Co-operative Inquiry
In the About post and Introduction I set out starting points for our inquiry into living in a sentient world: ‘The world is alive; not only alive, the world is sentient and speaks to us, if only we will attend and listen.’ In Living Cosmos Panpsychism I summarised a key orienting philosophy – briefly the understanding that all life and matter has/is connected consciousness; and in Cracked Open with Love gave one account of the experiences arising from this perspective. In this post I introduce co-operative inquiry which has been central practice of our work.
Co-operative inquiry was developed in the 1970s and 1980s as a form of humanistic action research, based on the view that it is not possible to have a true science of persons without engaging with humans as persons. Since persons are self-directing beings, manifestly capable of choosing and making sense of their actions, the distinction between a ‘researcher’ who does all the thinking, and ‘subjects’ who do the behaving is completely inappropriate. In co-operative inquiry these mutually exclusive roles are replaced by co-operative relationships: all involved work together as both co-researchers and co-subjects. Everyone is engaged in the design and management of the inquiry; everyone gets into the experience and action that is being explored; everyone is involved in making sense and drawing conclusions [1-9].
But these humanist assumptions preserve the very clear distinction between humans and non-humans. As animist scholar Graham Harvey puts it, drawing on a traditional Ojibwa perspective, the world is full of persons, only some of whom are human [10:17, 11]. I have in earlier posts reviewed some of the thinking the led me to realise that the co-operative inquiry approach could be applied to inquiry with Earth and her beings, rather than exclusively with human persons [this argument is developed more fully in 12]. Thus four years ago we started a series of inquiries with human and River persons to explore what it would be like for Western educated humans to engage with a sentient and communicative world.
What would it be like to live in a world of sentient beings rather than inert objects? How would we relate to such a world? And if we invoke such a world of sentient presence, calling to other-than-human beings as persons, might we elicit a response?
Co-operative inquiry has three central characteristics that make it profoundly suitable for panpsychic inquiry: it treats those involved – both human and by extension other-than-human persons – as subjective, self-directing beings and therefore as equal participants in the inquiry process; it emphasizes the experiential ground of knowing; and it asserts the primacy of practice.
In traditional research, the roles of researcher and subject are mutually exclusive: the researcher only contributes the thinking that goes into the project, and the subjects only contribute the action to be studied. In co-operative inquiry these exclusive roles are replaced by co-operative relationships, so that all involved work together as both co-researchers and co-subjects. Everyone is engaged in the design and management of the inquiry; everyone gets into the experience and action that is being explored; everyone is involved in making sense and drawing conclusions. Co-operative inquiry is an iterative process. Participants work together through cycles of action and reflection, developing their understanding and practice by engaging in an ‘extended epistemology’ – extended that is from the rational-empirical categories of traditional research. This epistemology embraces four interpenetrating ways of knowing [2]:
Experiential knowing brings attention to bear on the lifeworld of everyday lived experience. This is that aspect of knowing that arises through face-to-face encounter, perception, empathy, and resonance with a person, place, or thing. Experiential knowing is essentially tacit, almost impossible to put into words; it is often inaccessible to direct conscious awareness. Through experience we have direct access to the core of existence; it is the touchstone of the inquiry process and deepens through that process.
Presentational knowing can be seen as the first clothing or articulation of experiential knowing: we ‘tell the story’, make a sketch, maybe sing or dance as an expression of our experience, often bringing it into consciousness for the first time to ourselves and to others as we do so. Such a spontaneous narrative can then be intentionally articulated and developed through creative writing and storytelling, drawing, sculpture, movement, dance, all drawing on aesthetic imagery.
Propositional knowing is knowing ‘about’ something in intellectual terms, in ideas and theories. It is expressed in propositions and statements which use language to assert facts about the world, laws that make generalisations about facts, and theories that organise the laws. This propositional form of knowing is the main kind of knowledge accepted in modern society. In this sense, it is the link between action research and scholarship. Propositional knowing can ‘redescribe’ experience, to borrow a term from philosopher Richard Rorty [13, see also 14], providing new ways to make sense of the world that are both informative and liberating. However, propositional knowledge knowing needs to be handled with care, especially in the language-driven worlds of late modernity. It has great conceptual power to divide the world into isolated mental subjects and independent non-mental objects [15].
Practical knowing is knowing ‘how to’, knowing-in-action. Practical knowing has a quality of its own, ‘useful to an actor at the moment of action rather than to a disembodied thinker at the moment of reflection’ [16:167]. At the heart of practical knowing is skilful doing, which may be beyond language and conceptual formulation. John Heron argued persuasively for the ‘primacy of the practical’ [17].
Ľuboš plays with distinguishing and weaving together the four ways of knowing in his narrative of encounter with Melatín Brook.
These four ways of knowing that make up the extended epistemology are brought to bear upon each other through the inquiry cycles to enhance their mutual congruence, both within each inquirer and the inquiry group as a whole. These cycles can be characterised as Apollonian – planned, thought through, logical; and/or they can be Dionysian – spontaneous, emotional, and wild [5:95].
A co-operative inquiry can start anywhere in the extended epistemology – with new experiences that call for reflection, with new practices that are demanded. Often it starts with questions about practice expressed in propositional form – such as the summary of living cosmos panpsychism we have outlined above. Quality inquiry arises through the systematic – and serendipitous – cycling through these ways of knowing.
Co-operative inquiry with Rivers
The practice of co-operative inquiry thus opens a route toward systematic experiential inquiry into the panpsychic worldview. In our work we have focussed on relationships with Rivers as our other-than-human partners, this choice partly serendipitous; partly because our first proposed inquiry at Schumacher College, cancelled because of the COVID pandemic, was planned in relation to the nearby River Dart; partly because all the human principals have close links with Rivers near them; but mainly because, even in over-developed lands and despite terrible degradation, Rivers remain complex living ecosystems, still providing cracks where a wilder world may flourish. We are seeking to encounter the Rivers, not as passive objects winding through the countryside and city, but as living, sentient beings, as River – River taken to encompass not only the flow of water between banks, but a whole community: wind and rain, mud and rock, plants, insects, birds, and animals, as well as humans [18].
We have established our inquiry programme mainly through the Living Waters workshops as part of the short course programme at Schumacher College; independently, a separate inquiry group has worked over several years. Workshop communities of around 24 human persons meet in inquiry groups of about six, facilitated by a faculty member. The faculty offer a comprehensive introduction to the range of ideas that inform the inquiry through YouTube videos [19] and an extensive reading list, and practical suggestions for invoking Rivers as sentient beings. All involved then engaged in cycles of inquiry: visiting Rivers regularly (once a week) to explore different approaches to invocation – loving attention, meditation, ceremony, song, gift-giving; finding initial presentational form in writing, photography, video, poetry, and drawing; posting these on Google Drive; reading each other’s accounts; meeting weekly on Zoom to share experiences and make sense together; deciding the practical actions to be taken in the subsequent cycle; then after several cycles, drawing learning together. The Living Waters inquiries included weekly meetings of the whole community at which underlying ideas and practices were presented and discussed; and workshop sessions to draw together learning from the project as a whole.
There is, of course, a question whether Rivers, or any non-human being, can be a co-researcher within a co-operative inquiry. One might argue that there is no way a River can (or indeed would want to) partake in the design of the inquiry, the process of sensemaking, the ‘writing up’ of outcomes. And yet, from the perspective of living cosmos panpsychism, the world and its beings actively seek to communicate with humans (and other selves) as part of the process of self-realization. So we can make the assumption that if we approach River respectfully and invite their participation as co-researcher, we can together cautiously establish some level of collaboration. Further, while in the full model of co-operative inquiry, all involved participate in the design, practice, and sense making, this doesn’t mean that everyone does the same thing. All can play an equal part while contributing according to their diverse aptitudes, skills, and interests. As in any group process, different people lead in and contribute to different aspects of the process. So can River be a co-inquirer? There seems to be no reason in principle why not; and from experience the answer must be a tentative ‘Yes’. And it would be absurd to conduct inquiry into ontopoetic relationship with River without regarding them as co-researchers. How this can evolve in practice remains, as with everything, open to inquiry.
For published articles on co-operative inquiry and Living Waters, please also see Voicing Rivers through Co-operative inquiry, Extending Co-operative Inquiry Beyond the Human: Ontopoetic inquiry with Rivers and The Sacred as Immanent in a Sentient World article and video
Future posts will draw on our experience of inquiry with Rivers to share some narrative of our encounters, to illustrate the themes we have identified, and to say more about the practices and protocols we developed for communicative engagement with the more than human world we which have developed over time. In a later post we also reflect on the experience of being part of a panpsychic co-operative inquiry group and the Cycles of Inquiry.
Next post: Encounter with Monte Gottero with guest contributor Andreas Weber
1. Heron, J. and O. Sohmer, An Interview with John Heron: Exploring the Interface between Cooperative Inquiry and Transpersonal Studies. International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 2019.
2. Heron, J. and P. Reason, Extending Epistemology with Co-operative Inquiry, in Sage Handbook of Action Research: Participative inquiry and practice, P. Reason and H. Bradbury, Editors. 2008, Sage Publications: London. p. 366-380.
3. Heron, J. and P. Reason, The Practice of Co-operative Inquiry: Research with rather than on people, in Handbook of Action Research: The Concise paperback edition, P. Reason and H. Bradbury, Editors. 2005, Sage Publications: London. p. 144-154.
4. Heron, J. and P. Reason, The Practice of Co-operative Inquiry: Research with rather than on people, in Handbook of Action Research: Participative inquiry and practice, P. Reason and H. Bradbury, Editors. 2001, Sage Publications: London. p. 179-188.
5. Heron, J., Co-operative Inquiry: Research into the human condition. 1996, London: Sage Publications.
6. Heron, J., Experience and Method: An inquiry into the concept of experiential research. 1971: Human Potential Research Project, University of Surrey.
7. Heron, J., Philosophical basis for a new paradigm, in Human Inquiry, a sourcebook of new paradigm research, P. Reason and J. Rowan, Editors. 1981, Wiley: Chichester.
8. Heron, J., Experiential research methodology, in Human Inquiry: a sourcebook of new paradigm research, P. Reason and J. Rowan, Editors. 1981, Wiley: Chichester.
9. Reason, P., Special Issue: The Practice of Co-operative Inquiry. Systemic Practice and Action Research, 2002. 15(3): p. 169-270.
10. Harvey, G., Animism: Respecting the living world. Second ed. 2017, London: Hurst and Company.
11. Harvey, G., Academics are Kin too: Transformative conversations in the animate world, in Kinship: Belonging in a world of relations., G. van Horne, R.W. Kimmerer, and J. Hausdoerffer, Editors. 2021, Centre for Humans and Nature Press: Libertyville, ILL. p. 133-141.
12. Reason, P., Extending Co-operative Inquiry Beyond the Human: Ontopoetic inquiry with Rivers. Action Research, in press.
13. Rorty, R., Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. 1989, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
14. Reason, P., Pragmatist Philosophy and Action Research: Readings and conversation with Richard Rorty. Action Research, 2003. 1(1): p. 103-123.
15. Mathews, F., Invoking the Real: from the Specular to the Ontopoetic, in For a New Naturalism, A. Gare and W. Hudson, Editors. 2017, Telos Press: New York.
16. Torbert, W.R., Creating a Community of Inquiry: Conflict, collaboration, transformation. 1976, New York: Wiley.
17. Heron, J., Quality as Primacy of the Practical. Qualitative Inquiry, 1996. 2(1): p. 41-56.
18. Wooltorton, S., et al., Special Issue: Voicing Rivers. River Research and Applications, 2022. 28(3).
19. Reason, P., et al. Living Waters. 2021; Available from: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLw7QD3ASAfBJujMNfoN6Bo76DX5tnC5vE.