

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feelings of an ‘authentic self ’. Archer (2008b) found that younger academic women were particularly concerned about their appearance, and how this related to their professional practice and experience. One of her participants noted that during their free time, they wore jeans and trainers, but would not wear such clothes at work, especially when they taught (Archer 2008b). What I wear and how I ‘dress’ are extensions of my own body and are determined by my intentionality to express particular parts of my identity (King 2015). When I started working as a graduate-­ teaching assistant, in the second year of my PhD, I was offered a piece of unsolicited advice on my appearance when teaching: don’t wear jeans. The advice came from a colleague and friend who was well established within the institution. Being new to the role, I took the advice, and went out to buy an ‘appropriate’ wardrobe. Black trousers, blouses, and boots without a heel. I recall feeling uncomfortable in these clothes when I first put them on but felt (perhaps because I had been primed to feel) distanced from my students—several of whom were my age or older. Erudite finds herself similarly situated—having ‘work’ clothes versus ‘normal/ everyday’ clothes in which she feels more comfortable. Wearing different clothes at work versus at home creates clear boundaries, but this also prompts questions around which ‘version’ is part of an ostensibly authentic self (or selves) (Archer 2008b). A sense of authenticity is linked to more successful work and personal outcomes (Rings 2017; Reis et  al. 2016; van den Bosch and Taris 2014). So how do ECAs navigate these identities effectively? Other academics have considered that how they look and are perceived within their field causes tension. McLachlan (2017) notes that ‘some students disliked my ‘bad voice’, and Rees (2018) explains that her ‘role as an academic was seen by some as being somehow fundamentally at odds with my appearance.’ Archer (2008a) explores how young/er academics construct professional identities within ‘new’ managerial university contexts. Participants of her research note that traditional academic environments challenged ‘their own academic authenticity and identities’. Abbasi’s (2013) participants were frustrated that they were judged not on their skills, but on their appearance—both in terms of clothing and youth. For me, the change of clothing choices demonstrated a shift in my ‘identity’, from student and novice to ‘knowledgeable academic’. This

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new identity was uncomfortable and foreign to me (and, to some extent, still is). It is perhaps this sensation of not feeling ‘completely at home’ within my discipline (Burnier 2006) and professional sphere which has prompted me to write an autoethnography to examine my experience (Wall 2008). Part of dressing in this way was to compensate for my age and (lack of ) experience. I had gone through my academic degrees one after another, and upon starting work as a graduate teaching assistant, I was a few months past my 23rd birthday. When I finally revealed my age to my first cohort of students, their reactions were not what I expected. I was nervous: would they dismiss me? Would they think I was too young? Erudite struggles with the same issues—she is young, female, and not yet versed in the ‘rules of play’ within the Academy for Arcane Arts. She worries about what her students will think, and how her colleagues will react to her age. I am still among the younger members of my academic team—a fact that is commented on with some regularity. Archer (2008b) similarly found that questions of how to dress often centred around how to look ‘smarter’ and ‘older’, perhaps because, as one of her participants put it, ‘somehow success comes with older looks’. The reactions of my own students were, in the end, generally positive. One student told me—not unflatteringly—that I seemed older (I remember the wording distinctly: not ‘looked’ but ‘seemed’). Another—a mature student—commended me on what I had achieved by my age. Reflecting on this now highlights the difference between what I think people are thinking or the meaning of their comments, and what they actually think or intend. At the time, however, I felt inadequate because I was young and felt like I looked young. Like Erudite, on paper I was (and am) qualified for my role in academia, but somehow, I feel undeserving. Imposter syndrome is well known and a well-established issue, particularly among women in many sectors (Kumar and Jagacinski 2006), and it is in our dress and appearance that we attempt to obfuscate how much of an imposter we really are. Wearing particular clothes helps to project an intended identity—‘I belong’ or ‘I am an academic’. Women are often seen as ‘woman’ or bodies (Sinclair 2008): in talking about Professors/academics of different sexes, we talk about ‘academics’ or ‘female academics’ (rather than ‘male academics’ or ‘female academics’). In order to fit in, to be

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‘academics’, we need to camouflage our bodies, to ‘look like’ academics to demonstrate authority and gain respect (Abbasi 2013). But what does an academic look like? I have always been explicitly aware of my appearance in a way that I suspect my fellow (male) colleagues are not. I am six foot two inches, which makes me an imposing figure for a woman. Comments on my height have made me self-conscious, just as Erudite is self-conscious regarding her diminutive stature. Why is it that height is a legitimate area for scrutiny? (Stavrakopoulou 2014). Being tall did have its advantages in the early part of my academic career. Because (I felt) I cut an imposing figure, I felt more confident. When I stood up in front of a class, I drew attention. My height contributed to my ability to command a room of students. I didn’t look up at any of my students, I didn’t feel cowed by them, as another female graduate teaching assistant who I worked with at the time felt she was, or as Erudite does. In my quest to set myself apart from the students in my appearance, my height helped. But it didn’t help my ability to find clothes that fit, that looked ‘professional’. Finding a pair of trousers that fit in length, or a blouse that was long enough in the arms? Almost impossible. Clothing is a public display that allows us to express certain parts of our identity (if we wish to) and allows us to make impressions of others (Feinberg et al. 1992). What impressions would my students have of me, do Erudite’s students have of her, as we stand before them in ill-fitting clothes that aren’t long enough or ‘gape’ in places? (Abbasi 2013). Graduating with a PhD in Art History and Theory to working in a Business School required another development in my ‘identity-trajectory’ (McAlpine et  al. 2014). I began dressing in ‘corporate/business’ attire. Two-piece suits, trousers and skirts, professional dresses—sleeves a must—and smart shoes. I don’t know why. I remember reading (but not where) that business professionals didn’t reveal bare arms. I polished my shoes (something I had not done since middle school). I did not feel comfortable. I tried to negotiate/rebel in small ways—I wore bright colours or floral patterns that stood out at networking events against the sea of black and grey pinstripes (I don’t wear particularly bright colours in my own time and avoid patterns at all costs). I wore (but didn’t prefer) skirts and dresses, because (again) I had read somewhere that female

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business leaders should reclaim their femininity by eschewing the ‘pant suit’. My smart shoes were comfortable—and I hated them. A colleague and friend, who I believe has excellent taste in shoes, once called them ‘sensible’. Perhaps they didn’t mean it as such, but I couldn’t help but take this as an insult. I was determined to ‘wear them out’, but I refused to replace them when they finally fell apart. I bought a pair of heels instead. Why? I probably read something somewhere. High heels, for me, presented a new challenge. I was already tall. Did I really want to be any taller? A conversation with another colleague helped me come to terms with my height and choice of shoes: I’m tall anyway, another couple of inches isn’t going to make much difference. It was another step towards self-acknowledgement that has helped feed into a sense of authenticity (Rings 2017). My story goes beyond that of Erudite’s. Her identity is static—created and conceptualised at the moment I recorded the interviews with those seven ECAs in 2017. She has no trajectory or scope for development (McAlpine et al. 2014). That is not to say that the stories on which she is based are static and without scope for change. This is, of course, another limitation of this kind of research; another way that we might ‘flatten’ the voice of our participants (Denshire 2013). The growing body of literature into the nature of ‘identity’ within academia (e.g. Abbasi 2013; Archer 2008a, 2008b; Clegg 2008) is predominantly and similarly static. It takes a snapshot of academics at a particular time in their careers. But their story, like mine, is still ongoing. Their negotiations of identity, of becoming an academic continue to progress until, eventually, we might hope they feel themselves authentic in any given context. It took until I started presenting my research on dress and identity at two conferences—both in 2018: Storytelling at the University of Suffolk, and Art of Management & Organization (AOMO) at the University of Brighton—until I gave myself ‘permission’ to dress differently at work. Verbalising and presenting my work, particularly at AOMO made me really turn the critical lens on myself and consider my own experiences from the perspective of ‘researcher’. After the first day of the AOMO conference, I edited the start of my presentation to reflect this shift:

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Having been here at AOMO for the last two days, I now feel as if my original draft of this presentation is a bit stiff. Too formal. Too traditionally ‘academic’. I’ve enjoyed experiencing this creative community of artists, researchers, educators and ‘real world’ professionals. It has, in many ways, reassured me that my interest in storytelling and stories as means of exploring authenticity and identity is not completely outside the realms of ‘real’ academic research. … I have felt, perhaps for the first time, that I might not actually be an imposter here. That I might have something worth saying that people think are worth hearing. I think that every Early Career Academic needs a space like this. (Albary 2018)

I became a subject of scrutiny from my epiphany (Ellis et al. 2011). I started wearing jeans, not just to campus, but in front of students [italics for effect, cue dramatic music]. I slowly weeded out items in my wardrobe that I did not feel reflected an authentic self (Archer 2008b; Rings 2017). I reconciled myself to acknowledging and having multiple identities (Barnacle and Mewburn 2010) that were not conflicting, but synchronous and complimentary, each one a truth in its own right (Rings 2017). I felt comfortable and authentic expressing myself in the same style of clothing within each ‘identity’; it is only the context I am in that changes which identity becomes dominant: wife, friend, academic, teacher. This process of reflexivity, of becoming more conscious of my experience and ideas on identity, has led me to feel more authentic (Kreber et  al. 2007). This sense of authenticity has, in turn, made me more comfortable in my academic identity. I am, and always have been, an academic, just working at different points of my identity-trajectory (McAlpine et al. 2014). Further research is needed to conclude whether or not this will impact my overall ‘success’ within my chosen career (Archer 2008a), but I do, at least, feel motivated and engaged in my work (Reis et al. 2016). Unlike Erudite, I may not have ‘proved’ my worthiness to be where I am to others, but I have managed to convince myself that I belong. This shift in my approach at work, in my clothes, jewellery, hair (I am, I have decided, a ‘natural blue’) has made me more comfortable. I feel better at my job. Better able to connect to my students. I feel like a better role model (particularly for the women I teach). I often use my

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appearance as a talking point in seminars, able to do so simply because I feel more confident. Using different ways we conceptualise ‘blue’ as a tool for teaching ontology in Research Methods has become a ‘signature move’ of mine (inspired by the colour of my hair). It helps to ground complex concepts in a reality that students can see before them, giving them a tangible example, but also gives me confidence in what I am talking about. Whether or not this has a direct impact on how my students perceive me, I do not know for sure. I might think they do, but without asking them (and getting the necessary ethical approval), I cannot be ‘academically’ certain. When I talk about my own research journey to MBA students, around half are interested in ideas on the impact of dress on identity. The women I teach are often the most intrigued and have stories of their own to tell. When I first wore clothes more closely aligned with my identity to work, I received the odd comment from (male) colleagues. ‘Not teaching today?’ ‘You’re looking casual.’ ‘That’s an interesting coat.’ Not negative comments, exactly, and perhaps more an acknowledgement that my style had simply changed. But comments, nonetheless. When I presented my research at an internal research seminar to my colleagues, the presentation quickly became a discussion for which I was more of an observer. Not on my research specifically, but on how everyone in the room dressed and how they felt about how they dressed. Afterwards, female colleagues approached me to tell me how interesting they found it, and how they empathised with my participants (and, by extension, me). Male colleagues were, while not discouraging, less convinced. Now my appearance has become the norm, it is rarely commented on. My colleagues are less interested in how I look and more interested in how well I do my job. Perhaps they always were. But feeling comfortable, looking how I want to look (rather than how I think I should look), makes me feel better at my job. Perhaps that’s the point.

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Epilogue Clothes and appearance are a large part of how we present and negotiate our identities. In both narratives—the story of Erudite and the autoethnography—I have explored how early career academics use dress to negotiate and explore identities and authenticity within working environments they do not naturally feel part of. I have presented some of the challenges that we, as academics who happen to be women, face both in terms of internal thought process of imposter syndrome and ‘belonging’, as well as those we feel we face in terms of external reactions and behaviours towards us, from colleagues and students. Autoethnography has allowed me to turn the critical lens on myself, examine my own experiences with fresh eyes. This has enabled me to not only become comfortable with my own experiences, but also look upon my career as an impartial observer. Academically, this might be professional development; personally, this might be thought of as working towards better mental health or spiritual development (Kreber et  al. 2007). I am not my thoughts. The use of an ethnographic fiction has allowed me to explore the feelings and emotions of my research participants in a more authentic way, to use the themes in my research as a dialogue and to create a narrative that actual represents those I interviewed, rather than boil them down as ‘data’. By using this methodology, I have sought to show rather than tell the story of my participants (Kara 2013), presenting the work in a way that is accessible to both academic and non-academic readers. (Never Really) The End.

References Abbasi, L. (2013). “Their Image of Me”: A Phenomenological Study of Professional Dress Choices of Female Professors. Proceedings of the New York State Communication Association, 2012[2013](4) Available at: http://docs. rwu.edu/nyscaproceedings/vol2012/iss1/4. Accessed 28 May 2020.

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Albary (née Nolan), S. (2018). ‘What does it look like?’ The (in)authentic early career academic. Presented at Art of Management & Organization (AOMO) University of Brighton, Brighton, UK, 30 Aug–2 Sep 2018. Alvesson, M. & Sköldberg, K. (2000). Reflexive Methodology: New Vistas for Qualitative Research. London: Sage. Archer, L. (2008a). The new neoliberal subjects? Young/er academics’ constructions of professional identity. Journal of Educational Policy, 23(3), 265–285. Archer, L. (2008b). ‘Younger academics’ constructions of ‘authenticity’, ‘success’ and professional identity’. Studies in Higher Education, 33(4), 385–403. Barnacle, R. & Mewburn, I. (2010). Learning Networks and the Journey of ‘Becoming Doctor’. Studies in Higher Education, 35(4), 433–444. Barone, T. (1992). Beyond Theory and Method: A Case of Critical Storytelling. Theory Into Practice, 31(2), 142–146. Bell, G. (2015). The Secret Life of Big Data. In Boellstorff & Maurer (Eds.), Data, Now Bigger and Better (pp. 7–26). Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press. Best, K. (2018). Saying the unsayable: an autoethnography of working in a for-­ profit university. In Vine, Clark, Richards, & Weir (Eds), Ethnographic Research and Analysis: Anxiety, Identity and Self. (pp.  155–169). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Burnier, D. (2006). Encounters With the Self in Social Science Research: A Political Scientist Looks at Autoethnography. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 35(4), 410–418. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891241606286982 van den Bosch, R. & Taris, T. (2014). Authenticity at Work: Development and Validation of an Individual Authenticity Measure at Work. Journal of Happiness Studies, 15(1), 1–18. Clegg, S. (2008). Femininities/masculinities and a sense self: thinking gendered academic identities and the intellectual self. Gender and Education, 20(3), 209–221. Coates, C. (2019). Blurred Boundaries: Ethnofiction and Its Impact on Postwar Japanese Cinema. Arts, 8(20), 1–12. Cohen, C. (1998). Using Narrative Fiction within Management Education. Management Learning, 29(2), 165–181. Denshire, S. (2013). Autoethnography. Sociopedia.isa, 1–12. Denshire, S. (2014). On auto-ethnography. Current Sociology, 62(6), 831–850. Dourish, P. & Gomez, E. (2018). Datafication and Data Fiction: Narrating Data and Narrating with Data. Big Data & Society, 5(2), 1–10. Edwards, R. & Weller, S. (2012). Shifting analytic ontology: using I-poems in qualitative longitudinal research. Qualitative research, 12(2), 202–217.

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Ellis, C., Adams, T., & Bochner, A. (2011). Autoethnography: An Overview. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research [Online], 12(1). http://www.qualitative-­research.net/index.php/fqs/article/ view/1589/3095. Accessed 28 May 2020. Feinberg, R., Mataro, L., & Burroughs, W.  J. (1992). Clothing and Social Identity. Clothing and Textiles Research Journal, 11(1), 18–23. Jacobson, M. & Larsen, S. (2014). Ethnographic fiction for writing and research in cultural geography. Journal of Cultural Geography, 31(2), 179–193. Kara, H. (2013). ‘It’s hard to tell how research feels’: using fiction to enhance academic research and writing. Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management: An International Journal, 8(1), 70–84. King, I. (2015) ‘What to wear?’: Clothing as an example of expression and intentionality. Argument, 5(1), 59–78. Kreber, C., Klampfleitner, M., McCune, V., Bayne, S. & Knottenbelt, M. (2007). What do you mean by “authentic”?: A comparative review of the literature on conceptions of authenticity in teaching. Adult education quarterly, 58(1), 22–43. Kumar, S., & Jagacinski, C. (2006). Imposters Have Goals Too: The Imposter Phenomenon and Its Relationship to Achievement Goal Theory. Personality and Individual Differences, 40, 147–57. Lewis, P. (2011). Storytelling as Research/Research as Storytelling. Qualitative Enquiry, 17(6), 505–510. McAlpine, L., Amundsen, C., & Turner, G. (2014). Identity-trajectory: Reframing early career academic experience. British Educational Research Journal, 40(6), 952–969. McLachlan, F. (2017). Being critical: an account of an early career academic working within and against neoliberalism. Sport, Education and Society, 22(1), 58–72. Narayan, K. (1999) Ethnography and Fiction: Where Is the Border? Anthropology and Humanism 24(2): 134–147. Neville-Jan, A. (2003). Encounters in a world of pain: An autoethnography. American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 57(1), 88–98. Pullen, A. (2018). Writing as Labiaplasty. Organization, 25(1): 123–130. Radina, E. (2020). Ethnographic creative non-fiction: The creation and evolution of Lily’s Lymphedema. In Hackett & Hayre (Eds.), Handbook of Ethnography in Healthcare Research (pp.  438–452). Abingdon: Routledge, Taylor & Francis.

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Rees, E. (2018). Clothes do not make the woman: what female academics wear is subject to close scrutiny. Times Higher Education. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/clothes-­d o-­n ot-­m ake-­w oman-­w hat-­f emale-­ academics-­wear-­subject-­constant-­scrutiny. Accessed 28 May 2020. Reis, G., et  al. (2016). Perceived Organizational Culture and Engagement: The Mediating Role of Authenticity.” Journal of Managerial Psychology, 31(1), 1091–105. Richardson, L. (1997). Fields of Play: Constructing Academic Life. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. Rings, M. (2017). Authenticity, Self-fulfilment, and Self-acknowledgement. Journal of Value Enquiry, 51(3), 475–489. Sinclair, A. (2008). Bodies and Identities in Constructing Leadership Capital. In Hart & Uhr (Eds.), Public Leadership: Perspectives and Practices (pp. 83–92). Canberra: ANU E Press. Sparkes, A. (1997). Ethnographic Fiction and Representing the Absent Other. Sport, Education and Society, 2(1), 25–40. Stavrakopoulou, F. (2014). Female academics: don’t power dress, forget heels—and no flowing hair allowed. The Guardian Blog. https://www.theguardian.com/higher-­education-­network/blog/2014/oct/26/-­sp-­female-­ academics-­d ont-­p ower-­d ress-­f orget-­h eels-­a nd-­n o-­f lowing-­h air-­a llowed. Accessed 28 May 2020. Varzi (2014) Ethnographic Fiction: The Space Between. Savage Minds. URL: https://savageminds.org/2014/10/13/ethnographic-­f iction-­t he-­s pace-­ between/ (accessed 19/06/19) Wall, S. (2006). An Autoethnography on Learning About Autoethnography. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 5(2), 146–160. Wall, S. (2008) Easier Said than Done: Writing an Autoethnography. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 7(1), 38–53.

3 Women, Bullying, and the Construction Industry: A Story of Veiled Gender Dynamics Tina Potkins and Tom Vine

The autoethnographic story presented in this chapter explores a woman’s experience of bullying while working in a male-dominated environment. It reveals something remarkable: women within male-dominated industries sometimes experience bullying at the hands of, not men, but other women. Tina (co-author of this chapter) was a payroll manager at a British construction firm for 15 years. She subsequently resigned following sustained bullying by female colleagues. Her employer refused to acknowledge its seriousness. We interpret her story in two ways. First, we note that Tina’s experience broadly corresponds to the framework developed by MacIntosh et al. (2010). This framework suggests women typically experience workplace bullying through multiple stages: Being Conciliatory, Reconsidering, Reducing Interference and Redeveloping

T. Potkins Suffolk County Council, Suffolk, UK T. Vine (*) University of Suffolk, Ipswich, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Vine, S. Richards (eds.), Stories, Storytellers, and Storytelling, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07234-5_3

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Balance. Second, as befits this specific case, we then go on to apply—and reflect critically on—what has become known as the Queen Bee Syndrome (Staines et al. 1973). Although the Queen Bee Syndrome implies superficially—and somewhat patronisingly—that women are their ‘own worst enemies’ (see Rindfleish 2000, for discussions of this stereotype), our data suggest it is a phenomenon that is deeply entrenched in organisational norms, the parameters for which have typically been defined by influential men. To this end, we suggest that a more advanced understanding of the Queen Bee Syndrome, one which acknowledges more explicitly the principally male-dominated context in which it has emerged, affords some interesting insights. We further argue that bullying between women in male-dominated industries often persists because it often takes a form which many men struggle to identify; in effect it remains ‘hidden’ or ‘veiled’. This is particularly pertinent since it is men who continue to dominate the senior positions in such organisations. We conclude the chapter by outlining measures which organisations might apply to address this type of bullying and delineate recommendations to expand research in this area to encompass the experiences of other women, in other industries. This chapter builds on and advances the arguments contained in a brief working paper published by puntOorg (see Vine 2018). Whereas the vast majority of existing research on workplace bullying rely on survey or other quantitative data, we here impart first-hand experience by means of retrospective autoethnography (sometimes referred to as ‘autoethnography a posteriori’; e.g. see Boncori 2013: xvii). In this case, the experience was captured in a detailed diary kept by Tina while working in the construction industry. As befits an emic approach, we here endeavour to unearth and make sense of the nuance inherent to complex social dynamics. This presents significant advantages in the current context since—and as Miner and Eischeid (2012) note—workplace bullying proliferates in obscure and ambiguous ways. It is of course for this very reason that workplace bullying is far more pervasive than most of us imagine.

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What Is Workplace Bullying? The academic literature (explored in detail further on) favours the concepts of both workplace incivility and relational aggression to that of bullying. The merits of this terminology notwithstanding, these were terms that did not resonate with Tina. They seemed to de-sensitise that which the ‘bullying’ label evokes far more effectively. In the United Kingdom, the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas) (2013), however, do use the term. They define bullying as ‘unwanted behaviour that makes someone feel intimidated, degraded, humiliated or offended’, with examples ranging from ‘spreading malicious rumours, or insulting someone, to exclusion or victimisation’. According to The National Bullying Helpline (2013), one in four people experience workplace bullying at some point and, in stark economic terms, it costs British businesses an estimated £13.75bn per annum. It is against this background that we identify and explore the phenomenon at British Construction (a pseudonym) (BC). BC is a privately owned subsidiary construction company, with its head office in Suffolk in the United Kingdom. The organisation has a large client base across both public and private sectors in Britain, employing 239 men and 33 women, equating to 88% and 12%, respectively. Their work includes the construction of major highways and bridges, waterways, industrial, commercial, and residential infrastructure, and environmental schemes. Contracts range in value from £0.5 m to £20 m. Tina was a long-serving employee for BC, but ultimately resigned following sustained bullying by female colleagues. On one level, the story told will be one familiar to many of us: daily frustrations at work, resentment, and self-doubt. But on another level, the story reveals dysfunctional behaviour which scholars working in the related fields of work, organisation, and gender can actively help ameliorate. The narrative focuses on the phenomenon of bullying between women, and the male-­ dominated cultural and leadership mechanisms through which it is unwittingly facilitated.

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Reviewing the Literature Before presenting our story, it is important to provide the scholarly context in which the story is immersed. While conventional reviews of the literature in this field might be expected to rehearse the idea that organisational practice in terms of gender relations tends to lag behind gender equality policy, for our investigation, this is seemingly less relevant. Rather, what is interesting here is the nature of the dynamics between women in an organisational environment both constructed and inhabited principally by men. Although up until the emergence of critical management studies in the early 1990s, gender was virtually ignored in management and organisational analysis (e.g. see Mills 1988), it has since become more expansive (e.g. see Lewis 2014: 1846–1847). Rather than outline in detail how it has influenced a relatively wide variety of theory and application, we seek instead to establish an interpretation of gender in the context of organisational life that recognises complexity, incompleteness and paradox, particularly in respect of the ways in which gender differences have been conceptualised vis-à-vis workplace roles and expectations. We then present bullying between women (some of which appears to reflect queen bee type behaviour) as one such ramification of this complexity. While a hackneyed representation of gender may emphasise female camaraderie built around institutional disadvantage, the experiences of many women are markedly different. These women—at least in a perfunctory sense— cite not men as their organisational nemeses, but women. Indeed, with the death of ex British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 2013, the media rekindled the debate surrounding her controversial influence in respect of women’s rights. Perhaps most notable of all, Thatcher claimed in 1982 that the battle for women’s rights had ‘largely been won’. However, for many commentators, including Nina Lakhani writing in The Independent, it has been suggested that she was referring to her ‘own battle’ since the metaphorical glass ceiling broke only for her, and only because she deliberately sought to ‘masculinise’ herself. This high profile case, we argue, is representative of the more prosaic interpersonal experiences between women within many organisations too.

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This literature review is divided as follows: (1) gender, complexity and paradox, (2) women in the construction industry, and (3) workplace bullying between women.

(1) Gender, Complexity, and Paradox As reflects the heterogeneous nature of the movement itself, the application of feminism in the field of management and organisation is both wide-ranging and divergent. The discourses focussed on gender and leadership, for example, amply demonstrates this variance. Commentary on leadership from the early twentieth century described leaders using adjectives such as ‘competitive’, ‘aggressive’, and ‘dominant’ (e.g. see coverage in Moran 1992). The associated feminist discourse in this period, which asserted above all parity with men, sought to demonstrate women were just as capable of realising these qualities. Thatcher’s controversial political success is often represented in this manner. Broadly speaking, this position resonates with the feminism of the second wave in which attitudes that women were less capable in the workplace were challenged, but still measured principally in accordance with male-biased performance metrics. Later, however, the leadership literature began to explore approaches to leadership distinct from the conventional autocratic, command-­and-control, top-down, transactional variety. These included, among others, transformational leadership (see, for example, Burns 1978). This type of leadership came to be seen as better suited to service sector economies. In this context, qualities other than the ability to command and delegate are emphasised. These qualities include cooperation, collaboration, communication and interpersonal skills. While men have purportedly been more successful in respect of transactional leadership, Eagly et al. (2003) have suggested that it is women who have the edge over their male counterparts when it comes to transformational leadership. Broadly speaking, this position resonates with the post-feminism of the third wave, in which it was argued that women have qualities distinct from men and that these warranted more attention. As Moran (1992: 484), reflecting on this broader shift, comments: ‘In the past, most women who succeeded in becoming leaders did so by adopting the

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masculine style of leadership. There are now indications that women are beginning to make an impact on organizations using their own style of leadership’. Clearly then, while feminists are typically united in their desire for the contribution and talents of women to be recognised alongside those of men, their convictions as how this is to be achieved vary significantly. The whole discourse is complicated further by other research (see, for example, Powell 1990) which suggests that distinctions between male and female approaches to leadership are minor at most and that they are, in any event, the result of social conditioning rather than innate differences. It is at this point, of course, that we find ourselves pushed up against hitherto unresolved—or, more likely, unresolvable—theoretical presuppositions of determinism. We are therefore bound by social complexity, the transcendence of which doubtless exceeds our abilities. Furthermore, such distinct positions adopted by feminists sympathetic to different schools of thought draw attention to the paradoxical nature of the wider discourse. Moran recognises this: ‘The field of gender differences in leadership styles is an area that is full of ambiguity and paradox’ (1992: 488). We add to this that the field of leadership styles is by no means unique in this sense. On the contrary, it is representative of the broader feminist movement. However, while such a controversial conclusion to the theoretical background may at first glance appear unsatisfactory, it actually provides an excellent vantage point from which to examine both the experiences of women in the construction industry (in terms of the paradoxical nature of identity construction within the industry) and bullying between women (since this phenomenon apparently flies in the face of assumptions that the disadvantaged share a natural affinity).

(2) Women in the Construction Industry Construction is one of the most gender-segregated sectors of the UK economy; men constitute over 99% of the employees in the building trades (Ness 2011: 654). It is well reported that the construction industry is characterised by a male-dominated organisational culture (Fielden et al. 2000; McCarthy 2010) rife with sexist attitudes and stereotypes

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(Worrall et al. 2010). The industry is often characterised by a competitive-­ centric working environment that is ‘aggressively led by price and risk’ (ibid.), and regularly places the value of profit over people (Dainty et al. 2005). Such a culture propogates perceptions of women in the industry as less confident (Jones 2010) and physically less capable (Worrall et al. 2010; see also Woodfield 2015 for detailed analysis of body capital in respect of the UK Fire and Rescue Service). They are also often perceived as a less convenient resource when compared to their male counterparts since social expectations in terms of domestic commitments means they are more likely to request flexible working arrangements (Equality and Human Rights Commission 2012). Worrall et al. (2010) argue that this exclusion of women from the UK construction industry contributes to the skills shortage. To this end, they cite inadequate diversity-based recruitment as the problem, attitudes towards which appear not to be changing despite the creation of Constructing Excellence (in 2003), and the introduction of the Equality Act 2010, which supposedly both urges and enables businesses to protect their employees from discrimination on certain grounds, including gender. Given the institutional disadvantages outlined, it may therefore seem strange that any woman should actively choose to work in the construction industry. Powell et al. (2010) explore the career decisions of women construction students in the United Kingdom. Reflecting on the paradoxical nature of this topic (previously described), they conclude that ‘identity is often contested ground for women construction students who, while subscribing to an ideal that the sector is accessible to all those who want to work in it, uphold gendered stereotypes about women’s suitability for so-called masculine work such as construction’ (ibid. 573). To this end, they cite research which found that women more than men describe ‘wanting to be different’ as a reason for choosing to study science or engineering. Powell et al.’s own data is certainly revealing. Of the interviews undertaken, their female subjects commented thus: “girls can’t think like boys”; “It’s sort of a challenge being in a male-dominated industry. I get a bit of kick … I’m quite a laddish girl. I think if you’re a bit wet, I don’t think a girl would go far”; “we’re a novelty right now, you see”. This last quote is particularly illuminating and Powell et al. reflect upon it:

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These findings seem to indicate that women construction students subscribe to stereotypical perceptions about women and men and ‘innate’ differences, which imply they believe men are more suited to a career in construction than women. Women construction students were found to value their status as a novelty and, in this sense, seemed to align themselves with (male) construction engineers rather than as women. (ibid. 578)

At this point, Powell et al. make reference to the queen bee syndrome, demonstrating its relevance to the industry, but do not explore it in depth. It is here, then, that we turn to the literature on workplace bullying in general, and the queen bee syndrome in particular.

(3) Workplace Bullying Between Women The Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI) suggests 71% of female workplace bullying victims cite a woman as the perpetrator. Quoted in the popular press (Psychologies), Gary Namie of the WBI suggests that female bullies are more likely to use the relationship between themselves and the other woman as leverage to achieve their aims. Such bullying by ‘covert, subtle and manipulative’ means is regarded as a reaction to insecurities. The victims of her bullying are ‘often independent, skilled and well-liked’, and this it would seem suggests jealousy is at least part of the bully’s motivation. In the academic literature, this type of bullying is frequently described as workplace incivility. Miner and Eisheid (2012: 492), drawing on work of Andersson and Pearson, define workplace incivility as ‘subtle behavioural slights that violate conventional workplace norms for mutual respect and display a lack of regard for others’. Notably, it has been suggested that workplace incivility is ambiguous (Wachs 2009) since it is displayed through tone of voice, body language, and facial expression, rather than the spoken words (Montgomery et al. 2004; Tunajek 2007). As with more conventional forms of workplace bullying, the ramifications of workplace incivility can destroy workplace relationships and severely compromise productivity if ignored (Pearson et al. 2000; Miner and Eischeid 2012; Naimon et al. 2013).

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Closely related to the concept of workplace incivility is that of relational aggression. Originating in the child development literature, relational aggression involves the use of social intelligence to manipulate relationships or damage the reputations of others (Crick et al. 2002, cited in Crothers et al. 2002: 102). Notably, in earlier research, Crick and Grotpeter (1995) argued that girls are significantly more relationally aggressive than boys. Tactics associated with relational aggression include social isolation or alienation, ignoring, gossiping and/or rumour-­spreading, all of which affect friendship quality and, more generally, result in low job satisfaction (Crothers et al. 2002). That techniques of incivility and relational aggression are more usually associated with female bullies is likely a reflection of gender-roles that determine what is considered appropriate behaviour for men and women. Indeed, Crothers et al. (ibid.) have suggested that prevailing social norms mean that overt and direct confrontation have been considered inappropriate for women, so women have tended to use manipulative and covert means. Since both incivility and relational aggression are associated with control and enhanced self-image, we here usher in the concept of the queen bee syndrome. At its most rudimentary, a queen bee is defined as ‘a woman who has a dominant or controlling position in a particular group or sphere’ (Oxford English Dictionary). Indeed, this conception of a lone, domineering woman is certainly the understanding propagated in the media and is hardly surprising given the nature of the metaphor itself. However, a more nuanced understanding of the phenomenon has emerged within the scholarly literature and reveals finer detail. Most studies of the queen bee syndrome cite the concept’s origins in a paper by Staines et al. (1973). They present the concept as follows: … there is a group of antifeminist women who exemplify what we call the Queen Bee syndrome. Their countermilitancy has its roots in their personal success within the system: both professional success (a high status job with good pay) and social success (popularity with men, attractiveness, a good marriage). The true Queen Bee has made it in the “man’s world” of work, while running a house and family with her left hand. “If I can do it without a whole movement to help me,” runs her attitude, “so can all these other women”. (ibid: 63)

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More recently, Derks et al. (2011: 1243) have defined Queen Bees as ‘senior women in male-dominated organizations who have achieved success by emphasising how they differ from other women’. Of this definition, we can identify three key components: (1) it is witnessed among senior women; (2) it occurs in male-dominated environments; and (3) it involves the deliberate attempt to distinguish oneself from other women. Component (2) is clearly central to the concept itself (although this doesn’t necessarily mean that such behaviour is limited to male-­dominated environments; rather that this constitutes its analytical focus), but closer scrutiny of the literature allows us to develop the view here that component (1) may overlook the possibility that such behaviour may well occur at more junior levels among women who aspire to senior roles, and that component (3) may overlook the possibility that such behaviour is the result of institutional processes, rather than conscious and deliberate behaviour on the part of the Queen Bees (an observation the authors go on to address). The scholarly literature has, at times, recognised the complexity involved in understanding queen bee behaviour. Mathison (1986: 599), for example, suggests that traditional research on leadership, ‘assumed that adopting an assertive style of leadership benefits women managers in their career goals’. However: for some women professionals… this emphasis puts them in a “double-­ bind” situation within the organization. To compete they must be assertive; yet by asserting themselves they depart from the sex-related norm of compliance, an expectation commonly held by the traditional culture within an organization. (ibid.)

Clearly, in studying the queen bee phenomenon, we must resist the temptation to employ a clichéd interpretation which apparently ‘ignores the complex gendered processes within organization and gendered subjectivities of [ambitious] women’ (Mavin 2006: 271). With this in mind, when analysing our data, we intentionally avoid the term ‘queen bee syndrome’, preferring instead ‘queen bee type behaviour’ in an attempt to demedicalise the phenomenon. We also acknowledge another aspect of the queen bee phenomenon in the context of our study; that is the gendered

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deployment of power. Men and women typically use different techniques to further their own interests and it would seem that men in positions of senior authority struggle to recognise the subtler techniques some women use against other women. Drawing on the research of Kramer (1978) and Wagner and Swanson (1979), Mathison (1986: 600) comments that although both men and women report equal needs for power, these needs are enacted in two contrasting communication styles: men have tended to express power by direct aggression, whereas women tend to build power bases through a network of interdependent relationships and avoidance of direct confrontation. This difference in the deployment of power is relevant in respect of the queen bee syndrome. Controversially, Starr (2001: 9), cited in Mavin (2006), comments thus: Competition between women may go deeper than professional rivalry, to include sub-conscious jealousy and competition based on age or appearance (attractiveness, weight, dress sense). This suggests that at times women may read each other’s sexed bodies through men’s eyes in sexual competition. At other times the perception of separation and competition is explained in work related terms through factors such as intellectual ability, professional connections, reputation etc. Furthermore, unlike the more open forms of hostility exhibited by men, women observe that competition or opposition from women is more likely to manifest as passive resistance.

Crothers et al. (2002) suggest that ‘very few studies’ have been conducted in which ‘relationally aggressive behaviour has been investigated in the workplace’. The queen bee syndrome aside, given the reported gendered nature of both incivility and relational aggression, we must surely ask whether male managers are, perhaps, less likely to recognise their occurrence between their female staff? If so (and since senior management—especially in industries such as construction—remains almost exclusively male), does this present a serious managerial deficiency? In the absence of legislative protection and little in the way of policy, we look at the repercussions this has had on one of those employees, Tina Potkins, co-author of this chapter.

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Method Ethnography The review of the literature demonstrates that workplace bullying is often ambiguous, subtle and covert, especially when conceptualised as incivility or relational aggression. It therefore follows that conventional, quantitative methods of research are unlikely to capture its essence. Conversely, ethnography is much more sensitive to such subtleties. Furthermore, ethnography involves researching a subject within the context in which it occurs, using a data collection technique that does not oversimplify the complexities of what is being explored. Indeed, Cowie et al. (2000), as cited in Lester (2009: 448), have commented that ethnographies offer significant potential ‘in uncovering subtle, informal, and covert forms of workplace bullying’, and it is on this basis that we embrace the approach. Notably, however, our ethnography is unusual in two ways. First, the ethnography did not involve participant observation in the conventional sense of the researcher watching and participating in the ‘native’ activities of the researched. Rather, the researcher here is the researched. Formally, this is what has become known as autoethnography. Bochner and Ellis (2016: 91) note that ‘an autoethnographer’s story is [often] a tale of two selves, a journey from ‘who I was’ to ‘who I am’ … The story bears witness to what I can mean to live with shame, abuse, addiction, stigma, discrimination … and to gain through testimony.’ Following in this vein, but acknowledging that reliving traumatic events is often an unpleasant process (e.g. see, Chatham-Carpenter 2010), there was for Tina a discernible therapeutic value to this project. Second, the data itself—in the form of a diary (discussed further down)—pre-existed the formal study and was not intended at the time for use in this project. Consequently, in further conceptualising our research approach, we have embraced a form of retrospective autoethnography, comparable to the approach deployed by Vickers (2007). This is a methodological approach which is slowly gaining traction. For Boncori (2013) and Boncori and Vine (2014), this approach is described as ethnography a postoriori. Weir and Clarke (2018) use comparable techniques, exploring in detail the authenticity of the approach.

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Diaries There are significant advantages to the use of diaries in ethnographic research. Open diaries, as used in this case, allow the participant to write in continuous prose and can therefore provide more extensive content. The account thus conveyed is very much in the subject’s ‘own words’ (Hyldegard 2006). Furthermore, where the diary is written in a manner whereby the participant was not at the time aware it would subsequently be subject to analysis (as is the case here), we might reasonably expect its content to be honest, sensitive and free from anticipatory bias (Alaszewski 2006). Of course, a single diary can never represent more than a single perspective and hence cannot be considered an ‘objective’ record of events, but it does, however, represent an extraordinarily potent vehicle for conveying raw emotional experience. Pseudonyms are used throughout. Finally, it is worth noting that Vickers (2007) made use of her own diary entries in exploring the concept of bullying, and we follow in that tradition.

Data Analysis Autoethnographic research is undoubtedly challenging, particularly where emotional recall is central to the narrative. Vickers (who reflected on her own previous experience of workplace bullying, although in circumstances somewhat different to those presented here) approached the analysis of the emotional aspect of the research by way of the sensemaking framework described originally by Weick (1995). Although such an approach is implicit in terms of our own endeavours (certainly in terms of the therapeutic affects it has had for Tina), given the specific framing of the workplace bullying experience in the case of our research (i.e. between women, and occurring within a male-dominated environment), we have opted instead to apply two-pronged analysis. First, we apply the experiential framework developed in the bullying literature by MacIntosh et al. following their 2010 study on the effects of workplace bullying on how women work. Second, we examine our data by recourse to a critical reading of the queen bee syndrome.

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MacIntosh et al. suggest that women experience workplace bullying in four stages: Being Conciliatory, Reconsidering, Reducing Interference, and Redeveloping Balance (MacIntosh et al. 2010). In the first stage, Being Conciliatory, victims use peacemaking tactics in an attempt to understand or avoid the bully. During this stage, women also attempt to change their approach to work to fit the bullies’ expectations, which may also involve avoiding contact with co-workers. This increases the victim’s isolation whilst limiting potential sources of support. Eventually the victim recognises that these conciliatory attempts are futile. It is at this point that the victim progresses to stage two, Reconsidering. Here the woman seeks validation from others within the organisation of her own perceptions in an attempt to endorse the reality and severity of her experiences and begins to assess possible courses of action. Once the woman feels validation has been achieved, and one or more suitable courses of action identified, the victim can move on to stage three, Reducing Interference. At this point, she can begin to more purposefully pursue selected strategies, before ultimately re-establishing or redefining her relationship with work in the final stage, Redeveloping Balance.

Case Context: Tina’s Preamble I was 34 when I started keeping my diary. I worked for BC which is a privately owned, medium-sized construction company employing 239 men and 33 women. At the time of writing the diary, I worked as the payroll manager as part of an accounts team of seven, consisting of five women and two men. The gender composition of the team did not reflect that of the whole organisation. I kept a diary for the period in which I experienced the bullying; diary entries were mostly made during times of intense emotional experience and were recorded without the knowledge that they would later be used in research. The entries were dated but written in continuous prose. The bullying I experienced at work took place over a two-year period from 2010 until the point at which I resigned in September 2012. Prior to the bullying, I had worked for the company for 13 years. The frequency of the entries (and the length of those entries) varied considerably

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over the period in which I kept the diary. They reflected times when I felt powerless and could do nothing but live through the bullying (and consequently barely wrote at all), to times of intense anger (where I wrote extensively as a means of venting my frustrations). British Construction was run by a board of all-male directors overseen by the CEO, Philip. I worked in the accounts department alongside Alan, my boss, Carla, a purchase ledger supervisor and Catherine, a trainee management accountant as well as two other staff. One member of the team, Kate, a management accountant, had recently resigned. Over the two-year period in question, I was bullied by both Carla and Catherine.

Tina’s Story My diary opens with the following entry: I have no idea what I am supposed to have done wrong. [05.09.11]

I was aware that Kate had recently resigned following sustained bullying and I was worried that I was now experiencing the same. The next day: I am very conscious that I must adhere to every rule in the book so that no-one can complain about me. [06.09.11] It’s very rigid and again getting me down. [ibid.]

Carla and Catherine had made me feel left out by ignoring or excluding me, and this is what’s getting me down. The bullying all seemed so much easier to cope with today because I had Laura to speak to. [07.09.11]

Laura had recently been recruited to the team as a management accountant, as a replacement for Kate. It transpired that Laura was also being bullied.

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I have started to suffer from back pain … lack of sleep, bad headaches, and have contemplated going to the doctor to ask for some pills for anxiety. [08.09.11]

I work from home when I can, but Carla and Catherine have now spread rumours that I bake when I’m at home, instead of working. I had simply brought up in conversation that I had prepared dinner for my family during my lunch break at home. As a result of these rumours, I have today been informed that I am no longer permitted to work from home. This has caused me to retract from personal conversations in my workplace, as the less I say, the less they can get me into trouble for. Regardless, this incident has made it much more difficult to reconcile my private life and domestic responsibilities with those at work. I’m just trying to ignore it all. [08.09.11]

In September 2011, I passed my CIPP Diploma and studying was finally over. I told Alan in front of the team when he came down, as I was so excited. Catherine ‘scowled at me’ [07.09.11] and, apart from Alan, no one in the team congratulated me. I did not say anything more. Initially, my silence was an effective strategy to keep the peace, but ultimately this withdrawal left me feeling isolated. I became frustrated that I couldn’t participate in their conservations. Alone and silent, unpleasant thoughts and feelings engulfed me. I decide to ‘look into the grievance procedures today, as I need to do something’ [08.09.11], but reading through the documentation further depresses me. Friends and family keep telling me to ignore it’, but ‘it’s so hard’ because it was affecting me, not them. [09.09.11]

They did at least reassure me that I am doing nothing wrong. this is bullying by any stretch of the imagination and it needs to stop! [05.10.11]

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I continue to try to ignore the bullying. I wanted them to think it was not affecting me. I persevered, but the whispering and apparent exchanges of email between Carla and Catherine made me paranoid. ‘I do not want to trust anyone’ [08.10.11]. I now feel everyone is against me; my friends, my colleagues, and the organisation more generally. The feelings of paranoia increased when I noticed that Carla and Catherine would whisper to each other as soon as I left my desk, and stopped as soon as I returned [02.04.12]. As a result, I found myself staying at my desk for longer periods, making excuses not to get up, just so I did not have to experience it again. Today, Laura was ‘reduced to tears’ following a conversation she’d had with Alan. Alan showed no sympathy. I told Alan that I ‘had to comfort her and that it was not fair this was happening’ and he said ‘I just want it sorted. I’m not interested in the detail’ [07.09.11]. I couldn’t believe it. ‘How can I report anything now?’ [07.09.11] knowing Laura was treated so badly? I felt torn. My frustrations continue, and I feel ignored every day now. (Notably, the word “ignored” appears more frequently than any other in my diary). My intuition continues to tell me that that best way of dealing with this is to not speak; to pretend like I am not really here, ignoring them back. I am avoiding their tactics; I am trying to give them a taste of their own medicine, ‘operating in passive aggressive ways’ [05.09.11] by ignoring them first. This is reminiscent of the bullying I experienced from other girls at school and it was the only way I got them to eventually leave me alone. However, I could resist no longer. Today I decided to confront Carla. She lied and made excuses for her behaviour. She did, however, apologise; this is something Catherine never did. When I explained to her that ‘she did not include me anymore and that I felt isolated’, she ‘assured me she would make an effort’ [05.10.11]. I felt relieved that after all this time I had achieved something, and perhaps closure was on its way. I hadn’t and it wasn’t. She and Catherine continued to exclude and isolate me at what felt like every opportunity. Laura left at the beginning of December because she couldn’t cope any longer with the bullying she was experiencing. I felt like I had lost an ally. However, it did motivate me to look for another job too. I did have choices!

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BC’s reaction to Laura being bullied was to close ranks and deny all knowledge of what had happened. Laura had decided to send an email to Alan reiterating the fact that she was being bullied and expressing concern that he was doing nothing to help. In error, however, this message was sent companywide. Inevitably, other staff discussed what was happening in the accounts department, but instead of Laura receiving any support—or Alan being reprimanded—Catherine got all the support and sympathy. Perhaps, in the end, like Laura, I was one of those misfit employees. I decided to use my Personal Development Review [27.03.12] as an opportunity to discuss the bullying with Alan. When I received the response, I was relieved that senior management had taken notice, and that it seemed like they were finally helping me. The CEO commented thus: I am… concerned that the ‘team’ ethos may not be right at times and would strongly suggest we all work at getting that right. [16.05.12]

Looking back through the document, and after what I know now, it would appear that management were in fact trying to saddle me with the blame for the situation. Alan responded to the CEO’s comments by suggesting I needed to ‘reinvigorate the finance team working together ethos’, and that I needed to ‘develop/enhance the ability to work with others’. Of Catherine’s demeanour, in particular, Alan said ‘that’s just Catherine, you need to show her how to behave in an organisational setting’ [27.03.12]. Alan implied that this was my problem to sort out. But I wasn’t her line manager. He was. Alan’s concluding comment in my Personal Development Review read as follows: With Tina’s undoubted ability and experience, the need to reinvigorate the “finance team working together ethos”, coupled with developing her payroll colleague as payroll cover asap, the challenge for Tina is to now look “outside the box” and develop/enhance the ability to work with others to achieve a desired outcome, which will stand her in very good stead in the future.

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His comments seemed to make the unacceptable acceptable. Alan was suggesting that I should ignore the bullying and it would go away. He was blasé about the situation. I expressed significant frustration at this in my diary: “I do not understand why he will not get involved!” [07.09.11]. Perhaps he believed that if he did deal with it, this would be seen to legitimise my claims. After Christmas, I was invited to Sue’s 40th birthday weekend in Spain, which was scheduled for April 2012. Of the planned weekend, the attitude of both Carla and Catherine appeared to degenerate further and was virtually indistinguishable from the playground parlance I’d experienced at school. Catherine made comments to me such as, ‘you will never fit in’, ‘no-one will talk to you’, with Carla adding; ‘I would rather stick pins in my eyes [than spend the time with you]’ [10.04.12]. These were supposed to be accounting professionals! Colleagues I had known for over 15 years divulged to me that even worse had been said behind my back. I decided to talk to Catherine one-­ on-­one, as I was so angry. I explained to her that it is ‘no defence’ to say ‘everyone moans about everyone’ because this was manifestly different. I stressed that ‘I do not want to work in that kind of company’ [03.07.12]. I also explained that I felt that her attitude towards me had deteriorated over time, and was, in effect, a form of bullying. I did not get an apology. The best she could offer was a promise to “try to make an effort”. However, I know even these are empty words because she sat turned away from me, slouched in her seat, refusing to make eye contact. I am close to quitting even though I do not have another job to go to. [26.06.12]

My partner Peter said we would cope. He knows how ‘every Sunday night, a black cloud comes over me because I hate the thought of going to work’ [27.04.12]. I don’t know why I stay. Part of it is the financial side; in spite of Peter’s reassurance, without two salaries we would lose our home. Towards the end of July 2012, I have an informal meeting with Rachel, the training manager. After agreeing training was not the answer to the issue raised in my Personal Development Review, she agreed to be my

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mentor; to help me deal with each situation as it occurs. However, although Rachel’s support did help me to deal with it more effectively, it did not stop the bullying. It was not the answer. Strangely, it also made me feel like the bullying was somehow my fault. I requested another meeting with Alan, and Rachel helped me to compose a list detailing what I would like him to do, and—crucially—how it would benefit BC. Having prepared carefully for the meeting, scheduled for 2 August 2012, I began by commenting on how I have been made to feel, the options I have considered, and the financial implications and worries those bring. I supplement this with two requests: first, to switch departments as I feel it has got to the point where ‘trust cannot be rebuilt’, and second, for the bullying to be formally acknowledged as I firmly believe that Carla and Catherine’s behaviour is not acceptable within BC’s culture. There is a look of anguish on Alan’s face, and he says, ‘I just do not think that would work’. Once again, he refused to take the issue seriously. I feel stripped of respect and dignity. After 15 years working with BC, later in August 2012, I manage to secure an interview elsewhere and I am offered the job. I handed in my letter of resignation. It read as follows: The hostility and bullying within the finance department have unfortunately been left unchecked, and this, coupled with my lack of career progression, has led me to this decision. [17.08.12]

My resignation was informally accepted just before I was due to go on holiday, but Alan told me to take my holiday as a chance to reflect and decide if leaving was what I really wanted to do. However, it transpired that while I was away a companywide email had been circulated advising all staff that my resignation had been accepted and a replacement appointed. This underlined to me the extraordinary lack of integrity within the organisation. When I did eventually receive BC’s formal response to my resignation, it stated that BC had no idea the bullying was still happening and that they had assumed it had been resolved. I requested an exit interview with Philip, the company CEO. I explained to Philip my immense frustration that Alan had not taken any steps to help address the bullying. However, Philip echoed Alan’s claim

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that the organisation did not realise it was still happening. Notably, he cautioned me not to ‘burn my bridges’, a comment apparently aimed at deterring me from following in Laura’s footsteps. Laura was, by this time, in the process of suing the company.

Discussion Broadly speaking, Tina’s experience of workplace bullying corresponds to the four-stage framework described by MacIntosh et al. (2010).

Being Conciliatory In the first stage, Being Conciliatory, victims use peacemaking tactics in an attempt to understand or avoid the bully. During this stage, women also attempt to change their approach to work to ‘fit the bully’s expectations’, which may involve ‘avoiding contact with co-workers’. This is reported to increase the victim’s isolation whilst limiting potential sources of support. The opening entry in Tina’s story demonstrates her frustration. She makes multiple attempts both to understand and to avoid the bullies [‘I have no idea what I am supposed to have done wrong’]. There is a discernible attempt to put herself in the bullies’ place [‘Perhaps, like Laura, I am just one of those misfit employees’]. Her avoidance tactics are numerous too. She deliberately stays at her desk so as to restrict the time available to Carla and Catherine to gossip, and even avoids speaking as she feels the less she says, the less they can chastise her. The effect of this is, inevitably, to increase her isolation. In this way, Carla and Catherine effectively use the ‘perceived power imbalance’ (Lester 2009: 447; Miner and Eischeid 2012: 494) between themselves and Tina as an enabling structure to generate vulnerability (Miner and Eischeid 2012: 495). They use a manipulative form of ‘social intelligence’ (Crick et al. 2002) by spreading rumours (Crick and Grotpeter 1995), which erode Tina’s self-­respect and increase her feelings of vulnerability and self-doubt.

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Reconsidering Eventually the victim recognises that these conciliatory attempts are futile. It is at this point that the victim progresses to stage two, Reconsidering. Here the woman seeks validation from others within the organisation of her own perceptions in an attempt to endorse the reality and severity of her experiences, and begins to assess possible courses of action. Tina’s experience corresponds with this, the second stage in the MacIntosh model. Tina clearly seeks validation from others within (and, indeed, beyond) the organisation as evidenced by her endeavours in September 2011 in which her ‘Friends, family and Peter helped her to see she was doing nothing wrong and, in effect, ‘legitimised her claims’ by validating her perceptions of what was going on.’ Her diary shows a number of examples of where she sought to validate her perceptions, such as talking things through with Peter and her two confidants: Rachel and Sue. Each of them was a sounding board at one time or another.

Reducing Interference Once the woman feels validation has been achieved, the victim can move on to stage three, Reducing Interference. At this point, she can begin to address the situation by exploring potential courses of action. Having secured validation from influential peers, Tina begins to make purposeful attempts to address the situation. She arranges and carefully prepares for meetings with each of the perpetrators and, latterly, her manager. Ultimately, of course, this course of action proves unsuccessful. However, Laura’s departure demonstrated to Tina that she did have another choice: finding alternative employment.

Redeveloping Balance Ultimately, the woman re-establishes or redefines her relationship with work in the final stage, Redeveloping Balance.

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Ultimately, it transpires that the only way for Tina to ‘redefine her relationship with her work’ is to quit. Indeed, for Macintosh et al., quitting is a typical reaction to bullying and, notably, in both the Rindfleish (2000) and the Derks et al. (2011) studies on the queen bee syndrome, finding alternative employment in other industries is also considered a key reaction to those adversely affected by queen bees. It is here, of course, that we must distil a lesson. In addition to the ramifications our research has for the queen bee syndrome, we pick up on this lesson below. On the basis of the experience described in this case, and although the bullies in question were not especially senior, there is evidence for queen bee type behaviour within the construction industry. In this sense, the construction industry appears to be comparable to other maledominated industries. Both Carla and Catherine deploy tactics associated with incivility and relational aggression to help realise their main objective: to remain the minority. And, ultimately, they were successful. Of the other women to work with them (Kate, Laura, and Tina), all resigned. For the most part, incivility and relational aggression are often so subtle they in effect remain hidden and, hence, unreported and unaudited. Consequently, this has meant that workplaces have not developed appropriate policies. This of course leaves limited options for the victims except those costly to the organisation and victim; absence, resignation, and shortage or loss of skills. The suggestion that women are more likely to engage in incivility and relational aggression than their male counterparts may—in part at least— enhance our understanding of the queen bee syndrome and, particularly, how it is seemingly ignored by organisations. If women are more perceptive of these subtler forms of abuse, then organisations—most of which have senior management teams composed exclusively or predominantly of men—are less likely to identify it when it takes place or to take it seriously if raised. Certainly, Tina’s boss, Alan, repeatedly failed to recognise that bullying was taking place. In this sense, we advance Derks et al.’s (2011) analysis one step further. They recognised that there is a tendency to assume that queen bee behaviour is something ‘inherent to the personalities of career women’ (ibid. 519), rather than attributing it to social context. To this end, they persuasively argue that ‘in addition to being a cause of gender discrimination in the workplace, the queen bee

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phenomenon is an important consequence of workplace experiences, namely the gender discrimination women experience during their career’ (ibid. 521). Our data has revealed something more specific: that queen bee behaviour can proliferate in organisational environments where men do not recognise the subtler, more covert bullying that can take place between women. It is therefore unfortunate that covert bullying such as that reported in this case is described by some as a lower grade of bullying (e.g. Bar-David Consulting), or as something distinct from bullying altogether (e.g. Vickers 2007: 227 & 228). This is probably part of the reason it has not attracted the attention it clearly warrants. It can be just as harmful as more overt forms of bullying, and—in some cases, such as that identified in this research—more harmful.

Concluding Thoughts It is hoped that future research will bring to light other experiences of this nature. After all, this is just one story and, as such, is unlikely to prompt a wholesale shift in attitude. The experiences of more women will doubtless help provide more empirical colour. Other researchers may also wish to incorporate the perspective of the bullies, since this too is an interesting phenomenon and—in all probability—will tell us more about institutional norms than of questionable character on the part of the bullies themselves. On a more practical trajectory, research trained on mitigation is warranted. Clearly, organisations must address incivility and relational aggression. Training of staff to recognise and minimise such behaviour can also help (see, for example, Crothers et al. 2009), but we call for further research as regards to both the specifics and contextualisation of such training. In this sense, rather than deliver generic learning packages to suspicious and disengaged audiences, training must drill down to the particular way each company is organised, paying particular attention to structural-cultural inertia, as well as the manner in which it manages performance: schooling in the subtleties of gender dynamics without descending into stereotypes is not going to be easy and, of itself, warrants careful research. More generally, training is likely to present a significant challenge to the construction industry not least because—and as Worrall

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et al. (2010) recognise—it is an industry which is extremely fragmented and heterogeneous, both in terms of the supply chain and in respect of firm size. Other researchers may wish to turn the tables completely and explore, for example, whether bullying is experienced between men working in female-dominated environments such as care work and characterise the form this bullying takes by way of comparison. Finally, it is worth stressing that our data challenge conventional wisdom in respect of addressing gender balance. Williams and Emerson (2001) argue that at the point at which women account for at least 30% of a given workforce, existing sexist cultures will likely be confronted. More recently, Watts (2010: 189) has commented of the construction industry in particular: ‘Because women in construction form such a small minority of the total workforce, with their representation fragmented across a large number of small and medium sized firms, they do not share a collective interest’. Tina’s experience is markedly different. Rather than galvanising a sense of camaraderie, the concentration of women within her particular department is a principle cause of division and resentment. In this sense, in reflecting on our data, we echo Powell et al. (2010) in cautioning against attempts to determine a threshold at which female representation in an organisation enables the dislodging of entrenched, sexist attitudes. More broadly, this, of course, underlines our initial assertion that gender dynamics are complex and attempts to determine linear, causal relationships will likely fail. Further research in this vein must, invariably, be sensitive to both nuance and context.

Tina’s Reflection I hoped, as Vickers (2007) did, that the writing of this chapter would enable me to seek closure. It was difficult on occasion not to feel consumed by the emotions the diary resurrected. Part of me was concerned that in engaging in this process, I was effectively placing my bullies on a pedestal. My new job was a fresh start. Although the trebled travel time took its own toll on my family and study commitments, it was preferable to feeling angry and powerless. In 2014, BC contacted me to see whether I

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would consider coming back. With a sense of vindication, I agreed to meet with Alan, expecting him finally to offer some semblance of empathy. Instead, our meeting revealed that nothing had changed in respect of the office relations. Alan continued to demonstrate a complete misunderstanding of the circumstances that had led to my departure in the first place. Indeed, it transpired that BC was hoping I could be lured back to do the same job, but with a £5000 salary reduction. I managed, somehow, to decline politely.

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Crick, N. R., Casas, J. F., and Nelson, D. A. (2002). Toward a more comprehensive understanding of peer maltreatment: Studies of relational victimization. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 11, 98–101 Crothers, L. M., Lipinski, J., and Minutolo, M. C. (2002) Cliques, Rumors, and Gossip by the Water Cooler: Female Bullying in the Workplace. The Psychologist-Manager Journal, 12: 2, 97–110. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 10887150902886423 Dainty, A. R. J, Ison, S. G. and Briscoe, G.H. (2005) The construction labour market skills crisis: the perspective of small-medium sized firms. Construction Management and Economics, Vol. 23, pp. 387–398. Derks, B., Van Larr, C. and Ellemers, N. and De Groot, K. (2011) Gender-Bias Primes Elicit Queen-Bee Responses Among Senior Policewomen. Available at: http://pss.sagepub.com/content/22/10/1243 (Accessed: 25 May 2013). Eagly, A. H. and Johannesen-Schmidt, M. C. and Van Engen, M. L. (2003) Transformation, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership styles: A meta-analysis comparing women and men. Available at: http://psycnet.apa.org/?fa=main. doiLandinganddoi=10.1037/0033-­2909.129.4.569 (Accessed: 7th April 2013). Equality and Human Rights Commission (2012) Internal Market, Infrastructure and Employment Sub-Committee—inquiry into Women on Boards. Available at: http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/legal-­and-­policy/consultation-­ responses/written-­e vidence-­t o-­t he-­h ouse-­o f-­l ords-­e u-­i nternal-­m arket-­ infrastructure-­and-­employment-­sub-­committee-­inquiry-­into-­women-­on-­ boards (Accessed: 05 May 2013). Fielden, S. and Davidson, M. and Gale, A. and Davey, C. (2000) ‘Women in construction: the untapped resource’, Construction Management and Economics, Vol 18, Issue 1, p113–121. Hyldegard, J. (2006). Using diaries in group based information behaviour research—a methodological study, Proceedings of the 1st international conference on Information interaction in context, 153–161. Jones, J. (2010) Closing the Gender Gap. Available at: http://civil-­engineering. asce.org/wps/portal/ce/c0/04_SB8K8xLLM9MSSzPy8xBz9CP0os3 iLkCAPEzcPIwP_ACc3AyMXF4sQk6AQY_cAE_1I_ShznPIhhvohIBMz9 SPNLA2MQcxi_UgDEF0AFDLSL8hOTKpKjVQEADiA-­Hg! (Accessed: 16 May 2013). Kramer C (1978) ‘Women’s and men’s ratings of their own and ideal speech’, Communication Quarterly, 26: 2–10.

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Lakhani, N. (2013) Margaret Thatcher: How much did The Iron Lady do for the UK’s women? Available at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ margaret-­t hatcher-­h ow-­m uch-­d id-­t he-­i ron-­l ady-­d o-­f or-­t he-­u ks-­ women-­8564631.html? (Accessed: 27 May 2013). Laura M. Crothers, John Lipinski & Marcel C. Minutolo. (2009). Cliques, Rumors, and Gossip by the Water Cooler: Female Bullying in the Workplace. The Psychologist-Manager Journal 12 2: 97–110, https://doi. org/10.1080/10887150902886423 Lester, J. (2009) ‘Not Your Child’s Playground: Workplace Bullying Among Community College Faculty’, Community College Journal of Research and Practice 33: 444–462 Lewis P (2014) ‘Postfeminism, Femininities and Organization Studies: Exploring a New Agenda’, Organization Studies, 35(12): 1845–1866. MacIntosh, J., Wuest, J., Merritt Gray, M. and Aldous, S. (2010) ‘Effects of Workplace Bullying on How Women Work’, Western Journal of Nursing Research, 32 (7) pp. 910–931. Mathison D (1986) ‘Sex differences in the perceptions of assertiveness among female managers’, The Journal of Social Psychology, 126(5): 599–606 Mavin S (2006) ‘Venus envy: problematizing solidarity behaviour and queen bees’, Women in Management Review, 21(4): 264–276 McCarthy, C. (2010) Construction—Equality street. Available at: http://www. shponline.co.uk/home/-­/journal_content/56/354216/702349 (Accessed on Mills, A (1988) “Organization, gender and culture.” Organization Studies 9.3: 351–369. Miner, K. N. and Eischeid, A. (2012) ‘Observing Incivility toward Coworkers and Negative Emotions: Do Gender of the Target and Observer Matter?’ Sex Roles 66 (7) 492–505 Montgomery, K. and Kane, K. and Vance, C. M. (2004) Accounting for Differences in Norms of Respect: A STUDY OF ASSESSEMENTS OF INCIVILITY THROUGH THE LENSES OF RACE AND GENDER. Group and Organization Management, 29(2), pp. 248–268. Moran, B. (1992) ‘Gender Differences in Leadership’, Library Trends, Vol 40, No 3, 1992, pp. 475–91. Naimon, E. C. and Mullins, M. E. and Osatuke, K. (2013) The effects of personality and spirituality on workplace incivility perceptions. Available at: (Accessed: 14 May 2013). Namie, G. (2013) Work Place Bullying Institute: The WBI Website 2013 Instant Polls- C: Barriers to Bullied Targets Leaving Their Jobs. Available at: http://www.workplacebullying.org/multi/pdf/WBI-­2 013-­I P-­C .pdf (Accessed: 17 May 2013).

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National Bullying Helpline (2013) Help for employers who have bullying occurring in the premises. Available at: http://nationalbullyinghelpline.co.uk/ employers.htm (Accessed: 19 May 2013). Ness K (2011) “Constructing Masculinity in the Building Trades: ‘Most Jobs un the Construction Industry can be done by Women”, Gender, Work and Organization, 19(6) 654–675 Pearson, C. M., Andersson, L. M. and Porath, C. L. (2000) ‘Assessing and Attacking Workplace Incivility’, Organizational Dynamics, 29 (2), pp. 123–137. Powell, G (1990) ‘One more time: Do female and male managers differ?’, Academy of Management Executives, 4(3): 68–75 Powell, A. and Dainty, A. and Bagilhole, B. (2010) Achieving Gender Equality in the Construction Professions: Lessons from the Career Decisions of Women Construction Students in the UK. Available at:http://www.arcom.ac.uk/-­docs/ proceedings/ar2010-­0 573-­0 582_Powell_Dainty_and_Bagilhole.pdf (Accessed: 17 May 2013). Rindfleish, J., 2000. Senior management women in Australia: diverse perspectives. Women in Management Review, 15(4), pp. 172–183 Staines, G., Tavris, C. and Jayaratne, T. (1973), “The queen bee syndrome”, in Tavris, C. (Ed.), The Female Experience, CRM Books, Del Mar, CA. Starr, K. (2001) “What makes management experience different for women? Secrets revealed through the structure of cathexis”, paper presented at the Rethinking Gender, Work and Organization Conference, June, Keele. Tunajek, S. (2007) Workplace Incivility—Part I: Anger, Harassment, and Horizontal Violence. AANA Journal, 61(3), pp. 30–31. Vickers, M. H. (2007) Autoethnography as Sensemaking: A Story of Bullying, Culture and Organization, 13:3, 223–237 Vine, T. (2018) Women, bullying and the construction industry: Twisted gender dynamics in a male-dominated environment. puntOorg International Journal. 1, 1 (Mar. 2018), 23–2 Wachs, J. (2009) Workplace Incivility, Bullying, and Mobbing. AAOHN Journal, 57(2) pp. 88–88. Wagner K & Swanson C (1979) ‘From Machievelli to Ms. Differences in male-­ female power styles’, Public Administrative Review, 7: 66–72 Watts, J (2010) ‘Now you see me, now you don’t’: The visibility paradox for women in a male-dominated profession, in Lewis P & Simpson R (eds) Revealing and concealing gender: Issues of visibility in organizations, London: Palgrave Macmillan

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4 Clinical Advance Through Ethnographic Storytelling: Towards an Enacted Organisational Role for the Hospital Visitor Tom Vine

This is a story about illness. The focus is on the institutional dynamics that framed that illness and what we can learn from their formal examination. The story is about Halina, a cancer patient under the care of the publicly-funded British National Health Service (NHS). The story is based primarily on a handwritten diary in which I reflect on my visits to Halina, initially at her home and then later at hospital. The methodological, aesthetic and therapeutic advantages of storytelling notwithstanding, I use this chapter to report—constructively—on the experience in more specific empirical terms. I am an organisation theorist, and so my interest in the NHS should be straightforward to infer. My ‘findings’, if that is not too glib a term, are twofold: (1) the social, cultural and emotional aspects of care are, it seems, at least for some patients, more significant than the clinical care itself; and (2) a reflection on my own autoethnographic experience as a visitor in a hospital of a terminally ill patient suggests that we should take more seriously the role of the visitor. In

T. Vine (*) University of Suffolk, Ipswich, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Vine, S. Richards (eds.), Stories, Storytellers, and Storytelling, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07234-5_4

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developing this argument, I propose that the NHS, and perhaps other health providers, delineate an active role for visitors in terms of what is tentatively described as ‘negotiated nursing’. There are at least three areas in which this role has potential: First, visitors represent catalysts of care. Second, visitors represent a potential source of support for clinical professionals in respect of certain routine practical tasks, as proxy carers. Finally, visitors represent a potential source of support for clinical professionals in terms of emotional mediation. Ultimately, I argue that collaborative endeavours such as those associated with negotiated nursing—all of which actively transgress traditional clinical and organisational boundaries—will help ameliorate the negative reputation for health care as overly-­ professionalised (Gerard 2019), and hence disengaged from the community it purportedly serves.

Auntie Halina Auntie Halina died from cancer in 2017. She was 69. Halina had a difficult start in life. She was born in what was then a deprived part of north London to Polish immigrants. Neither of her parents spoke English, nor did they learn. From the age of five, Halina thus took on the role as interpreter and cultural mediator for her parents. Halina studied hard. She eventually became a psychiatric nurse and, later, a teacher. Halina never married. Over the last couple of years, and as her cancer slowly spread, she and I discussed the possibility of writing about her experience of the illness, focussing particularly on the professional care she received—both good and bad. I wasn’t entirely sure that this would be received positively but she liked the idea and this project was born. It is significant, I think, that Halina had developed an interest in anthropology later in life. This was an interest we shared, and spent many hours discussing (I even bought her a copy of Anthropology for Beginners on her birthday one year). She once described herself as an armchair anthropologist. She quite liked the alliteration. Sadly, Halina died before the project came to fruition. I therefore take full responsibility for the final cut.

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Method and Ethics The story I go on to tell in this chapter is based on my observations and participatory experiences. Empirically, the data is drawn from a diary I kept in the latter stages of Halina’s illness, in which I detailed my own and others’ interactions with Halina. I take some poetic license in crafting the narrative and—inevitably—configure the story with a pedagogical end in mind. Methodologically, the story that underpins this research represents the coming together of multiple techniques drawn from ethnography, autoethnography, diary studies and life narratives. It is an approach that is principally experiential. Personal experience has, historically, been frowned upon in academic circles (see, for example, Delamont’s critique from 2007). It is, however, slowly gaining renewed respect across the academy (e.g. see Adams et al. 2015; Bochner and Ellis 2016; Weir and Clarke 2018). Ironically, and as I’ve noted elsewhere (see Vine 2020), it is those at the hard edge of physics who have led the way in this respect. Experience, it would seem, is a prerequisite for developing the necessary faculties for advanced physics. As Capra stressed in 1982: Einstein experienced relativity theory before he formulated it. Bohr experienced quantum mechanics before he formulated them. Feynan experienced quantum field theory and Chew experienced S-matrix theory before their formulation. (Capra 1982: 220, emphases added)

The best-known experience in science, however, is of course that associated with Sir Isaac Newton’s discovery of gravity: As the legend goes, Newton discovered [gravity] when an apple fell down from a tree, and he realized in sudden flash of intuition that the force that pulls the apple from the tree is the same force that pulls the planets towards the sun. (ibid. 226)

Few of us understand Newtonian mechanics (and fewer still, Einstein’s theory of relativity!), but most of us are familiar with the cultural framings of their science. And this is what’s important. Even scientists are compelled to accept that they are, in the final analysis, human beings. And no

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matter how crisp and well-pressed their white coats, they remain human beings throughout their scientific careers. They have fears, hopes and unfulfilled dreams. They harbour prejudices and envies. They shit, piss and orgasm behind closed doors. And, perhaps, most pertinently, they veil their work in ostensibly ‘neutral’ methodologies which are anything but (Hoehner 2006). Historically, science has been seen as desirable precisely because it seeks to abstract and isolate specific variables for examination; and yet, it is this very act of abstraction (and hence isolation) that disengages the enterprise of science from its context. This, I hope, will help persuade you that there is significant vitality to ethnographic storytelling. Perhaps more so than other (social) scientists, ethnographers capture, interpret and convey the essence of human existence in their work. In ethnography, being a human being is prioritised. The data I present is thus a reflection on my own experience of the NHS. It is, I hope, both informative and illuminating. Experience and storytelling go hand-in-hand.

The Story 2 September 2017 I telephone Halina at home. My auntie makes a habit of presenting everything in positive terms. She obsesses over silver linings. Halina insists—once again—that she has had an excellent experience with the NHS.  Of the various staff she interacts with during check-ups, scans, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, she speaks most highly of those who recognise her from previous visits, and of these, especially those who enquire about aspects of her life other than her cancer. The clinical aspects of her treatment are glossed over. Initially, I find this a little peculiar, but slowly it is beginning to make sense.

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9 September 2017 Halina has just returned home after a short spell in hospital. I pop round to see her. Well, I don’t exactly pop round, as I live in Norfolk and she lives in North London. But I certainly don’t want to make a big deal of the distance. She would only fuss. I ask her how she’s doing. “Absolutely fine,” she responds. I usually just go with her whole positive thinking thing, but today I decide to scratch through this veneer. Eventually, she confesses: “On Tuesday, the night nurse woke me in the early hours of the morning. The nurse said that I’d been groaning in pain, and that I really ought to be quiet as I was disturbing the other patients. The nurse insisted that I take my medication.” Halina said she “apologised immediately,”— an “all-too-British habit,” but later wished she hadn’t. She was a terminally ill patient and was apologising for being in pain! She was apologising for being a patient! In the margin of my diary, I write “WHAT THE FUCK?” She said she felt horrible and wasn’t sure what to do. On the one hand, she wanted to file a complaint; on the other, she didn’t want to cause problems for the nurse in question. I remind myself that Halina worked as a nurse herself once upon a time and knows first-hand the stress they are under. However, she did make the following observation: the walls at Barnet Hospital were plastered with posters reminding patients that “We operate a zero abuse policy, both physical and verbal, towards any member of our team” and “The NHS will not tolerate abuse of its staff.” ‘Where was the poster reminding staff that “The patients will not tolerate abuse from them”’, she quipped.

21 October 2017 I wake to see a missed call from Jane. Jane is my cousin’s wife and has taken on the role of informal carer for Halina. Halina is once again in hospital. Jane had received a distressed call from her but can’t get to the hospital. I drive down from Norfolk, arrive at the hospital and follow the signs to her Ward. When I arrive, I cuddle Halina. For the first time, I notice how fragile her frame feels in my arms. She seems really relieved to see me. I settle in to a chair next to her bed. There are three other beds in

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her section of the ward. One is empty. Halina tells me that the woman in the bed opposite has ‘left’. Her face glazes over. I don’t ask her to clarify what exactly she means by ‘left’. There is gunk in the corners of Halina’s mouth, which I clean with a tissue. Her lips are really dry. I ask the nurses for some Vaseline. They say they don’t have any. We’re in a hospital. Surely they have fucking Vaseline? Perhaps not. Hmmmm. I head down to the hospital gift shop, buy some, take it back to the ward and apply it to Halina’s cracked lips. Reflecting on this episode a little later in the day, I can’t quite figure out whether the ward prefer patients to supply their own petroleum jelly for cost reasons or whether they are just too busy to fetch some.

22 October 2017 I arrive at the hospital shortly after 10  am, as agreed with Halina. Technically, visiting hours aren’t until 2 pm, but early arrivals don’t seem to bother the staff in the slightest. Halina’s illness is really beginning to show. She is awake but her mouth is foaming—she says she’s been waiting for mouthwash. I ask if she wants me to chase it up. She says, “Not yet.” I infer from this that she is conscious not to bother the staff. Her skin is dry. My wife has given me some Sanctuary Spa cream to bring down to Halina. I gently rub it into her hands. The citrusy smell is refreshing. A nurse arrives, introduces herself and asks if I’m Halina’s son. “Her godson,” I reply. Technically, Halina is neither my auntie nor my godmother. However, I know that Halina feels most comfortable introducing me this way. The nurse says to me: “Can I have ten minutes [alone] with Halina?” I head to the hospital’s in-house branch of Costa Coffee. Respite, caffeine and an opportunity to write this particular diary entry. Ten minutes later, I return to the ward. Halina is in tears. She is struggling to form sentences coherently: “Tom, I’m so glad you’re back.” “What’s the matter, Auntie?” “They’re trying to make me take medication I’m not supposed to take.” I try not to look perplexed. “Don’t worry, Auntie. We’ll speak to them together.” And so began what I refer to as nursing by negotiation.

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The registrar arrives a little later. She is patient and listens carefully as Halina attempts to convey her concerns, struggling with every word. Are they this patient with her when I’m not here, I wonder? From a health practitioner’s perspective, this is probably frustrating. “I used to be a nurse myself,” Halina says to the registrar, again. “Did you know that?” “Yes, I did,” she replies calmly and politely. Halina repeats this question three times. “This is why I find it so hard to…” There is a silence of approximately 30  seconds. We both wait for Halina to finish the sentence, conscious not to interrupt her attempts to find the right word. Eventually, she settles on the word ‘complain’. “Well, you mustn’t feel as though you can’t complain,” the registrar says. Eventually, the registrar deciphers her concerns: Halina feels as though the staff are forcing her to take medication. She would rather have it left at her bedside for her to take in her own time. I explain that Halina has had concerns about being asked to take medication which hasn’t been prescribed. The registrar assures her that this isn’t the case. I mention that Halina has been asked to take blue pills and she hasn’t had these before. The registrar looks troubled—and—says, “I only prescribe the medication, I don’t know what it looks like since it is the nurses that administer it.” This strikes me as a rather peculiar response, and I get the impression that Halina is unlikely to be reassured by this. I decide to step in. “Auntie, it could be that this time round, the medication was a different brand. Different drug companies produce tablets that look different from one another but are the same medication.” “Yes, absolutely,” the registrar says. It is difficult to say for sure, but I get the feeling that the registrar is grateful for my intervention. Halina certainly seems reassured by this explanation. My auntie falls asleep. I continue to write. A nurse arrives with some more medication for Halina, a soluble Paracetamol and an anti-bacterial tongue drop to help relieve the dryness of her mouth. Halina wakes but doesn’t want to take the Paracetamol. However, together we convince her that the tongue drop is a good idea. She takes it. Her symptoms improve. The nurse then tends to Halina’s radiography wound. Halina grimaces in pain. At that moment, the nurse’s mobile phone starts ringing. The ring tone is traditional Turkish music—the sort played in Mediterranean restaurants. Halina smiles and holds both hands up and gently clicks her

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fingers imitating the Flamenco-style dance (wrong country, but you get the idea). This is the first time she has smiled all day. Later that afternoon, the nurse arrives again, this time with the antibiotics Halina needs to take. Halina doesn’t really have the strength to self-­ medicate. “Shall I pop the tablet in your mouth, Auntie,” I ask. “No, I hate that.” She wants to take the medication herself but now lacks both the dexterity and cerebral capacity to do this. We’re in a bind. I guess this is probably something the nurses have seen thousands of times before with other patients in similar situations. For me, it is a completely new experience. On the one hand, to feed her is humiliating for her. On the other, she needs the medication. Nurses clearly don’t have time to wait. The difference, of course, is that I do have the time and can help facilitate the taking of the medication when she is ready. This of course is what negotiated nursing is all about. It was at this moment that the penny dropped in respect of that episode with the night nurse Halina had recounted for me weeks ago: the night nurse was in all probability using Halina’s groaning—and the apparent distress it was causing other patients—as leverage to help persuade Halina to take her medication.

Discussion Halina died several days after this last diary entry. In many ways, Halina’s experience of the NHS is unremarkable. It’s a cliché, but I’m absolutely convinced Halina would be proud to know that some good comes from her—ostensibly unremarkable—story. So what can we learn from this experience?

 he Salience of the Social, Cultural and Emotional T Aspects of Hospital Care As noted at the outset of this chapter, Halina insisted to me that it was the non-clinical aspects of her care that she valued most. Now, clearly this should not discredit the clinical aspects of the care which are of course imperative to physical well-being. However, what is significant is that the

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non-clinical aspects rarely ever attract attention outside specialist dialogues and rarely ever in the eyes of the public. So, for example, when the media discuss performance metrics of hospitals or the differences of provision from Trust to Trust (known colloquially as the “postcode lottery”), non-clinical care is poorly represented, if indeed at all. So how might we make sense of this? Recall the pedagogical importance of the apple falling on Sir Isaac Newton’s head. Few of us understand microbiology, pharmaceuticals or the broader sciences on which clinical treatment draws (just as few of us have a working knowledge of Newtonian mechanics), but most of us can relate to the social, cultural and interpersonal dynamics of an organisational environment. For Halina, it was the personal interaction that she valued most. Recall the Turkish nurse’s mobile ringtone. The point is not that hospitals should play Mediterranean folk music, or that nurses should routinely encourage acquaintances to call them when tending to seriously ill patients so that their jolly ringtones might help lighten the mood. Rather, the point is that serendipity plays a small but valuable part of the hospital experience. Again this isn’t—and nor should it be— engineered into the organisation of health care; to do so would devalue it. However, it underscores the value of hospitals as “flows of experience”, co-constructed, but only partly premeditated. For Weick (1977: 298): As members [of an organization] enact and punctuate in parallel their individual flows of experience, they develop inferences about their experiences. These inferences are arranged cognitively in causal maps which in turn predispose future behaviour. Individual member’s causal maps are altered and developed through experience. This development produces some cognitive and behavioural correspondence which defines, for them, an organization. (Weick 1977: 298)

For Weick, then, organisations should be understood not simply as bricks-and-mortar nouns, or even as verbs pertaining to order and systematisation, but as human creations with existential pertinence. Organisations are both vessels for experiential encounters and empirical ramifications of co-experience. Together, this amounts to what Weick refers to as the ‘flow of experience’. On the face of it, this might sound loquacious or even pretentious. Expressed differently, however, it becomes

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more palatable: the hospital is a deeply social and cultural entity. We should avoid casual assumptions that stays in hospital are necessarily regrettable or undesirable. More precisely, to stay in a hospital does not involve temporarily stepping outside our community. On the contrary, the hospital is—or at least can be—an articulation of community par excellence.

 he Visitor Has a Multifaceted Role: ‘Catalyst of Care’, T ‘Proxy Carer’ and ‘Emotional Mediator’ Reflecting upon the autoethnographic data presented, my experience suggests that the role of the hospital visitor is a fundamental—and yet entirely overlooked—aspect of the manner in which hospitals function as interdependent, co-constructed networks. I see the visitor’s role as multifaceted; as a potential catalyst of care, proxy carer and emotional mediator. As catalyst of care, we could legitimately argue that the presence of visitors serves a Foucauldian surveillance function (see Foucault 1977) in the sense that visitors can monitor the activities of health professionals to make sure these individuals are suitably attentive. My diary entry from 22 October 2017 in respect of whether or not the registrar was modifying her behaviour when I was present vis-à-vis when Halina was alone is testament to precisely this. Where a patient receives visitors, this might attract the following interpretation: the nurses do a good job when the visitors are there because—ultimately—they are the people who take away and propagate the impression. But, perhaps more pertinently, the opposite may also be true—health professionals may, consciously or otherwise, train their attention on those without visitors, in part by way of ‘compassionate compensation’. The rationale for this is as follows: health professionals recognise that accompanied patients have visitors looking out for them and therefore don’t require as much vigilance on the part of the nurses. To this end, we can cast the visitor role as proxy carer. Interestingly, we regularly hear stories along these lines: “It’s just as well so-and-so was at my bedside!”; “Had my husband not been there, the nurses might have ended up being accused of medical negligence!”; “It was my daughter who spotted that

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the machine had turned itself off unexpectedly!” But do these stories ever capture the complexity of the underlying dynamics? Perhaps it was your daughter—and not a nurse—that spotted that the machine had turned itself off. But ask yourself whether NHS nurses—infamously spread so thinly—were focusing their attention on those patients who were alone at that time. We need to move away from a cause-and-effect ontology in which we assess health standards in the abstract. It is invariably much more nuanced. The outcome is co-constructed. Invoking Weick’s nuanced understanding of organisational dynamics, visitors are an essential part of the experiential flow. To this end, then, the passive involvement of visitors as proxy carers represents a sort of resource-maximisation strategy on the part of the NHS. Notably, a year after Halina passed away, my daughter was born and I took the opportunity to reflect—ethnographically—on that experience too (see Vine 2021). The focus of that paper was very much on understanding—and appreciating—the institutional ‘warmth’ associated with the perinatal hospital experience. However, the research also generated some interesting data in terms of resource maximisation. My data from that experience suggest there is passive involvement of the ‘birthing partner’ in a constructive manner. So, as birthing partner to my wife, I recorded multiple interactions. I noted, for example, that I communicate directly with the nurses on Becky’s behalf at the nurses’ station; I take the timings of Becky’s contractions (and record them in a notebook); I dispose of the rubbish around Becky’s bed and generally keep house; I help Becky in and out of her clothes. Of course, none of these tasks is especially onerous and I was only too happy to carry them out. However, from a resource perspective, they do constitute specific duties that in effect the hospital does not need to make provision for. In a loose sense, then, the passive involvement of visitors represents a resource maximisation strategy. Finally, we can cast the visitor as an emotional mediator. Hospitals are organisations, like any other, with delineated processes and functions. However, for hospitals, these processes and functions must be trained towards an exceptional product—patient care. And it is here that the role of the visitor becomes essential as mediator. Quite simply, the visitor knows the patient well, but typically has no clinical experience. The staff, meanwhile, have clinical experience, but do not know the patient. This

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form of analysis further taps into the idea that hospitals are flows of experience in which life is co-constructed. Perhaps more pertinently, the suggestion that the visitor’s role can be cast as an emotional mediator brings into the fold discussions about emotional labour. Noting its origins in Hochschild’s (1983) paper called ‘The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling’, Jary and Jary (1999: 194) describe emotional labour as the ‘face-to-face interaction and the sustained display of particular emotions required by workers in particular occupations’. The concept is relevant in respect of numerous job roles which require regular, personalised, performative interaction with clients such as airline cabin crew. However, it is also relevant in respect of many clinical professions, particularly nursing. On the face of it, emotional labour represents the softer side of physical or cerebral labour. However, a multitude of studies (see Jeung et al. 2018 for a review of the relevant literature) present emotional labour as exhausting, and a principle determinant of employee burnout. Furthermore, emotional care does not lend itself easily to palpable metrics. With this in mind, hospital performance is rarely—if ever—understood in terms of care (see Hotchkiss, forthcoming). Finally, unlike the administering of an injection or dressing a wound, emotional support does not (and perhaps should not) require formal training. It is thus something visitors can assist with. And—of course—it is something they do anyway; they are there to visit a loved one, after all. But the takeaway point is subtler. Without visitors, the love and care and emotional support would fall—entirely—to clinical staff. If visitors are going to assist and help alleviate the pressures on the NHS, emotional mediation is certainly one way in which they can do so.

So What Now? It is hoped that NHS hospitals—and perhaps health services elsewhere— will seriously consider demarcating a clearer role for visitors. While not only relieving some of the pressure on professional health services, it might also help improve relations between patient, practitioners and the public. The marketing and provision of such an initiative would require extremely careful explication. A cynical press, for example, might regard

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it as a cost-cutting exercise, rather than an embedded cultural approach to health care. There are practical implications, too. Should restrictions on visiting hours be relaxed? Will there be an impact on parking? But the cultural advantages are huge: much of the West has—justifiably—been criticised for abstracting the administration of health and the ‘organisation’ and ‘bureaucratisation’ of dying and death. Nursing by negotiation might help re-establish and resocialise (perhaps even resacralise) these processes. It might help reverse the compartmentalisation of health care. It might help reverse the wholesale outsourcing of health care to “professionals”. However, a “negotiated nursing” approach will likely lead to cases of failure. Statistically, this is inevitable. For example, well-meaning relatives might get in the way of professionals attempting to deal with cardiac arrest. Newspapers and political opponents will doubtless present these as evidence of the new initiative failing. But there is much to recommend the approach, both on the political Left and the political Right. It would constitute a development on the part of the NHS—and pragmatic change—both of which might be expected to be welcomed by those on the Left. For the political Right, it has the potential to engage with the importance of the family as a key kinship support network. It is also reminiscent of former Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron’s Big Society initiative. Finally, perhaps it will also help highlight the problem of patients who do not receive visitors. Much as doulas provide dedicated assistance to heavily pregnant women from disadvantaged backgrounds through the duration of their perinatal hospital experience (e.g. see Kozhimannil et  al. 2016), volunteers may be identified to step in as points of continuity, sitting by an ill person’s bedside, over time getting to know them and ultimately helping mediate between patient and clinical staff. In fact, the phenomenon of the ‘death doula’ is actually an area of research already in its infancy (e.g. see Rawlings et al. 2019).

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Concluding Thoughts Methods that rely on introspection and reflection upon personal experience have often been viewed with suspicion. But consider this: many of us recognise that the most interesting research emerges at subject discipline boundaries, where two or more perspectives engage in reciprocal learning and scholarly advance. It also seems that interesting insights emerge where unconventional methods are applied in ostensibly conventional circumstances. Sorensen (2003), noted how the nuance, complexity and paradox inherent to life is best-discerned through the medium of storytelling. So did this present study reveal a sense of the paradoxical? Well, perhaps not paradoxes as such but certainly unanticipated—and potentially controversial—insights. First of all, we have identified that the supposedly clinical concerns associated with care are—for some patients at least—subordinate to the social and cultural aspects. We have also seen how the supposedly passive visitor can be a source of support for the organisation. Not only does this help provide a sense of usefulness for the visitor but it also enables the hospital to reconnect with the community in a truly meaningful sense. It will also be interesting to see how hospitals have coped in this respect during Covid-19, a time in which visitors have been more or less banned from hospitals. The epistemological question, of course, is whether such insights would have been possible had a more conventional method been employed. The answer: probably not. Institutional dynamics are precisely that: dynamic. They do not conform to a linear logic. A series of interviews—less still a bland survey—is never really going to elicit the complexity associated with organisations. Both methods—even those which ostensibly lay claim to an epistemology premised on, say, social construction or grounded theory—inevitably and invariably end up abstracting data from context. Of course, on the other hand, the price we storytellers pay for the rich detail made possible by experiential methods is generalisability. Is it fair to generalise from a single experience? Of course not. But this should not deter others from engaging with such methods. On the contrary, this is a call to arms; we need reportage from far and wide; from multitudinous experiences. Only then will the autoethnographic record develop a true sense of breadth.

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Ultimately, this was research about love. For Cunha et al. (2017: 3), ‘management scholars have tended to neglect love as a relevant topic of theorizing and research.’ Their research (on Christian managers, but the findings transcend religion) indicates that such managers associate love with two core dimensions. First, they describe love as an expression of virtue. Second, they link love with a sense of communityship. ‘Organizational love can thus be theorized as the exercise of constructing virtuous, other-oriented human communities that transcend the productive functions of work and respond to important human needs, fulfilling normative performativity’ (ibid.). Hospitals in general, and given its history, precedent and remit, the NHS in particular, are extremely well placed to serve as organisational exemplars of virtue and communityship. The findings presented in this chapter in respect of what has tentatively been described as negotiated nursing are, perhaps, one way of achieving this.

References Adams, T.  E., Holman Jones, S., & Ellis, C. (2015). Autoethnography: Understanding Qualitative Research. New York: Oxford University Press. Bochner, A & Ellis, C. (2016) Evocative Autoethnography: Writing Lives and Telling Stories, New York: Routledge. Capra (1982) ‘Chapter 9: The Tao of Physics Revisited: A conversation with Fritjof Capra (Conducted by Renée Weber)’, in Wilber K (ed) (1982) The Holographic Paradigm and other paradoxes: Exploring the leading edge of science, Colorado: Shambhala. Jeung, D., Kim, C., Chang, S. ‘Emotional Labor and Burnout: A Review of the Literature’. Yonsei Med J. 2018; 59(2): 187–193. Cunha, M, Clegg, S, Costa, C, Leite, A, Rego, A, Simpson, A, de Sousa, M, and Sousa, M, (2017) ‘Gemeinschaft in the midst of Gesellschaft? Love as an organizational virtue’, Journal of Management, Spirituality & Religion, 14:1, 3–21. Delamont, S. (2007) Arguments against autoethnography, Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, Institute of Education, University of London, pp-17. Foucault, M (1977) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, New York: Random House.

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Gerard, N. (2019) ‘Perils of Professionalization: Chronicling a Crisis and Renewing the Potential of Healthcare Management’. Health Care Anal 27, 269–288. Hochschild, Arlie Russell. (1983). The managed heart: commercialization of human feeling. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0520054547. OCLC 9280843. Hoehner, P. (2006) ‘The Myth of Value Neutrality’, Virtual Mentor. 8(5): 341–344. Hotchkiss, Keith. (forthcoming) ‘How does chief executive leadership influence the success of acute NHS Trust hospitals in England?’ PhD Thesis (University of Suffolk). Jary, D. and Jary, J. (1999) Dictionary of Sociology (2nd edition), Glasgow: Unwin Hyman. Kozhimannil, K, Vogelsang, C, Hardeman, R and Prasad, S (2016) ‘Disrupting the Pathways of Social Determinants of Health: Doula Support during Pregnancy and Childbirth’, The Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine May 2016, 29 (3) 308–317. Rawlings D, Tieman J, Miller-Lewis L, Swetenham K. (2019) ‘What role do Death Doulas play in end-of-life care? A systematic review’. Health Soc Care Community. 27(3): e82–e94. Sorensen, R (2003) A Brief History of Paradox: Philosophy and the Labyrinths of the Mind, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Vine, T (2020) ‘Brexit, Trumpism and Paradox: Epistemological Lessons for the Critical Consensus’, Organization 27(3): 466–482. Vine, T (2021) ‘Institution(alization), bureaucracy and well-being? An organizational ethnography of childbirth in the NHS’, in Hayre C & Hackett P (eds) Handbook of Ethnography in Healthcare Research, London: Routledge. Weick, K. (1977) ‘Enactment processes in organizations’ in Staw B & Salancik G (eds) (1977) New Directions in Organizational Behaviour, Chicago IL: St Clair Press. Weir, D., & Clarke, D. (2018). ‘What makes the Autoethnographic Analysis Authentic?’ In T. Vine, J. Clark, S. Richards, & D. Weir (Eds.), Ethnographic Research and Analysis: Anxiety, Identity and Self (pp.  127–154). Palgrave Macmillan.

5 Two-and-One: Discovering My Story in Participants’ Pregnancy Narratives Maureen Haaker

Introduction Arguably, there are two aspects which warrant scholarly attention when thinking about how stories are told: the sociocultural domain, which provides the words, discourses, and subject positions that help make sense of reality; and the individual’s own emotional, biographical subtext. Current research on pregnancy often focuses on the former, exploring the medicalisation of pregnancy, visualisation of the foetus, and cultural ‘policing’ of women’s reproductive choices. However, Young (1984, p.  45) noted that not much work had been done on the pregnant woman as a subject or on “the mother as a site for its proceedings.” Later, Maher (2004) added that the foetus has received limited attention too, particularly within feminist critiques, appearing only in competition to the subjectivities of pregnant women. Save for a few prominent examples (e.g. see Longhurst 1999;

M. Haaker (*) University of Suffolk, Suffolk, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Vine, S. Richards (eds.), Stories, Storytellers, and Storytelling, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07234-5_5

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Raphael-Leff 1991; Young 1984) there remains limited focus on women’s subjectivity, particularly in respect of stories of pregnancy. My research into the subjectivity of pregnancy began with the collection—and analysis—of stories of pregnant women, as a means of enhancing our understanding how these women situate themselves in the world. Having not been pregnant myself, the stories were revealing, particularly in respect of the societal value placed on women and reproduction. However, I became pregnant halfway through my fieldwork, and consequently found myself situated as one of the participants; I decided therefore to formally reflect on my own experiences of pregnancy. Reading through my own autoethnographic field notes alongside the pregnancy narratives of others, I noticed some remarkable similarities. Furthermore, in revealing vulnerable aspects of myself in turn impacted how I (re)interpreted and viewed the stories of my participants.

Method I employed Wengraf ’s (2004) Biographical Narrative Interview Method (BNIM) to collect my interview data. Derived from Rosenthal’s Quatext “mix of methods,” this is an approach which explores what is meaningful to participants themselves and how they make sense of their lived experience  (Wengraf 2001). There are of course comparable interviewing styles—such as Jefferson and Holloway’s free association interview— which are also aimed at tapping into the subconscious, inner-world of the participants. These methods explore one’s situated subjectivity—that is, the way their sense of self is formed from the social processes going on around them, as well as the internal feelings and reactions to those processes. BNIM, however, does this through biographical narratives and free association writing (taken after each interview), and finds a balance between the interview situation, the thoughts and feelings portrayed within the story, and story itself.

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A BNIM interview typically begins with a single question, and it is formatted in a particular way. This question aims to reveal both inner and outer worlds of the individual, the cultural dimensions which they find themselves in, and their own biographical and emotional responses to it. Mine was as follows: As you know, I’m researching women’s experiences of pregnancy. So can you please tell me the story of your pregnancy, from the moment you found out you were pregnant until now, and all the experiences and events that have been important for you personally. Tell me when you’ve finished. I’ll listen first and I won’t interrupt. I’ll just take some notes in case I have any questions for you when you’ve finished telling me about it all. Start whenever you like and take the time you need.

Initial stories responding to this question varied in length from six minutes to 45 minutes. Each participant was given as much time as they needed to tell their story, in their own words. Aside from an occasional “mmm”, I kept quiet throughout. Initially, I found staying quiet very difficult. However,  on reflection, even “mmms” should be limited. Eliminating interviewer cues reduces interference and allows the participant to talk freely. From that initial session, there were then one or two further sub-sessions, either later the same day or scheduled for subsequent days as per participant availability. The questions in these sub-­ sessions were also structured in a particular way. It was important to quote the precise words used by participants in their first session, to elicit further detail about particular incident narratives (PINs). So, follow-up questions were structured as follows: You said [participant quotation] … Can you remember any more detail about how it all happened?

As in the initial session, there was therefore  a strong emphasis on phrasing the questions so as to limit bias. The goal was to find a particular incident narrative (PIN). BNIM differentiates between two kinds of PINs—in-PINs and about-PINs. In-PINs, where the participant is in effect re-experiencing the incident as

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they are telling it, help to reveal something more about an individual’s subjectivity. Signs of an in-PIN include getting emotional, making hand gestures to imitate the story, or gazing off as if the participant is watching something play out in their minds. In-PINs afford a glimpse of the lived experience. However, less intense about-PINs are also useful. Here the participant stays firmly in the present but looks back on the event in detail—like recounting a childhood memory—but without actually permitting access to the lived experience. The difference between these tellings is important: about-PINs mean that the participant stays within the subjective experience of the interview itself. In-PINs, however, allow access to the subconscious, situated subjectivity of the experience. While in-PINS are desirable, they are also rare and difficult to elicit. In gathering stories of pregnancy, this method offered a systematic means for exploring how pregnant people made sense of their bodies in a way which considered both the social constructions of pregnancy and the internal processing of these discourses. Importantly, however, this method also afforded participants space to share their stories and in the way they wished. Rather than devising a series of questions or conversation topics, the participant leads the direction of the interview. Even the sub-sessions drew on the precise words as used by participants, and in the order they were originally conveyed. Too often, pregnancy and the way it is experienced has been determined by ‘experts’. In inviting pregnant people to share their stories, in their own words, and in accordance with the method described,  I hoped to open up the possibility for a different kind of knowledge.

Defining the Participant The task was then to find individuals willing to tell their story. Recruiting participants from a maternity ward or GP office seemed to make most sense given most pregnant people have regular, routine medical appointments. To recruit in these places, however, necessitated the solicitation of ethical approval of the Health Research Authority (HRA), largely considered to be the gold standard of research review committees. However, the approval process can be extremely time-consuming. After months of

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preparation for the process, including information workshops, speaking with researchers who had been through the process previously, and talking to NHS research managers at my local trust, I was ready to submit my proposal. At that point, however, the HRA put steps in place to streamline the paperwork and expedite the approval process. In this restructure lay the possibility of proportionate review. Proportionate review is an accelerated ethics approval process where paperwork is submitted to a panel. That panel then decides that if the project is “low risk,” and a decision is returned in approximately two weeks. A “Low risk” categorisation was reserved for small scale studies, undertaken for purposes of education, and in which intrusion on participants was limited. My project—asking a limited number of individuals for their stories of pregnancy, done to fulfil requirements of a PhD— seemed to qualify. I submitted my paperwork for proportionate review and hoped I would qualify. That same day I got a call back: I did not qualify for proportionate review. It was decided that my sample group— pregnant people—were a vulnerable group and I had to go through the full Research Ethics Committee. Vulnerable. Pregnant people were vulnerable. Even thinking back now, I still wonder how that was decided so quickly. Was there a list of vulnerable populations, I wondered, or was it decided based on the wider context of my study? Prior to submitting my paperwork, I thought they might label the research topic as “sensitive,” given the possibility of divulging personal health information. The decision, however, was based on the participants, not the topic: pregnant people were vulnerable, even if they were not considered vulnerable before pregnancy. At this point, I grappled internally with what vulnerability in research means. Informal conversations with women about pregnancy did not seem to invoke a particularly strong sense of vulnerability. “Ask them what they called their babies!” said one. Another, who had been pregnant many times but never carried to term, told me, with a smile, about “Bean,” the one who she carried the longest. These ad-hoc stories were full of happiness and excitement, grief and despair. But vulnerability? Do these emotions and life stories depict a vulnerable individual? Even within the field of medicine, there appears to be no agreed definition of the vulnerable (Boldt 2019). In Racine and Bracken-Roche’s

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(2017) analysis of vulnerability within research ethics frameworks, definitions varies from “incapacity to make decisions” to “historically … have been treated unfairly … or excluded from research opportunities.” There is no doubt that pregnancy—and the historical stories which are told of medical invention in pregnancy—often involve experimental, traumatic treatments in which those who are pregnant are given very little power and often tokenistic, if any, ability to consent. Kapsalis’s (1997) book explores this very topic in detail, outlining the development of gynaecology and noting its reliance on experimentation of unconsenting women. Sometimes, however, the only other option to such traumatic intervention and experimentation was certain death. For example, Skippen et  al. (2004) trace the history of the modern chainsaw, and found it was designed for use in obstructed labour (at a time before anaesthesia was discovered) as one of the only alternatives to a messy, inaccurate, and painful surgery which usually resulted in the death of the mother, baby, or both. In this historical sense, pregnancy surely put women in a vulnerable position. The HRA assessment ruled that people receiving medical care for pregnancy expressed a level of dependency on others, and therefore should fit the definition of a vulnerable subject for the duration of their pregnancy. Ultimately, my ethics application was forwarded on to a full Research Ethics Committee, and I received a date for which I would need to appear before the panel of 15 professionals who would ultimately decide under what conditions I could proceed, if at all. The chair of the committee, herself a medical doctor, was clearly concerned about the potential for safeguarding issues, and asked me questions about potential disclosure of illegal activities or child neglect. Once safeguarding procedures were clarified, she moved on to concerns about midwives and doctors having knowledge of the study. At this point, another panel member pointed out that the study was not about medical care itself, but about women’s broader experiences of pregnancy. At one point in the meeting, the chair called the participants “patients” before immediately correcting herself. Habit? A Freudian slip? Or a bit of both? Despite the disagreement amongst the panel, the committee insisted that I make available an information letter for the participant’s midwife or doctor. This was an easy condition to meet, even if I did not, in principle, agree with it. (I should

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also stress that, in the end, no participant requested this letter for their medical team). The debate about the vulnerability of participants left me with unanswered questions: in what ways are participants vulnerable, and how should narrative research address this? Jefferson and Holloway coined the term “defended subject” as a way of describing the role anxiety played in “protecting” an individual from knowing too much about themselves. They argued individuals invest in particular subject positions to protect vulnerable aspects of the self. Frosh et al. (2003, p. 41) explain that this particular perspective joins together cultural forces and agency of the individual by exploring how people “produc[e] their individualized cocktail of beliefs, behaviours and accounting practices abstracted from those available in the cultural pool.” Through the introduction of the concept of the defended subject, Hollway and Jefferson (2012) claim that interviewees are necessarily psychically defended. That is, that everyone has an unconscious which contains motivations, instincts, and impulses which are constrained by the social world in which they live. A defended subject may not (consciously or unconsciously) tell a complete and transparent story. Becoming aware of these defences and their underlying causes can result in an enriched understanding of the interviewees’ deep-rooted feelings and enable the interviewer to recognise the undercurrent of emotions which underpin the socially acceptable front which is performed on a much more conscious level. Using this perspective, everyone is a defended subject. The recognition, however, of the ethics committee in framing pregnant people as vulnerable revealed something important about the kinds of subject positions pregnant people are expected to take and the ones which are “untellable” (Wigginton and Lafrance 2016, p. 33). Through the use of BNIM interviewing, I had hoped to explore both what pregnant people said and did not say in a purposeful way.

Defining the Researcher Recent decades have seen social scientists grow increasingly suspicious of the possibility of claims to objectivity and neutrality in research. Debate over the past two decades has produced a growing recognition that

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researchers do not shed personal identities or biographies to become neutral observers. In his landmark book, Rabinow (1977) highlighted a reflexive turn in anthropology that challenged the objectivity of research and fieldnotes, and he proposed a more nuanced understanding of the inherent power dynamics of fieldwork. Haraway (1988, p.  587) has famously argued that claims to be able to observe from a distance and to see everything from nowhere is nothing but an illusion, a “god  trick”; there are no neutral observers and no research is completely unbiased. Furthermore, if researchers are subjective and carry with them unique, individual biographies, the knowledges they produce are necessarily affected and situated within the specific historical and social context of the researcher (Haraway 1988). A tension arises in qualitative research in respect of neutrality. On the one hand, qualitative research strives to be systematic, analytical, valid, and uninhibited by the biases and assumptions of the researchers themselves. Yet, in practice, qualitative methods demand a close relationship between research and participant as well as local, tacit knowledge in respect of context. Hammersley (2010, para 3.4) notes that “in the process of data collection researchers generate not only what are written down as data but also implicit understandings and memories of what [has been] seen, heard and felt, during the data collection process.” In other words, context matters. Data do not exist independently of the context in which they were produced or (co)constructed or generated. The reality is that researchers, researching the same topics, will rarely produce the same findings because “we all speak from a particular place, out of a particular history, a particular experience, a particular culture, without being contained by that position” (Hall 1992, p. 258). As McDowell (1992, p. 409) argues, “we must recognize and take account of our own position, as well as that of our research participant, and write this into our research practice.” However, Hammersley (2010, para 4.3) goes on to stress that conclusions should be informed by a systematic analysis, arguing, “After all, surely we do not and should not make up our data? ... [T]he data must in some ways constrain what inferences we make and the conclusions we reach, rather than being freely constructed in and through our inferences. And this implies that they must, in some sense, exist prior to and independently of the research process…” Nagel (1986, p. 3) also reflects on

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this, noting, “[The] problem [is] how to combine the perspective of a particular person inside the world with an objective view of that same world, that person and his [sic] viewpoint included. It is a problem that faces every creature with the impulse and capacity to transcend its particular point of view and to conceive the world as a whole.” Positionality is a strategy that has been employed to contextualize research observations and interpretations (Cloke et al. 2000). Flynn and Wengraf (2020, p.  2) outline a process that can be used in narratives interviews (and that were used specifically in Flynn’s BNIM interviews), which maps the “defended researcher.” They build upon Hollway and Jefferson’s notion of the “defended subject” and argue that the participant is not the only one defended within the research context: it is also the researcher who performs a certain presentation of self. Reviewing the free associative field notes generated throughout the research process, comparing these to the research outputs, and making field notes available to a peer-audit allows for the scrutiny of the researcher’s situated subjectivity and interpretations. Flynn and Wengraf (2020, p. 14) are careful to note that the point of this exercise is not to paint analyses as wrong, but rather to aid a deeper examination of the interview situation and resulting biographies. The additional layer of reflection can take many forms. In my own research, I followed up each interview with a period of free association writing, jotting down my thoughts and feelings from the interview. I also kept analytic notes (or memos) of initial interpretations, and literature review drafts which reveal some of my preconceived ideas about research on pregnancy. The literature I read prior to conducting interviews impressed upon me a particularly beguiling structure of how to think about the experience of pregnancy. Pregnancy is often framed as the unborn body and the pregnant body, anomalies which challenge accepted norms of individuation and contained embodiment. The pregnant body, while seemingly singular and clearly contained from one aspect, quite clearly becomes (at least) two bodies from a different view. Due to this ambiguity, the pregnant subject has often been described as an “unknown thought” (Bollas 1987), unspeakable, or “unthematizable” (Baraitser 2009, p. 6). Paes de Barros (2004, p. 90) says, “The reality of the maternal body—its biological contingencies, its vast capacity for radical change,

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its evident sexuality and utility—make it truly … the inexpressible Real [sic].” Within the pregnancy narratives I collected, I hoped to examine how women navigated the space of two-and-one and how this conflicted with their external, social worlds. Even in my research proposal, I wrote that I would examine the “oscillations between being two and one at the same time” and set the general aim to examine the construction between foetal and pregnant bodies. As I read through the narratives, however, there is a different dimension which surprised me, making me question my own wording from the start of the project: women described being “on the cusp.” Within their narratives, women often described their baby as being on the cusp of the outside world, with two women using almost the exact same phrasing that there is only “1 inch of skin” between the baby and the external world. The first time I heard one of my participants use the phrase, I thought nothing of it—yes, the belly stretches thin, with the baby sometimes protruding in the way it moves within (as one woman exclaimed “like a monster!”). The next time I heard someone use this phrase, I was startled, and had to remind myself not to show a reaction, so as to not influence the story in any way. This closeness, but not quite there—“just on the cusp…” was clearly important. There were other ways of describing this moment: another commented that the mounting baby gear in their flat was “like he’s moving in—but just not here yet.” There was always an imagining of someone else, but not necessarily one that could always be felt or known—the foetal body seemed to straddle an ambiguous line that borders upon the external world, making itself seen while still remaining internal. It was not as simple as two-in-one, but more like “two imagined” with one body. Another woman described this as “There’s days where you are not certain if you feel the baby move or not, then you’re not sure if it was just your stomach rumbling….” There was certainty in the pregnant body, but ambiguity around what was the foetal body. As another said, “as they start to move—they are a human. They are part of me. They are attached to me.” Another felt she could move in certain ways to get the baby to move too—it was a ritual at night to have her husband feel the baby kick before dropping off to sleep, so she would do things which would wake, shift, and move the foetus until it kicked.

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The prediction of movement became more of an intuition to her, something she trusted in but could not, at the same time, be certain of it. There was not a clear navigation of the space between being two and being one, as I thought there would be. Instead, this conceptualisation seems to mirror a more relational model of personhood and embodiment, which depends on creating and maintaining social ties with other persons/bodies and which views bodies as communal rather than as individuated from each other (Conklin and Morgan 1996; Kaufman and Morgan 2005). Accessing, or knowing, the foetal body to anyone else (except the pregnant woman) always involved some sort of external “presence”—the presence of hormones, as on a pregnancy test or blood test, or feeling a foot kick. Pregnant women, interestingly, also sometimes tried to see the world from the foetal perspectives. One participant had several court appearances for a traumatic event that happened years before the pregnancy and remarked that she was “gutted my baby has to endure it with me.” Another woman who gave birth at 29 weeks also commented that she felt that it was her “body that let the baby down.” Some tried to involve the foetus in daily activities, such as the one who said, “if I feel movement, I might talk to it.” Access to this body, however, had to be negotiated for everyone else: women described disappointment when the baby moved, but then stopped once a partner tried to feel movement through their bellies. One made a point of trying to remember every day when she felt movement, saying, “Because with [my first son] I don’t really remember that—I have an anterior placenta so you don’t necessarily feel as much movement. But certainly, I’m conscious everyday. … And looking to the point where [my husband] will be able to feel it more…” Another woman, who had experienced miscarriage at nine weeks, made the following comment a fortnight later: I said this was the end of pregnancy story already, but I suppose it wasn’t. I was told to take pregnancy test 2 weeks following the miscarriage to ensure the test came back negative. You know—just in case hormones didn’t drop off? … I decided not to take the test. I’ve had enough. I’m letting my body just get on with it.

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Birth was, of course, the ultimate way to “know” the foetal body. One woman talked about her impending birth saying she felt “braver now— I’m growing a human being and I’m going to push it out…” so she needed to “woman up, basically.” Others talked about the excitement to “meet” their baby for the first time at birth—particularly in the final weeks before the due date. Prior to this, however, “knowing” the “two” bodies always seemed to be borderland—perhaps, maybe, not quite, sometimes two, but definitely—at least—one. The conceptual boundary remained hidden, although all the stories described it in detail. My own framework I laid out necessarily looked for me to look at where women saw two bodies, instead of further exploring the varied ways of understanding one person.

 efining the Space Between Participant D and Researcher In using narrative analysis, I sought to empathise with my participants so as to identify any instances where my own assumptions were compromising the stories imparted. Page (2017b) writes there is a risk of losing sight of the broader picture surrounding the interview of the life-period from the outside. Researchers have been, as Page (2017a) writes, seduced by the story and by the self-representation of the interviewee. Recognising this, however, is difficult, unless something happens which necessitates this recognition. About halfway through my fieldwork, I fell pregnant. It was never my intention to turn my project into an autoethnography, but the timing of life seemed to move in that direction. After announcing my pregnancy, mere weeks before my body began to “out” me, it was suggested that I keep a pregnancy diary, like the one I asked participants to keep, as well as arrange to be interviewed. I did not know how to reconcile my data with the data of my participants: surely my data needed to be kept separate? Or should I add it to the dataset, and try to “objectively” analyse the data as if it were just like the others? While I collected data on myself, I nevertheless returned to the question of how I use that data in my analysis. I found insight in Abu-Lughod (1995), who also

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writes of how she fell pregnant while doing her fieldwork with pregnant Bedouin women in Egypt. In her writing, she explained how “one’s own constructions of personal experience would be shaped by knowledge of these women’s lives and even by particular women one had come to know. In being pregnant, I was finding that the cultural resources I had at my disposal to think about what I was experiencing and to fill in gaps in my knowledge of an uncertain terrain included both those from ‘home’ and those from the ‘the field’, often juxtaposed” (Abu-Lughod 1995, p. 347). It led me to question, to what extent my own experience was shaped by my fieldwork, and in what ways my analysis of interviews was rooted in my experience. Reading back through my diary reflections, I replied directly to this question. On 9 April 2019, at seven months pregnant, I wrote “I’ve been absorbing myself in the narratives of participants, and I think it’s starting to impact the way I feel and interpret my own pregnancy…” I went on to reflect on the idea of “using pregnancy” to ensure the outcome favoured what I wanted. I reflected on this power of pregnancy, and I concluded that there’s opportunity here to re-shape so many other aspects of my life using pregnancy as my way of becoming visible in a way I wasn’t before. I almost feel as though there might be a fear—but not over me. Over the pregnancy—what if the baby is hurt? The combined mother+baby is more powerful than just woman alone.

In that moment, I had mapped my own way through the borderland of two-and-one (“mother+baby”) by using the words of my participants who talked through the experience of shifting, contesting, and accommodating identities to navigate through nine months of pregnancy. “Using pregnancy” was a term used by one of my participants in an interview months before this one. That view, internalised and came back out as a way of understanding how pregnancy and being seen as “two” held much more social value than me on my own. In subscribing to the position of “pregnant,” it exemplified the obtuse ways that vulnerability crept into my experience of pregnancy.

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Further contemplating this brings about reflections on the position of others within their narratives. We create “others” within society through cultural images, often built upon social inequalities, contrasting identities, and clearly defined spaces. Behar (1996, p.  165) challenges this, arguing that “Our classical dichotomies of Self and Other, Subject and Object, the West and the Rest have become hopelessly inadequate in the face of feminist and minority cultural critiques…” Perhaps this two-and-­ one was never about being two. In describing the baby, women described those that were most important to them. One woman, who was not able to get a clear picture of her son’s face in an ultrasound, described “knowing him” through his increasing movements, and how his sleeping pattern followed that of her husband, “so it’s like he has his own personality already—it’s like he’s [her husband’s] son already. It’s nice to see that.” Even in my own pregnancy narrative, I spent one-fifth of the interview talking about my husband’s experience of “being pregnant” by proxy. Another described it as a way that allowed her to transform her own understanding of herself: “You are no longer you—you are you and your child. You are a mother.” Pregnancy—as a journey—seemed to allow a recognition of others in the self and of themselves in others, and a new way to think about how we are connected. One participant took this further, reflecting how a headline news story of a boys’ football team stuck in a flooded Thai cave upset her: “That’s someone’s son … you can feel what that mother must be feeling like.”

Concluding Thoughts It seems trite to comment that no two (pregnancy) stories are the same. But to see the diversity of life laid out in a dozen personal narratives from people going through the same life experience reinforces how difficult it can be to understand the nuances of narrative data. Some women participated in multiple interviews, taken 6–8 weeks apart for the duration of their pregnancy, and even when the story was told by the same woman, it involved an evolution of subjectivity between the start and end of pregnancy. Understanding, articulating, and ‘settling’ these changes is not easily expressed. As Wengraf (2004) points out, however, each interview

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reveals something about the other interviews; it is not about finding the same experiences, but rather using the different stories and articulations as a way of building a larger picture. In the early stages of this research, I did not anticipate that my story would feature among those of my participants. I was, in the words of Flynn and Wengraf (2020), the “defended researcher.” Rather than using my data to ‘fill’ gaps in the literature, drawing upon the BNIM method together with the experience of becoming an insider has enabled me to map intermediate spaces that have yet to be defined. These reflexive engagements shift the response and responsibility of researchers in becoming accountable to those hitherto voiceless parts of narratives. As Page (2017b) concludes, “don’t be an invulnerable researcher researching vulnerability.” The happenchance of my own pregnancy gave me the impetus to begin recording my own vulnerability through my diary, interview, and memos, allowing for a deeper analysis. By working through the myriad of identities, some of which I saw in myself, it unsettled the divide between self and other within my research and reminded me of why narrative research is important. Collecting narratives is not about relaying an account of events, the told story, or even about telling a personal “truth.” As Behar (1996, p.  176) explains, storytelling is about grappling with the impossibility of telling certain stories and recognising the commonality between all parties, unsettling the self/other divide. A narrative interview is not two people talking to each other, but a relational experience which constructs a social map of how we got to that point. In this respect, researchers and participants alike all have a level of vulnerability which reveals itself in stories.

References Abu-Lughod, L. (1995) ‘A tale of two pregnancies’ in Behar, R. and Gordon, D. A. (eds) Women writing culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 338–349. Baraitser, L. (2009) ‘Mothers who make things public’, Feminist Review, 93 (1), pp. 8–26. https://doi.org/10.1057/fr.2009.21

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Bollas, C. (1987). The shadow of the object: Psychoanalysis of the unthought known. Columbia University Press. Boldt, J. (2019) ‘The concept of vulnerability in medical ethics and philosophy’, Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine, 14 (6). https://doi.org/ 10.1186/s13010-­019-­0075-­6 Cloke, P., Cooke, P., Cursons, J., Milbourne, P. and Widdowfield, R. (2000) ‘Ethics, reflexivity and research: Encounters with homeless people’, Ethics, Place, and Environment 3, pp. 133–154. https://doi.org/10.1080/713665889 Conklin, B. A., & Morgan, L. M. (1996). Babies, bodies and the production of personhood in North America and a Native Amazonian society. Ethos, 24(4), 657–694. https://doi.org/10.1525/eth.1996.24.4.02a00040 Behar, R. (1996) The vulnerable observer: Anthropology that breaks your heart. Boston: Beacon Press. Flynn, S. and Wengraf, T. (2020) ‘Research devices for illuminating defended subjectivities in complex qualitative case-interpretation: an example from recent Biographic Narrative (BNIM) practice’ Available at: https://www. researchgate.net/publication/345342589_Susan_and_Tom_-­_ Draft_ Article_for_Discussion_-­_August_8_2020 Frosh, S., Phoenix, A., and Pattman R. (2003) ‘Taking a stand: using psychanalysis to explore the position of subjects in discourse’, British Journal of Social Psychology, 42 (1), pp. 39–53. Hammersley, M. (2010) ‘Can We Re-Use Qualitative Data Via Secondary Analysis? Notes on Some Terminological and Substantive Issues’, Sociological Research Online, 15(1), p. 5. https://doi.org/10.5153/sro.2076 Hall, S. (1992). The Question of Cultural Identity. In: S. Hall, D. Held and T.  McGrew (Eds.), Modernity and Its Futures. Milton Keynes. Cambridge: Open University Press. Haraway, D. (1988) ‘Situated knowledges: the science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective’, Feminist Studies, 14(3), pp.  575–599. https://doi.org/10.2307/3178066 Hollway, W. and Jefferson, T. (2012) Doing qualitative research differently, 2nd ed., London: Sage. Kaufman and Morgan (2005) ‘The Anthropology of the beginnings and ends of life’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 34, pp.  317–341. https://doi.org/ 10.1146/annurev.anthro.34.081804.120452 Longhurst, R. (1999) Pregnant bodies, public scrutiny: giving ‘advice’ to pregnant women. In E.  K. Teather (Ed.), Embodied Geographies: Spaces, Bodies and Rites of Passage (pp. 78–90). London: Routledge.

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Maher, J. (2004) Confined subjects: rethinking the activity of pregnancy, TASA 2004 Conference Proceedings, 8 December 2004 to 11 December 2004, The Sociological Association of Australia, Bundoora Vic Australia, pp. 1–11. McDowell, L. (1992) ‘Multiple voices: speaking from inside and outside ‘the project’”, Antipode, 24 (1), pp. 56–73. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.1992. tb00428.x Nagel, T. (1986) The view from nowhere. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Page, T. (2017a) ‘Vulnerable writing as a feminist methodological practice’, Feminist Review, 115, pp. 13–39. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41305-­017-­0028-­0 Page, T. (2017b) A reflection on vulnerable methods of research. Available at https:// femrev.wordpress.com/2017/05/02/a-reflection-on-vulnerable-methods-ofresearch/. Paes de Barros (2004) Fast cars and bad girls: nomadic subjects and women’s road stories. New York: Peter Lang. Rabinow, P. (1977) Reflections on fieldwork in Morocco. Berkeley: University of California Press. Racine, E. and Bracken-Roche, D. (2017) ‘Enriching the concept of vulnerability in research ethics: An integrative and functional account’, Bioethics, 33 (1), pp. 19–34. https://doi.org/10.1111/bioe.12471. Raphael-Leff, J. (1991) Pregnancy: the inside story. London: Karnac Books. Skippen, M., Kirkup, J., Maxton, R. M., and McDonald, S. W. (2004) ‘The chain saw—a Scottish invention’, Scottish Medical Journal, 49 (2), pp. 72–75. https://doi.org/10.1177/003693300404900218 Wengraf, Tom (2001) Qualitative Research Interviewing. London: Sage. Wengraf, Tom (2004) The Biographic-Narrative Interpretive Method—Shortguide. NCRM Working Paper. Wigginton B., Lafrance M.  N. (2016) How do women manage the spoiled identity of a ‘pregnant smoker’? An analysis of discursive silencing in women’s accounts. Feminism & Psychology 26(1): 30–51. Young, I. M. (1984) Pregnant embodiment: subjectivity and alienation. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 9 (1), pp. 45–62.

6 Exploring Polyvocal Stories of Space, Place, Movement, and Migration Anna-Leah King, Barbara McNeil, Heather Phipps, and Kathryn Ricketts

Introduction This chapter explores the role of storytelling as both a learning tool and creative practice in families, community gatherings, and related pedagogical settings. For Roney (1998, p. 23), “[i]n its most basic form, storytelling is a process whereby a person (the teller), using mental imagery, narrative structure, and vocalization or signing, communicates with other humans (the audience) who also use mental imagery and, in turn, communicate back to the teller primarily via body language and facial expressions, resulting in the co-creation of a story”. This chapter reflects on the role of storytelling in the practice and research of four educators. We bring unique lived experiences and histories to our work, and value collaboration and the construction of ‘intersubjectivities’ through storytelling; it is through the communication between storytellers and listeners,

A.-L. King (*) • B. McNeil • H. Phipps • K. Ricketts University of Regina, Regina, AK, Canada e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Vine, S. Richards (eds.), Stories, Storytellers, and Storytelling, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07234-5_6

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as Roney (1998) suggests, that new stories are created and established as vital lifelines. As scholars from Turtle Island—specifically Canada—a place imbued with Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies that place stories and storytelling at the centre of life, we responded enthusiastically to the opportunity to participate in the 2018 Storytelling conference at the University of Suffolk. In this chapter, we build on Roney’s definition of storytelling, in exploring the rich heritage of Canada as a storied place for Indigenous peoples and for settlers. With a particular emphasis on polyvocal discourses (Thimm et al. 2017), we bring together narratives to illustrate the complexity of our subjectivities and national and transnational storyscapes. In territories such as Canada, which have experienced settler colonialism and its inherent relations of domination and subordination, we are drawn to Currie and Sterelny’s (2017, p. 15) view that as story, a narrative is a candidate explanation of a particular causal trajectory in the past thought to be of interest in its own right. Narratives are not mere chronicles; they do more than provide an ordering of events. They posit links, often causal, between them. Earlier events conspire to produce later events. This account of narrative leaves much open for exploration and interpretation. Felicitously, it is complementary to our conceptualization of the role—the work of narratives, of stories in our lives. Drawing on the work of Johnson and Soren (2013), we argue that stories and place are interlinked—thus “context, situatedness, and perspective—in short, place” exist in symbiosis and thus “context is essential” (p. 10, emphasis in original).

Situating Ourselves Anna-Leah King My name is Anna-Leah King and as an Anishnnabe kwe from Wikwemikong, Nidoo Minissing (Manitoulin Island, Ontario, Canada), I situate myself as an Indigenous voice to promote Indigenous voices, including in literature. We live by a worldview based on “giving” and, in this case, giving back to our communities whenever and wherever possible. I like to privilege the voice of Anishnaabe scholarship and authorship

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as well as other Indigenous scholars/authors in my work with regard to research and literacy study. I have a double chair role as Chair of Indigenization for the Faculty of Education and then Chair of the Indigenous Advisory Circle for the University. My dissertation research is about Anishnaabe story as well as other Indigenous story, Knowledge keeper’s words and Indigenous teachings titled: Beyond the Role of Drum and Song in School: a Storied Approach.

Barbara McNeil I am Barbara McNeil, a teacher–educator. I was privileged to encounter Anancy/Ananse/Anansi stories in Leeds, Jamaica. These stories have become tools for survival, and set the stage for the reception of stories from all over the world. My family, community storytellers, librarians, teachers, as well as the opportunity to travel, have been pivotal in my journey in discovering the storied wealth of the world.

Heather Phipps My name is Heather Phipps. I am a settler scholar of British ancestry residing in oskana kâ-asasêki, Saskatchewan (Treaty 4). My love of stories and connection to nature developed as a child in the Peace River area of Northern British Colombia (Treaty 8) where I spent most of my childhood summers playing outside and reading. As a child, I recall having some opportunities for cultural learnings and visits to the Dane Zaa community and occasional cultural activities at school such as drumming and dance with local Indigenous community members. During my teacher education program in Lethbridge, Alberta, we had opportunities to hear Indigenous scholars and to learn about the heritage and diversity of cultures through stories. Later, as a graduate student, I became involved with research projects in Québec that focused on children’s literature and social justice (Strong-Wilson and Phipps 2014; Phipps 2016). Presently, I include Indigenous literatures, alongside a wide range of stories, in my French Education courses for preservice teachers (Phipps and King 2021; Hanson et al. 2020) with an emphasis on relationality.

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Kathryn Ricketts I was brought up on the west coast rain forest, the traditional and unceded territories of the Squamish (Sḵwxwú7mesh Úxwumixw), Tsleil-Waututh (səlilwətaʔɬ), Musqueam (xʷməθkʷəyəm), Kwikwetlem, Semiahmoo, and Katzie peoples. When I was a child, I loved it when my parents entertained guests so I could perform skits amidst their cocktails and snacks. Later, as a young teen, my idea of fun was to go into a closet and find clothes that would be the catalyst for the building of a character then confidently emerge from the closet complete with that character’s vernacular, physical traits and situation. Later, I began keeping a journal of voices: those who were in need of help and then the ally/respondent both characters matching in font, tone, and language. The compass of these retrospective observations pointed in the direction of where I am situated now. A dance artist that embraces lived experience and personal narratives as the life blood of a more compassionate world. I am asking how dance or embodied explorations of narrative can become a catalyst for reimagining the self and other within an ever-changing and ever-­ challenging world. I want the world to understand that our bodies have the power to move stories and mobilize visceral understandings of our shared truths. Now I reside on the territories of the nêhiyawak, Anihšināpēk, Dakota, Lakota, and Nakoda, and the homeland of the Métis/Michif Nation, and I honour how indigenous ways of knowing can inform my practice in honouring stories of the heart and land.

Situating Our Storytelling We begin with the work of Phipps and King who story their research through the âcimowin storytelling circle in an urban high school in Regina, Saskatchewan. The focus of this project is on reading Indigenous literatures while enabling youth to explore their creativity through responding to selected texts, including poetry, spoken word, novels, and song. Through this storytelling circle, young readers are invited to reflect on place, self, and identity in response to Indigenous literary arts. The âcimowin circle brings together perspectives and voices from newcomer,

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settler, and Indigenous youth to read together, share stories, and learn from one another. Listening to the voices of Indigenous authors provides us with a strong sense of place and connection to these lands, to ourselves, and to one another. This is followed by McNeil’s Africa in me; a piece that speaks to the embodied migration and transplantation of stories through British imperialism and its project of colonialism. In this case, transportation of stories from West Africa to Jamaica via the signifying spider, Anancy/Anansi/ Anance of Akan folklore, as a result of the North Atlantic slave trade— and then more recently, from Jamaica to Saskatchewan, Canada, due to the latter’s liberal immigration policies of the 1970s. For McNeil, residency on the Canadian plains has elicited/pivoted a mindfulness of place and space to intentionally honour and not eradicate her sociogeographical, historical/sociocultural identifications. She excavates the idea of origins as a way of identifying the provenance of her stories; the very first ones, and in so doing enunciates the local and the global in the local. These are stories that have endured the longest—learned in the bosom of family and loved ones, in warm, loving environments, characterized by imagination, emotion, caution, and continuity. Finally the theme of place and displacement is taken up by dancer Ricketts as she explores notions of belonging, migration, arrivals, and departures by braiding complex and beautiful stories that now mark the Canadian face of Turtle Island. Three dancing characters: LUG, Remington, and Rufus function as kinaesthetic conduits to tell the stories of others and to echo the resonant themes of this paper. Ricketts outlines the methods of improvization that allow for the intelligence of cohering visceral impulses moment by moment in order to create poetic meaning on Treaty 4 territory—southern Saskatchewan—the site of her practice.

Storying the Site of Our Practices Treaty 4 land is rich in stories. Treaty 4 is situated in Southern Saskatchewan. The numbered treaties are agreements that were negotiated between the British Crown and Indigenous communities across Canada. These groups came to the negotiations from very different perspectives. Treaty 4 was an

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agreement signed in September 1874 in Fort Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan. Interviews with Indigenous Elders in Saskatchewan have highlighted that the Indigenous people viewed the treaties as spiritual (Cardinal and Hildebrandt 2000). Promises were made by the government such as the well-being of First Nations children, and that the treaty would last “as long as the sun shines and the waters flow” (Stonechild, n.d.). However, these promises were not respected, wherein the government and the church, in 1894, enacted a compulsory assimilationist policy forcing Indigenous children to attend Indian Residential School1 (IRS), where they were forbidden to speak their languages and practise their culture. The forced separation of children from their families disrupted the transmission of culture, language, and spiritualty. The Canadian government, through the work of Truth and Reconciliation (TRC) Commission (2015), formally acknowledged this was a cultural genocide (p. 1). Prime Minister Stephen Harper made a formal apology in 2008 stating that the IRS “were based on the assumption that Aboriginal culture and spiritual beliefs were inferior and unequal. Indeed, some sought, as it was infamously said, ‘to kill the Indian in the child’ today, we recognize that this policy of assimilation was wrong—has caused great harm—and has no place in this country” (TRC report 2015, p. 130). The recommendations of the TRC include 94 calls to action, including for education and language revitalization. Despite the trauma of living through such assimilationist policies as the Residential Schools, stories have been sustained intergenerationally by Indigenous people in Saskatchewan, as noted by McLeod: “Cree narrative memory is ongoing, and is sustained through relationships, respect, and responsibility” (p.  18). This land is embodied with stories of the human and the nonhuman—there is a pedagogy of the land (McCoy, Tuck, and Mackenzie 2016; Simpson 2013) through these stories, if we choose to listen. As a collective, we are listening to one another through our shared research narratives and now offer these to a wider world. Here, we foreground stories of this place and the re/movement of humans and nonhumans from/to this place across space and time. In this chapter, we interweave our voices through story, inspired by the nêhiyaw (Plains Cree) notion of  Cardinal and Hildebrandt (2000) note “Generation upon generation of First Nations children were forcibly removed from their homes….they were programmed to abhor anything that contained, reflected, or symbolized their First Nations heritage” (p. 21). 1

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miskâsowin—returning to a place of origin. In the words of nêhiyaw (Plains Cree) Knowledge Keeper Joseph Naytowhow,2 “miskâsowin means when someone has lost their way in life for whatever reason there’s only one recourse and that is to find their way back” (J. Naytowhow, personal communication 26 May 2020). Our work on storytelling and place has enabled us to gain a deeper connection to ourselves. Through stories, we find our sense of belonging. From an Anishinaabe perspective, Leanne Simpson  (2011) writes, “Storytelling is an important process for visioning, imagining, critiquing the social space around us, and ultimately challenging the colonial norms fraught in our daily lives” (p. 34). As a diverse collective of scholars committed to indigenizing our teaching, research, and lives, we envision stories as a powerful way to navigate the colonial divide. In this sense, we are disrupting the way that Eurocentric models (that have dominated Canadian Education systems) to privilege Indigenous epistemologies. Aboriginal epistemology is defined as those who seek to understand the reality of existence and harmony with the environment by turning inward have a different, incorporeal knowledge paradigm that might be termed Aboriginal epistemology (Ermine 2000, p. 103). In essence, tapping into the ‘all encompassing’ life force and connecting with it is where knowing becomes possible. While indigenization is not “static”, it is a “process of resurgence, a recentring of precolonial and acolonial Indigenous ways of knowing and being that never ceased to exist despite colonial structures and processes and their attempts of assimilation and erasure” (Grafton and Melançon 2020, p. 242).3 Storytelling can be defined in varied ways (Simpson 2011; Justice 2018; Johnston 1976; Lewis 2011; King 2003) and has multiple meanings for each of us relative to our life experiences. Justice (2018), for instance, states that, “we know ourselves only through stories. The unstoried life is a terrible thing to comprehend, a soul-deep desolation” (Justice 2018, p. 34). Although we approach research from different angles and methodologies,  The authors of this paper acknowledge the generous guidance and scholarly mentorship of nêhiyaw (Plains Cree) Knowledge Keeper Joseph Naytowhow and Dr Patrick Lewis of the Faculty of Education, University of Regina, throughout its development. We also acknowledge Solomon Ratt of First Nations University of Canada for his generous guidance with the Cree language. kinanâskomitin. 3  For further reading on Indigenous epistemologies, please read Angelina Weenie (2020). 2

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we share a common heartfelt appreciation for storytelling as a fundamental characteristic of human experiences. Presently, we are residing and teaching in the same university, within a faculty vision of teaching towards social justice. As teacher–educators, we are also conscious of the stories that we bring to our classrooms. We are cognisant that storytellers address “difficult knowledge … that society prefers not to face, be it racism, sexism, or homophobia” (Ibrahim et al. 2016, p. xix). The art of storytelling offers the possibility of having an impact on the listener or reader. It is an effective form of teaching; it always has been. Indigenous scholars such as Maria Campbell, Jo-Ann Episkenew, Neal McLeod, Leanne Simpson, and Thomas King have portrayed the transformative nature of stories shared intergenerationally. Hence, we argue that more attention needs to be paid to stories and storytelling across informal and formal spaces of learning. The focus of this chapter is on the way we learn, both as individuals and collectively, through the sharing and cultural reproduction of stories. The storytelling-as-method embraces polyvocality, “the power many voices to shift and sustain narrative change” (Weidinger 2020). With an appreciation of miskâsowin, returning to the place of origin, we reflect on stories that move us collectively towards having a deeper understanding of what it means to belong and live together. Furthermore, storytelling opens a window (Pinkney 2015) into another’s world.

 iverse Voices in Response to Indigenous Literature— D The âcimowin Circle In the âcimowin storytelling circle, the voices of the authors and storytellers, participating youth, and our voices as researchers were interwoven as we formed a community of readers, artists, and storytellers. Through reading and responding to contemporary Indigenous authors, this project aimed to bring forward Indigenous voices while also building community among the youth and storytellers. As scholar and literary critic, Deebie Reese observes (2016) stories have often misrepresented Indigenous youth in harmful ways through stereotypes, and many of these stories continue to be published. It is thus critical that educators take time in reading and selecting literature that represents Indigenous

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“people in the fullness of their humanity, with the range of emotions and actions” (Reese 2016). Métis scholar Aubrey Hanson et al. (2020) notes that while the Indigenous literary arts are thriving in Canada, Indigenous-­ authored texts are not always selected for teaching in English Language Arts classrooms. Furthermore, reading Indigenous literatures and understanding colonial histories is complex, and requires “responsible, relational ways of engaging with Indigenous literatures” (p. 162). In order to engage relationally, in the context of this project, we carefully considered the location of the storytelling circle, the intimacy of a small group of young readers, and the value of inviting Indigenous authors and artists to meet with the youth. In this sense, we were seeking to engage “ethically and reciprocally” (Hanson 2020, p. 162) with the literature and with the storytellers. Through reading and responding to contemporary Indigenous authors, this project had the following objectives: (1) to bring forward Indigenous voices through a series of literary workshops, while also (2) building community among the youth and storytellers, and (3) fostering creativity through aesthetic engagement with literature. Underpinning this work is the notion that through listening to the voices of Indigenous authors and storytellers and reading Indigenous literature as a community, we may come to a better understanding of one another, ourselves, our shared histories, and move towards healthier intercultural and crosscultural relations through storytelling (Christenson et al. 2018). This is connected to the Cree (nêhiyawewin) notion of miskâsowin or “finding one’s sense of origin and belonging, finding one’s self or finding ‘one’s centre” (Cardinal and Hildebrandt 2000, p. 21). By understanding oneself and one’s location through story, we may also feel a stronger sense of identity, belonging, and community (McLeod 2007). Participants in the âcimowin storytelling circle were invited to engage in conversations related to issues and themes in the literature, to interact with Indigenous authors, and to create their own works in a series of literary arts workshops. The âcimowin storytelling circle project is a qualitative inquiry that draws on social constructivist theory, following the notion that “reality is socially constructed/created through social practices, interaction, and experiences” (Butler Kisber 2010, p. 7). This literary project took place within the context of an urban public secondary school in Regina, Saskatchewan, and brought together Indigenous and non-Indigenous

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youth aged 14–17. From Fall 2018 to Winter 2020, we gathered with a small group of youths at the high school, reading Indigenous literature and engaging in literary arts workshops with invited Indigenous artists. The âcimowin storytelling circle was composed of a culturally and linguistically diverse group of youths interested in sharing their stories and in listening to the stories of others, as we engaged with literary texts in various forms such as poetry, novels, stories, song, and hip-hop. As such, the circle provided a space where we could all learn together from listening to one another. Research in anti-racist education (St. Denis 2007) has established the need for alliances between Indigenous and non-­Indigenous people to work in solidarity towards improving social relations. Verna St. Denis notes, “by acknowledging the common experience of colonization and racism educators can enact solidarity and join together to challenge racism and racialization” (p.  1087). As such, bringing together both Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth in the storytelling circle, in addition to our collaboration as both Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers, was foundational to this research. The selection of literary texts began in the early stages of the research and was an ongoing process throughout the project. We considered texts by Indigenous authors that would be of interest to the youth, and consulted the youngsters about the books they would like to read together. Considerations for selecting texts included works that addressed themes of social justice that are relevant for young people through the exploration of identity, relationships to others, and connections to land and community. Saskatchewan has been at the forefront of Indigenous Education in Canada, which has influenced curriculum development. Given the transformation of curricula in Canada, Indigenous stories can be read, heard, and told in order to gain a deeper understanding of Indigenous perspectives through literary works. Archibald Barber (2018) writes of the challenges that many Indigenous authors have faced, such as texts that “were kept from publication for one reason or another for decades” and yet “what is undeniably clear is that the voices of Saskatchewan Indigenous peoples have always been here” (p. xxi). Hence, through the creation of the âcimowin project, we focused on celebrating Indigenous literary arts by providing an informal space where youths will have access to a range of texts as well as the opportunity to meet with Indigenous authors.

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Hip-hop artist Brad Bellegarde facilitating workshop with âcimowin storytellers

The informal space of the storytelling circle was central to building relationships, trust, and fostering engagement with literature. We intentionally held this storytelling circle in an informal context outside of the classroom where young people would be able to connect with one another and with Indigenous authors. This space allowed for youth who were interested in literature to join the circle and they were encouraged to express themselves creatively through written and visual response to texts. As attending the circle was voluntary, it became a space where they could share and connect with others who were genuinely interested in stories. We gathered on a bi-monthly basis in the cultural room in the school where we served lunch, as food was an essential part of the social aspect of gathering together. Food is an important part of Indigenous gatherings and events, as it is in all cultures. For this project taking place at lunchtime, the food created a comforting and welcoming space. Furthermore,

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as noted by Tausch and Menold (2016), the provision of food and beverage “helped to create a positive and trusting atmosphere” (p.  5). The cultural room was brightly and warmly decorated, with a starblanket quilt and colourful walls adorned with Indigenous art. Hanging on the wall in the cultural room was a large sign in reference to treaty, with the words “As long as the sun shines, the river flows and the grass grows…” Additionally, an Indigenous knowledge keeper in the school often joined us for the meetings offering guidance to the youth. As noted earlier, a central aspect of the project was to connect young people to Indigenous authors working in a variety of genres. We were interested in providing opportunities for youths to actively engage with Indigenous literature while exploring their own responses, to develop an appreciation of Indigenous literary arts as they became familiar with authors and literary texts.

“…as long as the sun shines, the river flows, and the grass grows.” Cultural Room for storytelling.

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As we began to select literature for the âcimowin project, Anna-Leah and Heather attended the launch of Kisiskaciwan: Indigenous voices from where the river flows swiftly at First Nations University of Canada on May 30, 2018. This anthology of Indigenous literatures from Saskatchewan (Archibald Barber 2018) includes historical and contemporary texts. We were inspired to hear many local Indigenous authors read from their creative work, including internationally acclaimed artists Buffy Sainte-Marie and Sky Dancer Louise Bernice Halfe. The anthology includes a wide variety of media from historical texts such as speeches by chiefs at the time of Treaty to contemporary creative non-fiction, short stories, and poetry. Inspired by the literature, we considered how this text would be impactful for young readers in a local high school. As part of our storytelling research project, several renowned local Saskatchewan Indigenous authors published in the anthology were invited to offer workshops with the âcimowin youth storytellers, including Jesse Rae Archibald-Barber, Brad Bellegarde, Lisa Bird-Wilson, Rita Bouvier, Randy Lundy, and Joseph Naytowhow. We also read aloud from the anthology and from other Indigenous-authored texts selected by the youth such as Indian Horse and The Marrow Thieves. Richard Wagamese (1995–2017), Ojibwa author of the award-­winning novel Indian Horse (Wagameese,  2012), is a prolific writer from Wabaseemoong, north-western Ontario. The novel is about the repression experienced by Saul Indian Horse, a First Nations boy, at the hands of his Catholic Indian Residential School in the 1950s. Here he was denied his language and culture and subject to the assimilation process these institutions were set up for. Indigenous children were violently punished for speaking their languages and were separated from their families for the duration of the school year. Fear was instilled into the students for speaking their language. This abusive practice of IRS resulted in intergenerational trauma. Saul’s saving grace was the school’s hockey team and his  own volition to play the game. Sports—in particular hockey—were a solace for many students living in such harsh conditions at the IRS (TRC, 2015). It was through hockey that many Indigenous youths gained self-confidence and a sense of pride playing with a team. We read the first few chapters of this book to the youth. The students

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responded and appreciated learning from an Ojibwa author who conveys the experience of Saul’s family and the impact of residential schooling. One student of European ancestry said if it wasn’t for reading the book he would not understand as well this portion of history and its impact on Indigenous people. In this sense, the book served as a ‘window’ for the young reader to learn about Indigenous perspective and culture. Cherie Dimaline’s (2018) The Marrow Thieves is a dystopian novel set in the future, illustrating the strength and resilience of Indigenous people. The significance of resisting colonialism through a reclaiming of language, culture, and identity is a powerful theme throughout the novel. The young Indigenous characters in the story are longing to hear the stories told by knowledge keepers, such as Miig, who recounts the history of the Anishinaabe people. In a public lecture at the University of Regina, author Cherie Dimaline spoke about the way that we open ourselves up to others through storytelling: “When we tell stories to each other, we are being our most honest and we are being our most vulnerable” (Dimaline 2019). She also indicated that the youth in The Marrow Thieves represent Indigenous resistance, as they are “dreamers on the run”. The narrative, set in the future, offers hope to Indigenous youths. Dimaline noted that there is a “specificity of Indigenous speculative fiction” that is “born of a reality” and grounded in Indigenous knowledge. Indigenous authors, she observes, are “writing from a place of survival”. Dimaline’s novel highlights the resurgence of language and cultural identity of Indigenous people. Given that this text is set in the future, the powerful description of the resurgence reflects what is happening in contemporary times in terms of cultural resurgence and new emergence (Simpson 2011). Miig tells the young people that it was through a resurgence of songs and language that Indigenous communities found pathways to healing from the devastating effects of the residential school system and colonization: But we sang our songs and brought them to the streets and into the classrooms—classrooms we built on our own lands and filled with our own words and books. And once we remembered that we were warriors, once we honored the pain and left it on the side of the road, we moved ahead. We were back. (p. 24)

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These words offer hope as Dimaline highlights that pain and trauma can be healed, particularly through song, story, and language. The importance of story has been emphasized by many Indigenous scholars, as a way of healing (Episkenew 2009) and “living out the truth” (Johnston, 1987). The value of story from an Indigenous perspective is viewed as truth and not seen as fictional. Story is a valid way of teaching. Anishinaabe scholar Basil Johnson states that in story lies fundamental understandings, philosophies, ideologies, and insights toward human conduct. Further, he has learned it is not enough to understand the truth in stories because the Elders say truths must be lived out and become part of the being of a person. To listen and to know the stories is to know ourselves as Anishnaabe. Learning Story is a search for truth and wisdom to lead to fulfilment as humankind (Johnston 1987, p. 7). Living out truth in story is our process of becoming. Following her lecture at the University of Regina in February 2019, Cherie Dimaline signed a copy of The Marrow Thieves that she dedicated to the storytelling circle: “For the acimowin youth storytellers. This is absolutely your story. Chi Miigwetch.” Dimaline’s words signify the author’s recognition of young Indigenous readers, and the importance for these youths to live their dreams, to become strong warriors, and to reclaim history through story. We were inspired to bring this story to the youth as we felt that it would be a highly engaging text for them, particularly in regard to the empowering portrayal of Indigenous youth who are the central characters of the novel. While we gathered with youths and storytellers in the âcimowin circle—listening to the stories of Indigenous authors, a connection was established among all of us in the shared space. It was a time that we looked forward to and valued, being in the circle, listening, laughing, and learning. Through our collaboration on this storytelling project, as both Indigenous and settler scholars, we shared a journey of learning alongside the youth and storytellers through encounters with literary texts, and in sharing creative, aesthetic responses to these texts (Phipps and King 2021). Through this work, we have taken small steps in bringing Indigenous literatures into the hands of young people, while also learning about ways to nurture storytelling and the importance of valuing all voices within the circle.

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 frica in Me: Anancy/Ananse/Anansi4 A on the Canadian Plains Anancy is a spider Anancy is a man; Anancy’s West Indian And West African… Andrew Salkey (1970) Offering a postcolonial perspective, in this section I acknowledge that the place I now gratefully call home—Saskatchewan, Canada—evokes a sense of nostalgia borne out of resonance with the import it places on story/stories. In the excerpt above, a shape-shifting, transforming, liminal, survivalist folk hero called Anancy/Ananse/Anansi who is indigenous to West Africa speaks of polyvocality of place within and around me. Deloria, (2006) explains, that “…while it seems to be all about physical geography, place is utterly dependent upon the temporal.” He adds, that a “place becomes a place only with the passage of time, and with human experience. Place may not always be a reliable marker of time … but it operates at a particularly evocative scale of human experience” (p. 26). In reference to the human experience that marks the place I now call home, one of its major characteristics resembles my first home: Jamaica. Both Jamaica and Canada are sites that evidence the harsh and fraught branding of British imperialism—namely settler colonialism: its hierarchical power relations, their resistance, and constant subversion through the stories of the colonized. Therefore, I find a particular purchase in this new landscape where, in anti-colonial fashion, we have begun to acknowledge that in Saskatchewan, we are on treaty land and “we are all treaty people” (Office of the Treaty Commissioner 2008, 2019). And as Chamberlin (2004) suggests, Indigenous peoples in this part of the world, believe that stories of place are inextricably interlaced/  Anancy/Ananse/Anansi is a  character of  folklore credited to  the  Akan people of  West Africa (Lexico: Oxford English and  Spanish Dictionary, (https://www.lexico.com/definition/anancy). Among the Akan, he is Ananse or Anansi. In the Caribbean (e.g. Jamaica), his name is Anancy. Wherever the stories have travelled, they have been considered “spider tales.” In the Twi language, Ananse/Anansi means spider. 4

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entwined with that of its people(s). Similarly, Johnson and Soren (2013) argue that “Indigenous ontologies structure worldly understanding through firsthand experiences in place” and that “… these places of experience … include dreaming, memory, and spiritual journey” and “speak to a recognition that context is essential for knowledge. Knowledge comes in and through place: thinking and reflection invoke a set of relationships such that understanding quite literally “takes place”” (p. 10). Place then is “an active and ongoing collaboration among human and nonhuman beings in the lifeworld” (Ibid.). For me, manifestation of the subjective bonds between humans and their places is inscribed in the stories my enslaved ancestors embodied and carried from West Africa to Jamaica via forced migration. Anancy/ Ananse/Anansi stories were passed on to their descendants, and transported in me to Saskatchewan, where they are shared, and are emblematic of the Africa in me that I discuss here. This transportation of stories is revelatory of considerable investment “in memories of place” (Deloria, p. 26). And now, while people like me experience acute social and psychological pummelling—dehumanizing and torturous oppression— borne out of hierarchies of power relations and systemic “racism in academia” (Bahia 2019; Black Canadian Studies Association [BCSA], 2019; Canadian Sociological Association [CSA], 2019), I desperately grasp for my first stories—my cultural capital—as protective/sustaining gear. From them, I glean strategies of perseverance while adding them to this storyscape (Johnson & Soren)—a Saskatchewan, increasingly characterized by anti-colonial/decolonial action in the face of centuries of oppression that tried but did not ultimately succeed in its question to quash Indigenous peoples—their stories and storytelling. Stories were and are an enduring mode of resistance to exercises of colonial power, debasement, diminishment, domination, and survival for Indigenous peoples (Chamberlin, 2003) and also for enslaved Africans (Marshall 2018), who were brought to Jamaica, for example, and now find themselves on the Canadian plains. It is this outstanding and deeply cherished legacy that I examine and utilize as nourishment in Africa in Me—annunciation and enunciation of the stories that inform and produce my developing subjectivity in response to contemporary/ongoing oppression.

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Specifically, my African ancestors passed on Ananse/Anancy/Anansi stories depicting survival and resistance strategies through the unending resourcefulness, plasticity, bravado, and migratory disobedience (Forbes 2012) of an ebony anthropomorphic man/spider—often characterized as a ‘trickster’. But not to me, since, such characterization would condemn Anancy/Ananse/Anansi to the prison of “conventional meanings”—those of the imperialist/colonizer who benefit from constructions of Anancy/ Anansi/Ananse as a “trickster represented in a Black human like spider who lies, steal, hurts, and laughs at others and everything” (Araya 2014, p. 43). Rejecting this imperialist construction of Anancy/Ananse/Anansi who, “embodies the chaotic reorganization of the double-moral world he lives in”, I embrace Araya’s anti-imperialist/colonial proposition that Anancy/Ananse/Anansi’s rejection/non-acceptance of “institutionalized order” is attributable to his insight and lucidity. He “does what he has to do to survive in an oppressing system” and in so doing, “Anancy reveals the double institutionalized morality of his society”—one controlled by the imperialist whose primary goal is Anancy’s submission to imperial morality (Araya, p. 44). Ananse/Anancy/Anansi stories were the first stories told to me and other children in my family. They have their roots among the Akan (e.g. Ashanti) and other peoples of West Africa (Araya 2014); they did/do not belong to the slaver/colonial oppressor. The tales were told by our elders on moonlit nights around communal fires and on rainy, sometimes hurricane-­lashed days, when we were kept inside and where I was almost always, closely, cosily, and warmly wedged between my great-­grandparents while listening to their distillations in my first language—Patois—the Creole of Jamaica used for signifying through Anancy stories. Drawing on Gates (1988), De Souza (2003) acknowledges the significance of this linguistic creolization: it is in the language itself as it is practiced by the African diaspora that one must look for the origins of Signifyin(g). African slaves may have lost their ability to use their native languages but never their skills in Signifyin(g). Indeed, Signifyin(g) is an enduring legacy, and African continuity which enabled uprooted Africans to survive slavery by creating a new language that was only partly understandable to slaveholder and overseer…. (p. 343)

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Through signifyin(g) processes, Anancy/Ananse/Anansi for instance manipulates language to triumph over his enemy (De Souza). Thus, signified through creole (Patois), the Anancy/Ananse/Anansi stories maintained their African roots. They were explicitly characterized as narrative gifts—originating from Africa to teach us valuable moral lessons about honesty, respect for elders, the pitfalls of taking advantage of others—and were also illustrations of how careful planning, trickery, cunning, and pranks can be strategically deployed by the physically smaller Anancy against his more powerful foes (e.g. in Anancy/Ananse/Anansi stories such as (Tying Tiger, Tiger as a Riding Horse, etc.)) thereby demonstrating the triumph of brains over brawn—the weak over the strong and mighty. These stories were not only sources of carnivalesque humorous delight but were also intended to be vital to our survival and well-being as we navigated our way through childhood, adolescence and adulthood under colonialism—enabling tellers to “hide multiple layers of meaning under the jest of storytelling” (De Souza, p. 103). It is necessary to emphasize the African origins of these stories since they highlight an important fact about Afro-Jamaicans and Jamaica. We have limited (if any) oral stories of Jamaica that pre-date chattel slavery because those were held by the indigenous peoples (the Tainos) who sadly, at the hands of colonial domination and abuse by the Spanish, succumbed to genocide (Marple 2015; Tinker and Freeland 2008). Hence, I cling dearly and possessively to the Anancy/Ananse/Anansi stories told to me because without them, I would be bereft of African-­ descent stories except for those given to me through colonial education; the ones chosen to remind people like me of self-serving fictions regarding cultural, cognitive deficits, and deficiencies of Black people—thereby ensuring colonial hegemony and subservience. Such fictions and mental states are undesirable since they would further stigmatize our bruised identity as descendants of slaves and would prove the colonizer right in proclaiming that we were, and are, nothing since all “knowledge worth knowing” would be that foisted on me/us through chattel slavery and colonialism—conditions of abjection and debasement. This would be unbearable. Happily, I, along with all Jamaicans (especially those of African descent like me), can draw on a rich cultural repertoire of Anancy/ Ananse/Anansi stories informed by their West African provenance and

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yet imbued and fashioned out of the lived, sociohistorical experience of chattel slavery, colonial domination, the struggle for independence, and post-colonial economic development. For Afro-Jamaicans (such as me) and others in the Caribbean, Anancy/Ananse/Anansi stories are impressive/expressive enduring legacies; they continuously evolve and are constructed and forged through our engagement with the land and our circumstances since we arrived there. The stories—inventions and re-­ inventions (Ramsay, 1999)—are valuable agentic folkloric tools of empowerment, enrichment, resistance, and laughter. The enduring value of Anancy/Ananse/Anansi stories has attracted scholarly discussion. Pointing to the evolution of Anancy/Ananse/Anansi in the Caribbean, Araya, for instance, asserts that for a trickster like Anancy, there is no sense to believe in Manichaeism as a structural guide for his social behavior because that system plays with such Manichean duality for its own good. From an occidental perspective, Anancy behaves amorally. But from the colonial model, in the sociohistorical context of slavery, Anancy is a symbolic redeemer that refuses to accept the role of the victim. Assuming its victimization—even though Anancy is a victimized creation—would justify the idea of the weak individual who needs to be domesticated by the one who embodies the oppressing system. Undoing Anancy in the sociohistorical context of coloniality reveals other attributions that go far from the Christian morality, and then from the western philosophy of being and its institutions of power. His historic and cognitive consciousness is developed in the socio-political and economic context of slavery, deterritorialization, survivorship, migration and adaptation. In West Africa, Duncan clarifies that Anancy is a second deity known as Anansi Kokoruru, “a kind of fallen angel” but with the qualities of “the great builder of the universe”. On the other hand, in the Caribbean and in Costa Rica, Anancy “is the symbolic saga of the slave against his oppressor, this represents a psychological vindication of the Black” (Duncan 2010, p. 99, cited in Araya). Such symbolic psychological vindication is constructed through the destruction of the western referents of power such as size, force, and intelligence.

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In those situations that imply confrontation, Anancy is able to defeat his enemies using intelligence rather than force. This is evident in the ­stories. … “Breda Anancy and Bread Mule” (Chang et al. ii, 2006) … and “Anancy and Bredda Lion”. (p. 44)

After sharing an extensive list of Anancy stories as corroboration/substantiation of her argument, Araya opines that Anancy succeeds by studying the “behaviors and ways of thinking of his opponents to conquer their cognitive identities and control their performance. Anancy does so through the play of their moral, philosophical and ideological beliefs. This is to say that Anancy is aware of the colonial and imperial differences, and he decides to take advantage of that knowledge to survive, to get pleasure, to vindicate his role and position in society, and finally, to make others see the possibility of subversion—to give hope to those who, like the spider, live in an oppressing and unequal world” (p. 45). Therefore, in reaching for Anancy/Anansi/Anansi stories—the Africa in me—I humbly join forces with anti-colonial/postcolonial and anti-­ oppressive activists to summon psychological resilience and social survival by reminding myself that in such stories, “power derives from intelligence and astuteness” (Araya, p.  47–48). Power also comes from collaboration with ethical others to persevere against systemic racism, marginalization, and micro-aggressions here on the Canadian plains. For me, this storytelling project is a potent way to enact compassion, catharsis, and relief aimed at reducing suffering caused by unethical institutionalized tyrants and their structures of power intent on keeping the academy—the ivory tower—White (Schick 2002) and colonial. And as Mignolo (2002) suggests, such actions are perversities to modernity: they serve the oligarchical, narrow interest of a select few; reduce the intellectual richness and promise of pluralism; and are menace to academic integrity and freedom. Faced with such struggles, the Anancy/Anase/ Aanasi stories offer a vital and powerful tool to “give us a window into both our roots and the outside world. In this way we [can] write our own narratives for, and [of ] our lives” (Pinkney 2015, p. 30). In addition, we can tell, listen, read, and learn the stories of others, and work together, as compassionate and sensitive justice activists, toward the construction of better worlds for all through, and with, storytelling and writing.

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 torying the Landscapes of Self and Other: S Topographies of Body and Land At the 2018 storytelling conference in Suffolk, I drew on my performative work in response to my experience living on Treaty 4 territory. I moved to the prairies from the lush West coast forest and instantly fell in love with the open sky and expansive landscape. In many ways, I felt I had come home. Leslie Tait in her story of walking the Camino trail speaks of the song of the land, the song of home calling out to us if we truly listen, “…the song of home added its voice to the others” (Berk, 2012, p 5). As a contributor to the conference, I presented a variety of vignettes for which I became a kind of kinaesthetic conduit. Through this improvised performance, I moved through a kaleidoscope of narratives inviting the audience to meet this with their own lived experiences and interpretations. Graham (2104) writes of this kind of open circuit with my viewers. Art becomes more than individual self-expression practiced by the strange and gifted. It becomes a language for a conversation about experience, a way to inquire about the world, even a way to change how we see the world and our relationship to it. (p. 30)

This liminal space of moving embodied narratives from one source to another became the nexus of my graduate work (Ricketts 2011) and subsequent and current research. We begin a story only to arrive somewhere unexpected depending on the context and the condition of the telling. I see the storytelling space to be an empty space, a void that is the result of an essentialized process involving a stripping away of specificity, fragmenting meaning into a poeticism that blasts chronology, logic, and sequencing into space. The pieces fall where they may and are read differently by each of those who witness. In this way, my poeticized dance narratives speak to space and place as topographies of both body and land. As a dancer, I am constantly reading the world through movement and reading movement as sentences of

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meaning, grammared and punctuated with all the nuances of shifting weight, leverages, and centres. For example, when I improvise in outdoor sites, my partners become the wind, the gravel under my shoe, the rusted steps, and brick wall, and all of these elements are intrinsic to both my physical choices and the metaphors of place, both external and internal, that shape my metaphors. Graham writes of the work of the artist as countering predictable circumstances by “embracing ambiguity, surprise, imagination and idiosyncratic outcomes” (2014, p.  33). As artists we disrupt habituated relationships of knowing “The world is depicted as an object of consumption. Places are owned, measured, used, and thrown aside.” Instead, we are working to reassemble a world through what he calls our own “personal mythologies” (Graham 2014, p. 34).

Fact and Fiction Knowing that our lived experiences are the foundation of a collective storying process, I am interested in the historicity that lives within a creative bricolage mapping our stories, both unknown and remembered, probing and traversing time, space, and meaning and all the points between. When we tell the stories of our past, is it an unravelling of what was ‘meant to be’, or are we surprised by its evolution? Lacan writes of “the moment one arrives at illusion….” (Cited in Miller 1992, p. 10). In this way, illusion is not necessarily misconception but rather a disruption—a suspension of patterned historical associations that problematize the obvious, the habitual. Our determination to define fact and fiction as necessary binaries is replaced with a liminality of the narrative in relation to self, history, and the other. I have learned that creating narratives in relation to self/place is entirely transient and relational to the other. My story, here and now, exists within the multiple conditions of this moment within this space and place. Golden (2001, cited in Graham 2014, p. 34) exemplifies this: “A sense of place vitally shapes our being, our identity … it refers to not simply location but at a deeper level to home, departure, arrival and destiny.”

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LUG, Remington, and Rufus I have three characters that I inhabit for the purpose of creating kinaesthetic provocations towards important dialogue. I use the term inhabit as a means to indicate that these characters exist in an archetypical world, commonly understood. I merely drop into these archetypical characters and by doing so, the viewer sees something ‘strangely familiar’. My character of 15 years, LUG, donning an old overcoat and felt hat and always ‘lugging’ an old leather suitcase, dances stories of displacement, longing, belonging, and in-betweenness. Remington, an anthropomorphized bird character who inhabits an austere prairie landscape of sound and video, wears a rubber pigeon head and a coiffed fur coat telling stories of our relationship to land and place. Finally, Rufus, a tired clown, explores place as an interior landscape harnessing humour and fertility ‘underneath the error’. This character is steeped in what we may identify as failure, but with further interrogation we understand that Rufus invites

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us into the necessary place of the unexpected, the unplanned, and the unintended “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better” (Beckett 1983, p. 7). In all three of these characters, I perform metaphors of place, both internal and external, fixed and fluid, liminal and determined. These metaphors are portrayed in the form of poetic expressions anchored within a clear intent. For example, perched on a large rock in an abandoned alley reeling in the long trail of my coat with my suitcase delicately balanced on top, could be a metaphor for isolation and gathering to self that which brings comfort. Lippard (1997) writes of these notions of place, “Place is longitudinal and longitudinal with the map of a person’s life. It is temporal and spatial, personal and political. A layered location replete with human histories and memories, place has width as well as depth, it is about connections, what surrounds it, what formed it, what happened there and what will happen there” (p. 47). These characters perform structured dance/theatre improvisations which are playfully probing and bittersweet in nature and call us to attention in regard to self, other, place, and space, inviting us into the poignancy between fact and fiction. My performative inquiries always finish with actively engaging the audience in dialogue. An invitation to enter what I coin as the hermeneutic circle and as Schon claims as the third part of his “Living Practice” breakdown, “Back-Talk” (Schon 1983), which is a dialogue with the metaphor and those who engage in it. This completes the investigation and remains an essential component to my inquiry. What sediment is revealed? What rises to the surface? What saliency sheds new light? Which words move forward otherwise hidden or silenced in the recesses of our body? I include two stories below as exemplars of this notion of the landscape of the body in relation to place, holding narratives that surface through kinaesthetic provocations and disruptions, illuminating how these narratives move from solitary to collective authorship through shared resonations. These stories encourage us to make a journey together asking for vulnerability within this shared space. Elder Bob Cardinal reminds us how important and challenging this journey is. “The longest journey you will ever have to make is from your head to your heart” (Cited in Latremouille et al. 2016).

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The next three vignettes: I moved between them, the hockey stick, and the letter are stories from my doctoral thesis (Ricketts 2011). These stories among others, shaped my positioning in performative scholarship and have become the cornerstones of my engagement with communities as they seek to recognize and celebrate their own personal mythologies in relation to place.

 ignette 1: I Moved Between Them—A V Kinaesthetic Conduit from Him to Them Copenhagen, 1987 My dear collaborator, ill with AIDS, is the source for our choreographic material. His company is waiting to finish the show. I have been flown in to help complete this task. He mused, we listened and responded. He is pale, wrapped in a blanket and sitting against the mirror of the dance studio. The dancers are curious about me, a stranger to them, but obviously an old friend and colleague to their choreographer who has been in hospital for the last month. I had arrived that morning from Canada to complete the task and to extend his choreography. AIDS has ravaged his body rendering his dancer/self to a wisp of a memory, yet with an imagination still brimming with his Columbian metaphors, an imagination I knew very well. I moved between them; the man at the mirror and the dancers on the floor. The dancers were curious and even sceptical, but this was soon trumped by the hunger to move, to (re)interpret the moves that were spilling from my body as I danced his metaphors, adjectives, images and tones. I transmitted these poetic narratives to the group of dancers, eager to please and relieved to get back to work after such a long and unexpected break. Reflection: This was the first moment I understood this journey from the mind to the heart and this realm of collective storying while honouring personal mythologies.

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 ignette 2: The Hockey Stick—Disrupting V the Habituated Vancouver, 2009 I work with a counsellor/theatre director who is also interested in exploring unconventional ways of developing script. He has brought a hockey stick as an emblem of self within a particular period in his life. He begins his story holding the stick with ease; an extension of his body—he sweeps around with imaginary slap shots on goal and with power and control he speaks of his father. He tells me what he knows, but I am not interested in the telling of what is known but rather exploring the space where discovery lives. I ask him to work with the stick using any part of his body but his hands. The signifier becomes fractured, he begins to work with the properties of the stick: texture, weight, pliability, and dimensions. The stick brings another movement to his body and tone to his voice. I begin to hear another side of the same story—what was once power and control gets mixed up in the navigation of this object through time and space. The activity is transformed to a gentle inquiry and results in tender curiosity. With this comes a concert of emotions playing back and forth and inviting the participant into a place of unknowing, this is the place of discovery…. The fracturing of the signifier causes a rupture in the triangulation of story/action/object and allows new understandings to emerge. This is how the poetic is introduced to the object in relation to narrative thus affording a location distinct from physical theatre or theatrical dance where the props are often clear cuing mechanisms. For example, an actor picks up the tiny empty bottle beside his deceased lover and we can all understand that she has been poisoned. But what if the movement of a prop in relation to the axis point in the body shook up that narrative until we each had a different story of the bottle and the lover? We store information within the body that is meant to be resuscitated. Murium Reiner, a researcher looking at tacit understanding through

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embodiment, writes “bodily acts are often tacit, implicit, and are hard or impossible to capture in propositional form. Yet some highly sophisticated knowledge is evidenced in the dynamics of the body” (1998, para. 1). Reflection: This encounter with my collaborator and his hockey stick reminded me to trust the body as it whispers what we need to know, to truly listen to the wisdom of the body.

Vignette 3: The Letter—A Collective Voice Vancouver, 2008 I had donned my overcoat and hat for the inaugural performance of LUG. I was clutching my leather suitcase with one hand and with the other I was gathering the letters I had asked my classmates to write; a greeting or farewell, from or to a loved one. I sat in the stall of the washroom down the hall reading through each of them hoping one would be the obvious choice for my improvisation. Unfortunately, they were all good. And then I found the letter—a small note from a father who had long since passed. A letter of regret and apology to his son who felt compelled to conceal his sexuality. I tucked it into my suitcase and returned to the class. It became the source of my improvisation as I moved through kinaesthetic/dramatic metaphors of estrangement— isolation—longing—compassion—regret—and finally, atonement. At one point in the improvisation, I read the letter silently as a flood of emotions engulfed my body. When I had finished the performance a room full of emotional students all claimed they were absolutely sure I had read their letter. Reflection: I am reminded that we do not own a singular story, but rather we are part of a collective set of reflections and refractions as we story and re-story our lives collectively.

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Catalysts for Shared Storytelling My performative characters continue to operate as catalysts for shared storying of internal and external spaces/places and rather than erasure of self in these blended narratives, we seek to cultivate ecosystems of shared truths that transcend the boundaries and borders that often challenge this. Graham (2014) adds to this that our stories are generated, steep, and linger within our pace and communities “…history and community endure in places, in the land and in those who live in it” (Graham, p. 46).

Concluding Remarks In this chapter, we have emphasized learning through cross-cultural storytelling that transcends generations. Our storytelling tapestry captures and contributes to the creation of a more inclusive, hybridized, and open storyscape for self and others. In the âcimowin storytelling circle, we observe the importance of creating a space for Indigenous stories and poetry to come to life. The Anansi stories “are agentic folkloric tools of empowerment, enrichment, and laughter” transmitted through generations. The “liminal space of moving embodied narratives” dance in spaces and places “of topographies of both body and land”. These diverse methods of storytelling reveal how narratives can act as site of resistance, collaboration, and social justice. In our collective and individual work on storytelling, we have learned in relation to diverse communities through memory, movement, and aesthetic experiences. Our relationships to place are a significant part of our storied lives, identities, and lived experiences. We have begun; we are telling/sharing our stories because as Maya Angelou (1969) imparts, “[t]here is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

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References Angelou, M. (1969). I know why the caged bird sings. Toronto, ON: Random House. Araya, K. (2014). Anancy stories beyond moralistic approach of the western philosophy of being. BLO, 4, 43–52. Archibald Barber, J. (2018). kisiskâciwan: Indigenous voices from where the river flows swiftly. Regina: University of Regina Press. Bahia, J. (2019, July). University Affairs/Affaires Universitaires, UA/AU (Carleton University), https://www.universityaffairs.ca/opinion/in-­my-­opinion/ a-graduate-­student-­of-­colours-­navigation-­through-­the-­ivory-­tower/. Beckett, Samuel, (1983). Worstward Ho. New York: Grove Press, Inc. Black Canadian Studies Association (BCSA). 2019 (June). An open letter to Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences (Canada) from the Black Canadian Studies Association. Personal Communication. Canadian Sociological Association (CSA). 2019. CSA statement. Retrieved from http:// www.csa-­scs.ca/index.php?p=news.ViewStory&story=127, July 18, 2019. Butler Kisber, L. (2010). Qualitative inquiry: Thematic, narrative and arts-­ informed perspectives. London: SAGE. Cardinal, H. & Hildebrandt, Walter. (2000). Treaty Elders of Saskatchewan: Our Dream Is That Our Peoples Will One Day Be Clearly Recognized as Nations. University of Calgary Press. Chang, G. et  al. (2006). Cuentos Tradicionales Afrolimonenses, San Jose, Costa Rica. Christenson, J, Cox, C. & Szabo-Jones, L. (2018). Activating the heart: Storytelling, knowledge sharing and relationship. Wilfred Laurier Press. Currie, A. & Sterenly, K. (2017). In defence of storytelling. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 62, 14–21. Deloria, P. J. (2006). Places like houses, banks and continents: An appreciative reply to the presidential Address. American Quarterly, 58(1), 23–29. De Souza, P. (2003). Creolizing Anancy: Signifyin(g) Processes in New World Spider Tales. Matatu, 27/28, pp. 339–363, 541. Dimaline, C. (2018). The Marrow Thieves. Altona, MB: Cormorant Books. Dimaline, C. (February 8, 2019). Indigenous Futurisms: Apocalyptic Survival with Precedent. Barbara Powell Memorial Lecture. University of Regina, Regina, SK. Duncan, Q. (2010). La literatura de la etnia negra en centroamerica. Del olvidoa la memoria, SanJosé, UNESCO, 5, 99–105.

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7 Whose Story Is It Anyway? Hashtag Campaigns and Digital Abortion Storytelling Reilly Willis

Introduction ‘In the last 24 hours, more women have shared their stories in comment threads, on the #ShoutYourAbortion page, or on their own statuses than I have the ability to count. This is what it looks like when people decide to challenge an oppressive narrative by raising their own voices and choosing to accept a new level of personal vulnerability as a sacrifice’ (Ganga 2015). Abortion storytelling sets out to achieve many things, but outcomes desired by the abortion storytellers themselves can be loosely categorised into three areas: personal catharsis or mental well-being; connecting with others for collective empowerment; and destigmatising across the wider The original version of the chapter has been revised. A correction to this chapter can be found at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07234-5_14

R. Willis (*) University of Suffolk, Ipswich, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022, corrected publication 2023 T. Vine, S. Richards (eds.), Stories, Storytellers, and Storytelling, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07234-5_7

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population (Sherman n.d.). These are centred on different levels of personhood—the individual, community, and wider society. This chapter explores the efficacy of digital storytelling through hashtag campaigns in achieving each of these goals, weighed against the risks of on- and offline abuse, harassment, and violence. If digital abortion storytelling achieves those goals, as the storytellers wish, it may be worth the risk. If, however, digital abortion storytelling fails to achieve those goals, it may become difficult to justify exposing individual women to the risk. The hashtag campaigners in this chapter encouraged women to share their stories on Twitter, taking a potentially active role in exposing individual storytellers to these risks. The darker side of storytelling (in the case of negative outcomes) deserves exploration to help reduce unnecessary exposure to or experience of violence. This chapter finds that digital abortion storytelling may achieve individual and community level goals but is unlikely to achieve destigmatisation in the wider society. With that in mind, campaigners may need to think more critically about using hashtag campaigns for societal-level work. Individual- and community-level work may benefit from social media, but evidence from non-social media storytelling tends to be more positive in achieving all three goals (Sherman 2021). Digital abortion storytelling is characterised by dominant narratives, particularly from the United States, which tell an essentialised story associated with Western white women, many of whom are considered part of an elite. These dominant narratives, though clearly unintended from the campaigners and storytellers, are likely a product of the medium rather than the story. These are still dominant narratives in a highly contested sphere, but the prevalence of an essentialised version of this story could have significant negative effects on those whose stories do not conform to the dominant narrative. While for many the character limit on Twitter may make the storytelling more accessible, Twitter’s algorithms, filter bubbles, and heteronormative infrastructure render the essentialisation of these incredibly personal stories almost inevitable (Ott 2018). The stories then become highly unrepresentative of the majority of women for whom this story does not reflect their experiences. Many of the campaigners and activists who start these movements are journalists or celebrities, representing a very specific group of women with specific access to capital, adding a risk of silencing or othering thousands and thousands of women who do not.

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Therefore, there appear to be two possibly insurmountable problems with digital abortion storytelling—first, that the risks outweigh the benefits, and second, that it has the very real potential of essentialising abortion stories to those of ‘unapologetic’ elite white women, having a discriminatory impact on women who do not fit this description. This chapter uses examples from five campaigns in three countries to help illustrate these obstacles—#ihadanabortion (2011), #shoutyourabortion (2016), and #youknowme (2019) in the United States, #twowomentravel (2017) in Ireland, and #precisamosfalarsobreaborto (2014) in Brazil. Underscoring the point above, the Brazilian campaign did not receive as much attention either in the media or in research as the other English language campaigns. This chapter aims to overcome some of this essentialising but is limited by the lack of reliable information on the Brazilian campaign, even in Portuguese. Traditional abortion storytelling can be extremely powerful and highly effective in achieving the goals of those involved—this chapter in no way seeks to oppose or challenge that fact (Sherman 2021). Nor does it set out to minimise the positive experiences some women have had in sharing their abortion stories on social media sites. There can be very positive individual level outcomes from digital abortion storytelling. Here, however, the aim is to explore the darker side of digital abortion storytelling. As this is a highly contested issue, it is important to reflect on the potential for bias on the part of the author. My experience in this area is deeply rooted in the health and human rights movement, based on the fact that restrictions on access to abortion services lead to increased maternal morbidity and mortality. Unsafe abortion is one of the leading causes of maternal deaths worldwide (Say et al. 2014). Countries which have more restrictive laws tend to see higher rates of maternal death due to unsafe abortions than countries with less restrictive laws (Say et  al. 2014). With this data, the goal of destigmatisation becomes intimately linked to legal reforms, which can then help to eliminate or reduce restrictions. These legal reforms, in turn, save lives. This is not, therefore, a value judgment on the morality of abortion; rather, it is a public health perspective aimed at reducing morbidity and mortality. It is also important to note at the outset that destigmatisation appears to be a goal of the storytellers themselves. Reducing stigma is a driver for

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sharing these stories in the first place; the efficacy of storytelling should therefore be evaluated with this outcome in mind. The chapter begins by exploring abortion storytelling and stigma, before moving on to a discussion of feminist activism on Twitter. The five campaigns are then outlined and discussed.

Abortion Storytelling Abortion storytelling has been viewed as a powerful tool for decades. Similar to the LGBTQ+ movement, however, these stories were first told in ‘private’ circles. In the United States in particular, the decision in Roe v Wade steered the direction of access to abortion as a ‘right to privacy’ (Kissling 2018). While this was a critical strategy to ensure legal protections for reproductive rights, this framing has made public abortion storytelling more challenging. Many women’s rights are framed as ‘negative’ rights—in other words, it’s about ‘hands off my body’ as opposed to ‘hands on my body’ (Willis and Meier 2010). This creates societal complexities around the act of storytelling—if, as legal activists, we want the government to stay out of our business, placing abortion in the private sphere, what does it mean when we use the public sphere to seek destigmatisation and normative change? However, again just as the LGBTQ+ movement eventually ‘came out’, influential work has been undertaken to consciously move abortion stories into the public sphere with these goals in mind (Herold and Baker 2010). This is part of a wider but nascent movement to shift thinking from a reproductive rights framework to a reproductive justice framework which more broadly aligns with improved health outcomes (Piepmeier 2013; Thomsen 2013). Arguably, this focus on privacy has allowed those against the loosening of legal restrictions on abortion to co-opt the narrative, creating widespread abortion stigma (Baird and Millar 2019; Hanschmidt et al. 2016; Kissling 2018; Kumar et al. 2009). In other words, pushing abortion into the private sphere opens doors for negatively portraying the procedure as something worth hiding. Abortion stigma is well-defined, prevalent, and, according to those who have experienced it, deeply damaging (Hanschmidt et al. 2016). It can also contribute to the prevalence of unsafe ‘back alley’

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abortions which have poorer physical health outcomes and contribute, significantly, to maternal death and disability (Say et al. 2014). For the focus of this chapter, abortion stigma both drives and hinders storytelling. The word ‘taboo’ is often used to explain reticence to share stories (Kissling 2018, p. 10). Stigma, taboo, and a focus on privacy makes it very challenging for women who want to share their stories. This in turn increases feelings of isolation and loneliness (Kissling 2018, p. 10). Yet, at the same time, we know that telling stories is a key tool in reducing stigma and helping women feel less alone (Rafferty and Longbons 2020, p. 6; Sherman 2021, n.d.). In this way, the role of the audience becomes just as critical as the role of the storyteller. Abortion stigma itself may stem from a deviation from the ‘traditional story’ of womanhood. Goffman’s oft-cited definition of stigma in general is non-conformity to expectations of social roles (as discussed in O’Donnell et al. 2011, p. 1358). As Kissling says: This reproductive secrecy imposes a norm of silence around any reproductive experience that does not meet patriarchal ideals of femininity, such as adhering to the roles of good wife and good mother; in other words, there is no acceptable social discussion of miscarriages, abortions, or the decision to be childless by choice. The invisibility of these common experiences belies how normal they are. (Kissling 2018, p. 19)

Not conforming to the archetypical story of getting married and having children in and of itself may create, or at least contribute to, the stigma (Kissling 2018, p.  26). Having a different story is difficult for some to accept, either for themselves or within society. (Although, the transformative subaltern possibilities of challenging stereotypes render the non-conformist story a powerful tool.) Even within abortion storytelling, there are dialectical tensions (Rafferty and Longbons 2020). Stories of relief versus stories of regret tend to be the most noted. But there is also tension between the mainstream abortion stories of white, heterosexual, arguably elite women versus, well, everyone else. According to Rafferty and Longbons, ‘the presence of larger cultural narratives can result in dialectical tensions as one seeks to construct her own abortion narrative and considers disclosing that narrative to others’ (Rafferty and

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Longbons 2020, p. 7). This can lead to the ‘essentialisation’ challenge, which is discussed in more detail later in this chapter. When mapped onto social media, these tensions and complexities grow exponentially. Yet part of the movement to overcome stigma relies heavily on social media to share stories. While these campaigns work in different ways to achieve myriad goals, three are of importance to this chapter: individual ‘catharsis’; connecting to other women who have similar experiences to reduce isolation; and to attempt to destigmatise with the aim of reducing individual level harms through societal changes (Kissling 2018). For individual women, telling their abortion stories can have both positive and negative outcomes. Women report increased support, making valuable connections, or feeling that they had made a difference by sharing. However, they equally report experiencing harassment, abuse, or threats. Notably, most women report experiencing both—some report positive outcomes only, but fewer report negative outcomes only (Sherman n.d., p. 4; Woodruff et al. 2020). It is, therefore, without question that women can experience individual level benefits from sharing their abortion stories. Yet even these studies introduce a note of caution: ‘more work is needed to explore the trade-offs between the potential benefits of abortion storytelling efforts and the personal vulnerabilities such efforts may impose on an already marginalized group’ (Woodruff et al. 2020, p. 6). Across wider society, there is ample research demonstrating the role of storytelling in destigmatising (Baird and Millar 2019; Woodruff et  al. 2020, pp. 5–6). These stories aim to ‘break the silence’ to overcome the taboo. The act of normalising through storytelling can work to destigmatise, though this chapter aims to show that it does not always achieve that goal. If the stigma is based on deviation from the ‘norm’ of womanhood, then challenging and changing that norm will eventually act to destigmatise. However, this puts burden on individual women (“What Happens When We Share Our Abortion Stories” n.d.). For Baird and Millar, ‘the continued incitement to individual women to “break the silence” by sharing their abortion stories also returns us to the individual—to her particular experience of abortion and to her responsibility for perpetuating or ending abortion stigma through either her silence or vociferousness’ (Baird and Millar 2019, p. 1120).

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Two ground-breaking projects have shown the positive effects of abortion storytelling, for individuals, communities, and the wider goal of the storytellers of destigmatisation. Renee Bracey Sherman’s project Saying Abortion Aloud works to support women and organisations in abortion storytelling, with the following in mind:1 Story sharing is a widely used method of communication to change hearts and minds about abortion. It is a way in which people who have had abortions can talk about the nuances of their decision-making with those who have not had abortions, in hope of finding common ground, creating understanding, and building compassion around abortion experiences. While it is a preferred strategy for change, few of the 40 million US women2 who have had abortions are willing to share their stories publicly due to the stigma and public shaming that is often experienced as a result. (Sherman n.d.)

The project tirelessly works to support individuals to share their stories. Even here, however, the risks are evident. In an unsupported and unprotected social media world, those risks of harassment and abuse are amplified. The other project works on a much more personal level. Untold Stories used an innovative book club model to explore abortion storytelling in a familiar, yet intimate, setting. The project published a book about reproductive choices and abortions and used it in a selection of book clubs across the United States. Reading group participants report high rates of positive feeling toward the book’s authors, as well as increased knowledge about and empathy for ­others’ reproductive experiences. In their responses, they used phrases like “eye-opening,” “more empathy,” and “more open to the nuance of reproductive decisions.” Half of them (48%) shared a personal reproductive story of their own during their group’s discussion, and 99% of those who  Although outside the scope of this chapter, Bracey Sherman’s work on the We Testify project is also of note. 2  It is worth noting that, generally, stigma is more prevalent in countries where there is a stronger anti-abortion/pro-life movement, such as the United States, Ireland, and most South American countries. 1

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shared felt supported by their group when they did so. (AbiSamra et al. n.d., p. 3)

The Untold Stories project explores these intimate opportunities for storytelling to overcome stigma, again viewing stigma as any deviation from a societal norm or expectation. They talk of ‘disrupting the silence’ by ‘bringing people together in discussions about reproduction that spark openness, curiosity and connection’ (AbiSamra et al. n.d., p. 4). Yet this overwhelmingly positive outcome was deeply rooted in personal storytelling, with the storyteller and the audience sharing an intimate experience. This project succeeded in destigmatising through storytelling because of the personal nature of the work; it is not likely that a hashtag campaign on Twitter would have the same destigmatising effect as it strips storytelling of its intimacy. It is therefore clear that abortion storytelling is a powerful, positive tool. The above examples show not only positive outcomes from individual women, but the utility of storytelling in destigmatisation across society, a goal for many of the women storytellers. Yet, even these positive examples show the stark difference between sharing stories on Twitter and sharing stories in more traditional ways. The risks to individual women sharing online are increased, and the likelihood of achieving their desired destigmatisation is decreased. To contextualise, this chapter now turns to a brief overview of using Twitter for feminist activism.

 igital Abortion Storytelling D in the Twittersphere Significant academic work has been, and is being, done to understand the role and place of Twitter in feminist activism (e.g. see Willis 2020). This chapter situates itself within the Habermas/Fraser school of thought. Habermas believed in a powerful public discourse, where debate and discussion would allow challenges to elite structures, resulting in true democracy (Habermas 2006; Habermas et al. 2005, 2007). Nancy Fraser challenged this view, arguing that the public sphere in this way would

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simply reproduce inequalities and skewed power dynamics, reasserting inequalities, not challenging them. She reimagined Habermas’s public sphere into a potential tool for feminist (and other subaltern) movements—multiple competing public spheres. Here, debate, discussion, and discourse could challenge dominant harmful systems (Fraser 1989, 1990). Weaving her work with that of Sarah Ahmed and Claire Hemmings leads to a theorisation of the Twittersphere where there are indeed competing narratives; where the feminist can truly be ‘feminist’ because of the challenges and counter-narratives, not despite them (Ahmed 1996, 2000, 2017; Hemmings 2011, 2012; Willis 2020). These feminist theorists posit that true feminism almost requires anger and rage to create disruption and, therefore, change. Facing challenge is conceptualised as a cornerstone of feminist work. Under this positive conceptualisation of Twitter, the benefits to individual women become apparent. There is an anonymous space where they can share their personal, private story, where the character limit may make it easier to share, and where they can connect to other similar women without physical barriers (Herold and Baker 2010; Kissling 2018, p. 39). The absence of a specific audience encourages narrators to provide an unadulterated account of their experience, rather than tailor their story to specific individuals (e.g., a friend who has had a certain stance on the abortion issue). Similarly, anonymity allows for potentially muted or stigmatized groups to post information without fear of sanctioning. (Rafferty and Longbons 2020, p. 2)

The benefit at community level is also apparent. Fraser’s competing public spheres offer women unhindered access to others who have had abortions or who tell similar stories. Minority viewpoints may not seem so ostracised if they can find solidarity and community with others. The facilitation of connectivity cannot be undervalued, particularly for an issue like abortion. Many women are unable to find that community in their offline lives, but are given ample opportunity in their online worlds (Sobieraj 2018, p. 1702). Other feminist work underscores the collective empowerment that can be achieved online (Barker-Plummer and Barker-­ Plummer 2018).

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However, even under this theoretical feminist imagining of Twitter, there are significant challenges to storytelling in particular (Sobieraj 2018, p. 1701). While social media may, under the right conditions, act as a feminist space for activism, its utility in abortion storytelling is hotly contested. First, the character limit can be a major barrier to true storytelling, and feminist work underscores the unhealthy debate that the character limits foster (Kosenko et al. 2019; Ott 2018). Some point out how using this particular medium can ‘trivialise’ women’s experiences (Puotinen 2011). Second, functionalities such as filter bubbles, algorithms, bots, and underlying structural frameworks can amplify, rather than challenge, gender biases (Donovan and boyd 2019; Karlsen et al. 2017; Ott 2018; Rohlinger 2019; Sobieraj 2018; Willis 2020). Third, heteronormative patriarchal structures on Twitter tend to favour the problematic dominant narratives—in this case, those of Western, white, arguably elite, women (Khoja-Moolji 2015). For example, the functionality of Twitter will promote Tweets which reflect a dominant narrative, giving it more visibility. These are the Tweets that become ranked as ‘Top’ and therefore have far more traction than those which tell a less dominant story from a less elite user, having a cyclical reinforcing effect (Ott 2018). The voice of minority women or women facing multiple discriminations can therefore be silenced (Lang 2019). Fourth, while anonymity may break down some barriers for storytellers, it also makes abuse easier for trolls (Kosenko et al. 2019, pp. 4–5). There is no shortage of research on harassment and abuse. Even the positive studies cited earlier which highlighted the support and care shown also exposed the high levels of abuse. Over half of respondents in one study reported both positive and negative outcomes: The majority of respondents (60%) reported experiencing harassment or other negative incidents as a result of sharing their stories. Respondents reported negative experiences both online (53%) and in “real life” (36%). These experiences included being called offensive names (48%), having someone try purposefully to embarrass them (25%), receiving distressing images online (15%), receiving death threats (14%) or physical threats (11%) and being sexually harassed (7%). Fourteen percent of respondents

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reported feeling that they or their loved ones were in physical danger as a result of sharing their abortion stories. (Woodruff et al. 2020, p. 3)

The loss of control of one’s story is also a concerning risk (“Openness Shouldn’t Be Used to Create Abortion Debate” 2013). While telling a story to any audience ‘frees’ the words into the public, the speed and ease with which stories can be manipulated, changed, or reframed on social media may render the risks too great for individual women to bear. Sobieraj also raises the point of re-traumatisation—telling the story once may bring pain (Sobieraj 2018). But having it shared over and over and over and again may be asking too much. Alongside the personal exposure to harassment and abuse is the general social media discourse around abortion. A study which used a dataset of over 700,000 Tweets found that discourse against abortion was present three times as much as positive discourse around abortion (“Analyzing Ideological Discourse on Social Media | Proceedings of the 2017 International Conference of The Computational Social Science Society of the Americas” n.d.).3 With this as the dominant discourse, the likelihood of individual stories told via Tweets changing perceptions and working to destigmatise at a societal level must be questioned. Feminist research also places emphasis on the physical body (Sobieraj 2018), while social media research exposes its disembodiment where ‘people’ simply become ‘posts’ (Shenton 2020, p. 172). Is a world of disembodied Tweets with a hostile audience the best place to tell intimate stories of a very physical experience? Do the individual- and community-­ level benefits outweigh these risks, given the likely lack of destigmatisation? This chapter now draws from five hashtag campaign examples to discuss—#ihadanabortion, #shoutyourabortion, #youknowme, #twowomentravel, and #precisamosfalarsobreaborto.

 Of note, these Tweets were not geographically specific, and therefore reflected a wide range of perspectives. However, the Tweets were collected using English language hashtags which does limit the scope in some ways. 3

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Campaigns  he US: #ihadansbortion, T #shoutyourabortion, #youknowme Time for us to come out. Who’s had an abortion? Show antis we’re not intimidated by scare tactics. Use: #ihadanabortion In 2010, Steph Herold, a reproductive justice activist, posted that Tweet. The response was overwhelming, and the Twittersphere was alight with the hashtag. It was picked up by mainstream media, and then by the pro-life movement. As one activist said, the whole point was ‘to take this private conversation public, to scrub the “a-word” of stigma and shame. This is part of a long tradition of feminist consciousness-raising, it’s just that the medium has changed’ (“Tweeting your abortion” 2010). Herold encouraged women to ‘come out’ (again referencing similarities to the LGBTQ+ movement) and share (“I Had An Abortion 2.0” 2010). It was a new, social media version of an earlier movement which focussed on a documentary film titled I Had An Abortion. While in the beginning, the hashtag was used in positive ways, it quickly fell into what was then called a ‘flame war’, which is an online heated argument between two sides. Herold herself said: Of course #ihadanabortion became a flame war. Given how polarized abortion is in this country, women’s experiences with abortion become just another tool to make a political point. Unfortunately, this may actually make women less likely to share their personal abortion stories in such a public manner in the future because they don’t want their stories to be manipulated or misunderstood. (Herold and Baker 2010)

She does, however, go on to describe the positive individual level experiences that women had—possibly for the first time on Twitter—connecting with other women, receiving messages of support and love, and feeling a sense of solidarity and community empowerment (Herold and Baker 2010). Despite these positive outcomes, news outlets tended to take a negative view. Herold discussed the CNN and PBS coverage and her

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disappointment in the less than positive coverage.4 By the end of the campaign, activist Angie Jackson said: “I have lost count of the death threats. I even had a death threat against my (then) 4-year-old, that he should be torn apart limb from limb. I can definitely see why women wouldn’t want to talk about their abortions when you get this kind of response” (Zerbisias 2010). As an early example (Twitter began in 2006 and hashtags were first used in 2007), this campaign begins to illustrate the theoretical insight that individual- and community-level goals may be achieved, but at great risk to the individual. If the mainstream media coverage tended to be less than positive and the pro-life movement essentially shut down the campaign with abuse and harassment, then it is difficult to see any of the desired destigmatisation success. The campaign to defund PP “relies on the assumption that abortion is to be whispered about.” #ShoutYourAbortion This Tweet was sent by journalist Lindy West in 2015, with a picture of a Facebook post from her friend Amelia Bonow, sharing her abortion story in response to a political move to defund Planned Parenthood. Within days, more than 60,000 women had shared their stories in Tweets (“Thousands of women are sharing their experiences of abortion and it is divisive” 2015). Similar to #ihadanabortion, the early stages of the campaign saw significant individual and community benefit (Ganga 2015). In the last 24 hours, more women have shared their stories in comment threads, on the #ShoutYourAbortion page, or on their own statuses than I have the ability to count. This is what it looks like when people decide to challenge an oppressive narrative by raising their own voices and choosing to accept a new level of personal vulnerability as a sacrifice. (Ganga 2015)

Yet, once again, significant media coverage led to an onslaught of abuse and harassment. #shoutyourabortion is one of the most widely known hijacked campaigns, with one study finding more than 25% of the Tweets

 Neither source was available for first-hand review as the articles were outdated and had been removed. 4

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using the hashtag were stigmatising, anti-abortion Tweets (Kosenko et al. 2019). This time, the counter tactics had developed, and trolling and doxing strategies on Twitter were more sophisticated. Within two weeks, Amelia herself had to go into hiding (Ganga 2015; Lewin 2015). After Amelia was forced to leave her home, the hashtag soon dwindled down to a few Tweets a day (Lewin 2015). There is now a shoutyourabortion website, where women can share their stories in a much safer way. This second example again provides insight into the very real risks of using hashtag campaigns for digital abortion storytelling. In this case, that risk was both on- and offline. 1 in 4 women have had an abortion. Many people think they don’t know someone who has, but #youknowme . So let’s do this: if you are also the 1 in 4, let’s share it and start to end the shame. Use #youknowme and share your truth. Actress Busy Philips Tweeted this on 15 May 2019. It followed a televised discussion of her abortion where she used the phrase ‘you know me’. The Tweet went viral and thousands of women shared their own abortion stories on Twitter (Feller 2019; Gonzales 2019; Kim 2019). This campaign, similar to #MeToo, attracted the attention of many celebrities, some of whom shared their own abortion stories. Previous campaigns did not have this kind of coverage. There was some documentation of mixed individual-level experiences: While many voiced praise and messages of comfort with those who shared their stories, some also pointed out that women shouldn’t have to justify or explain what they decide to do their bodies. In anecdotes that included abuse, women had to reopen wounds or relive trauma in order to make their point. (Gonzales 2019)

While there was not as much documentation of harassment or abuse,5 the backlash was just as strong: (Garrand 2019; Schultz 2019; Sini 2019).  In a personal communication, Renee Bracey Sherman shared that individual trolling has decreased over time. She suggested that the pro-life movement is using more subtle strategies to undermine destigmatisation. One such example is the Silent No More Campaign, founded by Janet Morana and Georgette Forney. They use stories of abortion regret to subvert the work of the campaigns, weakening advocacy efforts to loosen legal restrictions (https://www.silentnomoreawareness.org/ index.aspx). 5

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Unlike #ShoutYourAbortion, the repulsive no-regrets movement that began in 2015, #YouKnowMe feels, well, less shameless. Women have shared their struggles with the decision to have an abortion when they felt they had no other option. The stories are heart breaking. But that doesn’t mean they justify the pro-abortion cause. (Schultz 2019)

Like the others, #youknowme eventually quietened down. This campaign does not illustrate the risks as clearly as the other campaigns, but nor does it provide evidence of any successful destigmatisation. The views and opinions of Americans are still polarised, and new state legislation making abortion more and more difficult is regularly passed. The aim of the state legislation is to test the boundaries to try and get a case to the Supreme Court to chip away, or even overturn, Roe v Wade (“The World’s Abortion Laws | Center for Reproductive Rights” n.d.).

Ireland—#twowomentravel #twowomentravel boarding, it’s chilly. @EdnaKennyTD In 2016, the account @twowomentravel with the hashtag #twowomentravel documented the journey from Ireland to the United Kingdom to access an abortion. One of the women had an abortion while the other was her companion. The Tweets were aimed at the Irish prime minister, Edna Kenny, as part of a much wider campaign calling for an Irish referendum to repeal the eighth amendment, the law in Ireland which essentially criminalised abortion (Bacik 2013; Barry n.d.; De Londras and Enright 2018; Willis 2020). The #twowomentravel campaign was fundamentally different from the US campaigns. It was just one woman’s story, it was told anonymously, and it had a very specific target audience. The actual story was told in just 29 Tweets. However, quickly there were over 40,000 Tweets using the hashtag (Bouvier 2019). Responses, as expected, were both positive and negative: When #twowomentravel returned, 48 hours later, they had tens of thousands of Twitter followers and were making international headlines. “We

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could never have expected the response we received. It was surreal. Where do you even begin thanking people for standing with you in that situation?” But there were also, inevitably, anti-choice pundits aggressively shaming the women. “We were showing photos of waiting rooms, taxis, flights. In response we got bombarded by violent rhetoric accusing both of us of murder, bombarded with pictures of mutilated foetuses”. (“Abortion in Ireland” 2016)

The counter-narrative in Ireland is a very strong, vocal movement. Their response to both this, and the wider #repealthe8th campaign, was visible, palpable, and, for these women, painful (Bouvier 2019; Willis 2020). There were several articles published online attacking #twowomentravel (Gartl n.d.; LifeSiteNews.com n.d.; “#Twowomentravel but the media ignored the baby that never came home” n.d.). However, the larger campaign, #repealthe8th, was a strong on- and offline movement which eventually saw success. The prime minister held a referendum and the public voted to repeal the eighth amendment, paving the way for new legislation which makes abortion more accessible in Ireland (Fletcher 2018; Kennedy 2018).6

Brazil—#precisamosfalarsobreaborto In 2014, #precisamosfalarsobreaborto began trending on Twitter in Brazil (rough translation: we need to talk about abortion). The campaign was started by a feminist magazine and it took off (Lycarião and Santos 2017). There is little information about the campaign now, other than a study undertaken in 2017 by Lycariao and Santos. They found that the hashtag created ‘hotspots of contestation’, which is a term they coined to describe an ‘interpretive enclave inside a like-minded social network’ (Lycarião and Santos 2017, p. 370). They found a significant amount of hashtag hijacking in the campaign, which was unfortunately very visible and  The #repealthe8th movement in Ireland made visible the potentially fatal outcomes of legal restrictions. Savita Halappanavar died in 2012 after she was denied an abortion in Ireland. The doctors determined that her state of health was not enough to warrant approving an abortion. Due to that denial, she died. This story was a flashpoint in the Irish movement to repeal the 8th Amendment and shows just how legal restrictions lead to maternal deaths. 6

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linked to politicians very much in the public eye (Lycarião and Santos 2017, p. 378). Notably, they also found that the resistance to the campaign was found not at the periphery of networks, as might be expected; rather it was concentrated within network nodes (i.e. groups of connected individuals) (Lycarião and Santos 2017, p. 377). The work of Lycariao and Santos highlights the same exposure to abuse and harassment, and the polarisation that can result from using hashtag campaigns to tell abortion stories. This campaign was short-lived and seemed to have little overall impact on public opinion or political stance in Brazil. Abortion laws in Brazil remain highly restrictive (“The World’s Abortion Laws | Center for Reproductive Rights” n.d.).

 hose Story Is It Anyway? Celebrities, W Essentialism, and Linguistic Perspectives This chapter now considers the five campaigns in relation to the theoretical and academic coverage explored earlier. All five campaigns demonstrated similar characteristics: initial positive responses, with both campaign leaders and participants expressing a sense of individual catharsis, and community empowerment, followed by harrowing stories of abuse, harassment, and violence, both on- and offline. Although difficult to measure, in four of the five campaigns, the wider goals of destigmatisation did not appear to be successful. #twowomentravel was part of a much larger movement that did, at least legally speaking, go some way towards societal change. Whether the story itself led to destigmatisation is difficult to ascertain conclusively. Alongside these similarities, three important points of discussion emerge: the role of celebrities and the dominant narratives, the essentialising of the stories, and the discourse of the hashtags themselves and how they were used.

Celebrities and Journalists All of the campaigns were, in some way, linked to journalists or celebrities. Although #twowomentravel remained anonymous, the approach to

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storytelling came across as journalistic, leading many to wonder if the women were journalists themselves. The women had spoken to mainstream media in advance of the 48-hour Tweets; some even suggested that it might not even have been a real story. But from an activist perspective, this almost doesn’t matter—the story told was an honest representation of what so many Irish women had experienced (Bouvier 2019; Michie et al. 2018). #ihadanabortion was started by a vocal activist with ties to the media, #shoutyourabortion was started by journalists, #youknowme was started by and drew the attention of numerous celebrities, and #precisamosfalarsobreaborto began with a magazine cover with high profile celebrities. In an interview with Busy Philips about #youknowme, she shared that the idea to start a hashtag came from Tina Fey, Busy’s executive producer, who said to her: ‘I think you hit on something, which is “you know me.” It makes it very personal. I think you should think about starting that hashtag’ (Safronova 2019). While the hashtag may have had very important positive effects, its origins from the Hollywood world of celebrity cannot be ignored. Another powerful example is the #MeToo movement. MeToo was actually created by a black woman named Tarana Burke in 2006. Yet it wasn’t until 2017 when Alyssa Milano, a white, well-known celebrity, used the hashtag that suddenly it became popular (Rohlinger 2019; Willis 2020). The functionality of social media sites amplifies the celebrity voice, compounding the potential problem (Ott 2018). Of course, it is certainly not new having celebrities or journalists involved in campaigning, and it is a well-known powerful tool. But when exploring storytelling, there must be recognition that these are the stories of a very particular subset of women, coming from a very particular socio-economic place. Bouvier sums it up: ‘the case of #twowomentravel shows, in particular, that specific forms of elites, or those with the professional knowhow and resources to use social media creatively, particularly here Twitter, will be in a position to have their ideologies taken up by mainstream media’ (Bouvier 2019, p. 227) (emphasis added).

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Essentialism In a related vein, these campaigns also demonstrate the risks of essentialism. Personal, individual stories when told on Twitter tend to be distilled down, with all of the nuances and differences—subtle or not—lost (Shenton 2020, p.  172). This challenge is compounded with issues around representation in abortion storytelling more generally. As Rafferty and Longbons find in their research: Recent movements such as Shout Your Abortion and #YouKnowMe have tried to dispel the stigma and silence surrounding abortion. However, these movements remain politically aligned and purport the “American Dream” abortion narrative: I was able to go to college/graduate/get a good job due to my abortion…While such discourses were evident in some women’s blogs and have been shown to reduce abortion stigma when openly disclosed (citing Cockrill and Biggs 2018), many women’s narratives within this case study characterized chaos narratives where the abortion experience interrupted their daily lives and left them feeling out of control. (Rafferty and Longbons 2020, p. 8)

Problems with representation are rife in both campaigns and research, and  are well-recognised problems (Kosenko et  al. 2019; Rafferty and Longbons 2020; Sherman 2021; Thomsen 2013; Woodruff et al. 2020). The stories are from Western white women, many who would be considered ‘privileged’, and the stories of so many other women are left in the dark. Amelia Bonow herself recognised this problem with #shoutyourabortion, stating that ‘the most visible participation in #ShoutYourAbortion is white and privileged, and that it is women who are the most marginalized and who live in places with the least access to abortion who may benefit most if the de-stigmatization of abortion leads to improved access’ (Kissling 2018, p. 27). Although not specifically about abortion, the #YesAllWomen hashtag campaign elicited significant criticism for its essentialism, sparking a counter hashtag #YesAllWhiteWomen. In response to criticisms of the #YesAllWomen

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campaign, the hashtag founder Kaye M. stated the hashtag ‘invited all voices, and made the mistake of assuming that the inclusion of all would mean the exclusion of none’ (Barker-Plummer and BarkerPlummer 2018).

Hashtag Language The words used in the hashtags themselves provide much insight into these examples of digital abortion storytelling. All take the approach of using a sentence structure, with a noun and verb. Interestingly, the US campaigns started with first person (I had an abortion), then moved to use second person (shout your abortion), then a combination of the two (you know me). This personifies the hashtag sentence itself, moving the focus from the individual, taking ownership over her story, to an imperative sentence telling someone to do something, to a more collective approach, including the storyteller and the audience in the same sentence. The Brazilian campaign used first person, but plural—we need to talk about abortion. This still takes individual ownership but from the collective perspective. This isn’t just about the storyteller—it’s about many storytellers and their audiences. But the Irish campaign was completely different. It was anonymous. It did not have a particular point of view. It was just about two women. This made the campaign very different from the others. The storyteller was a woman, and her audience was the prime minister. Interestingly, this differs from much of the storytelling literature which places importance on the personal, the intimate, the storyteller themselves. Yet here, the storyteller could have been any woman travelling to the United Kingdom for an abortion. It was fundamentally different. As a journalistic tactic, it was successful. It may even have gone some way to embrace the essentialism issue in a positive way— the story told was of a very specific abortion experience, and, while very much essentialised, this essentialism likely is representative of most Irish women travelling to the United Kingdom to access abortion services. The word ‘shout’ was also very contentious. Linked to the above discussions, this language very much labelled these stories as ‘unapologetic’, an approach which causes debate even within the reproductive justice

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movement (Baird and Millar 2019; Thomsen 2013). Some of the backlash against the campaign focussed on the fact that women were ‘shouting’ about something that should remain private (Kosenko et al. 2019, p. 8). Bonow stated that the hashtag wasn’t about literally shouting, but rather about speaking out against stigma (Kissling 2018, p.  39). This approach did not seem to work. The stories became essentialised about unapologetic white women, silencing so many others, while possibly entrenching some of the abortion stigma even more. This was so far from the campaigners’ intentions it feels wrong to write about it, but this dark side must be explored to protect women, to protect their stories, and to protect the movement to reduce individual harm. The approach in the more recent campaign, using the sentence ‘you know me’ seems to address this issue and attempts to personalise the stories, more akin to traditional storytelling. Perhaps this is why #youknowme did not seem to garner quite as much violent backlash.

Conclusions This chapter set out to explore the darker side of digital abortion storytelling via hashtag campaigns. It was posited that the risks may outweigh the benefits, with particular attention paid to abusive and violent backlash against individual women, and the issues of using social media which tend to essentialise stories around a dominant narrative which is unrepresentative. This chapter explored these theorised risks, as well as benefits, in five campaigns in three countries—#ihadanabortion, #shoutyourabortion, and #youknowme in the US, #twowomentravel in Ireland, and #precisamosfalarsobreaborto (we need to talk about abortion) in Brazil. These campaigns, though extremely varied in some regards, all showed some similar characteristics, albeit to different degrees. All seemed to show that individual women can experience positive support from telling their story on Twitter. The ability to share anonymously in a character-­ restricted medium was noted by many as breaking down some barriers to storytelling. Women also told of positive feelings of collective empowerment and the ability to connect with others across physical or geographic

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boundaries. But this was not true for all women. Digital abortion storytelling is often easier for women whose stories are closer to the dominant narrative—white women who have had more ‘socially acceptable’ abortions (Sherman 2021). Any deviation from this dominant narrative can expose individual women to more negative experiences, in particular online abuse, harassment, and violence. However, across all the campaigns, there was consistent negative outcomes for individual women. Telling abortion stories on Twitter is undoubtedly risky. These campaigns also demonstrated macro-level problems with using Twitter. First, all campaigns had some connection to established journalists or celebrities. This access to the higher echelons of social media biases the stories that are told and the non-conforming stories, although told, remain silenced. This is compounded by the essentialising nature of Twitter reinforcing a dominant narrative of ‘unapologetic’ white women, which tends to elicit far fewer positive reactions and more negative reactions. Changing the narrative to ‘normalise’ abortion with the ‘unapologetic’ story may also ostracise those who did experience regret or those for whom it was a difficult decision. While it is easy to recognise how the counter-narrative has co-opted the framing towards the ‘apologetic’ story, that does not immediately mean that the best way forward is to reframe as ‘unapologetic’ (Kosenko et al. 2019). The campaign goals of destigmatising at societal levels did not seem to be achieved in any of the US campaigns or the Brazilian campaign. There has been positive work shown in Ireland, however, where restrictive laws around abortion have now been changed (as a result of a larger campaign of which #twowomentravel was just one strand). In some ways, this chapter serves to reinforce beliefs about the power of digital storytelling. Only a powerful tool could elicit such visceral responses. Both the theory and the cited examples indicate that using social media for some feminist subaltern work can have disruptive effects to challenge entrenched norms. However, the use of Twitter, in particular, has a perverse outcome, too: it pits the campaign leaders (representing the dominant abortion narrative) against a large proportion of campaign participants (representing diverse and non-dominant stories). Furthermore, there is little evidence that campaigns contribute to

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destigmatisation. The question remains: if women who have had abortions reveal their stories via social media and in so doing put themselves at risk of harassment and abuse because they think it is price worth paying to reduce stigma, where must they turn when the desired destigmatisation fails to materialise?

References AbiSamra, R., Herold, S., Cockrill, K., n.d. More connected to each other: Results and insights from launching the Untold Stories Project, a new campaign of reproductive storytelling. Abortion in Ireland: ‘Silence is breaking 12 hearts a day’ [WWW Document], 2016. the Guardian. URL http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/ aug/29/abortion-­in-­ireland-­two-­women-­travel (accessed 2.9.21). Ahmed, S., 2017. Living a feminist life. Duke University Press, Durham. Ahmed, S. (Ed.), 2000. Thinking through feminism, Transformations. Routledge, London; New York. Ahmed, S., 1996. Beyond Humanism and Postmodernism: Theorizing a Feminist Practice. Hypatia 11, 71–93. Analyzing Ideological Discourse on Social Media | Proceedings of the 2017 International Conference of The Computational Social Science Society of the Americas [WWW Document], n.d. URL https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/ 3145574.3145577 (accessed 2.4.21). Bacik, I., 2013. Legislating for Article 40.3.3. Ir. J. Leg. Stud. 3, 18–35. Baird, B., Millar, E., 2019. More than stigma: Interrogating counter narratives of abortion. Sexualities 22, 1110–1126. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1363460718782966. Barker-Plummer, B., Barker-Plummer, D., 2018. Twitter as a Feminist Resource: #YesAllWomen, Digital Platforms, and Discursive Social Change, in: Earl, J., Rohlinger, D.A. (Eds.), Social Movements and Media, Studies in Media and Communications. Emerald Publishing, United Kingdom, pp. 91–118. Barry, A., n.d. Explainer: What is the 8th Amendment? [WWW Document]. TheJournal.ie. URL https://www.thejournal.ie/what-­is-­the-­eight-­amendment-­ abortion-­1625596-­Aug2014/ (accessed 9.3.19). Bouvier, G., 2019. How Journalists Source Trending Social Media Feeds. Journal. Stud. 20, 212–231. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2017. 1365618.

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8 Storytime in the Craft Beer Bar: Narratives, Gobbets and Segments David Weir, Daniel Clarke, and Holly Patrick-Thomson

Introduction The aim in this chapter is to explore how talk ‘works’ and to examine the stories which are produced when servers and drinkers talk with one another during a service encounter. More specifically, we explore how bodies (human and non-human) interact via the medium of storytelling in the craft beer bar.

D. Weir (*) York St John University, York, UK University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK e-mail: [email protected] D. Clarke University of Dundee, Dundee, UK e-mail: [email protected] H. Patrick-Thomson Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Vine, S. Richards (eds.), Stories, Storytellers, and Storytelling, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07234-5_8

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For the past few years, a group of us has been researching the world of conversations between people behind the bar and customers in the new world of craft beer. We published our initial findings in Clarke et  al. (2019) where we noted the precarity of the employment situations of bar workers and explored the possibility that the Cicerone qualification based on the changing technical crafts of bar work could mark the emergence of a skills-based professionalisation of the bar role. We discussed these encounters as evidence of a growing trend towards ‘prosumption’, arguing that the flow of expertise in the craft beer bar was not unilaterally from server to consumer, and the transaction not solely about cash, moving towards a newer framing in which knowledge, motivation, expertise and drinking experience are evidenced on both sides of the cash nexus. If in our earlier work we ‘sided’ with anyone, we were on the side of servers. In this chapter, we shift slightly, prioritising the perspective of the consumer. However, foremost, we are focused on the interactional and conversational space between the server and the drinker. Drawing closer to consumers than we did in our previous work, we seek to cast fresh light on what storytelling from within (Shotter 2006) this dynamic can ‘do’ in the world. We do this through inquiring into the stories about and around the beer that circulate in these encounters, construing the things people say as the product of ongoing storytelling practices. We present accounts from each of our own experiences at bars by reproducing here the very stories we have been part of. The chapter is organised as follows. First, we outline our method for exploring how stories unfurl between craft beer servers and beer drinkers. Second, we explore the practice of beer storytelling as an interlacing activity weaving together narratives, gobbets and segments. But although we understand the utility and importance of narrative as a device for understanding the interactional sequences in bars and drinking places, we are not using narrative in the sense of narrativising our own sense of self and our ability to interpret the world because although we recognise that meta-narrative structures are intrinsic to the fabric of our mind and imagination, in this analysis, it is the smaller sequences, the bits of bar-­ based transactions that we are focussing on. Finally, as the chapter draws

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to a close, we tentatively explore possible implications for understanding some of the forces producing and consuming Storytime in the Craft Beer Bar.

Background and Method The trope of precarity (London 2014) could almost have been devised to describe itinerant, temporary bar servers. As one of our participants stated “…when I meet new people and tell them ‘I work in a bar’ it’s as if they look at me, thinking: well, you are young and educated, so why are you wasting your time working in a bar?! […] Yeah, there is still a lot of stigma surrounding bar work. Stigma is a real problem…” (Eve, Certified Beer Server Level 1). Yet, in the discourse of current bar working, there is room for more than one kind of story. This chapter is based on ongoing field research into the stories told by inhabitants of the craft beer bar. Where wine has Sommeliers, beer now has Cicerones (Prichep 2013), and the ‘craft’ in craft beer is not restricted to the processes and practices of production but is increasingly characterising the processes and routines of dispensing the product in an interface that is becoming increasingly motile. Bar workers are called upon to not just excel in the act of service, but to cultivate a broad range of knowledge regarding the product and the means by which it is produced, demonstrating understanding and knowledge of a brewer’s “procedural authenticity” (Thurnell-Read 2014, 1454). This knowledge can then be used to bring the consumers (who are often product enthusiasts themselves) closer to the production process, with their own understanding of what constitutes ‘craft’; though “craft” is a term that is itself contested (Waehning et al. 2018). The knowledge may also be used, in part, to justify the ‘craft premium’. Lastly, of course, bar work is interaction work at the interface of server and drinker, and each side stories the other. Both sides can be active in the other’s territory and a new designation of ‘prosumers’ offers craft status to the consumer as conversations become more technically sophisticated and stories are created

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and shared (Hartmann 2016). There may also be implications for craft ‘authenticity’ (Thurnell-Read 2014). Much research has focussed in the stories of customers at beer bars, and the role of archetypal stories in creating and maintaining “authentic” gender identities, from the perspective of male (Dempster 2011) and female (Cullen 2011) patrons. Other bar-room research has focussed on bar conversations as a source of representation of brand and place identities (Hede and Watne 2013). The brand basis of craft beer is explored by Fehribach (2017), while Sismondo (2011, cover blurb) claims a special ethnic base in America for the genre by romanticising “taprooms, taverns, saloons, speakeasies, and the local hangout where everybody knows your name”. There is a whole genre of urban literature that accords special value and authenticity to this alcoholdrinking locale by claiming, for example, that this represents a special cultural locale for creative artists (Dehelean 2017). These locations are linked to wider social trends in the craft beer industry by writers such as Koziol (2015), who notes that discourse in craft beer bars emphasises collective and individual bases for identity. Craft beer offers an alternative culture to that associated with the more generic values and symbols of large breweries. Koziol advances a “unifying label” for craft beer that “[b]y focusing on community and collaboration … allows its consumers to participate in “performative branding”” (Koziol 2015: Abstract). This chapter focusses, then, on the storied experience of bar work, illustrating in their own words how this breed of new professionals— “Cicerones” by aspiration—in a work environment traditionally and increasingly characterised by precarity are crafting the stories that permeate and structure their lives as interface professionals in a distinctive metier (Sheahan 2018). However, these stories are usually not complete narratives but are segments representing conversational initiatives, tentative offerings of connection, and unfulfilled promises of relationship, redolent of the precarity of the potential bonding. Traditionally, this social space has been divided between consumers and servers, with stories often drawing on tropes of solitary despair like one for my baby and one more for the road (Astaire 1943). We listen for new stories where worlds meet and people drink perhaps to forget the story that brought

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them here in the first place. But what was the ‘first place’ and what may be the last? Where will these incomplete(?) and imperfect narratives lead to? Driven by astonishment—that is, instances which caught our attention—during some of our many visits to the bar over the course of living everyday life and drawing inspiration from Brinkmann (2014), in this section, we explain how we assembled empirical materials that we stumbled upon in our conversations. Just as Brinkmann (2012) prefers, we refer to our work as qualitative inquiry in everyday life. This chapter represents a work in progress and in keeping with Brinkmann (2014, 721), rather than talking about collecting, handling, analysing and presenting ‘data’ to illustrate our findings, in the next section, we present our creata, that is the “taken, constructed, and selected—rather than the given” (p. 721). Indeed, some of the stories we have taken and used in this chapter were created during a trip we (Daniel and Holly) made to York to visit David to work on a book proposal (with Emerald) about Researching Craft Beer. As Bartunek (2019, 8) observes, “Sometimes astonishment comes from the seemingly farcical”. Indeed, some of the stories recounted here (especially David’s) have been created by paying attention to breakdowns (Brinkmann 2014) during encounters at the bar that might be described as farcical. Being astonished by the resultant farce, then telling us (Daniel and Holly) about it—both in person and on the telephone, in follow-up Skype meetings and within emails and subsequent earlier draft versions of this chapter—we therefore co-created more stories. We hope our stories are compelling and insightful in that they connect us—and our readers—to the human condition, create resonance and “…cause us to think about our own and others’ experience” (Cunliffe 2018, 1433). Contemplating our approach to living in the detail, helping to craft this chapter, we did the following: 1. We read as much as possible in the scholarly literature, in popular writing, and on the internet that offered first-hand statements, reports and narratives of the bar server–beer drinker experience.

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2. We went to bars serving craft beer where we observed server–customer interactions and listened out for stories associated with serving. We also asked servers what they consider the bar tending experience to be all about, documenting the stories they shared with us. It has been claimed that “The universe is made of stories, not of atoms” (Rukeyser 2005), and storytelling has become a widely accepted type and style of research in the social sciences (Boje and Rosile 2010), but field research has been marked by debates about the quality of the data presented from storytelling research. Storytelling has been distinguished from narrative analysis and narrative representationalism in case-study research as storytelling adds reflexivity to narrative (Boje and Rosile 2010). Much of the data we present does not encompass ‘stories’ in their entirety as they are generally short of the structural supports of a full narrative containing a beginning, a middle and an end. If these are not ‘stories’ then they are segments, distinguishable elements or threads that may be easily plucked from one narrative and sewn into another. We further identify the existence of these segments, not all of which can survive out of their intended context, in the Old Oxford University term, Gobbets, referring to an extract from a text, prescribed to be read as part of a course, especially one set for an examination on which candidates are invited to comment on the content, meaning and context (Oxford University 2017, 86). We have chosen this particular word “gobbet” not because it is especially odd or recherché but because it comprises the meaning which we seek to impart. A gobbet represents what may initially look like a “bleeding chunk” (Tovey 1935) which is itself a term of derision used against programmers of musical concerts who tear only the “good bits” out of complex wholes like Wagner’s operas that are perceived as too long for the short attention-span of time-limited concertgoers and used nowadays in the critique of Classic FM by snooty BBC Radio 3 fans. A gobbet may mean little when it is presented out of its context but represents more when seen as a fragment which permits latent connectivity to a meaningful content, with potential implication in a variety of possible contexts and so is available for translation as it is repurposed.

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The term “gobbet” also facilitates a change of analytical focus from one that follows an adaptive response or chain of responses (the purpose and possible outcomes of which are framed by intentionality) to an exaptative one. Exaptative response refers to the processes (usually observed or perceived retrospectively) through which elements of a system acquire utility in other systems than ones for which they may have been originally selected or intended and has some resonance with Schumpeter’s notion of creative destruction in which he presented the capitalist system as mutational rather than forecastable (Schumpeter 1942). We are further inspired by David Boje’s call to pay attention to the pragmatics of storytelling. Using the example of the tale of how St George slew the dragon (Boje 2014, xvii), he notes that “Over time, the storytelling changes. And sometimes, as a pragmatic economic move, it’s best not to set the record straight.” In the stories which follow, we shall illustrate the pragmatics (and anti-pragmatics) of storytelling in the craft beer bar. To avoid misunderstanding, we clarify our methodological position by stressing that while we believe that storytelling can be a useful, indeed illuminating, approach to dealing with found data (capta) produced in discoursal interaction in bars, we make no more general claim and definitely no claim to any overarching authenticity. Finally, some of these short conversational segments have been introduced in our previous publication (Clarke et al. 2019), but the focus in that publication was on the occupational structuring of the barperson role rather than on the stories themselves.

Beer Stories In this section, we present three stories from craft beer bars. The first (narrated by Holly and Daniel) illustrates how segments of stories get picked up, translated—as gobbets—and animate the stories of others. The second (narrated by David) presents an alternate story (quite serendipitously and unexpectedly drawn from the same bar) to introduce the importance of pragmatics to the praxis of craft beer storytelling. The final story (narrated by Holly and Daniel) builds on the idea of pragmatics and (biographical) authenticity (borrowing from Thurnell-Read 2014),

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showing how some—cyncical(?!)—servers corrupt(?!) the practice of storytelling in the bar by fabricating stories.

Story One—Gobbets in Process It is just after lunch, and Daniel and I have reached the next pub on a long list of beer destinations supplied by a local craft beer enthusiast. We follow his instructions, entering through a three-room shop stocked floor-to-ceiling with hundreds of craft beers from around the world. Turning right between two ground floor rooms, we ascend a narrow staircase that curves into a cavernous roof space resembling an alpine chalet: solid wood tables and benches smothered with animal hides are cosied together and (fake?) animal trophy heads adorn the walls. It is warm; a welcome respite from ‘the beast from the east’. The dimly lit corner-bar is fronted with six taps, staffed by two servers and the staircase we climbed spits more thirsty customers out into the bar. A folded-down bar top serves as access to the bar and temporarily serves as a holding space for one of the servers, allowing free range of full movement behind the bar. All of a sudden, the warm welcome turns into an intimate one. The server warming the fold-down bar top makes off to clear some tables, I (Daniel) claim some seats while some are available and Holly sidles toward the bar to eavesdrop. There are a couple of drinkers perched on stools either side of the fold-­ down bar top, suggesting they did not arrive together. Both are in their thirties, maybe forties, and one of them is talking to the server about the beer on the tap nearest to him. He boasts acquaintance with the farmer who grows the barley, telling the server about the locality and place where the barley grows and the special measures he takes to look after the crop. Apparently, the stream providing water to the brewery delivers ‘mighty fine water’—something anybody else listening into the conversation might also learn. The server responds with a few casual thoughts on the taste of the beer. But in the main, he listens, nodding away while returning clean glasses to their shelves behind the bar. The man with a farmer friend finishes his late lunchtime half-pint (maybe not his first judging by the precipitous manner in which he

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descends from the stool) and heads for the stairs. For a while, quiet. Daniel and I (Holly) enjoy a late lunch, and discuss our ideas about ‘beer research’. Around 3pm, more people start to arrive. It is Friday and many look like they have knocked off work early. A couple arrive, seemingly in for some post retail therapy refreshment. Removing their jackets and dropping their bags at the table nearest the bar, they scan what is on offer. Sensing an opportunity, the server appears to recognise a familiar kind of customer, perhaps two people who know less than the farmer’s friend about one of the beers on tap today and who are ready to be impressed with hints of intimate knowledge about the locality and place where the beer is brewed. Tossing his glass-polishing towel over his shoulder, he leans through the space between the taps and asks, ‘what can I get you’? They ask a general question about what beers they are pouring, prompting the server to share a most interesting story about the beer on the far-­ right tap, about the farmer who grows the ingredients and the secret about the stream. The story is not identical. The basics are the same, but there are improvisational embellishments which come across to the new customers as knowledge accrued from the server’s personal experience. Now there are hints of a link between the source of the water used to make the beer and its clarity and, the body of the beer is attributed to the farmer’s special barley growing practices. Seemingly impressed by the server’s knowledge of the “geographical authenticity” (Thurnell-Read 2014, 1456), which the brewer takes pride in (and the server apparently appreciates himself ), the couple order two halves. They agree that the body is quite impressive, and yes, they can appreciate the clarity. With us now seated on the other side of the bar, I (Holly) whip out my fieldwork notebook and scribble down the details of this encounter. Daniel suppresses a smile. The server has done a fine job of enhancing his repertoire today, and we wonder from where (or whom) else his other beer stories are sourced.

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 tory Two—The (anti)Pragmatics of Craft S Beer Storytelling Normally, I like the craic of a craft beer bar and feel comfortable in this environment. I like bars, craft beer bars best of all. After all, its work innit. Christ, it may even be REFable. I can even recall some of my first beer bar experiences, like the time my 17-year-old self I dropped into a small bar opposite the station at 10:30 one April morning. I had time to kill and a life ahead of me. I ordered a half of Tetleys and savoured the smooth bitterness as the world sloped by outside the murky window. Tetleys was good enough and always cool from its slate Yorkshire squares, though adverse rumour advised that these same squares were a “reight rat trap” if the square top didn’t fit precisely—but then hardy tykes probably preferred the taste of “summat wi’ a bit o’ body in it”. Now it is more sophisticated times and, in the prosumerist era, it is an added virtue of the specialist beer bar that the bar tender will be able to draw on craft expertise to engage the attention of the craft beer connoisseur. But sometimes it goes too far. It was mid-afternoon in early thirsty autumn and I had a 4pm appointment to keep in town, but there was just time for a quick one and I was near a bar that my colleagues had noted with approval, where good craft beer could be supped and the bar staff were knowledgeable. Although I had never been there in person, the website spoke of Delirium Tremens and claimed to have from medieval times suffered “times of great hardship” and of earlier incarnations as a Norman House (perhaps something to do with the great Norman Hunter RIP after his Eighton Banks days, he pondered whimsically) and an Augustinian Priory, but promised no Pink Elephants. I had dim memories of a Rock Band called Delirium Tremens of some years back (Rock, Metal, Punk even??), so I ascended the stairs with eager anticipations. A subterranean angst lingered in the inner man, possibly warning of the advertised promise of a ‘peanut butter milk stout’…still it takes all sorts (never saw a peanut butter allsort either, though). Omens seemed good. For a short half hour, I could again be the force for elder insanity that called across the decades to that teenage half pint

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drinker in the Station Square. Solitary does it for me sometimes; as Mark Twain averred, talking to yourself makes sense because you are hearing good stuff and advising a wise listener! And this was going to be fieldwork, right? And the Craic was supposed to be knowledgeable and crafty. So, High Hopes and without Sinatra and the annoying schoolkid choir. What could go wrong? Everything could go wrong: you, me, outside, pal! The bar was fairly well filled. More scruffy lounge bar than New Mod millennial though. Two men behind the bar, one at the back doing things involving meat, prepping up tasty over-priced small sandwich-­substitutes, was he? But why the big sharp knife? Was that raw meat perhaps? Shades of Sweeney Todd, was I to be lined up for a Main? But the other was definitely my lucky find of the day: young, scarcely bearded, engaging an already mightily engaged young couple (well, low thirtyish, young but keen, O so Keen!) in the sort of enthusiastic wordage of craft beer discourse… “It’s a ruby, almost red, not a stout, its one they’re trying, not too high alcohol, only 5 per cent…” (5 is high for me)… “…on the other hand, this one is a session beer, you can just drink it” (this latter depiction came with an aftertaste of disdain). This was the Prosumerist’s fantasy world. I listened at first interestedly to these Prosumerist Cicerone-novitiates worshippers, but then rather less interestedly as thirst tapped out to the inner man the original purpose of my visit and reminded me that time was not necessarily on my side. I made eye contact with the (possibly senior) bar person in the rear as he passed me to wash his hands. “Sorry, I’m dealing with food here” he barked as if of course I was familiar with the “local authority serving food guidelines,” but he had just washed his hands, hadn’t he? Was he too big to serve me? And why was the Cicerone of the first part not cognisant of the probability that I too, Old Git as I clearly was, might represent paying custom. After all, what’s a bar for if not for drink? My expectations were high, my time was short, my framing orientation was one of collegiality, of sharing in the common enterprise of discovery. I thought of doing my Father Jack impression and barking out a stern staccato of “Drink! Drink!” No need to embellish the unfinished day, but my Father Jack impression has been noted as a fair copy. By now minutes had gone by … Something inside me snapped and unforgivably I

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enquired sotto but not so sotto that it couldn’t be clearly heard by both the bar staff and the paying customers as far as the first row of tables, the pertinent enquiry of the fed-up would be drinker (no chance of promotion to a Quaffer in the little time we had left) “Do you serve beer, here?” I was instantly promoted to Troublemaker of the Day. “I’ll be with you in a minute, when I’ve finished serving these customers” stylishly retorted the younger barperson. “As I said, you can see I can’t serve while I’m preparing food” countered his colleague. But the first respondent wasn’t in fact “serving” these or any customers at that precise moment: rather he was off on one, impressing soft targets with his knowledge. These “customers” had not got round to framing their presence in an articulation of a purchase; they weren’t actually drinking: they were sampling as in a tasting session. The food-preparer could have seen that I wasn’t getting served, dried his hands and dealt with my needs. Bars are about the business of drinking: I had come for beer and this wasn’t getting me in a happy frame of mind for …well, drinking. I crisply noted, “I came for beer. Never mind! I’m only a customer. I’ll go to a pub.” And I did. But it was closed. Reflexive moment: Of course I was rude, intemperate, hasty and judgemental. But the core business of the craft beer bar is serving would­be drinkers, not self-indulgently showing off one’s knowledge, of craft or anything else. In marketing theory, prolonged debate around alternative strategies may be appropriate, per contra, in selling performance is everything and the outcome is crystallised and the bargain is sealed when the cash changes hands in return for the product as specified. But that’s it, isn’t it? “A thing is what it is and no other thing” advised the Cambridge philosopher G E Moore (a knowledge-worm residue of an Oxford Philosophy, Politics and Economics degree in the late 1950s). But the thing—if it is a bar—is primarily for drinking first, educating later and maybe educating only as an optional extra (Terms and Conditions Apply). Maybe it’s a generational thing or maybe I really am a cranky old git. So … shall I give this bar a second chance? After all, respected practitioners and keen researchers give it a good rating. But I shall tread cautiously before I report to seasoned tipplers that this is a “reight good drinking ‘ole…”

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At root, there exists a conflict of expectations and there are several ways of dealing with expectational dissociation: Avoid or procrastinate, give up, carry on fighting, compromise, collaborate, or invoke the Good Book and decide to change what you can, let go of what you cannot and be wise enough to know which is which. In my ninth decade, time is not on my side and I need to get my retaliation in first. Such conflicts occur because of unmet expectations and the drinker with money in hand, cash money, has a need to see legitimate situated expectations fulfilled. My approach tends, as the reader will note, towards the decisive not to say confrontational, but even in the post-­ modernist prosumerist, crafty information-rich encounters of the Cicerone-esque, there is also a time for serving ale and shutting up (here in Yorkshire, anyway).

Story 3—Authenticity and Pragmatics Snowflakes fall as we make our way through the city-wall in search of a bar that did not feature on our list of beer destinations reeled off by a local beer aficionado, but google maps (under ‘description’) told us was a ‘craft beer bar’. We see the old-fashioned sign, large plate glass windows, and we hustle in, shutting the door quickly behind us to prevent the cold draft from freezing the small number of people seated at the tables in front of the entrance. We take a seat by the sad, unlit fireplace and look through the food menu. The kitchen is open all day. There are seven beers on tap, five ‘tied’ and two ‘changing’, from Beavertown. After about half an hour, teenagers start arriving, filing upstairs to another room, and coming down in ones or twos to fetch large rounds. Despite the google maps listing, this does not feel like the other craft beer bars we have visited. Apart from anything else, the servers do not seem very interested in the beer they are serving, minimally concerned about striking up a conversation with customers and could not even give us a recommendation when we asked, ‘what have you got for us’? Other than replying with “most people drink that one,” pointing to the pump clip with a gauche stars and stripes logo for an American Pale Ale (predictably disappointing upon sampling). Banter was not forthcoming. Disappointed

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at the lack of interaction with the servers, we later asked if the manager was about and if s/he would be willing to have a conversation with us about serving craft beer. We were told to “come back tomorrow about 4pm”. When we return the following day and meet the manager, he kindly offers us a pint. After the previous day’s disappointment with the APA, Holly plays safe with a pint of Neck Oil (from Beavertown). We walk through to a quiet table in the back room and he immediately clears up our confusion about the difference between his bar and the other craft beer bars we have visited in the city. He explains that the pub we are currently in is part of a mid-sized pub company. Less than ten minutes into our conversation, the manager tells us how Neck Oil is the most expensive pint they sell in that it has the lowest profit margin (oops!). His big concern in those first ten minutes of our conversation was whether the live music act he had booked for that night will make it through the snow: “they’ve to come two hours to get here, from Preston.” For the most part, he seems more interested in talking to us about the general ‘commerce’ of pubs rather that the ‘craft’ in the craft beer served in his pub (Smith Maguire et al. 2017). Similarly, he says very little about and all but dismisses two of Thurnell-Read’s (2014) six modes of authenticity (i.e. “procedural authenticity” and/or “material authenticity”) that brewers tend to refer to in their narratives of (craft beer) authenticity. “I enjoy drinking beer. I like the taste of it. And I am happy to discuss it with people on a high level. But I don’t really want to know how it’s made, how to taste different things…, different beers…” He tells us that being a good server now is all about having product knowledge and giving a good service experience: “you are not just here to pour pints, you know … to just serve. You are here to talk to them and look after them like they are friends, family.” The value he places on product knowledge is rather surprising considering we both faced blank faces the previous day when he tried to engage the servers in conversation about broad topics such ‘beer trends’ and sexist advertising in craft beer. However, the lack of knowledge is understandable. In addition to a wide range of craft beers in the fridge as well as those on tap, the bar has a full wine list and over 30 gins (not to mention other spirits). The only formal

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product training offered to the servers is a 2-hour run-through of the drinks menus on Day 1 that also includes working the tills. The beers can change from one day to the next and so the servers are encouraged to taste ‘new’ beers when they come in to start their shift. … But “just a taste, mind you, don’t take the Mick”! When we asked if part of the criteria for hiring staff to work behind the bar was a personal preference and/or appreciation of craft produce, he told us “some of the servers don’t really like beer and one or two don’t even drink or hardly drink at all.” The horror. He comes across as a sensible Yorkshire lad. His biggest pet peeve with craft beer is wastage because the pipes need to be set up differently each time and small errors can lead to big pour aways. Moreover, he does not have time for the theatre of beer that we see elsewhere. When asked for an explanation, he refers to the palaver in bars which serve Stella Artois and strictly observe the brand guidance1 on how to pour the perfect head and then wipe the excess foam off with a special ‘bar blade’ sent to them by Stella (which for him is more like somebody tampering with your beer using a hair comb they have just produced from their back pocket): “I’ve never done it in any bar I have worked in. It is not for me that. It is important in the beer that there is no faff. That is why I am not into the [craft] cocktail thing; I don’t want to watch some person throw things around.” So how does he build that product knowledge? He writes little notes on the back of the pump clips: ABV, country of origin, a couple of tasting notes and maybe a fact about the brewery. We actually took a look at these before we leave, and later on in the trip, we notice other craft beer bars doing something similar. But what if a customer comes in who wants more, we ask? He responds, “These guys are passionate about beer. If you [as a server] are not—make it up!” For him, the performance act of storytelling—with enthusiasm for the story about the beer, any story—is more important than there being authentic knowledge behind that performance. To those of us who have heard some far-fetched craft beer

 See Allaine Schaiko, for example, on “How to Pour a Beer—The 9-Step Pouring Ritual. Stella Artois World Draught Masters 2014.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kOSAaTeG1c 1

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bar stories in our time, this guidance does not perhaps seem quite so strange or peculiar on first hearing!

Implications for Storytime in the Craft Beer Bar In the craft beer bar, our research reveals how bodies (both human and non-human bodies, including bodies of liquid and words strung together) create stories through an interweaving of narratives, segments and gobbets. Energising, animating, giving momentum to and ‘hitting’ other bodies with their own stories, material processes generate para-narratives of beer culture which circulate in varying degrees of intensity, in craft beer bars and further afield. As befitting a book on storytelling, our focus is not on what stories tell us about the craft beer bar, but rather about how the reimagining (or re-fetishisation) of craft beer is realised through a storytelling paradigm. As we stated earlier, the outcomes of our bar interviews are by no means completely articulated stories with beginnings, middles and ends. They are fragments in flux: segments transposed from one story into another, translated as gobbets, pragmatically woven and rewoven to perform the ‘beer sommelier’ role, to appease drinkers, to allow the bar conversation to carry on. Cask conversations can be valuable occasions for gaining product knowledge (Nunny 2017–2018). One approach is to consider them as pre-stories or as preparation for longer events that may or may not take place. Boje (2001) introduced the notion of the “ante-­ narrative” to draw attention to the “prospective sensemaking” that can be agential in its own right, offering opportunities for tentative sensemaking as stories emerge before they are fossilised into more rigid frames of narrative linearity, coherence and stability (Boje 2011). Boje helpfully notes that all storytelling is processual in nature, and points out that stories do not have to embody positive representations of self. As we saw earlier, the classic ‘lonely man’ trope is only one of many possibilities. Actually of course, it is far from a positive event: as bar stories can often be self-­ destructing, expressions of loss, guilt and recrimination. But the ante-­ narrative of Eve discussed earlier reveals a sense of pride and expresses the

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success of rising above the expectations of others, and perhaps above all reports on ‘career business’ that is still unfinished. Our stories illustrate the pragmatics of craft beer storytelling. Craft beer storytelling can be seen as a performative act underpinning the re-­ fetishisation of (otherwise perhaps unremarkable) commodities such as beer. However, there are limits to the pragmatism of this approach, not every drinker in the bar wishes to be regaled with detailed tasting notes or tales of terroir. Many just want a pint m’lud, and elaborate storytelling and tasting rituals not only interrupt but can alienate more traditional bar etiquette. Indeed, our third beer story above shows that cunning (or ‘crafty’) narrative (possibly inauthentic) entrepreneurs are already adapting to this by weaving gobbets together in highly pragmatic storytelling practices that ‘give the customer what she wants’ without alienating those who do not. In this vein, craft beer storytelling also draws attention to the performance of authenticity (Thurnell-Read 2014) in the serving of craft beer. For some, the reality of bar work is that the authentic stance is to accept the temporary nature of gig economy employment, pocket the wage and move as quickly as possible on to safer occupations. The nature of ‘authenticity’ in this milieu is called into question as ‘crafty’ bar staff redraw accepted boundaries involving consumers in their discourse without leading to a commoditisation of the transaction (Cohen 1988).

Concluding Thoughts There are many reasons why stories are told in craft beer bars—to educate consumers, to create value, to reinforce and maintain the performance of and/or reconfigure the performativity of craft beer culture, to communicate the expertise of the server—but here we have taken interest in how these stories are told. Thurnell-Read (2014, 1465) writes, “Further research might explore how ideas of craft and authenticity diffuse through popular culture over time and might seek to better understand the role of intermediaries such as bar and pub owners … in sustaining, developing or contesting the narratives of producers.” Our ‘creata’ shows that the stories told in craft beer bars are often not complete narratives, but

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segments which are transposed between the narratives of server and drinker. These segments are also given different purposes by their narrators, morphed into gobbets of craft beer trivia (or creative non-fiction). Our focus on bar stories raises other dimensions of the role of stories in service encounters. Smith Maguire et al. (2017) explore how brewers use “storytelling devices to communicate themselves to the market” (p. 20), observing that they do this by narrating stories about (i) themselves, (ii) customers and (iii) their peers. Likewise, we have observed in our beer stories here that servers narrate craft beer stories by weaving together gobbets and fragments about imaginary selves, even if they don’t know anything about the product in question, they might be invited to “make it up!” (story three). When Holly and Daniel learned that beer stories might be wild creations or figments of the servers’ imagination, notions of the inauthentic, lies and fake stories emerged. But as with the brewers’ stories of authenticity in Thurnell-Read (2014), “so obviously wildly made up” stories might signal a “willingness to playfully subvert” (Thurnell-Read 2014, 1464) more scripted attempts, such as the example with Stella Artois, to stage theatrical server performances. Servers also contribute toward embodied performances by retelling their customers’ stories (story one) and servers act together (story two) weaving stories with their peers. Indeed, it is in the stories about themselves (not other customers or other servers) that we most clearly see the implications of craft beer stories where “…much of ‘the work of enrichment’ (Boltanski and Esquerre 2015) is achieved through the marshalling of symbolic meanings, cultural value and affective attachments” (Thurnell-Read 2014, 1462). A risk here is that servers who spin fairy tales might come undone because if a community of committed and knowledgeable consumers spot server attempts to fabricate stories, this could result in anger and/or decreased patronage. After all, the majority of beer drinkers expect servers to know something about the beer they serve. The Cask Report states “Staff are expected to understand and be able to describe drinks, enthusing about beer and sharing recommendations. 86% of cask drinkers expect bar staff to have received some training in beer—and the industry risks losing these consumers if they fail to deliver.” (Nunny 2017–2018, 23)

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Lastly, our interpretations resonate with Boje’s notion that storytelling is an inherently pragmatic processually framed practice. Yet adopting this lens also illustrates the anti-pragmatism of some types of storytelling in the craft beer bar, where the performance of elaborate storytelling and exchange of tasting notes inhibits not only the experience of the drinker, but also the transaction itself. Observing the use of gobbets may open up opportunities to illuminate the processes of the adaptation and exaptation of meaning as the gobbets segue from one context to another, maybe un-purposed or tentative, context. Drink-based contexts permit what Collini (2013) has called “the ungovernable play of the enquiring mind.” Perhaps though it is simply a case of too much talking, and not enough drinking.

Appendix 1 Hopping recipes for home brewers to mimic Black Sheep and Tim Taylor’s Landlord

Black Sheep Pale gold ale with distinctive hop character. Powerful attack of Fuggles with malt background. Peppery hop in the mouth and in the long, bitter finish. All the ingredients required to make the Black Sheep Best Bitter Recipe. 18 g Challenger Hops 23 g Fuggles Hops 10 g Goldings Hops 195 g Crushed Crystal Malt 2 kg Light dried malt extract 500 g Wheat malt extract Choice of yeast Bitterness 35.06 IBU. ABV 4.25%

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Timothy Taylor’s Landlord All Grain Best Bitter homebrew recipe. This homebrew recipe uses the following ingredients: Maris Otter Pale Ale Malt Chocolate (US) Styrian Golding (SI) Hops East Kent Golding (UK) Hops Safale S-04 Homebrew Yeast Bitterness 36.8 IBU. ABV 4.3%

References Astaire, Fred singing to “One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)”. Song written for him to perform in the movie The Sky’s the Limit (1943). Words by Johnny Mercer and music by Harold Arlen, dance by Fred Astaire. https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD7sqGJ3NBg&list=RDFD7sqGJ3NBg&st art_radio=1 Accessed 26 April 2020. Bartunek, J. M. (2019). Contemplation and Organization Studies: Why contemplative activities are so crucial for our academic lives. Organization Studies, 40(10), 1463–1479. Boje, D. (2001). Narrative Methods for Organizational & Communication Research. New York: Sage Boje, D. & Rosile, G. A. (2010). Storytelling. In Mills, A. J, Durepos, G. & Wiebe, E. (Eds), Encyclopedia of Case Study Research. California: Sage. Boje, D. (2011). Storytelling and the Future of Organizations: An Antenarrative Handbook. London: Routledge Boje, D (2014). Storytelling Organizational Practices. London: Routledge. Boltanski, L., & Esquerre, A. (2015). Grappling with the economy of enrichment. Valuation Studies, 3(1), 75–83. Brinkmann, S. (2014). Doing without data. Qualitative Inquiry, 20(6), 720–725. Brinkmann, S. (2012). Qualitative inquiry in everyday life: Working with everyday life materials. Sage.

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Clarke, D.  W., Weir, D. & Patrick, H. (2019). Craft Beer, Cicerones and Changing Identities in Beer Serving. In Kelliher, C & Richardson, J. (Eds), Work, Working and Work Relationships in a Changing World (pp. 119–140). London: Routledge. Cohen, E. (1988). Authenticity and Commoditization in tourism. Annals of Tourism Research, 15(3), 371–386 Cullen, F. (2011). ‘The only time I feel girly is when I go out’: Drinking stories, Teenage girls, and respectable femininities. International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, 16(2), 119–138. Collini, S. (2013) Sold Out; London Review of Books,; Vol. 35 No. 20, 24 October 2013. Cunliffe, A. L. (2018). Wayfaring: A Scholarship of Possibilities or Let’s not get drunk on abstraction. M@ n@ gement, 21(4), 1429–1439. Dehelean, C. (2017). Ye merry olde pub. Annales Universitatis Apulensis. Series Philologica, 18(1), 345–354. Dempster, S. (2011). I drink, therefore I’m man: Gender discourses, alcohol and the construction of British undergraduate masculinities. Gender and Education, 23(5), 635–653. Fehribach, D. (2017). Crafting Craft Beer Brands. PhD Dissertation: University of Central Florida. Hartmann, B. J. (2016). Peeking behind the mask of the prosumer: Theorizing the organization of consumptive and productive practice moments. Marketing Theory, 16(1), 3–20. Hede, A.  M., & Watne, T. (2013). Leveraging the human side of the brand using a sense of place: Case studies of craft breweries. Journal of Marketing Management, 29(1–2), 207–224. Koziol, A. (2015). Crafting Beer, Crafting Community: An exploration into the portrayal of craft beer. BA thesis of Swarthmore College. London, J. R. (2014). New Portlandia: Rock ‘n’ Roll, Authenticity and the Politics of Place in Portland, Oregon. PhD Dissertation: City University of New York. Nunny, P (2017–2018) The Cask Report (2017–2018) On Trade UK Beer Market Oxford University. (2017). History Faculty Course Handbook Honour School of History Prichep, D. (2013). Wine Has Sommeliers. Now, Beer Has Cicerones. http:// www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/08/24/214582851/wine-­has-­sommeliers-­ now-­beer-­has-­cicerones. Accessed 28 April 2020.

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Rukeyser, M. (2005). The Speed of Darkness. (Stanza 9) In Levi, J. H., Kaufman, J. E., Herzog, A. F., & Rukeyser, M. (Eds.), The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser University of Pittsburgh Press. Schumpeter, J. (1942) Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy: New York; Harper and Brothers Shotter, J. (2006). Understanding process from within: An argument for ‘withness’-thinking. Organization Studies, 27(4), 585–604. Smith Maguire, J.  S., Bain, J., & Davies, A. (2017). Storytelling and market formation: An exploration of craft brewers in the United Kingdom. Untapped: Exploring the Cultural Dimensions of Craft Beer, 19–38. Sismondo, C. (2011) America Walks into a Bar: A Spirited History of Taverns and Saloons, Speakeasies and Grog Shops. Oxford University Press. Sheahan, T. (2018). Cicerone celebrates 10 years. Brewers Journal, January: 14. Thurnell-Read, T. (2014). Craft, tangibility and affect at work in the microbrewery. Emotion, Space and Society, 13: 46–54. Tovey, Sir Donald. (1935) Bruckner’s 4th Symphony. Essays in Musical Analysis, Vol. II (1935), p.71.: Oxford: Oxford University Press. Waehning, N., Karampela, M & Pesonen, J (2018). ‘Craft’ as a contested term: authenticity and meaning among British beer consumers. In Bell, E., Mangia, G., Taylor, S., & Toraldo, M.  L. (Eds.). The Organization of Craft Work: Identities, Meanings, and Materiality, London: Routledge.

9 Arbitrage and Autopoiesis in Police Sergeants’ Stories: More Than “Canteen Culture” David Weir

Author’s Note The research was carried out by a team of three and my thanks are due to my two valued colleagues who were partners in the fieldwork and of course to the police people whose stories these are. The story reported relates to field data collected by the author. For this new venture, only the present author can take responsibility and I gratefully acknowledge my debt to the two colleagues, Craig Marsh and Wilf Greenwood (Weir et al. 2005). As street-level bureaucrats, sergeants face wicked problems that do not entail right or wrong solutions. They are front line workers for police organisations and often the first point of contact with the public. Their

D. Weir (*) Huddersfield University, Huddersfield, UK York St John University, York, UK University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Vine, S. Richards (eds.), Stories, Storytellers, and Storytelling, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07234-5_9

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work is “edgework” and subject to unexpected intensification and escalation, and the actions of a sergeant must mediate between apparently fixed legal and conflicting organisational expectations in order to achieve situational justifiability and thus their stories carry strong implications of ethical variability. This chapter presents and evaluates (as a story) a critical incident in performing the role of the police sergeant. The outcome of the sequence of events reported in the story is autopoietic in that the solution to a wicked problem is framed in terms of existing rules, but the street-level decision-making permits the organisation to stretch the ethical operational envelope and creatively develop its repertoire of solutions.

Beyond Canteen Culture The line of authority that links the police forces of the United Kingdom to the political process runs from the Cabinet (in the role of the Home Secretary) to individual police persons acting “lawfully” on legally defensible bases. The context of any specific action as well as the contemporary social and political frameworks are both relevant to its interpretation. This research therefore occurred in a precise socio-political context that requires explanation. In the early noughties, the Home Secretary was a senior Labour politician who was regarded as forthright and plain-­ speaking, convinced of the societal need for stability and strong law enforcement, but equally critical from time to time of both the judiciary and the police. He presided over a substantial rise in recruitment of entry grade officers, and in a 10% rise in the recruitment of officers from an ethnic minority background and in a substantial, overall strengthening of police budgets. The Home Secretary suggested publicly that police work was in many respects inefficient and ill-organised, as well as expensive, with a pension-entitlement that risked long term burdens on the Exchequer. He intimated that he saw merit in considering radical restructuring of the organisation of police work, reducing the rank structures and encouraging reductions in overtime, manning, and immutable pension contribution inflation by eliminating the rank of the sergeant. Such sentiments became the focus of much publicity and public conflict (BBC 2001).

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This agenda became known to the various police forces of the United Kingdom and the Police Federation (as the representative body defending the interests of serving police people, though not explicitly as a Trade Union, being denied such elements of TU action as the use of the strike weapon). The Federation’s structure parallels the grade/rank structures of the police, and the Sergeants’ Central Committee is concerned with the interests of those Federation members holding the rank of sergeant. It was a central tenet of their understanding of what police work was all about, that this rank of sergeant had traditionally been regarded as the central point of the police structure, the pivotal focus. Historically, it had become the fulcrum of police work and the essential area of co-­ performance linking the managerial levels of the higher ranks (from Inspectors through Superintendents to the Command posts of Assistant Chief Constables and Chief Constables), with those forming the operational delivery of service, service roles within the police itself, and with similarly positioned roles in agencies concerned with health, social services, housing and social work, and other blue light services such as Ambulance and Fire Services. Their immediate capability to put up a reasoned case against the radical reform agenda of the Home Secretary in other terms than a reactively limited defence of established rights, privileges and accepted modes of working was that there appeared to be no recent credible evidence-based interpretation of how, in practical terms, the work of the police sergeant made a difference in the delivery of the contemporary police mission. This project proposed a study based on original field work and conducted to regular standards of social scientific research, leading to a report that would support an objectively coherent model of the value added by the rank of the sergeant to the delivery of police services. The budget available from the sponsor of the project was small and the time scale was extremely limited. While there was some (though not very much) extant research since the classic work of Chatterton (1976, 1979, 1983, 1987) on the topic in UK policing, it had been felt by the sponsors that many of the established experts in the field might be regarded by the authorities as relatively compromised by their being perceived as holding particular opinions or commitments to agendas that compromised their objectivity in the eyes of the senior policymakers. This added to an increased

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political risk of the type, summed up in the widely known phrase of Mandy Rice-Davies “well, he would, wouldn’t he”, succinctly shortened to MRDA (MRDA 2020). So the sponsors selected a research team of three academics, with experience of police work, but based externally to the UK with no recent “form” in police studies that could lead critics of the subsequent report to dismiss it as the expression of previously held prejudices about the topic being studied. The research therefore had to be presentable as new, evidence-based, understandable and credible. Parliament in the United Kingdom passes laws and The Queen in Parliament gives them the authoritative backing of the state, but it is the police as street-level bureaucrats (Lipsky 1969) who make law as interpreted and operationalised in practice. Police sergeants like many front-­ line workers as first-line supervisors in “blue light” occupations face “wicked problems” for which easy solutions are unavailable and are responsible for actions that impinge directly on members of the public. Their work is “edgework” and subject to unexpected intensification and escalation (Granter et al. 2019). Despite the intermittent intensity, street-­ level decisions must be conformable to existing legal principle and known precedent, but also open to becoming useful for future instances of similar situations. To achieve this, they must be both rigid and flexible, fixed and evolving, internally credible and externally legitimate, transparent and available, definite but subject to challenge. While the outcomes of policing work may be measured in statistics, in managing operational dilemmas police sergeants use stories as vital components of their working practice. A story is a “remembered series of events” (Becker 1932) and police people are familiar with stories because clients use them in their discourse and they themselves use stories as working tools in their diurnal professional work. Police work is storytelling work and is performed within storytelling organisations (Boje 1991). Police people often demonstrate suspicion of the police themselves becoming the focus or centre of the story, because their craft experience is that too often this turn represents bad news for them (Bittner 1970). Police stories in the media tend sometimes to emerge as narratives crafted around an implicit suspicion of police wrongdoing. Ironically, it may be these stories that characteristically became the chief drivers of organisational change as the long and densely contested stories of the Stephen

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Lawrence murder and the Hillsborough stadium disaster illustrate (Conn 2012; MacPherson 1999). Sometimes the framing of media stories may be organised around memes of lack of transparency, even of overt lying (Manning 1974), corruption (Morton 1993; Kutnjak Ivkovic 2005) or of masculine tropes of force, violence and male friendship (Newburn and Stanko 1994). The dominant male occupational culture, often described as “canteen culture” (Waddington 1999a, 1999b), is characterised by assertiveness, machismo and toughness and these values may appear prominent among female police people, too. This culture exists throughout the United Kingdom, though stronger in areas like Northern Ireland where there are exacerbating cultural features (Fielding 1994; Fielding and Fielding 1992; Brewer and Magee 1991). “Canteen culture” has become in the literature a shorthand term, somewhat demeaning in its utilisation, for a whole range of police storying both by police people and researchers, but its one-size-fits-all repetition does little justice to the wide diversity of police stories. Thus, “canteen culture” is sometimes defined pejoratively. The Cambridge Dictionary (2020), for example, offers the following definition: ‘racist and sexist attitudes shared by many ordinary workers within an organisation, especially attitudes that the organisation officially disapproves of ’ (Cambridge Dictionary 2020). But the culture of police canteens and of police occupational discourse in general is not well defined by this shorthand. The training and formation of police people involves the use of story, formally and informally, identifying themes, role-plays, case studies, anecdotes and hypothetical accounts as central opportunities for storytelling in which verisimilitude justifies the storytelling method as appropriate for the transfer of knowledge (Smith 1999). In this initial phase, they start to be socialised into the ways that more experienced officers appear to expect them to interact with a motile and diverse set of terrains, territories and populations. In simplifying the potentially unmanageable diversity of these contexts, stories enable structure and provide order to help frame police decision-making, especially when the street-level decision makers have to arbitrate between competing ethical frames. Operational verisimilitude and pragmatic relevance are among the key features of storytelling in police contexts, for without these features,

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stories are of no use to professional police people. But the success criteria are not merely those of objective, absolute truth, but of utility for furthering the objectives of police work (Cain 1973), and these expected outcomes become especially significant when considering the role of knowledge-­creation and maintenance in police organisations (Luen and Al-Hawamdeh 2001). Insights into the wider viability of storytelling as a research approach have come from ethnographic and fieldwork-based research by classic studies such as those of van Maanen whose “tales from the field” include “realist” and “confessional” tales, together with a category of “critical” tales (van Maanen 1988). The same “facts” can provide the basis for multiple stories (Miller et al. 1998) and many scholars have offered to provide overarching introductions to these topics (Gullion 2016; Cunliffe et al. 2009). Police sergeants on “the street” work as “street level bureaucrats” (Lipsky 1969). The framework of policing decisions seems clear and uncomplicated in legal frameworks that are specific and precise, but these have to be interpreted in the light of behaviours in diverse, contested, mixed and compromised situations where alternative courses of action are available for the individual police person faced with the need for decision. In sporting terms, the street-level bureaucrat has to play the ball that is actually in front of him/her and be prepared to live with the outcome and to be able to justify it in retrospect. Lipsky argues that these situational realities may compromise the clarity of what is stipulated by statute law and expected by society and infers that the system as a whole may be therefore perceived as degraded and the quality of outcomes deteriorated in consequence, frustrating the expectations of citizens and lawmakers. In this chapter, I argue that these stories do not necessarily degrade the legal frames but are rather sophisticated pieces of crafting that subtly mediate between ethical zones and lay out possibilities for flexible interpretations justifying alternative outcomes. This chapter aims to move not too far away from van Maanen’s “realist” type of tale. This story by no means aspires to the rights claimed by the retrospectively omniscient recorder, that bogey narrator, characterised by van Maanen who “… speaks for the group studied as a passive observer who roams imperialistically across the setting to tell of events that happen

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in this way or that” (van Maanen 2011, 53). But from an auto-­ ethnographic stance, I am honoured to present credentials including that I have been involved with police work for many years, as a teacher since 1962, with at least two Chief Constables as former students, and others as associates, over many years’ involvement with several police forces including West Yorkshire, Humberside, Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Merseyside, and with police people in my immediate family, so not an insider, but one who has lived for many years in close association with insiders. Many pints have been sunk in pursuit of these truths. Many stories have been heard and discussed. No particular claim is made for any special “authenticity” for the stories repeated and dealt with here; except perhaps for one suggestion. Many researchers avoid the positivistic, quantitative, statistical bases for “objectivity”, but still claim a right to be treated themselves as “objective” recounters of other people’s tales. All researchers wish to be seen as honest brokers of the authenticity of respondents on the grounds of their claimed objectivity, their lack of any explicit taking of sides because they are equally fair to all respondents and have passed the tests of fairness prescribed by the Ethics Committee of their own employer, the University of Snooty on the Hill, ivory tower department. However, the broader research agenda of which this chapter forms a part made a double claim, that of the usual scholarly virtues as researchers but also as a team of professionals, acting as consultants to an organisation of which they as individuals were supporters. In this sense, they sought to identify the organisational virtue in the contribution made by the sergeants themselves, in their own words. There was no inducement for any respondent to provide a misleading account, but every pressure to cleave tightly to the paths of veracity. Scholars seeking REFable status after all are not the only professional group to claim a preference for the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

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Methods The broader research project of which this chapter forms a part involved multi-methods, consisting first of a comprehensive review of the extant literature on the role of the police sergeant and comparable grades in the United Kingdom and in other police jurisdictions worldwide (Punch 1979; Chatterton 1987). Next, an intensive field study was undertaken in one major urban police force in England, based on interviewing a representative sample of 72 serving police sergeants in one-to-one interviews and then a further 25 in focus groups. The fieldwork was undertaken in April 2004. It was in this phase of the research that we were most exposed to stories from sergeants on which this paper is based. Finally, we conducted an online survey with elements derived from the field study achieving a sample of 10% of all sergeants in England and Wales amounting to over 2000 responses. From this vast cache of data, notable stories were distilled, including the one presented in this chapter. The context of the stories with which I am concerned in this chapter is an example of research being undertaken for the objective of identifying what it is that police sergeants do that adds value to the commonweal of society in general and to police organisations specifically (Weir et al. 2005, 1). To an extent, then, this research was “opportunistic” (Riemer 1977), but interesting nonetheless, as an attempt to redress the study of narrative and storytelling in a police context, “which remains an under-researched, although not unexplored, subject of study” (Smith et al. 2014, 218).

The Sergeant’s Story This is a verbatim extract from an interview with a sergeant in our sample. In response to an open-ended question from the researcher to give an example of how holding the rank of sergeant has framed his decision-­ making, he tells this story: Our divisional priority is robbery. Any robbery that occurs, we must deal with it positively. A robbery came in which was a nasty one. Two

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juveniles had been subjected to robbery at knife point. A gold chain and mobile phone was stolen. The two juveniles came home and told their father, and he turned up at one of the offender’s addresses and he recovered the chain, but not the phone. We know everything and we should respond to it. Just before this, there had been an incident where an old lady had been subjected to an aggravated burglary. And one of the offenders had been chased and we had secured him in an area and two of my constables were in control in that area. I was the only sergeant on duty; all other constables were busy on other essential tasks. Then this “robbery” comes in. As my procedures tell me, I have to “look around your division” so I asked—“Is there any other constable who is available?” and the answer is that there was not. So I waited until the night shift came on. I then directed a constable to go to the house, locate the offender and if he was still there, secure the missing property and lock up the offender. When I come back on the day after, I’m told by one of my constables that the boss, my inspector, is furious and that I’m ‘for the high jump’ for not responding to the robbery when it came in. So I go up there. I’m not too impressed when I go in there and it’s no “Hello, how are you?” It’s just a piece of paper pushed across the desk and “What do you know about that?” So I don’t say anything and then he says “Are you aware of the Divisional Priorities about Robbery? And how you should respond to it? ” And he went on about this and that and I said, “Have you finished?” and he said “Yes”, and I told him, “Can you have a look at the incident?” This incident log tells you the actions that I have taken. “As I’ve said, there were no constables available … if you want to carry out a resource check on what these constables were doing, then that’s your prerogative but I will tell you what they were doing because I am responsible for these constables. These constables were doing this, this, this and this … and there were no others available. That’s why we didn’t attend this incident, but I did direct the constable coming on shift.” So he said “Right, I was going to b*****k you but now I understand why you did what you did.”

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Analysing the Sergeant’s Story This story illustrates the way in which the sergeant has to translate generic policy instructions into practical actions. He has to make sense of the higher-level policies and deliver results that work on the street (Lipsky 1969). In this case, the policy of the organisation as well as the strict interpretation of the legal priorities advised strongly that a crime classifiable as a “robbery” should be given priority over a distressing situation in which no “serious” crime had occurred. But the sergeant must make sure that both his superiors and his team members understand the realistic and appropriate way to deal with complex situations, while himself remaining in charge of a quickly evolving sequence of events. He is thus the lynchpin in this organisation of narrative forces. He has to hear the story before telling it. There is of course a legal definition of what constitutes a “robbery” under the Theft Act 1968 Section 8/1. A robbery is comprised of two characteristics: theft and the use or threat of violence. This sounds quite straightforward, but like many aspects of police work it is in practice rather complex. Interestingly, a standard legal textbook advises that “robbery is an offence in which the legal definition does little to identify the complexity of forms that it might take” (Bennett and Brookman 2010). In the story, there is no implication that the features noted under the Theft Act were not present. So there is a legal frame here because the sergeant understands how these events can be “crimed”; that is, framed as events that are covered by the relevant legal definition, facilitating a formal charge. There is also a managerial and bureaucratic frame as the explicit policy of the division towards such events is that if an event can be crimed as a robbery, then there is a responsibility to attempt to secure a conviction (because this offence is a division priority, publicly reinforced by a slogan to that effect on the wall of the police station). Once an action can be crimed, it becomes available for recording, analysis and reporting as a success or failure. The sergeant knows that his decisions may in any event be subsequently challenged by higher authority (as it was indeed in this case) so

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he has to be sure of his ground and able to justify his actions. But he believes himself to be empowered to take decisions in a way which is creative and develops the apparent possibilities available to facilitate an outcome that is situationally correct. The sergeant has to make the best use of the resources available on the spot at that time, though time itself is framed in accordance with complex and diverse implicit social meanings (Grossin 1993). So from the start, the sergeant is facing more than one way in seeking to optimise the decision-making. These conflicting patterns infuse all of street police work, from the daily bureaucratic rituals to the sudden eruptions of violence and danger that can occur at any time. Thus this police person has to be able to manage both the inexperienced constables, in accordance with the health and safety aspects of their supervision, but also to directly control the actions of more experienced constables, who may be suspected of having a tendency to cut corners if left to their own devices. So this sergeant’s story tells the listener that it is the rank (of sergeant) that enables him both to handle the complexities of the situation, but also to be able to defend it later as a successful outcome. This story illustrates the choices that the sergeant has had to make in order to achieve a viable outcome, sequentially, as these choices have been presented to him. First, a decision has to be made about what constitutes a significant event worthy of the sergeant’s attention. In practice, this can be interpreted as considering whether a crime may have been committed—in police jargon, whether these events can be “crimed”. There is a formal procedure for deciding whether a specific event can be crimed (Home Office 2020). But the very bureaucratic specificity, and the legalistic language of these protocols make it inevitable that street decision-­ making follows simpler procedural rules to justify particular decisions. The sergeant needs to compare and rate these two sets of events in terms of relevant significance, bearing in mind that an event that can be crimed as a “robbery” carries more subsequent administrative weight than allaying the fears of a frightened old lady. The sergeant has the opportunity to adopt a purely temporal scheme for prioritising, which could have finessed the decision by adopting a policy of “first things first” and this might well be defensible in any later questioning. Or he could have taken the alternative route, that of a response in terms of what the

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organisational hierarchy is expecting of him, prioritising conformity to current organisational expectations. But what he does is neither of these two things; and his story tells us that this was a judgement call. Second, there is within the story a sub-theme relating to the prioritisation of resources. The sergeant has finite resources at his disposal and has both to solve the problems that occur on his watch and to keep enthusiasm and morale high for self and the team as potential resources for what tomorrow may bring. Third, there is a choice about the time and nature of his reporting of the incidents. He chooses not to make the instant report which complies with the hierarchy’s perception of priorities but to leave some writing up for more mature reflection the following day when he has had the opportunity to see what has actually happened in the case of each incident, given the natural effluxion of time. Fourth, the sergeant is faced on the next morning with a changed situation in that a potential threat to his organisational rank and authority has occurred, for it is a junior constable, one of his subordinates, who advises, that he, the sergeant and central agent in this story is “for the high jump”. That has to be dealt with because this is more than nuance; this feedback comes from a hierarchical junior and so implicates the essence of the sergeant’s prerogative of rank. Finally, the respondent is emphasising the spatial context in which this chain of decisions occurs and at which point space itself becomes central to the analysis. This spatial reference is implicit. Clearly the robbery took place at some location, but nothing in the subsequent narrative is dependent on the precise physical location of this space. It remains virtual throughout. Each of these choices is explored in turn. When the sergeant explains that “The two juveniles came home and told their father, and he turned up at one of the offender’s addresses”, this implies a potential or even actual loss of control of the terrain by the sergeant. It is the victim’s father who has led an expeditionary force into the contested area, in fact in the quasi-enemy territory of the home of the offender. But the sergeant’s account relates that he has realised this and has by accepting the intervention of the victims’ father sorted the situation between the two fathers and he is offering that as a solution to the

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“robbery”. This choice does not involve criming the incident, but treating it implicitly as a civil and familial matter: so it is now up to the inspector whether he accepts the subsequent dispositions. Clearly the sergeant is on debatable legal ground because as any fule kno (Willans 1953) from an abundance of TV courtroom procedurals that it is not acceptable to “take the law into your own hands”. By solemnly denying the interest and intervention of the victim’s father the sergeant may be behaving to the letter of the law and perhaps notching up a win on the “robberies solved” scoreboard, but he would be frustrating an acceptable outcome already achieved. The sergeant goes on to report that “one of the offenders had been chased and we had secured him in an area”. This refers to another contested space in which the perpetrators of another offence have been located and controlled and this space is now safe. The sergeant then amplifies his solution to the second problem when noting that “two of my constables were in control in that area”. This refers to the actions taken to control this space in which the two perpetrators have been located and corralled. Again the location is virtual to the inspector by now, but he is making the point that this situation has been brought under control but at the resource cost of the involvement of two constables. And they cannot be in two places simultaneously. The sergeant then generalises the point regarding the shortage of resources: “As my procedures tell me I have to ‘look around your division’ so I asked—‘is there any other constable who is available?’” By referencing this, he is illustrating both that he is aware of the standard operating procedures and that he is using them by way of rationale. But, as he suspects, he is unable to create extra resource: there is no slack in the system. At this point, the inspector has to take a virtual equivalent of a “look around” and determine what resources may be available. He has to command the terrain from a position that offers a fair view of all actual and potential resources. At this point, he is nearly “monarch of all he surveys” and the resources virtually available can be moved into new physical positions if necessary. But if he vacates his space, he may lose control, so he stays on shift after the shift-transfer time to ensure that it is his solution that is implemented. All of the sergeant’s actions can be construed as establishing control of each of the incidents in a legitimate and defensible series of decisions. He

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then directs a junior to physically go and retrieve the property: “I then directed one constable to go to the house, locate the offender and if he was still there, secure the missing property and lock up the offender.” He could have attended himself, but in so doing would have surrendered the control of the virtual space in achieving some control of the actual. When the sergeant decides to “go up there” to the inspector’s office in the Central Police Station, this is a major choice and one with potentially negative consequences for the sergeant. Instead of dealing with this situation in due course, the sergeant makes the choice to escalate the threat and raise the stakes by leaving his post to confront the senior person who is apparently the source of the “high jump” threats. He now has to travel out of his own comfortable decisional space in the neighbourhood police station and move into the threatening territory of the Central Police Station. This is a clear purposive choice not to wait for further action from his line superior. The sergeant feels that he has to meet his superior on that superior’s own turf. He then has to make the choice as to how to defend the decisions he has taken, all the time on the basis of imperfect knowledge, incomplete factual basis and uncertainty as to the hierarchical support he can expect. He does this in a confident, assured way that compels his superior to acknowledge not only that the sergeant’s choice was a reasonable one but even that he might have handled this complex situation in the same way. Finally the sergeant positions the choices he had to make in the defensible argument that the better use of the resources available was to have an officer attend the incident he had judged to be the more serious even if it did not evidently conform to the senior management’s expressed priorities. The story emphasises that the sergeant knows the formal organisational rules of engagement, but that in a specific situation, he can, at least, bend them. In telling this story, this sergeant is in some danger of becoming the hero of his own lunchtime in not only defending his turf adequately but also in carrying the confrontation on to away turf in challenging his superior. But although this story seems at one level to be concerned with relatively trivial events, the outcome and how it has been justified has implications because it also implicitly changes the way the organisation does business, by creating ‘case law’ for handling these kinds of situation

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in future. The story is deniable but represents an offer of decisional arbitrage in being both an offer and a response, a buy and a sell.

Autopoietic Story This idea of autopoiesis is based on Maturana and Varela’s analysis (1980), developed by Luhmann (1986), and described by Seidl (2004). The use of it in the current context is discussed more specifically in Weir et al. (2009). Significant organisational decisions occur when outcomes are contestable; as von Foerster observed: “[o]nly those questions that are in principle undecidable, we can decide” (von Foerster 1992, 14). A process can be characterised as autopoietic where the elements of a system are being reproduced by the elements of that system without obvious external agency (Luhmann 1986). On the basis of these encounters with the changing reality of the street and its challenges, the organisation evolves. This narrative of the sergeant reveals an autopoietic sequence, in the sense that the story reports how the organisation has developed a new performance option—representing potential for change—without appearing to break formal structure in its essentials. The sergeant’s decision mediates between a number of possible alternative decisions: and while the relevant law and the appropriate administrative constraints are understood and invoked, the sergeant’s situational awareness has enabled the decisions actually taken to bend these restraints and allow the organisation to move on without losing face. The situation facing the sergeant constitutes an example of a “wicked” problem. Wicked problems (Churchman 1967; Rittel et  al. 1973) are those that have no obvious solution available in the current repertory that an organisation is competent and experienced to deal with. The characteristics of a “wicked” problem include that the problem is not understood until after the formulation of a solution, that they have no stopping rule, that their solutions tend not to be clearly right or wrong, that every wicked problem is essentially unique in some aspect, and that every solution to a wicked problem is a one shot operation, without given alternative solutions (Conklin 2006).

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The story has clear ethical implications, but these do not reduce to imposing a prior ethical framework, or in simply justifying post hoc the rights and wrongs with the benefit of hindsight. This situational discretion is located in the middle of the organisational hierarchy as a “domain of alternatives … in normal peace-keeping activities in which considerations of legality play a subordinate role but which meet certain tacit public expectations” (Bittner 1967). In this context, it is appositely noted by Waddington that “The law is the servant of ethical discretion, not its master; it is a tool for the maintenance of respectable values” (Waddington 1999b). A “tool” can be taken up and also put down; its use is justified by its outcome. These discretionary possibilities imply different outcomes; many of which are equally “justifiable” (Chatterton 1987; Manning and van Maanen 1977). But what actually happens becomes ethically sanctioned by being situationally justified (Manning 1977) and disposed to favour future rather than immediate success. Circumstances do alter cases in practical decision-making. Thus new norms are created through decisive actions and justified in ways that permit them to be subsequently re-embedded in the justifications for future actions. The norming is a process that is producing, reproducing and potentially transforming the norms of behaviour. Events have changed options. Circumstances, in the old adage, have indeed altered cases in an evolving present. The organisation has mutated and added to its repertoire of action-possibilities for this sergeant and others. Police sergeants’ stories exemplify craft skills, mediating between an official, explicit and apparently programmed social identity comprehensible by and acceptable to members of their client and customer groups and one that is consistent with their self-identities as competent professionals. These narratives are themselves storytelling performances, “constituted, negotiated and revised by participants” (Georgakopoulou 1997) playing a ‘pattern fitting’ or ‘sense-making’ role in their organisational contexts (Boje 1991). The stories fit the context, and the ‘sense’ made in the narrative enables front-line managers to translate senior management rationality into something that works without compromising their craft integrity in organisational contexts characterised by high levels of uncertainty and inability to predict the future (Malhotra 1998). In these

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settings, the stories have to embody how the agents exercise normative arbitrage. Street-level police people use discretion (Chatterton 1983; Manning and van Maanen 1977) because in their decision-making they have to straddle competing ethical arenas, sometimes (as in Northern Ireland during The Troubles) between the benign arena of normal policing where community needs and empathetic response are paramount  and the repressive, semi-militarised field of instant response and quick, decisive control are paramount (Fielding and Fielding 1991). These responses are characterised not by a stable binary preference for one way of working over another but by mediative practices that leave things open for further interpretation and decisional arbitrage. Therefore these mini-narratives point forward. As van Hulst and Tsoukas (2021, 18) explain “the stories police officers [tell] are not only descriptions of sequences of events or even plots, but also performances of a ‘purposive’ professional identity (Chia and Holt 2006, 644): they are told from the perspective of the telos police work aims at, with officers manifesting their (sometimes agonizing) quest for better practice.” These wicked dilemmas are at the core of street-level decision-making and successful navigation of these troubled waters becomes the stuff of stories. This is how the autopoietic process works, through the organisational DNA located in the organisational middle, where alternative ethical possibilities lie and the street bureaucrats can exert normative arbitrage, not in codes of ethics imposed by the senior echelons of organisational hierarchies, or “visionary leadership” dislocated from street contingencies, nor in the counter-reaction of lower participants, significant as those may sometimes turn out to be (Mechanic 1962). It is close to the beating heart of the imperatively co-ordinated association that its pulses are generated, and its pulsations transformed into the vitalisation processes that ensure organisational survival through adaptation to changing realities on the street. Stories are much more than pallid representations of unchanging “canteen culture” but are scripts for continuing presentations, evolving canvases on which street-level decisions bend the organisational frontiers of law in the interests of better situational judgement.

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Luhmann, N. (1986) The autopoiesis of social systems ch 11  in Felix Geyer, Johannes van der Zouwen: Sociocybernetic Paradoxes: Observation, Control and Evolution of Self-Steering Systems: New York: Sage, MacPherson, W., 1999. The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry. Report of an Inquiry. [online] United Kingdom: The Stationary Office. Malhotra, Yogesh. (1998). Knowledge Management, Knowledge Organizations & Knowledge Workers: A View from the Front Lines [WWW document]. Accessed at on May 26, 2009) URL: http://www.brint.com/interview/ maeil.htm Manning, P. K. (1974). Police Lying. Urban Life and Culture, 3(3), 283–306. Manning, P.K. (1977)Rules, colleagues and situationally justified action,” in R.  Blankenship (ed.) (1977) Colleagues in Organizations: The Social Construction of Professional Work. New York: John Wiley. Manning, P.K., and van Maanen, J. (1977) ‘Rules, colleagues and situationally justified actions’ in P.K. Manning (editor) Policing: A View From the Street. New York: Random House. Maturana HR and Varela FJ.(1980) Autopoiesis and Cognition. London: Reidl; 1980 Mechanic, D. (1962) Sources of Power of Lower Participants in Complex Organizations Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 7, No. 3 (Dec., 1962), pp. 349–364 Miller, D. L., Creswell, J. W., & Olander, L. S. (1998). Writing and Retelling Multiple Ethnographic Tales of a Soup Kitchen for the Homeless. Qualitative Inquiry, 4(4), 469–491. https://doi.org/10.1177/107780049800400404 Morton, J. (1993) Bent Coppers: A survey of police corruption. London: Little Brown and Co MRDA (2020) Mandy Rice-Davies Applies; Wikipedia accessed at https://en. wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mandy_Rice-­Davies_Applies on 3 January 2021 Newburn, A. Stanko, E.A., (1994) Just Boys Doing Business?: Men, Masculinities and Crime: London: Psychology Press, 1994 Punch, M., (1979) Policing the Inner City: A Study of Amsterdam’s Warmoesstraat, London: Macmillan. Riemer, J.  W. (1977). Varieties of Opportunistic Research. Urban Life, 5(4), 467–477. Rittel, H., Horst W.J., Webber, M.M (1973), Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning. Policy Sciences. 4 (2): 155–169.

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Seidl, D. (2004) Luhmann’s theory of autopoietic social systems Münchner betriebswirtschaftliche Beiträge Munich Business Research 2004-2. Smith, K.G. (1999). The Role of Story Telling In a Police Probationer Training Classroom. PhD thesis. The Open University. Smith, R. Pedersen, S. & Burnett, S. (2014) Towards an Organizational Folklore of Policing: The Storied Nature of Policing and the Police Use of Storytelling, Folklore, 125:2, 218–237, https://doi.org/10.1080/0015587X.2014.913853 Van Maanen, J. (1988) Tales of the Field: Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Van Maanen, J. (2011). Ethnography as work: Some rules of engagement. Journal of management studies, 48(1), 218–234. Waddington, P.A.J. (1999a) ‘Discretion, ‘Respectability’ and Institutional Police Racism’ Sociological Research Online, vol. 4, no. 1, 269–283. Waddington, P.A.J. (1999b) Police (canteen) sub-culture. An appreciation The British Journal of Criminology, Volume 39, Issue 2, March 1999, Pages 287–309, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/39.2.287 Weir, D.T.H, Marsh, C., and Greenwood, W. (2009) How Organisational DNA Works: ch 12  in Costanzo, Lr, M and Mackay, R.B. Handbook of Research on Strategy and Foresight: Cheltenham, Edward Elgar Weir, D.T.H, Marsh, C., and Greenwood, W. (2005) How the rank of Sergeant adds value to the police service: report to the Sergeants Central Committee of the Police Federation Willans, G. (1953) Down with Skool! A Guide to School Life for Tiny Pupils and their Parents: London: Max Parrish Van Hulst, M. and Tsoukas, H. (2021): Understanding extended narrative sense-making: how police officers accomplish story work: Organization: 28 (5): 1–24

10 Restorying Trauma: Child Sexual Abuse Illustrations: Marley Theobald Aisha Howells

Note to readers: The language used to describe a situation and the people involved can be powerful. Although some people have preferences towards certain terminology, the words that begin to restory what has happened can often have wider implications in sexual violence discourse. Here, the terms victim/survivor are realigned to account for people’s multiple locations so as not to evoke assumptions of individual agency. This chapter also refers to the pronouns ‘we’ and ‘us’ as it is acknowledged that some people who work in the field of sexual violence or are Social Workers are victims/survivors. This chapter recognises it is not ‘them’ (victims/survivors) and ‘us’ (professionals), but together it is us. Stories provide a glimpse into the storyteller’s world. But do they truly reflect people’s experiences, or do they more usually compel us to tell our stories in line with traditional storytelling tropes? This chapter explores how narratives of trauma can constitute a framework to understand and

A. Howells (*) University of Suffolk, Ipswich, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Vine, S. Richards (eds.), Stories, Storytellers, and Storytelling, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07234-5_10

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respond to sexual violence in the United Kingdom. Narratives such as these tend to be strongly aligned with psychological and individualised approaches to recovery. This chapter critically examines the experience of trauma among adult victims/survivors of child sexual abuse and the complex, precarious relationship between story, storyteller and storytelling. Through this analysis, I attempt to tease out the tensions of how the implicit boundaries and systems which exist frame how and whether a story can be told or heard, contributing towards valuing certain victim/survivor experiences and silencing those whose stories do not fit. Often there is a tendency to reduce the messiness within stories to one ‘straightforward’ narrative; this risks overlooking the nuance of people’s experiences. We need to pay attention to the nuance in people’s stories as the detail matters; we need to make space for complexity and multiplicity in storytelling. In realising a sense of connectedness, this approach will enable victims/survivors to move beyond the realm of trauma and develop autonomy in storying what has happened, helping us to reclaim a sense of narrative. Trauma is a psychophysical experience brutally violating our mind and body (Rothschild 2000). It is not simply our verbal narratives which convey our personal stories of trauma; our bodies also integrate both trauma and the storyworld (Squire et al. 2014, p. 47). As such, this chapter explores the complex picture of trauma through a written and visual narrative. Visual narratives surround us and can act as a powerful aid to storytelling, providing rich reflections of experience and authenticity of people’s stories with narratives already embedded in imagery (Pink 2001). However, many scholars outline visual practices such as art and photography as symbolic representations which provide insight into the stories that lie beneath and between the imagery (Luttrell 2010). Together with narration, they become narrative co-constructions of the wider story (Donovan and Ustundag 2017). Arts-based methods such as these can be important for victims/survivors to story experiences (Murray et al. 2017) and stem from activist communities, challenging power structures and dominant narratives. Through offering written and visual components of storytelling in this chapter, it is hoped that this will mirror important connections for the reader in line with some of these ideas. The way in which a story is told often reflects the narrator’s interaction with the world and is shaped by the way in which they are both consumed and

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produced. As such, stories are both for the telling and the taking; we are ‘made up’ of many overlapping stories, and ‘our’ stories are embedded in the stories of others. Subsequently, the intention here is to enrich our understanding of the subtleties surrounding victim/survivor discourse, letting the images speak for themselves.

Illustration 10.1  Stories embedded in the stories of others

Mostly, stories reinforce the status quo (Solnit 2018). However, reframing existing narrative frameworks through a critical lens helps us in society to move away from polarising discourses which contribute towards and oversimplify current assumptions and stereotypes of victims/survivors. This, in part, is where the unknown becomes known and where the clarity about child sexual abuse lays bare the violation of victims/survivors, affecting our understanding, responses and protections. Drawing on a mixture of scholarly and grey literature, I have paid particular

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attention to publications which amplify victim/survivor voices alongside key inquiries into child sexual abuse. Consequently, this chapter claims that there is an emerging need for safe spaces which allow for diverse narratives. A different story of who and what matters. When you change your trajectory by even a few degrees at the outset, it can take you someplace completely different by the time you’ve walked a few miles, let alone gone along for decades (Solnit 2018, p. 38).

To truly understand a situation involving child sexual abuse, we must give a voice to people’s experiences, allowing new and unheard stories to evolve and expand the existing narratives. Telling personal stories is humanising and involves an important relational aspect influencing how we share and listen, where it is suggested that stories not only embody the things that people tell but are also what people live (McAdams 1993). This idea implies that our narratives are structured and shaped through socialisation, culturalisation and politicisation. In short, when and where we are born influences the kind of stories we hear and speak. Although powerful in helping people find common ground, stories can also be divisive, controlling and silencing, where we are unable to recognise ourselves in our surrounding communities. This suggests that what is said and what is omitted matters as it shapes victim/survivor experiences. There is danger within singular narratives and for some people, such as victims/survivors of the Global Majority, there are often difficulties in identifying what has happened because of prevailing social relations and discourses which, in effect, leave people voiceless. As a society, we have entrenched ideas which shape our understanding of how victims/survivors ‘should’ present or behave, and this chapter suggests how storying can both maintain the oppressive narrative structures and be used to transcend some of these difficulties. So, in the final part of the chapter, I explore how storytelling involving trauma can be used for social justice, helping us to agitate the social bounds of narratives. This requires storytellers and audiences to (re)claim our agentive positions within the storying process. Quite simply, stories matter. Child sexual abuse narratives are not banal bedtime stories; they

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are stories which galvanise us to do something. In this way, Social Workers, victims/survivors and those working in the field of child sexual abuse can take action against this crime.

Storytelling and Trauma A link between child sexual abuse and trauma is found in conventional— discourses of symptomology and medicalisation (Burstow 2003). This means that there is a risk that the narratives may reinforce a linear logic of symptoms, diagnosis and treatment. However, the intention here is to recognise that the language of trauma carries weight in validating and legitimating victim/survivor experiences. In addition, it is also noted that ‘trauma talk’ (Marecek 1999) has become normative in the field of sexual violence, and is synonymous with inferences of ‘recovery’ in which little attention is paid to the political (Burstow 2003) or social (Vera-Gray 2020) contexts. Recognising that our memories of traumatic events can be overwhelming and are not ‘stored’ and ‘labelled’ neatly is important. Victims/survivors may have engaged or may be engaging with a range of survival strategies to cope with what has happened to us. One example of this is dissociation, a process where the brain compartmentalises the abuse, through separation of the body, memory and mind. This psychological process, used as a survival strategy by the victim/survivor, can also be used intentionally as a tactic by perpetrators to control victims during the period of abuse (Miller 2012). This makes it difficult for victims/survivors to retrieve memories easily, if at all (Dell and O’Neill 2009) and stresses the fundamental connection between trauma and the body. As ‘Nadine’, victim/survivor (Jacobs-Kayam and Lev-Wiesel 2019, p. 9) notes: To escape the physical pain I taught myself to close my eyes and go inside to block out the pain. Even now, after all this time I still can’t go into my own mind to see all the details of what happened that day.

Body narratives co-present the personal story, projecting a visual and physiological narration of the traumatic events. Rothschild (2000)

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suggests that we hold an implicit memory of trauma in both our brains and bodies, and Van der Kolk (2014) reinforces this, suggesting that trauma leaves an imprint on us affecting the structure of our brain, our mind and our somatic memory. The symptoms can disrupt all aspects of human functioning and lead to a deterioration of physical, mental and behavioural health. As such, Rothschild (2000) highlights the importance of how understanding and bridging both the brain and body processes, and how we remember and perpetuate traumatic events, can facilitate recovery. One way to do this can be through supporting victims/survivors to find words to start the story, which can be profoundly meaningful and help to ‘reconstruct their inner map of the world’ (Van der Kolk 2014, p. 128). As Solnit notes (2018, p. 1): Once you name a disorder, you may be able to connect to the community afflicted with it, or build one. And sometimes what’s diagnosed can be cured. Naming is the first step in the process of liberation.

However, Alford (2016, p. 91) suggests exercising caution with respect to arguments which reduce trauma to a neuroscience because of the limitations around this type of research (see Edwards 2018). These individualising therapeutic approaches, although helpful to understanding the impact of trauma on oneself, may also risk some victims/survivors feeling pathologised as ‘damaged’. Victims/survivors experience a radical disruption of our world where our sense of self has been profoundly ruptured (Brison 2002) or ‘wounded’ (Burstow 2003, p. 1304). Once these ‘symptoms’ start to be viewed as socially located and as a source for sense-­ making, our knowledge of how victims/survivors’ narratives structure our experiences and our understanding of self can be enhanced. I was probably nine years old. I didn’t understand that it was abuse at that time. I thought I was dying. It was my brother that had abused me. … I wasn’t going to school. My mother had mental health problems so I could get around it. I sat all morning waiting to get her attention … it must have been late morning and she looked at me. I meant to say my brother had made me sick but instead I said she’d made me sick. So it all came out wrong (‘Wendy’, victim/ survivor, Bond et al. 2018, p. 17).

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We construct our understanding of self through our relationship with the social world to give meaning and coherence to our narratives (McAdams 2001). Story relates to human memory, revealing the hidden and making the unspeakable heard. However, a story involving traumatic events, such as childhood sexual abuse can be fragmented, unprocessed and emotional. As such, some view these as ‘broken narratives’ (Kokanović and Stone 2018, p. 20) and call the credibility of these stories into question due to the way in which they are told, where audiences expect polarised victim and villain narratives (Doane and Hodges 2001). However, these narratives can often be complex, thoughtfully crafted and constrained by powerful social, economic and psychological influences which impact both the remembering and the sharing of these stories. Powerful socioeconomic and psychosocial factors are enmeshed with trauma in Kanyeredzi’s (2018, p. 47) continuum of oppression. This theoretical framing highlights the complex interplay of structural pressures which exist alongside abuse, such as migration, age, poverty and racism. Such pressures can be ‘socially entrenched in lived experiences’ (Essed 1991 cited in Kanyeredzi 2018, p. 48). For example, Kanyeredzi (2018, p. 15) highlights a constraint faced by women of the Global Majority. In this case, to share stories of abuse and identify as a victim/survivor is to resist being further stigmatised. In this instance, multiple dimensions (i.e. being female, being a racialised female, as well as a victim/survivor) interact with one another to create a complex form of social inequality and oppression that may not fit with the hegemonic discourse of victims/ survivors and leaves people silenced, feeling powerless (IICSA 2020a) and ‘missing’ from research (Thiara and Roy 2020). We need to expand our understandings of the key narratives and challenge common misconceptions of victims/survivor experiences. For example, we can recognise how racism manifests in particular ways for Black Caribbean women who are often perceived and pathologised as ‘aggressive’ a view reinforced by the myth of being a ‘strong Black woman’ (Thiara and Roy 2020, p. 9). Such factors impact perceptions of victim/survivor coping and the protections offered. If we acknowledge the constraints of the social structural space and start to locate abuse in wider contexts, this may allow for more diverse, contextually embedded narratives to emerge.

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When considering child victims, statutory responsibilities involving protection, the principle of ‘best interest’ and legislation are crucial. This argument is clearly connected with multifaceted power dynamics, and arguably affects a victim/survivor’s sense of agency. However, there is also a risk that professionals and agencies lack sufficient insight and understanding, and so victims are left with the wolves. An extreme example of this involves the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham 1997–2013 (Jay 2014), where over 1400 children were sexually exploited. It was widely recognised that common attitudes and assumptions of victim agentic behaviours meant that there was a collective failure by agencies to recognise the children as victims. This was highlighted by participants in a report by Peach et al. (2015, p. 26) There are stereotypes of victims as slags and loose women… The girls might not be seen as victims as they were very aggressive towards authority.

Summit’s (1983) child sexual abuse accommodation syndrome suggests that society holds entrenched beliefs and expectations around normal coping behaviours and imposes these ideas onto how victims/ survivors should behave. This preconception of what victimhood ‘should look like’, inevitably propogates voicelessness and helplessness, and ultimately undermines disclosure and protection. Instead, we need to develop an awareness of the compelling reality for the victim/survivor and start to think differently around behaviours embodying trauma and what they mean. As such, there are many ways in which the abuse can be storied. For example, drawing on the victims/survivors from Rotherham, their experiences were not validated by those around them who were meant to offer protection. Therefore, this resulted in their behaviours manifesting in distrust, anger and rage. This, in turn, obscured the facts of the abuse. If we were to expand the possibilities of what a victim ‘looks like’ (and how our experiences can be storied), this will likely have a profound and positive impact for victims/survivors. Often these stories are not straightforward and victims/survivors are unable to frame the experience just ‘as it is’; this results in little more than silence.

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I waited practically years to say anything to anybody … because I didn’t know what to say or how to say it (Participant 18, Foster and Hagedorn 2014).

Many victims/survivors of childhood sexual abuse may not share details of the abuse or may delay telling the story (Parke and Karsna 2019). There can be complex and overwhelming emotional and cognitive processes at play in deciding whether or not to share details. McElvaney et al. (2012, p. 1155) describes the dynamics of this internal conflict as a ‘pressure cooker’. As one victim/survivor (McElvaney et al. 2013, p. 938) recalled I told my friends first. We were talking about… (another girl) was telling us her problems… and then like out of nowhere like I just felt like saying it cos it was like built up and all of a sudden I just said it. I mean, they were the first two I ever told.

However, for some victims/survivors the abuse can be an open secret within a community where protection of honour, family loyalty and reputation, fear of reprisals and being ostracised are powerful disincentives to share what has happened (IICSA 2020a) and contribute towards sustaining a climate of secrecy and silence. As one victim/survivor (IICSA 2020a, p. 39) noted: In the Jamaican/Caribbean culture, a lot of it has happened that we openly know, but it’s kept hush and it’s kept secret.

Often entwined with fear, power and threat, these secrets can adversely affect victims/survivors’ emotional well-being and ability to function. Although certainly challenging and not without significant risk for some victims/survivors, having the opportunity to open up and story the trauma, whether it be through therapeutic intervention, a trusted relationship, group or other avenue, can provide meaning and coherence to victims/survivors. Through sharing stories of trauma, we are exposing ourselves; the experience can be both meaningful and cathartic, but this is not always the case. Illouz (2008) illustrates the connection between personal storytelling and psychotherapeutic narratives as the pathway to

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happiness and success. This indicates that the sharing of one’s story is a prerequisite for healing. There is an assumption that without successful therapeutic intervention victims/survivors must fit the enduring psychological damage narrative. This trauma framing involving healing and recovery can affect victims/survivors’ sense of agency to feel empowered because it is rooted within a medicalised, deficit-based response to a social issue. If we were to understand the trauma as a process where a victim/ survivor has been harmed with a recognition that there is a need to address the structural context, this may support a space for complexity and action. Put simply, it is not about curing someone; it is about cultivating a sense of autonomy, connectedness and empowerment for the victim/survivor. However, there are risks involved in sharing stories of trauma and developing a narrative that may not be fully narratable, that is, ‘something that moves toward speech and away from speech at the same time’ (Rogers 2006 p. 57). In addition to the challenges associated with the emotional reliving of the abuse, we as individuals lay ourselves bare to be stigmatised as victims/survivors and defined in relation to our trauma. This colonising of our public identity as victim/survivor and private self affects how individuals relate to ourselves and others. So, is it any surprise that we tend to prefer a rehearsed version of the story, one that we have the best control over? However: In some cases, a single telling of an autobiographical narrative can be truly transformative, but more often a narrator constructs himself or herself through repeated tellings of similar autobiographical narratives (Wortham 2001, p. 6).

This highlights how social interactions can aid co-construction of one’s story. The storying of trauma can involve complex pathways for the teller to speak an unspeakable truth. Integrating recollections about one’s private and traumatic history into an authentic account requires a great deal of grit and recognition that different narratives may serve different purposes. Storytelling helps us to see the human behind the story whereby our actions are situated alongside our identities, often subtly reshaping both (Polletta 2006). Telling personal stories helps us to make sense of our experiences (McAdams 2001), building an understanding of what makes us unique and our interconnectedness with others and the world around us. In the process of identity construction, where trauma involves childhood sexual

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abuse, it is important to locate our understanding of storytelling in both sociocultural and historical contexts. This does not remove the reality of being subject to child sexual abuse and all that this encompasses for the victim/survivor but allows us to see how it is understood and narrated over time. Autobiographical accounts of child sexual abuse in the 1960s and 1970s were linked to the political feminist movement, empowering women and children who were previously largely silent and invisible. The Cleveland Inquiry (1987) outlined the sexual abuse of 121 children (Campbell 1998) and was a pivotal point in the 1980s. In the 1990s, discourses about child sexual abuse (Richardson and Bacon 2018) emphasised healing or therapeutic strategies. Contemporary understandings of child sexual abuse still draw heavily on the dominant discourse of therapeutic culture and the ‘harm story’ (O’Dell 2003). However, there is overwhelming evidence that harm is intrinsic to child sexual abuse, affecting all spheres of victims/survivors’ lives (Fisher et al. 2017). Blindness (Heffernan 2019) to crimes against children only benefits perpetrators and under-resourced, over stretched systems (Dingwall et al. 2014). There is also a school of thought which suggests child sexual abuse is akin to a moral panic where its prevalence and harm are exaggerated, diverting us away from more important issues. However, these arguments have themselves been challenged (Pilgrim 2018b; Salter 2018). What is known is that most sexual abuse is not reported and remains hidden across ethnicities, and more so within the Global Majority communities. Indeed, very little is known about how child sexual abuse affects Global Majority communities (IICSA 2020a); a clearly, a more nuanced understanding is needed of people’s racialised and cultural lived experiences (Bernard and Harris 2019). Stories about child sexual abuse as told through statistics indicate 80% of victims are female (ONS 2020a). Prevalence studies consistently highlight that over 90% of perpetrators are male (Kelly and Karsna 2018, p. 53), mostly white (Ministry of Justice 2020) and 37% are known to the victim in some way. Additionally, 48% of the sexual abuse takes place before victims are 11 years old (ONS 2020b). Sexual abuse is the most commonly reported type of abuse (ONS 2020b) with multiple and lifelong impacts on victims/survivors (IICSA n.d.; Salter 2018). Yet people still do not talk about it and the harm, scale and seriousness continues to be disputed.

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Illustration 10.2  Victim/Survivor, power and discourse

Perceptions about the ‘ideal’ victim/survivor permeate our society and are problematic. Those of us who do not fit this construct are at risk of our abuse not being identified, believed or addressed. This was patently clear in the case of the victims/survivors in Rotherham where they were met with contempt and disbelief. Opening up about intimate truths makes us vulnerable to the judgement of others and can often reduce complex narratives to one-dimensional accounts or even commodities, containing simplistic resolutions or toxic myths (Imber-Black 1998, p. 114). Additionally, there is potential for widespread backlash, ostracising and discrediting of victims/survivors which can be persuasive in shaping public opinion (See Nelson 2016, p. 59). As such, there can be both benefits and risks in taking steps to share one’s narrative. Drawing here

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on victims/survivors’ ‘right to narrate’ (Bhabha 2020), what needs to be recognised is the tenacity of the human spirit to persist in storying an account involving trauma and testifying to one’s own experience. Rooted in a profound power and courage, we can hope to make a society in which everyone’s story gets told. This, too, is a war about stories (Solnit 2019, p. 89).

The Power of Storytelling Historically, stories have raised our political and critical awareness by acting as mechanisms for narratives or counter-narratives to emphasise our social and cultural differences (Broad and Crawley 2004; Polletta et al. 2011; Daigle 2016). On the one hand, we celebrate the fact that stories can elicit empathy, challenge myths, help create new identities and ‘chip away at the wall of public indifference’ (Polletta 2006, p. 2). However, alongside this, these intentions can result in unintended consequences. Victim/survivor’s accounts can be met with disbelief, our veracity and credibility questioned, our impact superficial, and our telling at risk of causing further harm with little personal benefit to the teller. To bridge the personal and social spheres, care and understanding must be afforded to victim/survivors. Stories can be used as a tool to humanise social issues but also personalise fundamentally political issues. For example, one individual’s story of child sexual abuse may convey how to make sense of what has happened and its many consequences. However, the dominant way of speaking about child sexual abuse for some victims/survivors may mean we are not able to share what has happened because it is not part of the taken-for-granted ‘truths’ in how it is understood and addressed. These political connections perpetuate the belief for some victims/survivors that they remain ‘at the bottom of a hierarchy of power and value’ (Kanyeredzi 2018, p. 48). Personal stories can become a catalyst for social change (Whittier 2009). Personal stories can heal the individual and challenge oppressive social structures. But equally stories can be tainted by narrative control and history-building (Shields 2018). Framed in this way might mean

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some victim/survivor stories become sanitised and fail to take account of the broader issues. This means we might be wrongfully labelled as either a ‘victim’ or ‘survivor’ (but not both); and seen as either passive or agentic (but not both). The storying can present victims/survivors as either helpless or beyond the need for protection, creating divisive binary discourses; this was seen clearly in the case of the victims/survivors in Rotherham. Drawing on Ahmed’s (2020) idea of complaint as testimony, how we hear victim/survivor narratives matters. It is about bearing witness to an experience or trauma, where we recognise the messiness, the complexity, the multiplicity in our narratives, all of which helps demonstrate our fragility and agency. We might then be able to recognise that victim/survivor stories can be uniquely authoritative (Polletta 2006). As participant 4 (IICSA 2017, p. 49) says I feel very strongly that people who have experienced [abuse] themselves have very particular knowledge which can help [in] the future.

Put simply, stories matter for victims/survivors not only to make meaning of our past, present and future but also as central for justice. This emerges through telling and retelling stories within The British Criminal Justice System, which operationalises the traditional legal and disciplinary notions of justice involving conviction and sentencing. However, for some, it is seen as a hostile environment (Herman 1992) and one which retraumatises victims/survivors. Voice is central to both justice and the storying experience. To find our voice and speak our truths, Antonsdóttir (2019, p. 20) argues for ‘the creation of just spaces’ where inclusive or separate safe spaces enable victim/survivors to express themselves. The delineation of spaces can be considered at both individual and structural levels. For example, at a personal level, this might mean protecting a victim/survivor’s body space which has been violated through abuse. More broadly, at a structural level, such spaces might be designed in such a way that they cultivate a sense of belonging through acceptance and inclusion. There is strength in forging solidarity among victims/survivors (Holstein and Gubrium 2000; Burack-Weiss et al. 2017). However, the simple act of listening to each other is not enough; this in and of itself

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will not elicit social justice. Personal stories can inspire hope, empower and give courage. Nevertheless, we must not overlook the bigger picture. Storytellers are powerful political actors and our stories of social justice are embedded in relationships of inequalities and diverse power dynamics; the story itself is used as a tool to confront oppressive social structures (Mannell et al. 2018). Storytelling involves a relationship of reciprocity, involving the role of listener, as well as narrator. The audience needs to be curious about the victim/survivor’s social context, and able to make connections between the personal and the political. A space is needed to consider whether, as listeners, we mirror or visually reflect any of the injustices experienced and critically reflect on the influence of whose stories are being listening to. As listeners, few people feel apathetic about child sexual abuse and what we say about it matters. So, it is important to move beyond passive expressions of appreciation and fulfil our agentive roles. Here we might reflect on the role of the ‘bystander’: (Latané and Darley 1970). The bystander is forced to take sides. It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil… The victim demands action, engagement and remembering (Herman 1992, p. 7).

The audience has a responsibility to connect private issues such as child sexual abuse to the public sphere. It is important that connections are made between the personal narrative of a victim/survivor to the larger scale of child sexual abuse in society. Equally, our institutional responses to social norms, boundaries and enabling factors such as gender, sexuality, hyper-masculinity and victimhood must be challenged. To create longstanding social change and a shift in cultural, social and political narratives relies on the audience assuming an active role. Assuming the role of both witness and ally in this way may, in part, go some way to strengthen the victim/survivor’s autonomy and dignity, so often stripped away by the abuse. As captured succinctly by one victim/survivor (IICSA 2020b, p. 55): I was powerless everywhere.

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Concluding Thoughts We need to become better at both telling and listening to stories; the nuance in people’s stories matters. There is a tendency to oversimplify victims/survivors’ experiences to create uncomplicated, palatable narratives. This tendency risks silencing those whose stories do not fit. Rather than sharing an inspiring story of recovery following the traditional narrative arc from despair to flourishing involving a typical protagonist and villain, perhaps we can consider sharing other stories involving discord and the unfamiliar. Although not in line with the traditional storytelling tropes, it is important for us to consider how some child sexual abuse narratives can potentially constrain victims/survivors to process the abuse in accordance with a singular victim/survivor narrative. This in effect, potentially compels victims/survivors to relinquish a sense of agency. This was seen with the victims/survivors in Rotherham, where age, class and socioeconomic background meant that the victims/survivors’ stories were regarded as inauthentic; ultimately, they were cast as the architects of their own abuse. It was also seen in Kanyeredzi’s (2018) account, where women of the Global Majority were silenced in the dominant victim/ survivor discourse due to a lack of recognition of their experience. Consequently, there is a complex relationship between story, storyteller and storytelling; we need to be mindful that we risk losing our humanity should we reduce our complex selves to a ‘single story’ (Adichie 2009). Until we start thinking differently about how child sexual abuse can be storied and open up space for the complex realities of victims/survivors, particularly for those who are marginalised, many stories will remain untold. The broader conversation needs to shift to allow victims/survivors to tell stories for the first time. Until such time as this is achieved, we will inadvertently harbour secrets and perpetuate victim-blaming myths and stereotypes which minimise the harm of child sexual abuse and benefit the perpetrator. Hitherto, the language of child sexual abuse is used to dehumanise; it has the potential to evolve into something rehumanising. As allies and listeners, it is important to remain curious, open-minded and empathetic, and recognise oneself as being active in the storytelling process.

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Shifting our cultural understandings will challenge and redefine the boundaries of storytelling involving trauma; words matter. This chapter represents one small step in the creation of a space for every victim/survivor’s story to be told. As participant 15 (IICSA 2017, p. 48) says: [I] just wanted to … be able to tell my story and someone to listen to my story and not doubt me and not challenge me and ask me to prove it.

References Adichie, C. (2009) The Danger of a Single Story. TED Global. Retrieved from: https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_ danger_of_a_single_story?language=en Ahmed, S. (2020) Complaint as Testimony. Available at: https://feministkilljoys. com/2020/12/07/complaint-­as-­testimony/ Alford, C. F. (2016) Trauma, Culture, and PTSD. Palgrave Macmillan: New York. Antonsdóttir, H.F (2019) “Injustice Disrupted: Experiences of Just Spaces by Victim-Survivors of Sexual Violence”, Social & Legal Studies, 29, 1–27. Bernard, C. and Harris, P. (2019) “Serious case reviews: The lived experience of Black children”, Child & family social work, 24, 2, pp. 256–263. Bhabha, H. K. (2020) The Right to Narrate. Available at: http://www.harvarddesignmagazine.org/issues/38/the-­right-­to-­narrate Bond, E., Ellis, F. and McCusker, J. (2018) I’ll be a survivor for the rest of my life, adult survivors of child sexual abuse and their experience of support services. Available at: https://www.uos.ac.uk/sites/default/files/%E2%80%98I%E2%80%99ll%20 be%20a%20sur vivor%20for%20the%20rest%20of%20my%20 life%E2%80%99%20Report%20FINAL.pdf Brison, S. J. (2002) Aftermath, Violence and the Remaking of a Self. Woodstock: Princeton University Press. Broad, K. & Crawley, S.L. (2004) “Be your (real lesbian) self ”: mobilizing sexual formula stories through personal (and political) storytelling, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, vol. 33, no. 1, pp. 39–71. Burack-Weiss, A., Lawrence, L. S. and Mijangos, L. B. (2017) Narrative in Social Work Practice The Power and Possibility of Story. New York: Columbia University Press.

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Independent Inquiry Child Sexual Abuse (2017) Victim and survivor voices from The Truth project (June 2016–June 2017). Available at: https://www.iicsa.org. uk/key-­d ocuments/3304/view/victim-­s urvivor-­v oices-­f rom-­t ruth-­ project.pdf Independent Inquiry Child Sexual Abuse (2020a) “People don’t talk about it”: Child sexual abuse in ethnic minority communities. Available at: https://www. iicsa.org.uk/publications/research/child-­s exual-­a buse-­e thnic-­m inority-­ communities Independent Inquiry Child Sexual Abuse (2020b) Truth Project Thematic Report: Child sexual abuse in sports. Available at: https://www.iicsa.org.uk/document/ truth-­project-­thematic-­report-­child-­sexual-­abuse-­sports Jacobs-Kayam, A. and Lev-Wiesel, R. (2019) In Limbo: Time Perspective and Memory Deficit Among Female Survivors of Sexual Abuse, Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 912. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00912. Jay, A. (2014) Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham 1997–2013. Available at: https://www.rotherham.gov.uk/downloads/ file/279/independent-­inquiry-­into-­child-­sexual-­exploitation-­in-­rotherham Kanyeredzi, A. (2018) Race, Culture, and Gender: Black Female Experiences of Violence and Abuse. London: Palgrave Macmillan Limited. Kelly, L, Burton, S, Regan, L (1996) Beyond Victim or Survivor: Sexual Violence, Identity and Feminist Theory and Practice. In: Adkins, L, Merchant, V (eds) Sexualizing the Social Power and the Organization of Sexuality. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 77–101. Kelly, L. and Karsna, K. (2018) Measuring the scale and changing nature of child sexual abuse and child sexual exploitation, Scoping report. Available at: https:// www.csacentre.org.uk/documents/scale-­and-­nature-­scoping-­report-­2018/ Kokanović, R. and Stone, M. (2018) Listening to what cannot be said: Broken narratives and the lived body, Arts & Humanities in Higher Education, Vol 17(1), 20–31. Latané, B. and Darley, J.M. (1970) The Unresponsive Bystander: Why doesn’t He help? New York: Appleton-Century Crofts. Lovett, J., Coy, M and Kelly, L. (2018) Deflection, denial and disbelief: social and political discourses about child sexual abuse and their influence on institutional responses, A rapid evidence assessment. London: Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, London Metropolitan University. Luttrell, W. (2010) ‘A camera is a big responsibility’: a lens for analysing children’s visual voices, Visual Studies, 25, 3, pp. 224–237.

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11 Personal and Ethnic Bildungen: Cross-­cultural Storytelling in Singaporean-­British Writer PP Wong’s The Life of a Banana Weimin Delcroix-Tang

Overview Nearly forty years after the publication of Chinese American writer Maxine Hong Kingston’s (1976/1981, 1977) Women Warrior and China Men, which championed the silence-breaking movement of Asian American pan-ethnicity in the 1970s and, indeed, when famous Chinese American writers such as Kingston and Amy Tan have already moved away from being pigeonholed into writers of ethnicity, British Singaporean-Chinese writer PP Wong in her highly rated book The Life of a Banana, published in 2014, explicitly performs an act of voicing on behalf of the silenced and wronged British Chinese immigrants and British-born Chinese (BBC). More strikingly, however, is the fact that Wong (n.d.) calls herself “the first British Born Chinese novelist to get a publishing deal in the UK” (“PP Wong”). One may truly wonder where generations of British Chinese have been doing since the landing of the

W. Delcroix-Tang (*) University of Sanya, Sanya, China e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Vine, S. Richards (eds.), Stories, Storytellers, and Storytelling, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07234-5_11

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first Chinese (Michael Shen Fu-Tsung) on British soil in 1685 and the granting of British citizenship to the first Chinese (John Anthony) in 1805, not to mention the special British historical relation to its formal colonies of Hong Kong and other southeastern Asian countries, which brought many Chinese immigrants to Britain over the past centuries. Taking departure from such a remarkable silence of both British Chinese and their literary voice in general as compared to Chinese Americans, this chapter intends to demonstrate both the personal and collective Bildungen through storytelling, that is, acting CHM (“Chinks Have Mouths”), in PP Wong’s (2014) The Life of a Banana (p. 24). Indeed, Wong’s CHM serves as a hidden leitmotif in the novel, by means of which present and past stories of pain and suffering are interwoven and told. Storytelling performs the metamorphosis not only for the bullied and silenced “chink” girl to work through the trauma she experienced in her English school and come to terms with her biculturality through opening her mouth to speak up, but also for British Chinese to restore to themselves as the racially discriminated group a subjectivity and voice of their own and reassert cultural identities. On the other hand, similar to the well-known Chinese American literary works, Maxine Hong Kingston’s (1976/1981) Women Warrior and Amy Tan’s (1989) The Joy Luck Club, retrieving lost voice in Wong’s The Life of a Banana by braiding maternal texts of the past into tales of the intercultural existence of BBC banana girl and her immigrant family, functions as a healing process, by which generational and cultural reconnections are achieved through sharing and understanding of each other’s pain and suffering. Despite the differences in culture, it is the act of voicing, of telling stories, that turns rejection and even hatred into interconnection and empathy, facilitating both personal and ethnic Bildungen for both British Chinese immigrants and British-born Chinese in The Life of a Banana. So, who is PP Wong? The “About Me” from Wong’s (n.d.) personal website says, PP Wong is the first British Born Chinese novelist to get a publishing deal in the UK. She grew up in London and her parents are from Singapore. After completing a degree in Anthropology and Law at the London School of Economics, she did a Postgraduate Diploma in Journalism. (“PP Wong”)

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Even though there are BBC writers getting published before her, for instance, Helen Tse (2007) and Benjamin Yoeh (2001, 2003, 2006), PP Wong is right in calling herself the first BBC novelist to get published. Nevertheless, once again, it is astonishing to think how scarce BBC writers are and how few literary works they have produced so far when compared with their counterparts, the ABC (American-born Chinese) writers, who have produced a huge amount of literature as exemplified by Amy Tan, Gish Jen, Frank Chin and Shawn Wong. Here are some other quotes from Wong’s (n.d.) website: PP Wong has blazed a trail for future British Chinese novelists. The Life of a Banana is bursting with original and exciting flavours. (Ben Chu, The Independent, UK (“PP Wong”)) PP Wong’s delightful novel highlights in a hilarious manner the challenges and joys of growing up as a Chinese in Britain, and brought back happy memories of Sue Townsend’s Secret Diary of Adrian Mole. I highly recommend it to both those who know what this is like first-hand, as well as the many who are curious and interested in the lives of the Chinese diaspora, and indeed everyone else looking to read a novel that will entertain and enlighten in equal measure! (Lord Wei (“PP Wong”)) Lord Wei is the first British born Chinese member of The House of Lords. He is a successful social entrepreneur who takes an interest in British Chinese community issues, particularly in social reform. (“PP Wong”)

The terminologies “British Chinese novelist,” “a Chinese in Britain” and “British Chinese community” used here are the other aspect I would like to draw attention to. Compared with Chinese American literature, generally referring to all the literary works produced by Chinese American writers either in Chinese or English to emphasise its Americanness or its inclusivity in American ethnic literatures, here, even the BBC writers are referred to as British Chinese, with an emphasis on Chineseness, the foreign, a kind of exclusivity. Even though more and more works by writers of Chinese origin are getting published nowadays, there has been a significant lack of British  Chinese presence in the canonised English

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literature. Indeed, one may wonder, what has happened to generations of British Chinese? PP Wong’s The Life of a Banana, delayed though it is by nearly forty years as compared to her American counterparts and fictionised by being called a novel, does allow readers to catch a glimpse of the ethnic silencing of both British Chinese immigrants and the BBC generation.

 torytelling: Breaking Silence and Restoring S Ethnic Subjectivity Storytelling has been a common practice in ethnic literatures for articulating and reasserting personal and collective subjectivities and identities. Both Chinese American and British Chinese histories of immigration and survival demonstrate that ethnic silence has been a direct outcome of racial discrimination and marginalisation. Earlier studies of racial and ethnic relations within American society in the 1960s and 1970s likened racial minorities’ situation to that of an “internal colony,” where racism is “built into the very fabric of society” (Liu 2000, pp. 1347–1360). This accounts for not just the remarkable silence but also a general invisibility of Asian and Chinese group (Lim 1993, p. 151), whereas the silence of the minority, as Jeffery Paul Chan et al. (1982) pointed out, constitutes “one measure of the success of white racism and the amount of white energy necessary to maintain or increase that silence” (p. 207). Although the records of the earliest Chinese setting foot on British soil and the very first Chinese receiving the British citizenship date to, as mentioned earlier, as early as 1685 and 1805, respectively (see BBC Radio 4 2008, “Chinese in Britain—Episode 1”; Batchelor 2006, “Shen Fuzong”; Linehouse 2018, “John Anthony”), as mentioned earlier, most British Chinese immigrants did not arrive on the shores of Britain until the nineteenth century, with the early arrivals mostly settling down in the port cities of Liverpool, Cardiff and London at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Demographically, early British Chinese immigrants are significantly different from, for instance, early Chinese immigrants to the United States. Instead of being contracted labourers almost exclusively

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from rural areas of Guangdong province, the origins of early British Chinese immigrants were, in comparison, fairly diverse, with many coming to Britain as seamen from Chinese port cities of Shanghai and Tianjin, as well as some southern Chinese villages, recruited by the British East India Company, particularly after the Opium War. Their different immigration route notwithstanding, British Chinese immigrants encountered similar racial discrimination as in other parts of the world. The stereotype of the early mysterious Chinese immigrants dwelling in the dimly lit opium den caught Britons’ fantasy ignited by Sax Rohmer’s (1883–1959) thriller series about the mysterious Chinese villain Dr Fu Manchu. White British women who chose to miscegenate were generally from low social status which re-enforced the degradation of the Chinese in the eyes of the white British. The racial discrimination, social marginalisation and ethnic silence encountered by their American counterparts were paralleled in Britain and indeed manifested in the oblivion, culturally and literally, of thousands of Chinese men from British Weihaiwei in Shangdong province, who were recruited by the British government and died serving the British troops in France during the First World War (Pan 1993, pp. 78–83). Despite the demographic change and socio-economic improvement of British Chinese immigrants and BBC generations over the decades, the fact that PP Wong singles herself out as the first BBC novelist immediately raises the big WHY question and draws attention to the significant lag of British Chinese in the arena of British literature if not so much in other areas of British life in general. Wong’s portrayal of the outrageous racial discrimination and silencing in her literary work, a novelistic creation though as she calls it, is a heart-wrenching outcry and also the first of its kind. The Life of a Banana fits perfectly into the literary genre of Bildungsroman, detailing the growth of a British-born Chinese girl of Singaporean origin, from a bullied and silenced “chink” girl to coming to terms with her bicultural identity by acting CHM, telling stories of loss, confusion and sorrow of not only the BBC generation like the banana girl herself (“white on the inside, yellow on the outside.” Wong 2014, p.  111) but also the ethnic British Chinese as represented by the Singaporean-Chinese Wu family and the Jamaican-Chinese family of Jay, the only friend of the protagonist at school.

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In Wong’s story, the Hackney-born Chinese girl Xing Li has to go through shocking daily bullying and abuse by her school mates, being constantly called clumsy “chink bitch” or “Ano(rexic)-bitch,” mocked because of her Chinese name or lunch, or even physically abused, pinched, with her head being held under the water in swimming pool. “What’s wrong ANO-BITCH? You shaking from the cold? Not enough meat on your bones?” She [Shils, her bully] gives me a pinch, the sort of pinch that gives you a bruise. Then she whispers into my ear. “You’re all skin and bones. You’re disgusting.” (Wong 2014, p. 66)

To escape from daily abuse like this, she has to hide herself in the toilet by the library (Wong 2014, p. 29), eats her lunchbox there, sometimes with her only mixed-race (Chinese-Jamaican-British) friend Jay. Identity becomes a huge puzzle for the banana girl. Secretly she admires her brother Lai Ker’s courage in forging a salient existence by means of what he calls CHM (“Chinks Have Mouths”), that is, “to be smart enough or cool enough or loud enough to be [not] ignored by society” (Wong 2014, p.  24). Yet, she is much confused by her inescapable misery for being Chinese like her beloved Mama: Lai Ker [her brother] keeps telling me I need to have CHM. But I don’t even know where to start. I’m really confused sometimes about who I am or what I want to be. … [I]f I weren’t Chinese, Shils would leave me alone. She wouldn’t make fun of my Chinese name, she wouldn’t cuss my black hair and she wouldn’t ask me if my grandma cooked me dog for my tea. If I weren’t Chinese. … I wouldn’t have to always explain London is my home, not China. … [However], if I weren’t Chinese I wouldn’t be Chinese like Mama. I don’t know—it’s confusing. (Wong 2014, p. 45) Maybe one day when I become grown up and confident I will be able to say. … [l]ike I know I’m Chinese but then my only home is London and I can only speak English not Chinese. So I’m weird like that. I guess until I grow up and know who I am, I just have to focus on surviving Mondays and Wednesdays and Fridays at West Hill without losing my lunch in the process. (Wong 2014, p. 51)

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Finally, encouraged by her brother’s CHM, she plucks up all her courage to tell on her bully’s cheating in an exam and the latter is found guilty and expelled from school. Shils is gone and I am free!!! FREE!!! My life of torture is over. … The first thing I’m gonna do when I find Lai Ker is tell him I’ve got CHM ‘cos I spoke up and now Shils is gone. He’ll be well proud. I smile the biggest smile since Mama’s death. (Wong 2014, p. 184)

Unfortunately this only brings upon her the ultimate nightmare of being taken revenge by her bully who cuts the degrading word “CHINK” on her leg. Shils covers my mouth with the scarf and ties a double knot at the back. … Shils takes her knife and cuts into my leg. Blood oozes out and trickles down my leg. C H I N K The pain from each letter sends shock waves through my body.… (Wong 2014, pp. 187–88)

Racial discrimination and silencing is not just what the “CHINK” girl faces at school, but is also the daily experience of her immigrant grandmother who is told to return to China by queue jumping youngsters, or refused by taxi drivers to get into their vehicles because of the smell of the Chinese ingredients she carries (Wong 2014, p. 265). Auntie Mei’s actress career is limited to stereotyped roles of Asian and Chinese, and Uncle Ho whose mental disease and alienation finally results in him taking his life. For her brother Lai Ker, CHM becomes his obsession to act against racial stereotyping and silence.

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Lai Ker and his dodgy friend Jimmy Tang taught me the meaning of CHM. Standing up to white boys, cracking jokes mid-lesson and putting fingers up at racist sales assistants in posh shops are all examples of CHM. They said if I want to be a “true” Chinese person with a mouth, I have to be like them. I hope I can find my mouth soon, but I don’t know exactly what my mouth is yet. I think Lai Ker is the best at CHM ‘cos at St George’s he was always in detention ‘cos of fights with the big white boys. That quickly stopped them from calling him “yellow wanker.” (Wong 2014, p. 24)

Lai Ker joins the Chinese Alliance Group (CAG) in order to defend the rights of, and give voice to, Chinese people in British society. The CAG initially obtains some success in securing justice for some Chinese workers facing unfair dismissal and discrimination together with a victory challenging the silencing of some Chinese journalists (Wong 2014, pp. 224–25). The CAG nurtures high hopes that Lai Ker may eventually lead the organisation, yet these hopes are cruelly dashed as the organisation, increasingly desperate in their endeavours to amplify British Chinese voices, becomes more extreme in their actions. And Lai Ker, eager to participate, is caught with “graffiti spray” and consequently forced to leave the CAG (Wong 2014, p. 225). Proud of her brother, yet still confused, the banana girl finds her own way of acting CHM. By telling stories of her misery and confusion, as well as that of others, she is seeking a way of articulation, dealing with her sufferings, fears and losses growing up in the United Kingdom which is both home and foreign to her. Storytelling becomes a means to break the silence imposed on her and, indeed, the British Chinese group as the racialised Other. She also seeks to find a way to enunciate her uniqueness in terms of her identity and articulates a subjectivity not of her own but also of the BBC, the so-called banana generation. There is a dialogue in the novel between the banana girl and her only friend Jay. Asked about his Jamaican and Chinese roots and which side he would take in the unlikely event of some sort of forced choice, Jay replies, [Jay:] “I’m half of my father (Jamaican) and half of my mother (Chinese) and that’s enough for me.”

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“[Banana girl:] But what if you had to pick and you only had to be one. … I dunno like … like say there was a war between China and Jamaica, which side would you take?” “[Jay:] Neither. I guess whatever side the UK’s on.” “[Banana girl:] No, no, say the UK don’t exist anymore and you HAD to pick one. Which one would you pick? [Jay:] Man that’s tough. I really dunno. Like I get some parts from my mum and some parts from my dad. I dunno, it would be hard. I guess I’m just half and half.” “[Banana girl:] Well I guess two halves make a whole?” “[Jay:] Yeah, I guess so.” (Wong 2014, p. 102)

Here is the voicing of an identity that clearly is neither the one nor the other yet both, like the Chinese American identity Tang (2010) speaks of (pp. 294–295). It not only articulates the personal identity that marks the BBC generation like the banana girl and Jay but also voices a cultural identity that is echoed by ethnic Chinese across generations and geographical boundaries, as shown, for instance, by the conversation depicted in the early Chinese American émigré writer Chuang Hua’s (1986) Crossings, between its Chinese American protagonist and her French lover. [French lover:] You should return to China. [Fourth Jane:] What for? … [French lover:] Because you’re Chinese. … [Fourth Jane:] You forget I am also American. … I couldn’t live without America. It’s part of me by now. For years I used to think I was dying in America because I could not have China.… … [French lover:] Live in China. [Fourth Jane:] Too late now. Farm house, field, solitary tree, the distant mountains have fused, have become one with the American landscape. I can’t separate any more…. [French lover:] You have betrayed China. [Fourth Jane:] … I belong to both, am both. (pp. 120–125)

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Despite the significant chronological delay in terms of the literary voicing of Wong’s novel in stark contrast to the much earlier trailblazing of her Chinese American counterparts, Maxine Hong Kingston and others, storytelling as the means of breaking the silence remains acutely effective and certainly works here. By acting CHM, seeking a voice in various ways, the narrator succeeds in asserting, both for her and other British Chinese, a subjectivity and an ethnic identity that is multifaceted and unique. As the first BBC novelist, as Wong names herself, her story is definitely the first in telling the multicultural contemporary British society and the world that “Chinks have mouths,” like what Maxine Hong Kingston and Frank Chin did in the 1970s and 1980s. More than this, Wong’s story also bears much resemblance to the enormously successful works of her Chinese American counterparts, Kingston’s Women Warrior and Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, in terms of interweaving maternal past and present, finding the way towards generational and cultural reconnection through telling and retelling stories.

Storytelling: Intergenerational and Intercultural Reconnection Wong’s story starts with banana girl’s loss of her mother by accident on her twelfth birthday. Orphaned and left with no means to live, she has to move with her brother to her wealthy yet seemingly ruthless grandma’s house in Hampstead, where both mentally ill Uncle Ho and actress Auntie Mei live. With a family of three generations under one roof, banana girl’s telling of her own sufferings at school is intertwined with the stories of maternal sorrows and pains of both the past and present. Here, familial and intercultural conflicts and reconnection unfold towards and after the climax culminating in the ruthless bloody revenge done to banana girl’s act of CHM.

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Tension starts to build the moment the orphaned kids move to live with Grandma, a first-generation British Chinese immigrant, who speaks a kind of pidgin English of her own. Reminiscent of the dominant decision-­maker immigrant mothers in Kingston’s The Woman Warrior and Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, banana girl’s Grandma is the strong-minded matriarch. Her dominant role in her house with three generations living under one roof mirrors what Stephanie Demetrakopoulos (1980) terms the “matriarchal realm” or “matriachate,” in which “a child grows up, its management and domination by the mother and by feminine values of nurturing, relatedness, process. … Though fathers influence this realm, theirs is an intrusive influence and the child is chiefly shaped, especially in the earlier years, by the mother” (p.180). Banana girl’s Grandma dictates what the children and grandchildren must do and beats the grandchildren with a feather duster if they disobey her, fail to adhere to her rules or contradict her despite her caretaker’s role. She disagrees with banana girl’s deceased Mama and Papa’s relationship so they withdraw from each other before the death of the banana girl’s parents. She does not say anything to the children about their Grandpa who is therefore supposed to be dead. Indeed, Grandma dictates but never explains, her way puzzles the banana girl born and grown up in a different culture where everything seems to have a reason. Grandma is always telling me that I have to keep things in the family. When I was four, she opened my palm so my fingers were spread out flat. She said, “This is your family. … Chinese families keep rubbish in and don’t let rubbish out. …” The Wus take their rubbish to the grave. (Wong 2014, p. 207)

This again immediately reminds one of the haunting opening sentence of Kingston’s (1976/1981) masterpiece The Woman Warrior reiterating maternal silence, “‘You must not tell anyone’” (p.  11). Not unlike the banana girl, Kingston’s (1976/1981) ABC (American-born Chinese) narrator experiences the similar confusion as the banana girl, “We have so many secrets to hold in. … Sometimes I hated the ghosts for not letting us talk; sometimes I hated the secrecy of the Chinese. ‘Don’t tell.’ said my

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parents though we couldn’t tell if we wanted to because we didn’t know” (p. 164). Here, intergenerational conflicts confronting both the BBC and ABC generations are intertwined with intercultural clashes. Kingston’s (1976/1981) parents refuse to tell family secrets to their ABC children, because “we [the children] had been born among ghosts [Americans], were taught by ghosts, and were ourselves half ghosts” (p. 165). The BBC banana girl does not understand why the Wus have to keep secrets, even lie to the outside world, just to save family face. To the outside world, Uncle Ho is a writer and works from home. That’s why he sleeps at odd hours and is well strange. As for Grandpa, people don’t know he’s alive and living in Singapore. Instead, he passed away twenty years ago and made the family millions through working as an investment banker. Also, everyone thinks Auntie Mei does acting as a hobby, but her real job is as a plastic surgeon, that’s why she travels so much. But you know what’s weird? The Wus aren’t the only people to “keep the rubbish in.” (Wong 2014, p. 207)

What is confusing for the second generation Chinese born in the United States or Britain is in fact brought about by the reality facing the immigrant generation below the surface of keeping secrets to save family face. For Kingston’s (1976/1981) ABC narrator’s immigrant parents, their children are “a kind of ghost” (p. 165). Therefore, the immigrant parents have to keep secrets in front of their ghost children, especially “immigration secrets whose telling could get us sent back to China” (Kingston 1976/1981, p.  164). For Wong’s BBC narrator, Grandma’s silence about Grandpa, her indifference toward Mama, her lies about the Wus’ family, culminating in her lying to the outside world by calling her granddaughter’s nightmarish physical abuse and injury a bike accident, utterly alienates the banana girl from her Grandma. Her anger at her Grandma explodes into such hatred that she refuses to speak to her anymore. Grandma told me the Wus’ official statement to the outside world is I have slipped on a puddle and hit a cyclist. She doesn’t want ANYONE to know

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about The Incident as she calls it. … I feel weak, shaky and frightened and confused. Grandma says by keeping my mouth shut, it will protect my future. She gives me massive box of Panadol and doesn’t mention The Incident again. I hate her for that. (Wong 2014, pp. 189–190) I hate Grandma more than anyone in the world. I hate Grandma more than Shils [her school bully]. (Wong 2014, p. 216) Grandma and me don’t have each other, in many ways we never did. We’ll never be like those Grandma and grandkids in the fairy tales. … It’s weird, like we both live in the same house, but it’s like we’re both not there. (Wong 2014, p. 232)

She refuses to visit Grandma in hospital even after the old lady has suffered from a stroke. Intergenerational and intercultural conflicts take a turn, however, after the climax, when Auntie Mei, to amend the generational tension, tells the banana girl what Grandma really did after her nightmarish injury. Through legal ways, Grandma managed to have her school bully’s parents sign an agreement that forced Shils out of the country and out of her sight forever (Wong 2014, p. 251). Auntie Mei also reveals to the banana girl the box of Grandma’s secret letters, which tell the stories of Grandma’s past, her suffering, loneliness and loss in the United Kingdom away from Singapore. Here maternal texts and stories of the past are interwoven into banana girl’s own. In a way, telling Grandma’s stories together with her own reunite them in their suffering and understanding for what have made them the way they are now. For instance, after reading her grandma’s letters, the banana girl understands how her Grandma “changed from a dainty quiet girl” to a “loud-mouthed lion” by the “gritty London air” in order to survive and fight to protect her children and grandchildren from the harsh reality (Wong 2014, p. 266). Grandma learnt to shout lots. She yelled at queue jumping teenagers who told her to “go back to China” and delivery men who spoke to her in slow motion as if she were a child. She screeched at taxi drivers who told her that her Chinese ingredients were too smelly for their cars and librarians who

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showed her the kids’ section. Grandma’s fights turned into wars. (Wong 2014, p. 265)

Maternal texts and stories also knit the pieces of the past and present into a whole, revealing the hidden stories about the missing figures in the banana girl’s life, her father and grandfather. She gets to learn that not just herself but also the Wus have all gone through alienation and racial discrimination living in the United Kingdom as ethnic Chinese. Auntie Mei, despite her glamour as a film actress, can mostly play a role in “some crappy low budget film” (Wong 2014, p. 68) and her roles are limited to “Chinese prostitutes and starving refugees” (Wong 2014, p. 73). As she explains to Grandma and to her niece Ma I know some of the roles I’ve done haven’t been great. But you know how hard it is being a Chinese actor. If we don’t accept the stereotypical roles, we don’t get work. (Wong 2014, p. 88) The thing that affected me the most was when I was limited by my race. Times have certainly changed, but not as much you would think. Even today, Chinese people on British TV speak in broken English and ridiculed for their accent. There are so few characters of well-spoken Chinese doctors, Chinese lawyers or heaven forbid a Chinese politician on British TV. (Wong 2014, p. 182)

Through maternal storytelling, banana girl also knows that her mentally ill Uncle Ho used to be a very smart young lad excelling at maths. However, he too, like she herself, suffered in school from being called “chink fag” and laughed at (Wong 2014, p. 211). He slowly became sick to avoid going to school, so “THEY couldn’t touch me anymore” (Wong 2014, p. 211). He finally lost the will and desire to live and died of mental disease. Here, despite generational differences, storytelling reunites banana girl with the Wus in their shared sorrow and pain as both individual and ethnic Chinese. Indeed, storytelling functions as a healing process, by which the banana girl starts to turn from rejection and hatred to reconnection and love for her Grandma.

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After reading her letters, I get why Grandma got into fights a lot; why she had to have CHM cos if she didn’t shout, people would squish her down. In a weird way, I also understand why Grandma tells me off lots, ‘cos even though it’s warped, it means she wants what is best for me. (Wong 2014, p. 266)

Yet, very importantly, intergenerational and intercultural reconnection through storytelling does not suggest return to the same, rather with a difference. But then, I don’t want to be exactly like Grandma. I don’t want to be angry and sad and annoyed and fighting with people all the time. I want to be happy and grateful and peaceful and strong. I want to have a mouth so I can speak up when things are not right. … I’m a Chinese person with a mouth, but I’m a Chinese person with a heart too. (Wong 2014, p. 266)

Concluding Thoughts By vocalising the pain and suffering that are both part of the maternal past and racially divided British reality, storytelling serves, on the one hand, as a way of righting wrongs by writing wrongs (Ling 1990, p. 158) by finding a voice (CHM) for the ethnic Chinese group represented by the Wu family. Not unlike Kingston’s recreation of the heroine Hua Mu Lan in The Women Warrior who bears the words of grievances carved on her back and goes onto the battlefield to fight not just for the national cause but also takes revenge for herself and her people, the banana girl’s telling on her personal and ethnic Chinese suffering and pain, especially the CHINK word carved on her leg, works to give the mouth to the British Chinese group who have been silenced and unfairly treated. On the other hand, storytelling also functions as a means of navigating through intense generational and cultural clashes, bewilderment and barriers, mending the injuries and anguish, building understanding, compassion and connection. From this perspective, storytelling fulfils the purpose of both personal and ethnic Buildungen in the novel, where through storytelling the banana girl finally finds peace with her ethnic

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identity and her intercultural existence. Undoubtedly, however, Wong’s narrator, the BBC banana girl, moves further beyond her forerunners. The message she conveys at the very end of her storytelling is one of a spiritual and cultural transcendence that bridges differences and goes beyond.

References Batchelor, R.K. (2006). Shen Fuzong. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/95020. BBC Radio 4 (2008). Chinese in Britain—Episode 1: The first Chinese VIPs. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/chinese_in_britain1.shtml. Accessed 28 March 2011. Chan, J.P., Chin F., Inada, L.F., Wong, S.H.(1982). An Introduction to Chinese American and Japanese-American Literatures. In H.A. Baker, Jr. (Ed.), Three American Literatures: Essays in Chicano, Native American, and Asian-American Literature for Teachers of American Literature (pp. 197–228). New York: The Modern Language Association of America. Chuang H. (1986). Crossings. Boston: Northeastern University Press. (Original work published 1968) Demetrakopoulos, S.A. (1980). The Metaphysics of Matrilinearism in Women’s Autobiography: Studies of Mead’s Blackberry Winter, Hellman’s Pentimento, Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and Kingston’s The Women Warrior. In E.C.  Jelinek (Ed.), Women’s Autobiography: Essays in Criticism (pp. 180–205). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Lim, S.G. (1993). Assaying the Gold: Or, Contesting the Ground of Asian American Literature. New Literary History 24, 147–169. Linehouse (2018, November 10). John Anthony. Retrieved from http://linehousedesign.com/work/house-­of-­john-­anthony. Ling, A. (1990). Between Worlds: Women Writers of Chinese Ancestry. New York: Pergamon Press. Liu, J. (2000). Internal Colonial Model. In D. Brydon (Ed.), Postcolonialism: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies (Vol. 4, pp. 1347–1364). London: Routledge. Kingston, M.H. (1981). The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts. London: Pan Books. (Original work published 1976) Kingston, M.H. (1977). China Men. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

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Pan, L. (1993). Tracing It Home: Journeys Around a Chinese Family. London: Mandarin. Tan, A. (1989). The Joy Luck Club. London: Minerva. Tang, W. (2010). Emergent Literature: Transcultural Metamorphosis in Chinese American Women’s Writings. Tianjin: Naikai University Press. Tse, H. (2007). Sweet Mandarin: The Courageous True Story of Three Generations of Chinese Women and Their Journey from East to West. London: Ebury Press. Wong, P.P. (2014). The Life of a Banana. London: The Legend Press. Wong, P.P. (n.d.). PP Wong. Retrieved from https://www.ppwongauthor.com/. Yeoh, B. (2001). Lemon Love. London: Finborough Theatre. Yeoh, B. (2003). Lost in Peru. London: Camden People’s Theatre. Yeoh, B. (2006). Yellow Gentlemen. London: Soho Theatre.

12 Telling Stories, Building Bridges and Constructing Milton Keynes: Storytelling Practice and Research Working Together Terrie Howey-Moore

A group of blind men heard that a marvellous beast had been caught in a village and were curious. They set out to discover it for themselves. Without sight, the men had learnt to ‘see’ through their hands, touching to build an image in their minds. When they arrived at the village, they were taken to the beast and told it was an elephant. None knowing what that was they reached out their hands to the gentle giant to ‘see’ it through their touch. One man reached out and touched the trunk “Argh! It is a mighty snake!” “All I can feel is the tree it sits in” cried another holding the beast’s leg. “Some joker has led me to a wall” said the man touching the elephant’s side. “Wow it must like to stay cool, it has its own fan” said the man touching the ear. “All I appear to have is the rope that holds it” moaned the man holding its tail. But when the enormous creature gently shifted its weigh all realised they were holding a part of the beast. Immediately a raucous argument broke out between them about what the creature looked like. Each believed their own

T. Howey-Moore (*) Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Vine, S. Richards (eds.), Stories, Storytellers, and Storytelling, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07234-5_12

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experience as true—so, surely, the others with such different versions must be lying. It was then the elephant keeper said, “why don’t you all try again, but this time from a different position.” And so, the blind men each adjusted their perspective, working together they finally began to ‘see’ what the elephant truly was —Folk Tale, India

I am both a storyteller by practice1 and a researcher in the field of storytelling studies. The pedagogical value of the stories and my practice has been foundational in my research and methodology. This chapter explores the pedagogy of the stories and storytelling, both in my work and that of other storyteller practitioners; for whilst in this edited collection my position as practitioner–researcher is unique, I am far from the only storyteller to bridge the gap. However, whilst stories and storytelling have been—and continue to be—utilised in academic work, the role of the storytelling practitioner is frequently overlooked. Story consistently incorporates a multitude of factors which are further diversified by the interpretations of the tellers and listeners engaged in the telling. This can often mean that discussions about the power of storytelling are sometimes rather nebulous. In this sense, storytelling is akin to the elephant which when only one part is encountered gives a very different impression from that of the whole creature. The epigraph suggests, of course, that learning through cooperation is imperative to comprehensive comprehension. Knowing the whole elephant is achieved only through a bringing together of the disparate narratives and ‘knowledges’ associated with storytelling from a myriad of scholarly fields, as well as, crucially, from tellers themselves. Indeed, the overarching aim of this chapter is to raise awareness of the wealth of knowledge about stories and storytelling held by practitioners. It is argued that if stories and storytelling are to be considered pedagogical, then those who engage with such practice (tellers and listeners) are to varying degrees pedagogues (consciously and unconsciously).

 I earn my living by creating platform performances and facilitating applied storytelling projects.

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Storying Milton Keynes For those unfamiliar with Milton Keynes, it is very different from other English towns. It was designated a New Town in 1967 and built under the auspices of the 1946 New Towns Act. Pivotal in my storytelling studies research Knowing My Milton Keynes (KM:MK) was the work of Ruth Finnegan, a social anthropologist with a particular interest in storytelling (2003) and Milton Keynes (2007). Her study, Tales of the City (1998), explored personal narratives of ‘ordinary people’, as well as the academic and development stories surrounding the area. Owing to its New Town status, Milton Keynes is often ridiculed as having a lack of cultural heritage despite often being cited as the largest and most successful post-war New Town (Barkham 2016; Milton Keynes Borough Council 2017; Wallace 2017; Bayley 2018; Milton Keynes Council 2018). The plans and designs (Llewelyn-Davies et al. 1970) for the New Town were based upon the Los Angeles road system and sectioned into 1km by 1km grid squares separated by horizontal and vertical tree-lined roads. All grid junctions are roundabouts. Indeed, so numerous are these roundabouts they have come the area’s biggest ‘icon’ (along with multiple herds of concrete cows, and a concrete stegosaurus). Each grid square serves the community living and working in it by providing all necessary amenities, such as shops and schools. However, the grid square plan does deviate from its squared layout to incorporate the original 13 villages and three towns. These original settlements housed a population of 44,000 in 1967, each with their own customs, traditions and stories, which was expanded to a population of 260,000+ within 50 years. This mass migration overwhelmed the original inhabitants eclipsing places and stories of heritage with the rhetoric of newness and migratory ‘promised land’ dreams, leaving an image empty of culture and heritage (Howey-­Moore 2022). Whilst Milton Keynes is not the first place one thinks of when considering a storied landscape, its utopian narrative was developed before the physical construction began. The showcase exhibitions in London during 1972 told stories of this ‘promised-land’ with vast green open spaces and life-sized model sheep to sell the dream to potential new residents before the town was even built. Many of those exposed to the publicity were

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inner-city families who were living in poor housing after the destruction associated with the Blitz during the Second World War. Upon arriving in Milton Keynes during the early 1970s, the first ‘pioneers’ found plenty of space; there were no roads, shops, or hospitals, just mud, and endless construction vehicles. Since its designation, the construction of the New Town has been thoroughly documented, and urban myths abound about its creation (such as the planners marking the original plans with coffee cup rings as the origin of the roundabouts). However, to believe only new stories exist in the area is to ignore the historic tales (including the site where Edward V was kidnapped by his uncle Richard, soon-to-be the third) and folk tales (including multiple visits from the fantastical version of highwayman Dick Turpin), not to mention a rich tapestry of personal narratives. Milton Keynes is a place of both old and new in its physical and storied landscape—although its older sections, like its older stories, are not always obvious. In my practice many residents are surprised by the wealth of history and folk tales connected to the landscape, as such reacquainting participant-residents with these stories developed into action research. Safeguarding folk tales as part of the cultural heritage of Milton Keynes is important because “[w]hat is included or omitted from our stories makes plausible our anticipated futures. Because stories unfold over time, they are provisional and open-ended and contain the possibility for change” (Berger and Quinney 2005, p. 5). Stories reflecting beliefs and traditions connected to an area personify the inanimate (Frank 2012), helping to develop a relationship with space, in turn helping people imagine a place beyond their own experience. The realisation that storytelling practitioners harbour a vital pedagogical role was pivotal in my research in respect of Milton Keynes. My research aimed to challenge the negative perceptions Milton Keynes faces as a New Town. To this end, I explored storytelling as ‘intangible cultural heritage’ which informed the sense of place among Milton Keynes residents. This study originated in my practice of telling local history stories within the area’s communities and schools. Through acknowledging the stories as pedagogy, I developed the concept of “voices of place” which considers the personifications of place applied by human interaction with the area, based on Frank’s (2012)

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principle that stories carry the voices of those who share the tales (a development of Mikhail Bakhtin’s work). Voices of place is comparable to Hugh Lupton’s “vision of the ear” (Lupton 2001) suggesting that the storyteller, knowing the landscape stories, reveals a revised impression of the landscape for the listener. In my research, this ‘revising process’ is a form of re-storying; the ability to learn, reflect and review one’s perspective through stories. Both concepts (voices of place and re-storying) strive to understand the landscape through the stories and were combined in a further concept of socio-storyology. This concept recognises stories and storytelling as pedagogical, and specifically “about the origin and development of people, places, cultures and societies” (Howey-Moore 2022) Essential to these concepts was the relationship between story, listener and teller, which many practitioners regard as collaborative or co-creative. My research is thus geared towards exploring the pedagogical role of each, that is, story, listener and teller. These concepts established methods and philosophies which I was able to utilise in my practice-led action research. Ultimately, this meant I was involved in the curation and interpretation of folk tales connected to Milton Keynes, stories that had previously not been included in the town’s cultural heritage collections. These stories helped reconcile Milton Keynes’ image as a New Town with relevant ‘historic landscapes’, thus recreating a fresh sense of place. In this chapter, the theme of telling stories to build bridges that construct place is also relevant more broadly. Alongside other practitioners–researchers, I am actively involved in seeking to bridge the gap between storytelling practice and storytelling scholarship. Subsequent sections of this chapter are thus concerned with telling stories, building bridges and constructing place.

Telling Stories My research led to a collection of stories hitherto neglected as part of Milton Keynes’ extant cultural heritage. However, within the research, there were many forms of story construction, from the storyteller’s performance preparation to the tales and anecdotes we construct around our everyday lives. Of particular interest was how stories enable us to

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reconstruct perspectives. This is here termed ‘re-storying’ because with the changing of opinions, further stories are created, in turn bolstering new perceptions. Learning from the stories as told to and by the Milton Keynes resident-­ participants formed a social pedagogy of intangible cultural heritage, curated by the residents themselves. I utilised my practice as a storyteller and story facilitator to engage resident-participants with local intangible cultural heritage stories (Howey-Moore 2018, 2022). Between September 2018 and January 2019, four performances (Fig. 12.1), one exhibition and six weeks of participant workshops took place presenting historical, personal narratives, folk tales and urban myths. This aimed to challenge the rhetoric of newness Milton Keynes faces as a New Town, frequently regarded as “soulless” (Barkham 2016), and to fill the gap of archived

Fig. 12.1  Images taken at the four performances of KM:MK. (Image: T. Howey)

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local folklore (Howey-Moore 2019). My methodology was informed by my practical knowledge of local heritage stories, with storytelling being both a form of heritage, and a method through which to share heritage; it was the means by which residents were engaged, informed and challenged to re-story earlier accounts of the area. The data were collected through practice-led action research. There were five distinct groups of participants: (1) Interviewees—who were questioned about their relationship to the area and their knowledge of cultural heritage, both tangible and intangible; (2) Online survey respondents—these were questioned about their relationship to the area and their knowledge of cultural heritage, both tangible and intangible; (3) Audience survey respondents—those at the storytelling performances were questioned about their knowledge of the stories with which they were presented to ascertain what had been learned; (4) A further audience survey conducted at a storytelling performance outside of the Milton Keynes area—these were asked about perceptions of Milton Keynes and how the stories reflected the area; and finally (5) workshop participants— who had the longest and most in-depth engagement with local stories. To reflect on how the storytelling incorporated in the KM:MK project informed participants’ perceptions of the town, the data collected in respect of groups three and five are most insightful. Table 12.1 lists the stories performed in each of the four locations. Although many of the stories were repeated across locations, a central part of each performance incorporated tales specific to each location. Most listeners knew at least one of the stories told during the performance; nevertheless, new information and perceptions about the area were cultivated as part of the experience (Fig. 12.2). As Table 12.2 illustrates, perspectives changed through the performative storytelling. All the workshop participants felt that storytelling could have a positive influence within their communities in respect of well-­ being, community cohesion and awareness (Table 12.3) and that there were multiple benefits for engaging with intangible cultural heritage stories for local communities. (Table 12.4). Reflecting on the responses, it became clear that the stories both informed and re-storyed perceptions of Milton Keynes. Workshop

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Table 12.1  Matrix of stories performed in each Grid-Square Story area

Broughton

Conniburrow

Stony Stratford Wolverton

Stories connected to Milton Keynes

Introduction: My Story— the tale of the PhD Cows & Coffee Cups Roundabouts and Trams From-Crete-­ Cows Caradoc Gayhurst Dick Turpin Madam Bennett Joan Evans

Introduction: My Story— the tale of the PhD Cows & Coffee Cups Roundabouts and Trams From-Crete-­ Cows Caradoc Gayhurst Dick Turpin Madam Bennett Body in the Belfry The Poacher

Introduction: My Story— the tale of the PhD Cows & Coffee Cups Roundabouts and Trams From-Crete-­ Cows Caradoc Gayhurst Dick Turpin Madam Bennett Penny-a-peek

Local stories connected to the Grid Square of performance

A Pieta’

St Lawrence

Stories connected to Milton Keynes

St George & the Dragon Polly Parrot Jimi Hendrix Sewage Model Midsummer Boulevard Bad Reputation MK Story

Polly Parrot Jimi Hendrix Sewage Model Midsummer Boulevard Bad Reputation MK Story

The Great fire of Stony Stratford The Graverobbers

Introduction: My Story— the tale of the PhD Cows & Coffee Cups Roundabouts and Trams From-Crete-­ Cows Caradoc Gayhurst Dick Turpin Madam Bennett Wolverton Station Lovers Lane

Gunpowder Plot of Milton Keynes

Horsefair Green Witch Polly Parrot Jimi Hendrix Sewage Model

Polly Parrot Jimi Hendrix Sewage Model Midsummer Midsummer Boulevard Boulevard Bad Reputation Bad Reputation MK Story MK Story

Table 12.1 details the stories told in each of the four performances

participants demonstrated a discernible sense of enthusiasm about the prospect of sharing the stories they had heard. Ultimately, this underscored the positive benefits (Table 12.5) of storytelling as both individual and collaborative pedagogical tools.

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Listeners’ response to stories Listeners’ knew story/ies performed in KM:MK

Listener learnt something new from story/ies

80.00% 70.00% 60.00% 50.00% 40.00% 30.00% 20.00% 10.00% 0.00%

Yes

No

Unanswered

Fig. 12.2  Graph comparing listener’s knowledge of stories told to new knowledge gained Table 12.2  Participants comments on how the workshops engagement with stories altered their perspective of Milton Keynes Theme: Locality of story

Participant response

Deeper understanding of place

Made area more alive Talking about area more Improved local knowledge Recognising the area has history Enhanced vision of the area Being in a place long term Making connections Seeing stories on the streets More attentive to the landscape Stories help locate one within the area

Impacted SoP Impact of stories

Table 12.2 consolidates the data taken from participant feedback regarding how stories initiated re-storying

Despite evidence to the contrary, Milton Keynes continues to be derided as a soulless suburb or “non-place” (Barkham 2016). Through the interviews, it became apparent that many residents were acutely aware of this (Table 12.6). But most refuted it. Interestingly, however, many

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Table 12.3  Participants’ comments about engaging with local stories Theme: Engagement with stories

Participant perceptions of local Types of engagement emphasis identified

Most useful aspect of Thinking about workshop engagement with local stories stories Intensity

Far reaching effects for the engagement with stories

Understanding stories Learning new skills Reflect upon Milton Keynes Different way to look at MK

Storytelling

Engaging with stories created Story an increased interest in Milton Keynes

Sense of connection Making one’s own story in relationship to place Getting feedback straight away How they are passed/ survive Got me active From a different direction Look more closely at landscape Changed the way I live here Helping people to settle Sense of place Weave old and new stories New view of storytelling Seeing things anew Learn about people Sense of more interesting things here View it differently

Table 12.3 details what participants considered to be the relevance of engaging with local stories Table 12.4  Workshop participants identifying role of storytelling in the community Theme: The role of storytelling

Participants perceptions of the roles

Entertainment

Relive stress Sorting through issues Bringing people together Stimulate imagination Present ideas Challenges concepts Impression and conventions Taking notice

Making things extraordinary

Table 12.4 identifies the role of storytelling in the community as considered by participants

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Table 12.5  Workshop participants’ view on the benefits for the listeners of ICH stories Theme: Benefits of local stories

Participant response

Milton Keynes

Better understanding of the area Recognise the area’s history and culture People will respect area Help people live together People recognise their part in area Have a bigger impact being spoken than written down

Community Stories

Table 12.5 displays the benefits for listeners of local stories as considered by participants

Table 12.6  Response to being confronted with negative commentary about Milton Keynes Theme: Negative stories of MK

Participant emotional response

Ashamed Frustration

Embarrassed Defend Milton Keynes Argue Angered Annoyed Inform about history and heritage Correct assumptions (not a concrete jungle) Inform—marketing (job) Don’t waste time or breath Good riddance Used to it Not worried Bored with comments Fed-up with comments

Educate

Ignore Resigned

Table 12.6 consolidates responses and behaviour of participants when faced with external negative rhetoric of Milton Keynes

assumed that others in the area shared this negative perception. While derogative commentary is inevitable in any area, Milton Keynes and other New Towns apparently suffer more from disparaging remarks than other, more established, urban areas in the United Kingdom (e.g. see The Guardian 2016). However, the participants in my research frequently reported a sense of pride about Milton Keynes. Indeed, when describing

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the town, the participants frequently did so in relation to themselves. This indicates a connection to the place for these residents. Moreover, for others, the ‘storywork’ we facilitated enabled participants to ‘see’ Milton Keynes in a fresh—and positive—light. As participants reflected and re-evaluated their perceptions of Milton Keynes, it became clear that stories enabled people to look at their home in a new way, impacting their sense of place. Such stories came in the form of memories, histories, anecdotal folktales and urban myths, all related to the area. It became evident that these stories co-constructed an identity of place that residents could really relate to (Cilliers et al. 2015). They established a discernible connection between person and place (Lupton 2001; Gersie 2009; Mills 2017).

Building Bridges Throughout the research, my practice as a storyteller guided me: from knowing where to find stories and how to prepare and present them for the performances to the way I analysed the stories holistically responding to the “voices of place” rather than traditional narratological or folkloric readings. My years of experience in working with stories (and learning how to read audiences and workshop participants to support their experience whilst being flexible enough to allow people to generate their own meanings from the experience) enabled me to develop the relationship between the tales, tellers and listeners. My knowledge as a practitioner lent important context to what I was now learning as an academic researcher. Zipes (2004: 67) argues that ‘the arts can offer unique opportunities for cooperative learning that bridges and brings together people from different walks of life’. Within the KM:MK research, the development of a collection of folk tales yielded a fresh presentation of Milton Keynes. Whilst it challenged the notion of newness surrounding the area, the folk tales were never meant to displace contemporary stories but to add further ‘voices of place’ to the Milton Keynes narrative. Through the stories (that is folk tales and histories, personal narratives and urban myths), an intangible cultural heritage link is made to bridge the old and new aspects of Milton Keynes. However, as a practitioner transitioning into academia,

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my research sparked a personal process, and drew my attention to the divide between academics and practitioners. This section relates some of my experience in bridging that gap and considers the work of other practitioners and academics, many of whom are working towards establishing a more open dialogue between the two arenas. At the start of my research, I identified myself as a practitioner, for me, venturing in to the realm of academia was intimidating. I felt my practical skills were secondary to the “intellectual” collection of data, methodologies and literature reviews (and a common PhD student over-­compensation strategy ensued). Sharing my research in academic arenas felt daunting, but I soon discovered knowing how to tell a good story proved invaluable; using performance skills to hide the nerves, engage the audience, and become proud of my contribution to knowledge. Ultimately, I came to realise that whether presenting to a storytelling or academic audience, it is of course about knowing who your audience is and pitching your story accordingly; a group of sassy teenagers can be every bit as challenging as an academic audience. Taking the leap into academia was difficult as it is unusual for storytellers to document their work in the way the academy demands; oral practitioners focus on the spoken word and the in-the-moment experience. However, it should not be assumed tellers do not reflect upon their process or that their process is not methodical. Usually tellers create and utilise their own methodological process to find, prepare, perform and reflect on their stories. As a story, once learnt, is often incorporated into a working repertoire, the process of reflection and preparation is in constant evolution. These parts of my practice translated to my research. However, it took time and patience for my dual roles (as practitioner and researcher) to establish any sense of equilibrium. I was resistant to breaking apart the stories and the telling experience because, as a teller, this had always been a holistic practice; to deconstruct it felt like a betrayal. However, I recognised that the academy could provide a set of tools to help formally convey the insights about the influence of storytelling on people that I felt intuitively. It was therefore a matter of borrowing, mixing and utilising methods from multiple methodologies. Ultimately, I had to find a way of balancing an instinctive and holistic practice with critical analysis and academic rigour.

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My research has also impacted my practice. This is evident when I now discuss the value of storytelling with clients (such as schools, local councils, and museums) or teaching storytelling and being able to explain why story works ‘upon us’, or being aware during performance of the numerous pedagogies at work when audiences are in particular stages of a ‘storylistening trance’ (Sturm 1999, 2000). Of course, I have always been fascinated by stories and in awe of great tellers, but getting to understand the process and applications of storytelling has provided a renewed sense of deference for both teller and tales. Importantly, my research has impressed upon me that practitioners carry a wealth of knowledge, and this is not secondary to intellectual disciplines, but equal to (and part of ) them. Ultimately, practitioners are pedagogues. I am far from the first or only practitioner to venture into academia and there are many more experienced practitioners–researchers whose scholarly work and research is strengthened by their knowledge of both practice and theory. The evidence of this can be seen in Zipes’ understanding of how stories build communities (1995, 2004) and affect our perceptions of the world (1996, 2006a, 2006b, 2012, 2017); it is also found in Simon Heywood’s studies documenting the Dry’syla tradition (2018; Heywood & Cumbers 2017; Zipes 2017) and his research challenging the ideological perceptions that surround storytelling and its revival (Heywood 2004). Sobol, too, has written about the storytelling revival from an American perspective (1999) and champions the field of storytelling studies. Alastair Daniel (2018), reflecting upon his own practice, has striven to apply academic rigour to performance storytelling as has Michael Wilson who studied the performances of practitioners (1997, 2006) and also examined the role of storytelling within contemporary society (2014, 2017). Furthermore, tellers are increasingly choosing to document their work. Transcriptions of performed pieces, such as Shonaleigh Cumbers’ Jewish Myth cycles (Cumbers and Heywood 2018) and Michael Harvey’s Dreaming the Night Field (2018a, 2018b), archive the story and begin a dialogue of reflection and critique with the wider storytelling community. Transcriptions also give access to those researching storytelling who may not have practice experience. Fiona Collins (2018) and Ben Haggarty (1999) have both documented their process, reflecting on experience and

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philosophies about storytelling and what it means to be a teller. A great many practitioners create and deliver applied storytelling projects within communities (such as KM:MK) like Katrice Horsely’s community development project documented in Storytelling, conflict and diversity (2007). Within the field of applied storytelling, many practitioners specialise in particular fields. Janet Dowling is one such established example, utilising storytelling in children’s mental health care (2006a, 2013) and bereavement counselling (2006b, 2010). Numerous practitioners focus on the educational application of storytelling. This is hardly surprising, since storytellers find the majority of their work in schools. Within this field, examples include Patrick Ryan and Donna Schatt’s exploration of storytelling in education in America (2014), Robin Mello’s (2005) own journey as storytelling practitioner in educational settings, Louisa Phillips’ (2012) employment of social justice storytelling as pedagogy, and Alastair Daniel’s evaluation of Storytelling across the Primary Curriculum (2012). In my research, it was important to recognise the listeners as much as the tellers, not least because both were using the information in the stories in relation to their own life experience to reframe their perspective of the urban environment. The more I engaged with pedagogical theory whilst researching KM:MK, the more apparent it became that storytelling strongly incorporates aspects of social pedagogy. Storytelling thus provides a framework to deal with intangible aspects of life. Nevertheless, perhaps the most crucial pedagogical function of stories is that they require both teller and listener to learn their own lessons, using their own life experience to interpret the story and draw self-realising conclusions. Therefore, despite being the speaker, the teller is not necessarily the primary pedagogue, the ‘feedback loop’ (Figa 2007) means the listener is informing the teller and a fluid transition of information is passed between both (Lambert et al. 2010; Palmer 2014). Within this fluidity of roles, it is possible to recognise that not only can the role of pedagogue be passed from teller to listener throughout the storytelling but may even be held by both parties simultaneously. In my research, tellers and listeners within the communities of Milton Keynes were in a cycle of learning and teaching as stories were shared and re-storyed (and ultimately ‘curated’ the intangible cultural heritage).

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This understanding of the teller/listener relationship as a continuum rather than in isolated positions bridges the space within the storytelling performance, constructing a place where the stories can emerge, where learning and reflection can be achieved, and where re-storying can occur. This ultimately leads to the conclusion in KM:MK that storytelling as a social pedagogy is a space where all involved (listener, teller and story) are pedagogues. This has key implications for the study of storytelling in academic contexts. In building a bridge between storytelling and social pedagogy practice, the works of Hatton (2013, p. 15) and Storø (2013) were particularly insightful. Storø draws upon Jansen’s description of how we create ourselves and our experiences through stories, but that these never stand alone and are built upon previously told stories, added to and corrected (or rejected) (Jansen 2007 recounted & translated in Storø 2013, p. 109). Whilst Storø advocates for pedagogy as a conscious process in a social context, storytellers and listeners unaware of their role as pedagogue may still enact essential pedagogy. In using story to bridge the difference between the old and new aspects of MK, my own journey as practitioner–researcher, and the role of teller and listener, a strong pedagogical message is evident; that the collaboration of these aspects brings greater knowledge, as the epigraph story suggests. My position now is as a practitioner–researcher, bridging both realms (trying to understand as much of the elephant as possible), one aspect supports the other and I am better at both because of the other. Building the bridge between practice and theory does not mean both sides need be in constant collaboration, nor will it bring instant solution to issues surrounding terminology or the visibility of storytelling within the public realm. However, both fields may benefit by developing a stronger image of storytelling incorporating all its parts (including it enactors) and adding as yet undocumented knowledge or new discoveries. Like the blind men in the epigraph, this may require those involved to cooperate and reposition themselves: for storytellers to be more open to critique, for researchers to seek out2 storytellers, and to work collegiately in a bid to better understand the whole elephant.  The Society for Storytelling (2020) directory is a good place to start as it offers storytellers a place to highlight specific fields of specialisation. 2

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Constructing Place Milton Keynes, more than most towns, is a constructed place; for the most part, it was carefully planned. However, Milton Keynes has been constructed in more than the physical sense; it was co-constructed through the stories mediated as part of the new town marketing as well as those stories told by planners, academics, residents and external stakeholders. During the KM:MK research, the stories embodied how place was constructed mentally and emotionally, within the bonds of memory, social connections and perceptions of place. By using Lupton’s ‘visions of the ear’ socio-storyology presented residents with new information through which re-storying constructed new perceptions of place, and with it, new stories. Heritage can be understood as a constructed representation. For many, heritage is commonly regarded as synonymous with history; an obvious example of this is found in the marketing material for heritage organisations like the National Trust or English Heritage. Such material often features images of ruins, manor houses, castles; most are old and often connected to power or the church—these images inform the public view of what is heritage and therefore what should be valued (Crouch 2016; Selby 2016; Waterton and Watson 2016). Milton Keynes does have ruins (Bancroft Roman Villa), Manor Houses (Great Linford Manor Park), as well as old monasteries (Bradwell Abbey); it even has motte-­and-­bailey castles. However, many of these buildings are hidden away, and if new to or visiting Milton Keynes, these features are overwhelmed by the modern road layout and structures. Therefore, the issue in Milton Keynes is not with the heritage itself, but with its recognition. As a storyteller, I tackled this issue with stories, using them pedagogically to inform residents. In this sense, the stories were seeded in communities, and I hoped they would be passed on, which was one of the outcomes of the workshops (I have crossed paths with my workshop participants telling their stories since KM:MK and this has been confirmed). Interestingly, the theme of “construction” was a perennial feature in the stories told. When I uploaded the text versions of the stories used in performance into NVivo, I documented a thematic word frequency (Fig. 12.3). I was surprised to find that “constructed” was the term/theme

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Fig. 12.3  A word frequency search of the themes occurring in the folktales

which occurred most within the stories, not least because most of the tales included in the performances were folk tales and histories. Milton Keynes is heralded as the most successful of the British new towns— which is no doubt a result of the lessons learned from earlier new towns and the efforts of the Milton Keynes Development Corporation (1970). However, having completed my research, as a storyteller, I cannot help but question whether the stories of the landscape may have assisted Milton Keynes’ success. It would seem that the pedagogical role of stories operates at both a conscious and subconscious level. When first attending academic events focusing on storytelling, I was surprised by the lack of other storytelling practitioners on the circuit.3  Conferences and events held within the practicing community rarely have academics on the bill and may not necessarily attract researchers’ interest due to its more entertainment value representation. 3

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One might surmise that this is to do with a lack of awareness of such events or costs (as storytelling is not an affluent profession by any means). It was easy to be intimidated as the only practitioner; I felt an outsider at worst and a curiosity at best.4 During these conferences, I was struck by what was presented as ‘new story research’ in fields I know practitioners to have worked in for years. What is more, it seemed to me that both academics and practitioners were coming to similar conclusions but remained unaware of one another’s work. Clearly, building a bridge between practice and academia seems to me an obvious means of advancing our collective field. Some academic institutions5 are successful in cultivating a rich mix of practitioner and researcher. The annual Storytelling symposia held at the George Ewart Evans Centre (GEEC) for Storytelling, University of South Wales in Cardiff,6 for example, attracts a mix of academics and practitioners, but this remains an exception. Storytelling is a field and art form that is steeped in communication, yet ironically there appears to be little exchange of ideas. One might draw upon physics as an example of how theoretical and experimental fields can operate together productively, and yet independently of each other. However, it is the awareness between theory and practice which is often lacking within storytelling. It can be very difficult for storytellers to access academic articles and conferences; whilst storytellers’ own work may not be obviously visible, apart from at the performance level. One challenge is that the majority of storytellers do not document their work in standard ways; some record work through audio or visual means and make it accessible through physical storage media, social media or podcasts, but very few write critical reflections or analysis. However, the lack of accessible documented work should not imply a lack of reflection. As an oral art-form, most self-critique is  When introducing myself as a professional storyteller at one such conference, other attendees noted they had never met a storyteller before despite using story methods in their research; moreover, most were unaware of practitioners working in their fields. 5  Other academic centres in the United Kingdom which undertake storytelling research or courses include: (International) School of Storytelling—Emerson College, University of Chester, Edinburgh University, Royal Holloway University, University of East London, City University of London, Loughborough University, University of Nottingham, University of Westminster, University of York. 6  Founded by Professor Michael Wilson and Professor Hamish Fyfe in 2005. 4

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cognitive and vocational in practice. The problem is then a matter of accessing the vast amount of knowledge held ostensibly by ‘isolated’ practitioners, and hence not open for analysis, discussion or dispute—the core of the academic process. For tellers who would like storytelling to be taken more seriously, academia offers formal acknowledgement. But it is not a panacea. Bauman, for example, notes that “ethnocentric and elitist biases … privilege the classics of Western written literature over oral and vernacular literature … [the latter often regarded] as simple, formless, [and] lacking in artistic quality and complexity” (1986, p. 7). Equally, Berger and Quinney (2005: 5) warn that “narrative strategies privilege analyst and method over storyteller and story and distance us from the world of lived experience”. For these reasons, many practitioners continue to avoid the researcher’s critical gaze, fearing academia would bring to storytelling and storytellers an unwanted standardisation, and in turn harm the creative process (Radner et al. 2004; Berger and Quinney 2005). However, with so much experience and knowledge held by practitioners, the academic study of storytelling would be enhanced by collaborating with practitioners. This chapter opened with a tale to illustrate the manner in which storytelling is, at heart, a pedagogical enterprise. However, recognising that stories and storytelling are useful pedagogical tools is to only tell part of the (broader) story. Bridges can be built and spaces created where practitioners are welcomed. For the true pedagogical potential of storytelling to be achieved, it is essential that practitioners and researchers share the wealth of information held within their respective fields and acknowledge their symbiotic relationship. However, to further cement relations issues must be addressed. By working in isolation from each other, each is only telling half the story or knowing only a part of the elephant that is storytelling studies. If storytelling as pedagogy can teach us anything, it is that learning occurs disparately, in multiple places, and the ‘teacher’ takes many forms—be they storyteller, listener, researcher or, indeed, the story itself.

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Howey-Moore, T. (2019) Buckinghamshire Folk Tales. Stroud: History Press. Howey-Moore, T. (2022) Knowing My Milton Keynes: How storytelling as intangible cultural heritage can inform the sense of place experienced by residents of the New Town of Milton Keynes. PhD Thesis. Loughborough University. Lambert, J. et al. (2010) Digital storytelling Cookbook. Berkeley. https://doi. org/10.1016/S0097-­8493(01)00172-­8. Llewelyn-Davies et al. (1970) The Plan for Milton Keynes. London. Lupton, H. (2001) ‘The Dreaming of Place’, in Medlicott, M. (ed.) Society for Storytelling’s Gathering, West Sussex, March 2001. Reading: Daylight. Mello, R. A. (2005) ‘Telling Tales: Journey of an Itinerant Storyteller’, in Berger, R. Quinney, R. (ed.) Storytelling Sociology: Narrative as social inquiry. London: Lynne Pienner, pp. 195–205. Mills, K. (2017) ‘Plot and Tell’, in Storytelling and Place,. Cardiff: George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling, n.p. Milton Keynes Borough Council (2017) Heritage, Museums and Archives Strategy 2014–15 Review ( Years 1–4, 2014–18 ). Milton Keynes Council (2018) MILTON KEYNES CREATIVE AND CULTURAL STRATEGY. Milton Keynes Development Corporation (1970) The Plan for Milton Keynes Volume Two. London. Palmer, G. (2014) ‘Power of the Spoken Word’, American Indian Quarterly, 38(4), pp. 512–523. https://doi.org/10.5250/amerindiquar.38.4.0512. Phillips, L. (2012) ‘Emergent Motifs of Social Justice Storytelling as Pedagogy’, Storytelling, Self, Society, 8(2), pp. 108–125. https://doi.org/10.108 0/15505340.2012.665311. Radner, J. et al. (2004) ‘Visions for Storytelling Studies: Why, How, and for Whom?’, Storytelling Self Society, 1(1), pp. 8–27. Ryan, P. and Schatt, D. (2014) ‘Can you describe the experience?’, Storytelling, Self, Society, 10(2), pp. 131–155. Selby, M. (2016) ‘People-Place-Past: The Visitor Experince of Cultural Heritage’, in Watson, S. and Waterton, E. (eds) Culture, Heritage and Representation: Perspectives on Visuality and the Past. Abingdon: Ashgate, pp. 39–55. Sobol, J. D. (1999) The Storyteller’s Journey: An American Revival. Chicago: University of Illinois. Society for Storytelling (2020) Find a Storyteller | The Society for Storytelling, Society for Storytelling Website. Available at: https://www.sfs.org.uk/ storytellers-­directory (Accessed: 20 June 2020). Storø, J. (2013) Practical Social Pedagogy. Bristol: The Policy Press.

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Sturm, B. W. (1999) ‘The Enchanted Imagination: Storytelling’s Power to Entrance Listeners’, School Library Media Research, 2(July). Sturm, B. W. (2000) ‘The “Storylistening” Trance Experience’, The Journal of American Folklore, 113(449), pp. 287–304. The Guardian (2016) https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/may/03/ struggle-­for-­the-­soul-­of-­milton-­keynes Wallace, T. (2017) ‘Cambridge to lead UK economic growth in 2018’, Telegraph. Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/12/30/cambridge-­ lead-­uk-­economic-­growth-­2018/ (Accessed: 3 July 2018). Waterton, E. and Watson, S. (2016) Culture, Heritage and Representation: Perspectives on Visuality and the Past. Edited by E. Waterton and S. Watson. Abingdon: Ashgate. Wilson, M. (1997) Performance and Practice: Oral Narrative Traditions Among Teenagers in Britain and Ireland, Language and Education. Aldershot: Ashgate. Wilson, M. (2006) Storytelling and Theatre: Contemporary storytellers and their art. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Wilson, M. (2014) ‘“Another Fine Mess”: The Condition of Storytelling in the Digital Age’, Narrative Culture, 1(2), pp. 125–144. https://doi. org/10.4324/9781315853178. Wilson, M. (2017) ‘Some Thoughts on Storytelling, Science, and Dealing with a Post-Truth World’, Storytelling, Self, Society, 13(1), pp. 120–137. https:// doi.org/10.13110/storselfsoci.13.1.0120. Zipes, J. (1995) Creative Storytelling: Building Community/Changing Lives. New York: Routledge. Zipes, J. (1996) ‘Revisiting the Storyteller—Reviving the past to move Forward’, in Medlicott, M. (ed.) Society for Storytelling’s Gathering, Leicester, March 1994. Reading: Daylight. Zipes, J. (2004) Speaking Out: Storytelling and Creative Drama for Children. New York: Routledge. Zipes, J. (2006a) Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion, Routledge. New York: Routledge. Zipes, J. (2006b) Why Fairy Tales Stick. Abingdon: Routledge. Zipes, J. (2012) The Irresistible Fairy Tale: The cultural and social history of a genre. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Available at: http://www.scopus.com/ inward/record.url?eid=2-­s2.0-­84884106366&partnerID=tZOtx3y1. Zipes, J. (2017) ‘Once upon a time: Changing the world through storytelling’, Storytelling, Self, Society, 13(1), pp. 33–53. https://doi.org/10.13110/ storselfsoci.13.1.0033.

13 The Personal Statement: A Tool for Developing the Pedagogical Potential of Storytelling in Business Management Education? Daniel Clarke and Tom Cunningham

TC: I’m Tom, an Academic Development Partner at the University of Stirling. My role centres on enhancing Learning and Teaching at Stirling, including as Programme Leader of the PGCLTHE (Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education) for new lecturers. My previous role was Academic Skills Tutor at the University of Dundee—where I was fortunate enough to work with Daniel. DC: I’m Daniel, a Senior Lecturer in Management in the School of Business and Programme Director of the BSc (Hons) Business Management degree at the University of Dundee. As part of programme review and development, rather than treating academic literacy (and storytelling!) as a series of ‘standalone’ sessions, shoe-horned into lecture schedules willy-nilly, Tom and I worked together for two years to D. Clarke (*) University of Dundee, Dundee, UK e-mail: [email protected] T. Cunningham Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Vine, S. Richards (eds.), Stories, Storytellers, and Storytelling, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07234-5_13

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formally embed academic skills development into the ‘new’ Business Management degree, launched officially in September 2019. TC: In this chapter, we tell our story about stories; about how we tried, stumbled, readjusted and tried again to harness the power of student narratives in supporting student learning and engagement. Our final destination is the use of the Personal Statement (PS) as a tool in this regard, something we believe has great potential. After all, students come to us as storytellers so why not cultivate and nurture use of the PS to benefit learning? In telling our story, we offer an innovative take on capturing the conversations academics have all the time with each other by alternating back and forth between one another, such as we would read the script for a play. DC: Generally speaking, this chapter contributes to the literature on passion-inspired learning. Through joining conversation with those who believe student inquiry should tap into issues that matter to students personally in order to engage them more in their writing and to improve it, our research contributes to discussions about using storytelling as a pedagogical tool; in our case, we present the student’s personal statement as a starting point for identifying and developing individual passion to support student learning throughout the curriculum. TC: To help structure our story, the chapter is organized around five sections. First, we stake a small claim for story-based, passion-inspired learning in Business Management Education (BME) (e.g. Kenworthy and Hrivnak 2016). Second, we give details of a learning intervention we tried to harness this. Third, we reflect, with the help of our students, on the effectiveness and shortcomings of this approach. Fourth, we explore the use and value of the PS, concluding with, fifth, a discussion of lessons learnt and implications for learning and teaching. DC: Drawing inspiration from Wyatt and Gale’s (2018) article on “Creative engagements with writing practice in and with the not yet known in today’s academy”, our story about telling stories takes a “dialogic play script form” (p. 120) to provide snapshots of ongoing conversations between us as we went on the journey. Through showing how we handled the not yet known in “exchanges between the two of us … and those with, to and from whose work we speak. Between us all we see where writing takes us” (p. 120).

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The creative process feeding our writing involved the “nonwriting”/“not-­ writing” (Cloutier 2016: 79) activities of drinking coffee, looking out the window on the train during our commute to work, talking on the platform (after realizing that we have just been on the same train but sitting in different carriages), then discussing our ideas as we walked to work together. Other nonwriting activities included socializing in the pub with conference attendees after presenting research papers which raised important issues and pedagogical questions. Supplementing this process was the idea that we should write to it. With ‘it’ being the use of PSs to capture imagination, engage students and nurture learning. Texting and emailing each other, gesturing a movement toward writing, we then picked up on conversations asking, ‘how might we…’ and ‘what if…’ questions relating to the use of PSs in student learning. With Wyatt and Gale (2018), when we use the phrase ‘write to it’, “we mean exploratory, inquiring, open, hesitant, writing” (p. 120), so in this chapter, we share the thinking and learning underpinning our ambitions and raise some questions. On that, we use the word hesitant advisedly because we will only know where the writing has taken us when we get there. Along the way we hope to inspire other educators to join us on this journey. TC: The creative process looked and felt like a social and serious, writerly affair: a lot of talking, bouncing ideas around and giving them room to breathe. Sending emails, cutting and pasting from those into collaborative Word documents. Conversations intertwined work, life, the past, the future. Reflecting. Reading. Writing. Talking. Synthesizing. Drafting. Editing. Correcting. Crafting. Then, rehearsing and presenting at the Suffolk Storytelling conference, which led to this book. And, further reading. Talking. Writing. Correcting. Editing again. Later, we got together on Microsoft Teams, transcribing exactly what we said to each other and we set about “scrubbing” (Badley 2011) the text to make sure it made sense. Reading back over our writing and out loud to one another, putting the play script form into practice, this dialogue came into being.

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 taking a Small Claim for Story-based, S Passion-­inspired Learning in BME TC: What do we mean by ‘passion-inspired learning’? And why is that relevant to BME? DC: Just as we have observed in some of our own interactions with students, Bradley and Nash (2011) ask: Why is it that when we get into an … engaging conversational flow in my seminars my students’ personal self-disclosures and unorthodox intellectual insights can be so original and inspiring, yet their writing assignments turn out to be so disappointingly flat, uncreative, and impersonal? (p. 56)

Our “worry point” (Pelias 2016: 25), then, is this: that when it comes to writing academic essays, all that passion the students (apparently) have for the subject evaporates. When they come to university, many would­be passionate storytellers effectively end up vacating their texts; curtailing and removing any trace of themselves within their writing. TC: Students come to Dundee from a wide range of backgrounds: including a pre-entry Summer School to prepare students who are lacking confidence, experience or simply just missed their grade to get into university. A core focus in the Summer School is on getting students to complete a short essay to assess their preparedness for University. Students are often unsure, do not feel ready and lack confidence in their writing. Using contemplative practices (e.g. Bartunek 2019), how might we help students—including those transitioning to university through widening access—create and sustain creative possibilities for exploring and imagining new ways of being and ‘who to be’? DC: Like most Lecturers or Academic Skills Tutors, we want to help students prepare to write ‘academically’ so they feel as though they belong to an academic community of scholars… of learners … of people who know things. On this, we join with those who argue that passion (Kenworthy and Hrivnak 2016; Cunliffe 2018a) and student matters that matter—on a personal level—(Bochner 2016) should be at the heart of research and scholarship. From that, along with Kenworthy and

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Hrivnak (2016: 734), “we believe … that an individual’s passion should drive his or her research and scholarship.” TC: That is all well and good, but students, much like academics(?!) and me (?!), “…are persuaded to write formulaic texts laced with jargon that is accessible only to select others… […] In living up to demands for excellence […] they dress up banalities as profundities and then boast about it” (Kiriakos and Tienari 2018: 264–5). But then again, isn’t teaching formulaic approaches to essay writing that ‘work’ a good thing?! Your colleagues in the Business School and other academics might say that Academic Skills Tutors should be helping students remove florid language, jargon and overly personal matters from their writing. So, is it not a good thing that we are getting BM students to be somewhat more objective and systematic in their approach to analysing life inside organizations and the world of business? DC: Yeah but such ‘cold’ (i.e. objective and systematic) writing is a far cry from what we expect from our students when they are writing about something that matters to them. Moreover, here, aren’t we writing to try to join with those, such as Badley (2019), who seek to move academic writing away from formulaic, dull, turgid and author-absent texts, to a much more flexible range of options where stories that are “compelling and insightful in that they connect us with human fallibility” (Cunliffe 2018b: 1433) are also welcomed? Don’t we want students to create human writing for human readers (Badley 2019), that is, writing which moves its readers (Brewis and Bell 2020), contains more compelling stories that resonate with others (Meier and Wegener 2017) and, writing that seeks to engage its readers in meaningful dialogue “to create a better social world” (Pelias 2015: 610)? This is a tall ask for the average Undergraduate, but this is an aspiration for us as educators. Right? TC: Maybe so. But in classes for Summer School access students, we emphasize the formal, formulaic, dispassionate, author-vacant (i.e. do not use “I”) and prescriptive approach to academic writing. Although we draw attention to this structured approach to essay writing, we try to stress that it is only one way of writing. In doing so, I often wonder whether the impression given to students is that this is the only way of writing and this is how all their essays should be approached. It pains me to think that students leave my classes thinking this is how their writing

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throughout the entirety of their undergraduate studies should look, read and feel. So yes, I think we have some work to do… DC: Likewise, I worry that such prescriptions have the potential to constrain writing and student learning. The risk for all involved is that students then limit their imagination and possibilities for writing and this in turn impacts their understanding. By thinking that they must follow these overly rigid instructions for writing they may “fail to write like a human being” (Badley 2019: 181), limiting the ‘work’ (Pelias 2015) their stories can do in the world. TC: Our shared concern here, then, is that students become hamstrung and we, as the educators, end up flushing that passion out of their writing, the kind of passion that we assume got them into university in the first place … Following Badley (2019), what is needed then, is “human writing for human readers”: that is, scholarly writing that is “warm” and “intensely personal” (p.  183). And broadly speaking, that also means “human writing for the enhancement of human life” (Badley 2019: 180). DC: With Badley (2016: 378), I believe that … “qualitative inquiry should consist of telling stories that matter” and this kind of approach obviously puts student questions, interests and concerns at the centre of learning and teaching practices (Clarke 2018). Student essays, then, do not always have to be dispassionate and author-vacant. Likening the activity of composing authentic identities to a mapless journey, Badley (2016: 379) continues: “…personal identity is not what matters … writing about identity quests for our inner cores … is hardly a story that matters. …what matters are the connections we can make or see between ourselves (our identities) in the past and our identities now”. Our writing is therefore driven by curiosity and wonder (MacLure 2013; Carlsen and Sandelands 2015) and it joins those, such as Kiriakos and Tienari (2018: 268), who write about writing as a scholarly activity with the aim to “…treat academic writing comprehensively and to make it better”. Our pursuit of this goal is, in part, motivated by the desire to co-create a response to recent calls to bring more of the humanities and liberal arts education into BME (Essén and Värlander 2013; Nesteruk 2015; Van Buskirk et al. 2018; Koris et al. 2017). We are also motivated to bring contemporary research and up to date thinking into the business

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school classroom. From this, we are interested to ask what putting some +s (pluses) in our thinking (Cheek 2017) might bring to our teaching and student experiences of learning? TC: To summarize, then, we are both interested in creating instructional interventions designed to nurture, encourage, facilitate and help students become better learners. DC: Being Program Director has afforded me the opportunity to design some of this thinking into ongoing program development.

The STEP UP to Business Module TC: One of the main pillars of the new BM degree is the STEP UP to Business module. This is a compulsory first semester of first year module for all BM students. The design and approach builds on my experience working with students making the transition into university on widening access routes. The module embeds core academic skills development within a BM context. The module was designed in two parts. The first covers key aspects of being a student at university—including note-taking, time management and academic writing. These are introduced through relevant examples, applying to the BM degree. The second asks students to work collaboratively in groups to deliver an end-of-module presentation—with themes connecting to Dundee, the local business community and organizational contexts. DC: As Programme Director, my aim is to marble creativity and passion through the degree. STEP UP to Business is, as Tom says, one part of this. Other pillars include our second year Enterprise module where students create a business plan, taking their passion or interest in an area and applying it to a business context. In their third year, as part of the Research Methods module, we ask students to design a research proposal on personal matters that matter to them, informing their fourth-year dissertation. TC: The first version of the STEP UP to Business incorporated two ideas related to Storytelling as an educational tool. First, as an ice-breaker, early on in the module, students were asked to reflect on their intellectual

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journeys by way of sharing stories about a book or a piece of reading (or other media) that has rocked their world (Bridges-Rhoads et  al. 2018). Second, students were required to write a reflective journal: online in the module VLE, private so only individuals and module tutors can see. Based on Rolfe et al.’s (2001) three simple questions: (1) What? (2) So What? (3) Now What? students wrote weekly journal entries about what they have learned during the semester. This component of the assessment was worth 10% of final module grade. DC: Tom invited me to join the teaching team the day they moderated module marks and I was impressed by the quality of reflection, creativity and how compelling some of the submissions were. At first, I was a bit concerned about handing control of a Level 1 module over to Academic Skills Tutors with no background in BME.  My concerns were soon allayed when I was invited to showcase how the skills they were being asked to practice would come into their own later in the BM curriculum. Bringing me into the classroom became mutually nourishing and I was invited back in at various critical junctures as the module unfolded. TC: I had never taught BM students before, so I did not know what to expect, but for the first exercise, I was impressed by the range and variety of books students brought to class. I was expecting business books— which we got—about Steve Jobs, Alan Sugar and Donald Trump. Classic student books like The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings were included. But there were also graphic novels about the nature of art, alongside social and economic commentaries such as Animal Farm. It was a joy to take the class and lead the discussion which had flow and a buzz about it. This was helped by bringing in guests from across the University to give their own stories—including our Vice-Principal Teaching & Learning (who picked a Nietzsche text) and the VP of our student’s association (who played it safe with Harry Potter). For the second exercise, we found that students needed a lot of prompting to complete their weekly journal entries on time. Indeed, a few students only completed their journals ‘all in one’ at the end of the semester. The power of an ongoing narrative was therefore somewhat lacking. This led us to conclude that development of the module needed to include ‘future-oriented’ reflection: not just ‘what inspired me to get here?’ and

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‘what did I do during the first semester?’—but also ‘what am I going to do with my degree?’ and ‘what are my future goals?’ DC: This got me thinking: might helping students develop some kind of ‘mission statement’ or personal ‘manifesto’ provide an affective charge, energizing their inquiries throughout the duration of their studies? TC: That was our feeling, anyway. But what did the students who took the STEP UP to Business module actually think?

What Did the Students Think? TC: Daniel and I invited Level 3 students to discuss their impression of, and lasting impact from, STEP UP to Business—two years on from completing the module. DC: We asked a group of students to share their memories of the module with us. There was a general agreement among students that the module was fun and supported friendship building. One student recalled that there was “loads of 10-minute exercises; it was quite jam-packed full of weird and wonderful tasks to do”—which, when they look back and others at the time questioned, asking, ‘how does this relate to my BM degree?’ but somehow the activities helped them prepare for the kind of learning activities/assessments/coursework they would be asked to do in the future. TC: I tend to focus on the negatives in these kinds of comments. So, comments about relevance strike home: we wanted to create an Academic Skills module that was relevant to BM students and their degree. Perhaps there is still work to do in that area. Even the positives (about fun) make me wonder. Should we be entertaining students? How best so we engage them in first year? I do not mind if they think it is fun—but was it also useful? Groupwork also came up in this conversation—the frustrations that students feel about being assessed for it. DC: To tease out usefulness, I asked questions about essay planning. One student volunteered information, shining light on her friend, explaining that he still uses a lot of tips, guidance and PPT slides/lecture notes he took from the module. He was appreciative of the ‘safe space’ within this module to learn and make mistakes.

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TC: It’s great to see that students still use, and return to, the STEP UP materials in later years of their degree. The student who still to this day uses his notes wanted to know how Uni ‘worked’, or what we (as academics and those marking his work) were looking for in Uni essays. Another student made the valuable point about being an international student (and having taken a gap year) that STEP UP provided a grounding in how things are done in UK/Scottish HE. I also noted that, despite the reservations about groupwork, the module helped on the social side— bringing students together and forming friendship groups and creating a cohort identity. DC: I wanted to know how useful the students found the book exercise. What struck me as interesting about that intervention that Tom and his colleagues created was the decision-making process students undertook in selecting a book to tell the class about. The books they chose to speak about seemed to be as much about ‘image management’ as it was about creating authentic accounts of readings that upended their thinking, did something to them and changed their world … because the book choice clearly says something about the speaker.… TC: Yeah, some differing motivations for sure. For some, it was about presenting a certain image, for others, it was about finding any possible book they could … as some hadn’t brought any with them to University. So … perhaps we should have flagged this exercise up to them in the Summer, rather than the week before…? DC: One student chose Nudge. It was an Economics book. She admitted to not reading much before she came to university as she was more into art, theatre, drama, performing arts, sport and so, she was more interested in making things, being out and about and spending her time surrounded by others. … this left little room for the quiet, solitude of reading. Nudge is the only book she has ever read. TC: I found that shocking. I used to read a lot as a teenager, and the thought of only having read one ‘proper’ book is crazy. Perhaps this shows our limitations in designing modules for our students: we haven’t lived through their experiences, so their cultural and social points of reference are different to ours. No matter what we do, there will always be some disconnect…

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DC: In terms of potential implications for passion-based inquiry, Nudge and economic thinking does not necessarily seem to be her passion. TC: Indeed. We were hoping that the book choice would reveal something about them, their identity, their passion. But it didn’t quite hit that mark for her—although I do think others, like the student we mentioned earlier, did choose a book that spoke to him and who he is becoming. DC: The thought that perhaps struck me as most insightful was that, this choosing the book that ‘rocked my world’ exercise was viewed only as an ice-breaker activity. It was introduced in the lecture as such and perceived and now, still, viewed as such. I was interested to see how the book they had chosen ‘fed’ into and ‘nourished’ the rest of their learning in L2 and L3, to date. … I wanted to know, is there any sedimentation or residue in their current thinking with regard to, for example, their current work on their research proposal as part of the L3 module Research Methods & Consultancy Practices? TC: For me, this highlights the limitations of the book activity in terms of harnessing/fostering passion-based inquiry. The students saw it as ice-breaking, and the choices of book were not always oriented towards the longer-term and giving thought to how the stories they tell might do some ‘work’ and create a better social world (Pelias 2015). DC: With the exception of the one student who had a ‘choiceless decision’, that is, she had no choice other than to speak about Nudge as she had not read any other books so her decision was already made for her, so to speak (the truth is, however, she could have chosen a film, play, song or other, but thought she had to speak about a book—indeed, she said, ‘I should have chosen a piece of art or an artist’ when I probed her about her ‘real passions’, that is, through asking, ‘Did Nudge and what you learned in that book really rock your world?’); the other three students we spoke with explained that the book they chose is still helping them move forward in their studies. TC: Indeed. And this, I think, points forward to what to do with STEP UP. To tap into the passions, we have to design an assessment that enables this creativity to be realized. DC: So back to weaving a thread from the book they spoke about in L1 and the work they are doing in L3—for those three students, there are direct connections, albeit implicit, hidden, indirect, sedimented. The

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student who spoke about reading a book about Russian aircraft built for war, being fascinated by the rush to have the best arms, to be the most threatening and destructive described how what he learned about aircraft manufacturers helped him to reflect on business strategy. He is now writing about the rise of electric aviation, implications for global business, consumer travel and climate crisis. He is in the student aeronautical society (something I will come back to later), he wants to be a pilot and he has just secured a very prestigious internship with British Airways through an extremely competitive application. The student who spoke about How to be a wallflower and the role of character, personality and selfhood (although she did not use that term) is currently writing her research proposal for a project that touches on issues relating to social interaction and relationality that intersect with recruitment practices, leadership and human resource management. Interesting to note, is that one of the students did not bring her book into class because it was an e-book. It is not only tangible, tactile books and their pages that create impressions on people. Students can become impassioned and have their world rocked via strings of digital code (Osvath 2018). TC: I was really interested in the momentum How to be a wallflower provided that student, and how she has developed her studies into L2 and L3 of her degree. Her book pitch was the one I remembered the most, even though she did not ‘win’ the vote when we asked students at the end, which book are you most inspired to now go and read? This was because it was personal, honest and explained her drive and motivation. It was exactly what was being aimed for. So how can we facilitate and nurture such ‘thread-weaving’ for all students? DC: Theoretical/conceptual interlude: Is thread-weaving even necessary? Is this what we are arguing if we write this? With one of the students, we see how she felt ‘forced’ into choosing Nudge, but she is now into marketing, so maybe it does not matter if students are unable to weave a thread from L1 to L3…? TC: For me it’s about looking in two directions—but yes, I agree it’s not necessary for a good outcome for students that there is this ‘thread’ through a degree programme. Plenty of students can succeed without it. The aim here is enhancement; trying to provide the space for a narrative.

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(1) Transition in. About making relevance. So, the ‘induction’ nature of STEP UP is there in a way that not only equips students with the skills but also allows them to take control of their learning, set a direction (even if this changes). (2) Transition out. What do we (you/me/the Uni/the students) want Dundee students to be when they leave? A thread, a narrative, a manifesto, will be empowering for them to take forward? DC: …or, another thought. … Empowering them to ‘fake’ forward? Would we be able to smell the ‘fakery’? In writing about thread-weaving, maybe we are not arguing it is the only way to proceed or that students need to/ought to start thread-­ weaving. Building on insights gleaned from our students (who are doing very well, flourishing, excelling in their studies), we are arguing that thinking about building thread-weaving capacity is a worthy pursuit in itself; that working and ‘thinkingfeeling’ (Barad 2007) with readings that rock our worlds (Bridges-Rhoads et al. 2018) is a good starting point for embedding relational opportunities with reading and others into the curriculum. TC: One of my roles on the TESTA (Transforming the Experience of Students Through Assessment) project at Dundee was to interview final-­ year students on their experience through a degree programme. We, as staff, tend to focus on our own modules, our own little pieces of the programme, rather than across the programme as a whole. But students experience the degree as one thing, and so reflect on it that way. I think it’s interesting that you, Daniel, are (fairly) new in the role of Programme Director—so are thinking about this thread/marbling across and through the whole programme. STEP UP is, for me, a piece in that process—but is more needed? DC: The most exciting moment for me was when one of the students said it would be great if there were opportunities to find our passions earlier in our course. I got the impression that she was feeling a little frustrated at this stage in the conversation because the other three students in the conversation had clearly found what makes them tick and she expressed how she was ‘late to this party’, having only recently discovered that she is actually interested in marketing; evidence of this being that she has not continued with any modules of study in Economics since L1 and she has opted to take all the modules in marketing. Moreover, she

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is interested in the creative side of advertising, campaigning and events management. TC: Yeah, the other three had, it seemed, found the right path for them earlier on in the degree. We need to be careful, don’t we? One of the great benefits of a four-year degree is precisely that it allows students to change path/discover a new passion. So, this ‘thread/marbling’ can’t be restrictive, it can’t railroad people from day one? DC: This was music (and poetry!) to my ears. I asked how early is early (good) enough? When should we, as educators, start creating those opportunities? The conversation then turned to personal motivations, personality types, and cultural differences; and I mentioned that in my experience, there are a lot of horses and a lot of water. There was a general agreement that it is perhaps the ones who don’t turn up, those who are never there, are the ones who stand to also benefit a lot from such initiatives. TC: And this is another big challenge for us. We can design all sorts of ‘fun’ and, hopefully, relevant exercises and materials. But: we need the students to attend class and engage with these. Student Engagement is the key challenge.

A New Idea: The Personal Statement TC: On reflection, aided by discussion with the students, the first iteration of the STEP UP to Business module was good. The content and delivery clearly resonated with students—and they enjoyed it. But it could do more—particularly in terms of engaging students with what they are passionate about, and what motivates them in their studies and in life. Something more that gave them an opportunity to express themselves and ‘get on’ with the business of learning. DC: A story about a school leaver getting on with things sticks with me. I met him at one of the University Open Days. At the end of my presentation, he came to tell me, ‘I want to study at Dundee and do this degree with you’. In the weeks and months that followed, he must have sent me a good dozen emails or so. In his emails, he asked loads of questions about the degree, the decisions I had taken in my life regarding my

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educational pathway and I learned a lot about both his personal life and entrepreneurial ambitions. When the time came for him to write his personal statement for his UCAS application, he asked if I would read it and give him some feedback. I felt conflicted and wasn’t sure if I should. … I was impressed with his gumption, so I thought I will give it a read and then decide. I was blown away by his resolve and care for his family. In his statement, he explained how within a year, his father was made redundant, his mother’s business failed, they had to sell their family home and they were all living in a caravan for a short period of time before new living arrangements were secured. In one of his weekly updates, he explained how he was nearing the end of his first year of trading (buying and selling things on eBay) and he hoped to top £17,000 turnover. His PS moved me. Driven by the desire to pay back some of the generosity and kindness extended to him and his younger siblings, he wanted to become more self-sufficient and help out his parents financially in some way… It struck me that the PS could be a powerful tool to help tease out what makes a student ‘tick’, and then weave a thread throughout the degree to keep ticking (impassioned/motivated) … ‘thread-weaving’ … and everybody has a story to tell. Everybody who has survived childhood (and made it into university) has a story to tell … This young man was so positive and he was thriving. It struck me that he might have something to say about resilience and ‘bounce-back’ and much more … With appropriate academic guidance, for example, in an Internship, he could develop those interests, working in a third sector organization, for example; and in final year, he could study ‘flourishing’ or positive organizational scholarship, for example, as part of a dissertation. TC: So, this got us thinking: how might a classroom intervention involving ‘PS as storytelling’ play out in the context of BM? DC: From all this, we are interested to ask, what can a PS do now? In an effort to help them develop a love of and for writing well, what if we (re)introduce students to PS-(re)writing as a “tool for thinking” (Kiriakos and Tienari 2018: 264)? Is it through scrabbling/scribbling/scribing/ scrubbing (Badley 2011) and with some “slowing down of our usual pace” (Bartunek 2019: 3) that we can help students use and rework their PS to animate their life and learning? How do we make the PS ‘live’ in

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the world (Pelias 2016)? Perhaps it is through doing the work of precision and being finicky about words (Probyn 2010) that we can find “human-­ ways-­of-being-human-in-a-human-world” (Cunliffe 2018b: 1432 citing Shotter 2016: 116), bringing the PS to life and breathing life into scholarly journeys. What if, through adventuring, dreaming and hunter-­ gathering sentences, we meet students at the place in their intellectual/ academic lives where they are at? How can we take steps to harness the power of student stories? TC: In other words, how can we design and embed an instructional intervention in the BM degree programme to maximize the humanifying (Cunliffe 2018b) and transformative potential of the PS? And, building on this, how could we marble this approach throughout the curriculum? We see a few possibilities within this new degree structure to encourage students to revisit and ‘mine’ their PS for instances/moments/glimmers of passion and then rewrite their PS as part of their module assessment… DC: One of the student’s first touch points with University involves writing a story about who they are, where they come from, and what their motivation is for pursuing Higher Education—in this case—in Business Management. Following Cunliffe 2018a: 9), the activity of writing a PS, then, might be understood in terms of a “poetic moment, in-relation to others”. As it is conceptualized here, the act can also be construed as an “identity-related activity” (Kiriakos and Tienari 2018), a kind of identity quest. PSs, then, for us, are dreamy fictions and imaginations—they are creations of some future altered, desired, aspirational, presumably and, hopefully somehow better, aspiring self (Salem Khalifa 2009). TC: Because university applicants have to write a PS, applicants get into university by telling stories: they story their way into university by composing academic and professional aspirational identity narratives … So, albeit to varying degrees, when students meet with business management educators, they do so always already as storytellers. Indeed, one of the “Top 6 Tips” from UCAS designed to help students articulate their difference and readiness to study Higher Education is to “ensure that your statement [read ‘story’] is relevant to the courses that you are applying for”. In other words, students are encouraged to write an interesting

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identity-related story and if they stand out from the crowd enough … then we, as program directors/admissions tutors/management educators, determine that they have demonstrated sufficient passion for management learning and we hope they will continue to build upon, develop and nurture such passion(s) when they come to study with us. Research into PSs has examined the nature of the language used and its effectiveness (Swales et al. 2004), the role of ‘self-marketing’ in student applications (Shuker 2014), and the extent to which such statements bring more fairness to the application process (Jones 2013). Little work has been done, however, on what might be done with personal statements from a teaching and learning perspective when students reach University. Interesting, rich and personal student narratives may well be lost as a result. DC: This realization—that students are always already storytellers and their storytelling is, in part, what got them admitted into university to begin with—led us to the question: have you ever wondered what happens to those PSs? Are they doomed and eternally confined to the pages of UCAS application forms? Or, by inserting ‘contemplative activities’ into student developmental journeys as scholars, can we create contemplative student experiences, bringing PSs to life and helping to cultivate contemplative practices (Bartunek 2019)? TC: Do students ever think about their PS when they are at university? Do students ever return, revisit and revise them? What might they learn from doing so? Do they ever consider—either throughout all Levels of study and/or at the very beginning in Level 1 and then again in their final year of study—whether what they have studied and accomplished at university has reshaped who they thought they would become? DC: Instead of asking only questions about lessons for managers in terms of ‘what to do’ in this or that situation, do students ever contemplate ‘who to be’, asking themselves a “fundamental existential question of who we are as human beings in the world and its implications for the way we live our lives and do our work” (Cunliffe 2018b: 1432)? TC: Perhaps we should be asking students, are you proud, embarrassed, or indifferent (or other) by any of what you wrote and (perhaps interestingly!) how was it written, anyway? Do we even dare go there, considering authenticity and authorship? Why ask who wrote the PS in

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the first place? What kind of problems, challenges and concerns could this potentially open us up to (e.g. what if a student discloses that s/he paid for it to be written or a family member/friend wrote it for them)? How, then, might we start to think about possible forms such a pedagogical intervention might eventually take? DC: These and many other important pedagogical questions arise. There seems to be scope for designing such an intervention, so how might we try it out? TC: To make the PS relevant and move toward creating productive futures (Pelias 2015), we decided to link the exercise with the module assessment on STEP UP to Business. We designed a low-stakes (10% of the module grade) assessment which is consciously and explicitly open in its scope: giving students freedom to choose how best to meet module requirements. A ‘creative output’ was required, demonstrating reflection on the module, experiences of semester one and, by projecting into the future, an examination of the implications of all this, for the crafting of future possible selves. An accompanying 250-word summary (or ‘vignette’) was required, explaining the rationale behind the output. To support students in developing their creative output, we weaved advice/ guidance/support into three workshops throughout the semester. (1) The first workshop—in Week 1—is an introduction to the module, outlining various rules/regulations/expectations in management learning at university. Students are asked to access and read their PS ahead of class to inform a brief discussion of the ‘identity work’ (Beech 2008) involved in authoring a PS. This provides an inroad for conversations about transitioning from student as a desired identity, to being/belonging in a university, to student-as-aspirant (Salem Khalifa 2009) and agent of transformation. This serves as a way to introduce the assessment requiring students to produce something ‘creative’. (2) The second workshop follows in Week 3. This allows time for students to form their initial ideas: conceptual underpinnings are detailed during class and students are encouraged to experiment/play with creative ways of revisioning/reimagining/revising (Ellis 2016) their PS.

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(3) A period of prototyping ensues and there is conversation/discussion around the practicalities of submitting creative outputs, ensuring that intended learning outcomes are achieved. Next, there is a period of verification where the importance of crafting a reflexive vignette (Humphreys 2005) to evidence the development of academic identity and voice (i.e. passion-based learning) is emphasized. In the final workshop—Week 9—students are encouraged to share and discuss their prototypes for peer feedback. DC: I loved how you introduced reflection to the students and took the opportunity to emphasize that the skills learned in the here and now will be called upon in the Change Management module in the final year of study where students have to submit a reflective learning journal. And if students choose to do a dissertation, they might also use those valuable skills to keep a research journal/notebook. TC: From my perspective, students engaged well in the workshops and assessment. The creative outputs were excellent and there was a wide variety of media, ranging from responsive letters/postcards to a future-self, websites, blogs, videos, poetry and performative dance. Without the accompanying reflexive vignettes, attributing marks to some of the highly creative–imaginative outputs would have been virtually impossible. Students were, in general, forward-looking; focusing their reflection on their future academic and professional selfhood. DC: This activity is restorative because students are coming into BM education full of passion for management learning and their future working lives. Our challenge as educators has been and remains to harness such passion and these activities constitute, we argue, a step in that direction.

Conclusion DC: We hoped to be in a position to analyse student/staff self-reported evaluations, discuss implications for teaching and suggest next steps/further research. But in the composition of whatever is happening, (in)activities, people and things thrown together can easily come undone,

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activating a new self-world relation (Stewart 2016). Things happen … sometimes things do not go according to plan… TC: I got a new job at another university and somebody else took up the post I vacated. The idea of embedding storytelling—in the form of the PS—into the curriculum didn’t quite gain traction and you (DC) ended up having less of an influence or direct hand in designing assessment(s), making module enhancements and delivery of that module. DC: Next year, I will be module leader. I will introduce the PS as storytelling from day 1. And I wonder, just as Art & Design students graduate with a portfolio, would it be useful for BM students to graduate with a PS, perhaps one that they would be proud of and willing to show a new employer? Back to our question then: how do we make the PS (as a story) live in the world? How do we help students breathe life in to them, creating “human writing for the enhancement of human life” (Badley 2019: 180)? TC: Additional assessment ‘alignment’ and joined-up thinking with module leaders in successive levels of study within the degree programme could provide further opportunities, and indeed encouragement, to ensure that passion-based inquiries are marbled throughout student learning. For example, in an entrepreneurship module, requiring students to develop a business plan or in a module on Research Methods for Business Management where students are required to develop a research proposal, the PS could be reintroduced providing further opportunities for students to start again from ‘their place’ and where they are at in their life (as detailed in their manifesto). DC: Working with the new module leads in Tom’s absence, in 2019, I applied to the Scottish Institute for Enterprise (SIE) for Level 1 accreditation with the Scottish Innovative Student Awards (SISA) and STEP Up to Business was successfully awarded accreditation. The Enterprise Programme Director gave a guest lecture on ‘Creating your core values’ and students were invited to submit their application for Future Thinker (Level 1) accreditation. This extracurricular activity, requiring only a couple hundred words on what ‘new’ thing you have learned, and how does this ‘new thing’ relate to your future was not formally embedded into the assessment for the module and with this, only a handful of students achieved applied for it. Did they not see value in thinking about personal

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values? Was it not ‘pitched’ convincingly? Does it need to be assessed for students to engage in reflection of this kind? Could helping students prepare for submitting for Future Thinker accreditation be more intimately interwoven with use of the PS as a tool for thinking? How might such classroom interventions work in other academic institutions and adapted to local contexts?

Reflective Postscript DC: In her writing on why contemplation is so important for academic lives (of both staff and students), re-presenting the words of Mary Oliver, Bartunek (2019: 2) writes: Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.

For Bartunek (2019), paying attention is about attentiveness, meditative practices, being captivated and developing a quality of presence. It calls for us to notice things—seemingly small things that can be generative. But noticing things can also be disturbing. Likewise, astonishment can involve amazement, wonder and curiosity. It can even be farcical and with surprise, it can also be part of theorizing. Additionally, we can be moved by what we notice, evoking compassion and vulnerability. For our purposes here, tell about it involves two steps. First, write. Second, share it. The point here is we want students to pay attention to what they have written in their original PS (and any eventual PS rewrite), then wonder what the implications might be for future selfhood. ‘Telling about it’ in reflective prose as part of a submission for Level 1 (Future Thinker) SISA accreditation, for example, then returning to such thinking at a later Level of study—to keep going back and forth—might facilitate learning and “enhancement of human life” (Badley 2019: 180). This story has started in the middle and remains in the middle … our story is ongoing and unfinished. This chapter is a ‘pit-stop’ in our journey

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as we are finding our way with encouraging students to use PS-writing as a tool for thinking. We have written to it (Wyatt and Gale 2018), ‘it’ being the idea that PSs and storytelling, by riffing off and through PS rewrites, can nurture passion, learning and might eventually help to create a better social world (Pelias 2015). TC: We wonder if you will agree with us in thinking that this chapter in itself constitutes an illustration of scholarship that tells about it (Bartunek 2019). DC/TC: Tell us if you do, and please tell others about it…

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Correction to: Whose Story Is It Anyway? Hashtag Campaigns and Digital Abortion Storytelling Reilly Willis

Correction to: Chapter 7 in: T. Vine, S. Richards (eds.), Stories, Storytellers, and Storytelling, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07234-5_7 This book was inadvertently published without updating the below correction: 1. Page 157, The phrase “Steph herself ” has been replaced by the phrase “activist Angie Jackson”.

The updated original version of the chapter can be found at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­3-­031-­07234-­5_7 © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Vine, S. Richards (eds.), Stories, Storytellers, and Storytelling, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07234-5_14

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