Storytelling Consulting Seminar Boje

INSTRUCTOR: David M. Boje 532-1693 Call between 9 AM and 8 PM; Office BC 318 email:

MEETS: 2:35 to 5:05 PM on Tuesdays in Business Complex 247.I am asking your help to recommend students that want to learn the advanced qualitative arts. We develop qualitative approaches that suit each person’s field of study and we do some storytelling consulting as a class. We usually produce good quality work that is used for student’s conference presentations, and for potential journal articles in their field of study. Please distribute this flyer.

There is an important difference between Action Research and Savall's Intervention Research. Its our job to sort it out.

OFFICE HOURS: OFFICE HOURS: Tues 12:15 PM to 1:30 PM - Frenger Food Court (by Dynasty, at a table); or Tues 1:30-2:30 Tamara Journal Office Regents 422; are Please call 532-1693 for appointment

IMPORTANT DATES: Classes begin Aug 24th 2010 ; Thanksgiving Break Nov 22-26. Final exam class for presentations is Dec 7th 2010. We will work on this research together and you will have your own individual research based on your academic field of study.

SYLLABUS 685.1 Story Research and Consulting to Organizations. We apply various qualitative story and narrative research methods (plot analysis, script analysis, life history, and restorying) to intervention research projects. Students will conduct story noticing assessments and (proposed or enact) interventions with a local consenting organization. They will write it up for possible publication.

Open to all Ph.D. students; and to any masters student (by permission of instructor). Contact David Boje for more information. Ph.D. students from Education, English, Sociology, Anthropology, Education, Education, Communication Studies, and several other disciplines besides Business have expressed interest in a course that is about storytelling research as well as about how to use it in organizational change and development work. All are all welcome!

What I want to do is develop a new (rekindled) approach to action research, one that is not dependent on social construction theory.

“A detailed case study of sociotechnical networks ought to follow at this juncture, but many such studies have already been written, and most have failed to make their new social theory felt, as the science wars have made powerfully clear to all” (Latour, 1999: 198).

What this suggests to me is with a review of ‘Native American’ scholars’ work: Kaylynn Twotrees, Gregory Cajete, Gerald Vizenor, Robert Warrior, Greg Sarris, Louis Owens, and Paula Gunn Allen à It is possible to develop a new conception of Action Research, one not rooted in social construction, but more in a vibrant materiality.

A Challenge - I am wondering if it is time to reexamine the roots of ACTION RESEARCH. Kurt Lewin is the father of Action Research, and since his famous field theory approach the field has gotten all caught up in SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM. The field has moved away from an intra-play of what I call 'materiality' with the social and the psychological. This is really brought home in work by Bruno Latour (2006) Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Acton-Network-Theory and his earlier (1999) book, Pandora's Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. There is a whole new paradigm in materiality in the work of Karen Barad (2007) Meeting the Universe Halfway. As a physicist Barad wants to reclaim materiality in quantum physics. Jane Bennett (2010) Vibrant Matter is looking a an approach to materiality and storytelling. She builds on both Quantum Physics and on Latour's Actor-Network-Theory. And guess what? You can go back to Kurt Lewin's work in the 40's and 50's and find some common ground. And it’s a ground that Action Research has moved away from.

Each summer Grace Ann Rosile and I head for France to work with Henri Savall http://iseor.com. He believes that there is an alternative to Action Research. What sacrilege. He calls it intervention research. I told him about Latour, and Barad, and Bennett, and he finds that it is consistent with his Intervention Research. So the big challenge is to look to new approaches to change and consulting, using a storytelling, rooted in materiality, instead of ye old social construction.

Materiality-Storytelling and Intervention Research: The Challenge of Recovering Action Research from the Grip of Social Constructionism. Berger and Luckmann (1966) had, once upon a time, a social construction rooted in material conditions, in Marx. This changed in past two decades with the direction that Ken Gergen, as well as Karl Weick (a good friend), and the training in Action Research. Social Construction became obsessed with ‘stakeholder theory,’ and social construction, as Latour (2005) puts it, became equated with what is ‘unreal,’ ‘not truth,’ or ‘social fiction.’ I participated in this agenda for a good long time. And I am only beginning to wake up.

For example, in Marx, there is ‘congealed labor” which is physiological and it is use-value (see Latour, 1999: 189). Marx (Vol. 1, Chap 1: 53) says, “On the one hand, all labor is speaking physiologically, an expenditure of human labor power and in its character of identical abstract human labor it creates and forms the value of commodities. On the other hand, all labor is the expenditure of human labor power in a special form and with a definite aim and in this, its character of concrete, useful labor it produces use-values.” (p. 54)
At a very practical level there is a correspondence between Kurt Lewin’s (especially, 1943) field theory charts, and the drawing of actant-assemblages that Bruno Latour has done. And unlike ‘social construction’ in Lewin there is a definite intra-play between materiality and discourse, and between reality and irreality (as Lewin calls it). This was the basis for our recent presentation to CTU that Grace Ann did with me, and Samuel was there ( I think so).

The earliest days of sociotechnical systems tried to overcome the duality of ‘social’ and ‘technical,’ but as Savall tells it, the sociotechnical folks just gave up: “”In fact, they were not harmonizing formal and informal systems nor were they integrating the technical and social system as the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations had advocated (Trist, Higgin, Murray, & Pollack, 1963)” (Savall, 2010: 3).

Latour (1999: 193) asserts that “real artifacts are always parts of institutions, trembling in their mixer status as mediators, mobilizing faraway lands and people, ready to become people or things, not knowing if they are composed of one or many, of a black box counting for one or of a labyrinth concealing multitudes.”

Every once in a while a black box opens, mostly during a breakdown or dysfunction, and out of the woodwork all sorts of technicians who tend the technical affairs, join in the action. They were there all along, and days or months, or even years back, set up the technology, wrote the lines of software, installed the machines. We just never notice them when we scan the scene. When there is “a hiccup in the smooth function of the subprograms” (Latour, 1999: 191), the techies get the call to action. And all the glorious ‘malfarious assemblages’ become noticed in our storytelling. But, they were telling stories all along, which we did not notice. The malfarious are parts of much variety, each of which is a black box, until the hiccup.

What is the relevance to storytelling and action research? When there is that moment of hiccup and until the hiccup passes, a myriad of storylines visibly co-mingle, and the assemblage of non-human and human actants share the center stage. It is the material actants, and the enders of materiality (technology, techniques, etc.) that are invisible in a stake holder analysis, and recent renditions of action research. And with the linguistic turn, and the rise of social constructionism, and all that Western Narratology devoted to structuralism, and textuality, there is no noticing of the material storytelling.

You might be wondering how materiality can tell a story? In Jane Bennett’s (2010: 3-4) book there is an example of an ‘onto-story’ and there is more ontological storytelling in both of Latour’s (1999, 2005) books. Bennett uses the example of a onto-story of objects in a gutter in front of a shop. Latour uses examples of the classroom, a gun, and a speed bump. In assemblage theory as in field theory, there are actants who locomote, and the actants can be human and non-human. Latour (1999: 181) also call these ontological stories, ‘tool stories.’ They are part of what Morson (1994) calls the shadows (back-shadow, side-shadow, and fore-shadow) narratives and stories. A back-shadow narrative is a retrospective sensemaking, and the side shadow ones are what I have been calling living stories, and the fore-shadow ones are what I defined as antenarratives (Boje, 2001, 2008, 2010). Western narrative leaves much of the past in the shadows of a dominant narrative. Grace Ann and I use restorying to deconstruct the dominant (grand) narrative to recover moments of shadow, ‘wow moments’ of exception to the dominant saturated problem narrative. Then we do a process that allows the exceptions, the ‘little wow moments’ to become part of a new story, on that gets support in the materiality storytelling. In the 2001 book I called it the 8th step, ‘resituation’ that follows 7 steps of deconstruction of the Western narrative.

Vizenor (1998: 15, 170-183) calls this transmotion. Stories connote a special sense of materiality, what Vizenor (1998: 15) calls ‘transmotion’ defined as “that sense of native motion and an active presence, [that] is sui generis sovereignty” and “a reciprocal use of nature, not a monotheistic, territorial sovereignty.” The transmotion of ledger art is a creative connection to the motion of horses depicted in winter counts and heraldic hide paintings” (p. 179). Storied transmotion is a material “presence in stories, an actual presence in the memories of others, and an obvious presence as semantic evidence” and in a Bakhtinian sense “a dialogical circle” (p. 169) and “in a ‘dialogical context,’ the conversions of [ethical] answerability” (p. 27, bracketed addition, mine). Stories are a transmotion, and a virtual sense of presence in animated and embodied native memories that includes in a posthumanist philosophy, animal memories (p. 170). Colonialism is a narrative of domination where conquered rights of transmotion, land sovereignty, and natural material reason are decided by conquers (Vizenor, 1998: 181-2). “The monotheism and monologic of Western narrative is “dominance over nature; transmotion is natural reason, and native creation with other creatures” (p. 183).

Once again we are back to the essential difference of Western narrative and the materiality storytelling. And we are on course to looking at a new approach to Action Research. Savall (2010) prefers the term ‘intervention research.’ I teach this at NMSU. I think that Savall, who looked at Sociotechnical and Action Research in the 1970s, thought it needed to retain a focus on the technical, but all the economic and on accounting (thus his preference of a socio-economic approach to ‘intervention research.’

Emergence is co-generated from the human and the technical actants. “Every scientist knows in practice that things have a history to tell” (Latour, 1999: 282). Certainly every archaeologist knows this. Yet the constructionists use the vocabulary of stakeholders, as without materiality, as without nonhuman action. In Western narrative, the actors, the actants, and those little wow moments of exception à get replaced by abstraction, by a general plot line.

The crisis in action research all started in sociotechnical, not only in dualizing social as opposed to technical, but in making social the dominant part of the binary, and then just banishing technical altogether. And this Western duality stems from the split of subject from object in the social sciences. One possibility is for action research to return to the break, and to look at the intra-play of what Barad (2007) calls discourse and materiality. Storytelling is not only a domain of discourse, it is a materiality, or as Vizenor (1998) puts it a ‘transmotion.’

Storytelling-materiality with emphasis on exploring the ‘-‘ (gap), can yield a different register of practice that the social constructionist analytic cut that separates subjective and objective, word and physical, mind and matter. It is the gaps that make all reconciliation impossible. That ‘and’ has disappeared.

See the new annotated bibliography http://peaceaware.com/655/ on compleixy and storytelling. It has some links to work by Barad.

Some Books we will want to look at, a chapter here and there and the class will decide together which books, which articles, what challenges to make:

I will not select too many at the getgo. I want to stylize the choices according to your background and aspirations. I will change the list as we go forward. Please come to class prepared, having done notes on each reading, ready to discuss fine points. You will see that small assignments prepare you for getting into the field, collecting stories, doing your restory work with the client, and writing up publishable findings. I will help you each step of the way.

Week 1 First Class - We will start to decide as a class what kinds of projects of 'Intervention Research" we will do. Some options worth considering: a marketing project in Micronesia, help public housing in LA, do something to have fair and just selection of Art in Public Places, help market Las Cruces as Arts and Culture Destination; bring about a change in shared governance at NMSU, get the Dust Blowers out of NMSU, change the image of sustainability at NMSU into actual sustainability, and other projects you care about. Boje will present on Green Intervention Research Projects at NMSU Green Paper 1 - March 5 2010 Sustainability at NMSU (Connie Falk, Tim McKimmie, & David Boje) presented by D. Boje to Sustainability Council on Mar 10 2010. Green Paper 2 - April 5 2010 Ecological Landscaping at NMSU for personal, environmental, and fiscal health (Tim McKimmie, Connie Falk, & David Boje) presented by Connie Falk & David Boje to Sustainabiltiy Council on Apr 14 2010. Professor Nancy Oretskin (Law) will present a proposal to engage some of us in a marketing study of entrepreneurship in Micronesia. Virginia Maria Romero will talk about possible arts research intervention projects: see report on tax dollars below. Professor Oretskin renowned artist Virginia Maria Romero and board member of http://talkinstick.info - will present about these 4 initiatives about Tax Dollars and the Arts. --> A storytelling consulting Example: Why Las Cruces Does Not Exist? Film of 2008 Storytelling Intervention in Arts & Culture An Intervention Research into the Material Conditions of Arts and Culture in southern New Mexico. Special Report 20 July 2010 by David M. Boje, speaking as citizen - Why is our New Mexico Tax Dollars not Invested by State Agencies in Building the Artist Business in New Mexico? David M. Boje. Updated August 3rd 2010 In Part I - Why Southern New Mexico Arts and Culture is not on the Map of New Mexico? In Part II - Why did NM Arts - selection committee for Art in Public Places Not Pick anyone as a Finalist for the NMSU O'Donnell Hall art commission and only select five finalist who did not live in New Mexico? - See George Mendoza application; Alb. Journal Article Aug 3 2010 story coverage In Part III - What happened to Efforts for Las Cruces to apply to the State of New Mexico for an Arts and Culture Designation area? In Part IV: Why does the Federal and the State Government use Different criteria for who Can be on an Art Selection Committee? Can we start with a chapter from Bruno Latour's (1999) Pandora's Hope book? If so, in the Chapter on "A collective of Humans and Nonhumans" there are a series of charts that could be tied back to Kurt Lewin's (1943, 1946, 1947) field theory charts. Some have past, present and future in it (Figure 6.1, 6.2 & 6.6) and others have movement [i.e. locomotion] (Figure 6.5) and some have movement, time, and steps (Figure 6.3). Our opening question: How to reclaim an Action Research from the death-grip of 'Social Constructionism' by looking to Kurt Lewin's 'Field Theory' reimagined through Bruno Latour, Jane Bennett, Karen Barad, and several Native American 'materiality' storytelling scholars? “A detailed case study of sociotechnical networks ought to follow at this juncture, but many such studies have already been written, and most have failed to make their new social theory felt, as the science wars have made powerfully clear to all” (Latour, 1999: 198). Read on line course book, Introduction: WHAT IS STORY CONSULTING? (this is abit old, but may help give you backgrand). Optional: o Read the Introduction chapter in Narrative Methods book to get understanding of antenarrative o Read Intro Chapter to Storytelling Organizations and Critical Theory Ethics book o See video Story of Stuff http://storyofstuff.com/ o Intro to Story Noticing - Bill Viola Getty Museum Video o Intro to Story Fractals - Trippy Fractal Video o Improv Everywhere Home Depot Video o Ch 1 What are 2 Kinds of Story Consulting Story Consulting Book o Handouts: Walter Benjamin's classic 1936 essay, Storyteller something from Kurt Lewin and from Bruno Latour;: Answer Question: are living story skills being deadened by narrative-abstraction in our science and in the information systems of society? Assignment for next week: Pick an organization (any kind, but with some longevity) - for example, in Micronesia, in LA, in NMSU, or in the Arts Scene (http://talkingstick.com click Arts Scene for data bases) and come to class with a scrapbook of its visual storytelling, any public text, any semblances of founding story, narrative, and antenarratives. If possible do field visit: Please visit one of the weekend arts events: Arts Ramble is First Friday downtown mall (Main St); ); or Las Cruces Farmers & Crafts Market & every Sunday/Thurs is Mesilla Arts, Crafts & Seasonal Produce Market (Thurs) 11 a.m.-4 p.m.; (Sun) 12-4 p.m. Or set up your own contact - databases at http://talkingstick.info Then write fieldnotes in a notebook
Week 2 Have read by today - Lisa Sprinkles change agent of Nickerson Garden - largest public housing site west of the Mississippi- will be on SKYPE call to ask for our help as a class - http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/nickerson.html photo of Nora King and 1st graduate of Dual Management Program that Boje worked at using action research from 1989 to 1996. Lisa Sprinkles is a grant writer wanting to do some violence prevention and do a book on Nora's life. See how Nora wanted 1st dual management in LA and 1st Peace Corps grant form a community to do economic development in public housing. Please have read and highlighted - Walter Benjamin classic essay on Storyteller (see Blackboard), and read o Boje, D. M. 1991. "The storytelling organization: A study of storytelling performance in an office supply firm." Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 36: pp.106-126. What is 'materiality storytelling' from Native American Scholars' work such as Kaylynn Twotrees, Gregory Cajete, Gerald Vizenor, Robert Warrior, Greg Sarris, Louis Owens, and Paula Gunn Allen. Google Scholar it. Optional: Ch 2 What is Genealogical Method? SC Book o See Narrative Method chapter on Microstoria o Intro to Storytelling Organization: What are 8 types of sensemaking story? Intro to storytelling org book o For Marketing students: How is Understanding an Advertisement Possible? by Trevor Pateman -- Essay uses Roland Barthes approach to narrative Assignment for next week: Enter the public debate on the relation of Narrative to Living Story and Antenarrative. Go to my Wikipedia (Sjuzhet/Fabula) or story or narrative or similar entry and make an improvement in grammar, style, content, perspective. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sjuzhet
Week 3 - Note these readings will change as the class members substitute their own discipline's reading. Following are fallback examples o Story Ethics chapter from Critical Theory Ethics book o Chapter 11 on Aunt Dorothy's Murder/Suicide in Storytelling Organizations Book Optional: o Ch 1 Narrative Methods - Deconstruction o Jacques Derrida 1979 essay, Living On: Border Lines o Ch 3 What is Practical Storytelling Consulting SC Book o Ch 9 Developing Organizations Storytelling Org Book o Why I do not assign managerialist story consulting books? Boje, D. M. 2006a. Pitfalls in Storytelling Advice and Praxis. Academy of Management Review, Vol 31 (1): 218-224)..This is a review of six storytelling consulting books, and consulting practices. Issues are raises and opportunities for future research. Click here
Week 4 Planning to get your term paper ready for a Conference - e.g. —14 - 16 April 2011 —sc'MOI 2011 (20th Anniversary) 20 Years of Storytelling and sc'MOI: A Celebration —Holiday Inn Independence Mall Philadelphia, Pennsylvania —Sc’MOI 14-16 April – send in abstract by October to dboje@peaceaware.com If accepted you get a proceedings publication —HTTP://scmoi.org for more info Optional: o Ch 4 Why do Storytelling Organizations Crave Story Control? SC Book o What is the dark side of Knowledge Management Story Consulting? Boje, D. M. 2006d. The Dark Side of Knowledge Reengineering Meets Narrative/Story. Organization: The Critical Journal of Organization, Theory and Society. Click here for pre-publication pdf. o Chap 3 from volosinov book Marxism and the Philosophy of Language (1930/1973) pp. 125-140
Week 5 o Please Set Aside in your calendar the Oct 3-5 2009 dates of WHAT'S ART? exploring the Creative Economy of Dona Ana County Convention More info at http://talkingstick.info ASSIGNMENT: Turn in Title and abstract for your term project Optional:o Narrative Methods book, ch 3, Microstoria o Ch 5 What is Mythmaking in Story Consulting? SC Book o What is antenarrative? Boje, D. M. forthcoming. The Antenarrative Cultural Turn in Narrative Studies. To appear in book edited by Mark Zachry & Charlotte Thralls The Cultural Turn Communicative Practices in Workplaces and the Professions. Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing View pre-publication PFD
Week 6 o Chap 5 Semiology from Visual Methods book (Gillian Rose) ASSIGNMENT: Turn in an outline listing the various parts of your article Optional: o Ch 6 What is Mythmaking in Story Consulting
Week 7 o Boje, D. M. 1995. "Stories of the storytelling organization: A postmodern analysis of Disney as 'Tamara-land'" Academy of Management Journal. Vol. 38 (4): 997-1035. o Gabriel chapter from 2004 book - handout ASSIGNMENT: Turn in 1 to 2 pages on contribution you see your article making to the field; a paragraph laying out the major sections of your article Optional: o Ch 7 What Story Consultants Need to Know About Collective Memory?
Week 8 o Article slections by class members Assignment: Turn in about 3 to 5 pages of literature review for your article. Please be critical instead of just summarizing existing theory Optional: o Ch 8 How to Write Strategy Story?
Week 9 o Ch 4 Content Analysis form the Gillian Rose book on Visual Analysis o handout - Article selctions by class members o Intertextuality chapter from Boje book on Narrative Methods Assignment: Turn in methodology section (2 to 3 pages) of your study. o CH 9: WHAT IS HOLOGRAPHIC STORY CONSULTING? Submit the literature review of your article
Week 10 o Article slections by class members Optional: o CH 10: HOW DOES STORY CONSULTING RELATE TO MARKETING?
Spring Break Mar 24 to Mar 28 08 Week 11 http://scmoi.org -- time off for class to finish up article draft
Week 12 Assignment: Turn in the first part of your analysis section of your study o CH 11: WHAT STORY CONSULTNANTS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT STORYABILITY AND COMPLEXITY?
Week 13 Assignment:: 2nd part of your analysis section o CH 12: WHAT STORY CONSULTING NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT POWER TOOLS?
Week 14 o CH 13: WHAT STORY CONSULTING NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CRITICAL THINKING AND CRITICAL THEORY? Assignment: Turn in the implications and conclusion section of your article Work on drafting your article
Week 15 o CH 14: WHAT STORY CONSULTANTS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE ‘L-WORD’? Make final revisions before final presentation next week & Submit first draft of your consulting research paper, in the format of the journal you are submitting to, complete with abstract, intro, lit review, method, findings, implications, conclusion, references, and name of journal you will submit it to
Final presentation of your 2nd draft of consulting project papers will be done during exam week - Dec 8th 2009 in BC 204

About your Instructor: Professor David Boje is an internationally-acknowledge expert in organization story research. He has published over 80 referred journal articles, written a book in narrative method, and has book contracts under review with publishers for follow-on book projects. He has just completed chapters on story research for two scholarly handbooks, and a review of the story praxis books for Academy of Management Review (Boje, 2005a, b, c, e, f). One of his first tier-one journal articles was in Administrative Science Quarterly (1991) which was a consulting project to an office supply firm. Kaye (1996) developed a highly successful storytelling organization consulting practice down under with the approach. Boje teaches classes in small business consulting (Mgt448/548) using theatrics of storytelling and Socio-Economic approaches (Boje & Rosile, 2003, b, c).

1) Students completing the course will have a mastery of several story research approaches to studying story behaviors. I can include the use of N-Vivo text analysis software. But, I much prefer scrapbooking, deconstruction, and intertextuality without it. Choice of methods depends upon the field sites selected. Students will be able to collect story fragments in ethnographic field work, in documents, and in the non-verbal and non-text expressivity of art and architecture as well as the gesture and rhythm of story theatrics. Story behavior research and consulting is not about doing interviews or making collections of organization folktales, or narrative archetypes. Students completing the course will be able to collect and analyze field notes and recordings of story behaviors.

2) Students will conduct field research (&/or consulting) on a New Mexico, long-lived "storytelling organization" using genealogy research methods. It gets at the more epic aspect of storytelling. Epic looks at the systemicity of story behaviors, in their emergent, on-going in situ processes. Managerialist story consulting, on the other hand, imposes a cohesive-narrative-beginning, middle, end-dogma onto story that I call BME (see Storytelling Organization book). For narrativists story must have coherence: beginning, middle & end (BME); be linear in its development, and be monophonic (told by one informant in the manner that management prescribes). Epic story consulting addresses the entire storytelling organization as a collective constellation, in all its dialogisms (polyphonic, stylistic, chronotopic, & architectonic), that is ever-changing and rearranging in emergent complexity.

3) We will work on some things as a class; Students will conduct an "storytelling organization" intervention consulting project on a long-lived New Mexico organization. Students may work in teams, but each person must write their own individual independent sections of a project. a different kind of project that does not involve a specific site: story consultant Gabriel Gargiulo has asked for students to operationalize his story model using metrics; and other projects students suggest.

4) Ph.D. students are expected to produce a publishable-quality journal article for submission to one of the journals that focuses upon story research and/or story consulting practice in their chosen discipline. They are expected to submit it first to some conference, such as http://scmoi.org, critical management studies in UK, Academy of Management, etc. Masters students are expected to produce a professional consultation report detailing story behaviors observed, and appending field notes and other documentation. Masters students are expected to do less reading than Ph.D. students.

5) Students learn the ethics of story consulting practice and research. This includes following New Mexico State University IRB Human Subjects procedures. Please have anyone doing interviews fill out the following consent form. Please review any material with the client that you intend to appear in any king of conference paper or publication. Click here for IRB Approved Consent Form (Feb 2007; renewed Jan 08). Please have interviewees complete a Confidentiality Form (copy to be stored in Boje's office, BC 318; give copy to interviewee)

Our seminar will include methodologies for story research (deconstruction, theme analysis, grand narrative, plot analysis, etc.); will also include story intervention approaches such as “restorying” (defined as collecting the dominant (oppressive) stories of the organization that set up its posture and power, and then intervening to constitute a new story that has liberatory potential (White & Epston, 1990). Storytelling consulting to organizations is a blossoming field (about 50 books on it at Amazon.com). Most of these story consulting approaches are pretty naive, with advice like teach CEO to tell a stump speech story, and somehow that will change the organization (Boje, 2005f).

Each year there are free-to-the-public service learning 'consulting by storytelling' projects with different sectors of the economy. An example is facilitating 2008 1st Annual Arts Convention, organizing task forces with local public, private, and grassroots organizations to bring together leaders of city, town, university, and commerce to develop the arts economy. Results included actual interventions, such as museum scavenger hunt, Winterfest to vitalize downtown businesses, and other aggressive marketing of Arts and Culture of Las Cruces and Mesilla Valley. This is also civic engagement: doing storytelling consulting intervention that bring about more socioeconomic ethics of justice and equality by working with government, economic, education, and small business communities. Service Learning/Civic Engagement applies course content to your volunteerism, and includes your reflexive processing of experience in your notebooking and in your report and presentation assignments. The aim of your volunteerism is a collaboration with community members to effect interventions that add value to your education and to the socioeconomic situation of the community.

We will do this together, and perhaps a joint paper will emerge. The other activity is to do some aspect of storytelling in relation to your own specialty, perhaps relating the method or theory to your thesis work.

The storytelling in New Mexico, for example, affects the distribution of arts and cultural resources that metropolitan cities and the rural communities receive.

GENERAL SYLLABUS POLICY

o Incompletes ("I" grades): Given for passable work that could not be completed due to circumstances beyond the student's control (e.g., severe illness, death in the immediate family). These circumstances must have developed after the last day to withdraw from the course. Requests for "I" grades should be made to the instructor, but must be approved by the Management Department Head.

o Withdrawals: It is the responsibility of the student to know important dates such as University drop dates; last day to withdraw with a W is March 16. Moreover, it is the responsibility of the student to officially withdraw from any class that he or she intends to drop.

o Cheating: Cheating will not be tolerated. Punishment for those caught cheating will be an 'F' in the course. The person will also be subject to further sanctions as indicated in the student code of conduct.

STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES: If you have (or believe you have) a disability & would benefit from classroom accommodation(s), contact the Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) at Corbett Center , Room 244 (Phone 646-6840; TTY 646-1918). All medical info is treated confidentially. Do not wait until you receive a failing grade. Retroactive accommodations cannot be considered. Information, instructions & forms from the Services for Students with Disabilities Office are online at http://www.nmsu.edu/~ssd/index.html. Accommodations: SSD Office, 646-6840 ( Corbett Center , room 244); Discrimination: Office for Institutional Equity, 646-3635, O?fLoughlin House.

Feel free to call the Student Accessibility Services (SAS) Office at 575-646-6840 or email at sas@nmsu.edu with any questions you may have on student issues related to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA and/or Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act). Students requesting accommodations and/or services relating to a disability may seek assistance from the SAS Office located in Corbett Center, Room 244. All medical information will be treated confidentially. If you have already registered, please make sure that your instructor receives a copy of the accommodation memorandum from SAS within the first two weeks of classes. It is your responsibility to inform either your instructor or a SAS representative in a timely manner if services/accommodations provided are not meeting your needs.

Questions regarding NMSU’s Non-discrimination Policy and discrimination complaints should be referred to Gerard Nevarez, Office of Institutional Equity, 575-646-3635.

http://lib.nmsu.edu/plagiarism/ NMSU’s policy on plagiarism. This appears to be a growing problem. It is fairly easy to google excerpts from papers to check for plagiarism. If you find any cases, refer to the Academic Misconduct pages in the undergraduate (p. 21) or graduate (p.15) catalog. Thank you for your assistance on this matter.

Student Responsibilities

1. Within a few days of the start of the semester, register with SSD & obtain forms.

2. Within the first 2 weeks of beginning of classes (or within 1 week of the date services are to commence), deliver the completed forms to the instructor(s).

3. Within 5 days of giving the forms to faculty & at least 1 week before any scheduled exam, retrieve the signed forms from faculty & return them to SSD.

4. Contact the SSD Office if services/accommodations requested are not being provided, not meeting your needs, or additional accommodations are needed.

Faculty Responsibilities

1. Within five 5 working days after student gives you the forms, sign them, retain a copy, & return originals to the student.

2. Contact SSD immediately if there are any questions or disputes regarding accommodation(s), disruptive behavior, etc.

3. Refer the student to SSD for any additional accommodations.

WHAT ARE FIELDNOTES: Som Advice

Know your Standpoint - You are taking what Dorothy E. Smith (1990 calls a 'standpoint.' You are taking the standpoint of the artists in what is called the Creative Economy of southern New Mexico. Art is creative labor.

Notice Gender - The creative economy is based, I believe, on an inequality of labor power of men and women. We are asking you to begin SEAM be becoming a participant observer, and noting 'living stories' of working conditions, work organization, 3C's (communication, coordination & conciliation), training, time management, and strategy development.

Focus on Noticing and Noting Living Stories - The living stories situate already given ways of sensemaking in the practical activities of artists and arts and culture organizations. There are forms of thought embedded in the living stories, that is a sensemaking currency (Boje, 1991: 106). of the Arts Scene. Storytelling therefore is a sensemaking currency, where living stories, narratives, and antenarratives are the medium of exchange.

Living stories access the co-ordering of artists' practical activities as sensemaking subjects.

Beware of Narrative Reduction! Narrative, in social science (according to Triadic Storytelling Model, above) cancels out living story's embedded concepts, and replaces them with abstract ones. Social science usually aligns with narrative since it is one the side of producing abstract concepts, and erasing the living stories of co-ordered activities that are situated in Structure and Behavior social relational substructure, as well as in working conditions, work organization, etc. Narratives are good at branding, being specific about a path taken. Their weakness is abstraction. Narratives tend to develop one logic (monologic) and one perspective. The narrative representations erase living stories, the life world of living people, in order to form characters, to switch agency from person to social beliefs, social norms, etc. Narrative is swapping out reality of grounded living story activities to make generalities. Narrative makes up concepts at the social level, to do away with people's sensemaking living story specificity.

Narrative abstraction is accomplished by erasure of living stories, giving people abstract-concept-natures, to express a principle, idea, norm, or belief at the social level. This makes for efficiency in communication, but its different sensemaking than living stories. Narratives abstract, and living stories are more dialogical, have a polyphony of points of view, as you enter the web of living stories, situated in human activity. Narrative aggregates, makes living story over, into erasure.

Antenarrative - Antenarratives are a kind of storytelling that shapes the future, making bets, moving and traversing before the more solid, petrified narrative, abstraction, and monlogic sets in. There are four types of antenarratives: linear, cyclic, spiral, and rhizomatic networks. Linear are easy to spot, they have a beginning, middle, and end, such as in goal setting, strategic plans, action plans, etc. Cycles have stage by stage steps. Linear and cycle thinking allows time to be reversible. Look backwards, re-trace your steps, get to the beginning. Spirals veer way, and you cannot go backwards. Rhizomes network in all directions, and you cannot re-trace time or space moves.

When you are bringing change to an organization, or an entire economy, you are dealing with all four kinds of antenarrative-storytelling.

So What? In doing field notes, please sort out narratives, living stories, and antenarratives.

There is a good reason why e don't do surveys or formal interview schedules.

"Individuals are asked questions presumably in an interview" (Smith, 1990: 44).
Answer are detached from practical living stories in the interview situation so they can be ignored, reassessed, or fragmented into some minor quote, and coded into concepts, descriptions, evaluations, and prescriptions (This is what SMith calls Trick 1).
Statistical manipulations are made to living story fragments, as in-place metering devices, or becoming 'data' to craft "central tendencies" (p. 45) (This is Smith's Trick # 2).
The research re-narrates the social aggregate, in narrative, making central tendencies into character attributes of social norms, social beliefs, or social values within the bounds of abstract concept maps that have been substituted in steps 1 to 4 for the territory. Its an act of rhetoric (Trick #3).

Please take verbatim Fieldnotes, that are tapping into the living story sensemaking keeps your categories on the ground. The danger is when you craft narratives (such as in your report, in root cause maps) because you are concept-driven, and leave the grounded currency of sensemaking behind. Narratives compose a virtual reality

There are narratives in the field. People are always moving up the scale of abstraction in storytelling, erasing living stories in favor of narrative rigidity.

Therefore, it is important in your inquiry procedures to not become obsessed with concept, and focus on the "socially organized practices of real people" (Smith, 1990: 46) in what I call the living stories of people's worlds.

People in formal organizations are caught up in substituting narrative abstractions, like Creative Economy, creative worker, Creative City, etc for the actual living story ground, of embedding working conditions, work organization, etc.

I have a thesis: Arts Scene commodities (artists & artists) are courting the exchange of art for money in such a way that the commodity and money appears to become the agent, and the agent of the living artist in the Creative Economy gets displaced.

The WHAT'S ART? Convention is about how artists can become agents, as they set about selling art. You will find something quite curious. Not only is the Arts Scene not on the official State map (see above), art does not sell too well around here.

I think antenarrative path to the future of Arts Scene is to develop socially organized practices of artists and their organizations that results in art sales.

If artists are not selling their art, then what are they actually doing for Creative Economy. This is where the gendered nature of Creative Economy comes in. Art is feminized work. Actual people (both men and women) are feminized in their working conditions, and working organizations. It is bait and switch. The creative Economy keeps our attention on a narrative of abstract forces operating without human will or intention of those artists active in the process of wealth generation (Smith, 1990: 47). Artist are creative capitalist entrepreneurs, who are not well compensated for stimulating the activity and money-exchanges in the wider Creative Economy.

You get to finish this storytelling in your investigations and interventions. The trap is staying immersed in narrative, when you could be focused on the ground, on life in living story sensemaking.

Your task is to antenarrate a future of the Arts Scene where artist make a fair living.

Mgt 685 Story Research & Consulting Seminar

Green Paper 1 - March 5 2010 Sustainability at NMSU (Connie Falk, Tim McKimmie, & David Boje) presented by D. Boje to Sustainability Council on Mar 10 2010.

Green Paper 2 - April 5 2010 Ecological Landscaping at NMSU for personal, environmental, and fiscal health (Tim McKimmie, Connie Falk, & David Boje) presented by Connie Falk & David Boje to Sustainabiltiy Council on Apr 14 2010.

Why is our New Mexico Tax Dollars not Invested by State Agencies in Building the Artist Business in New Mexico?

Our opening question: How to reclaim an Action Research from the death-grip of 'Social Constructionism' by looking to Kurt Lewin's 'Field Theory' reimagined through Bruno Latour, Jane Bennett, Karen Barad, and several Native American 'materiality' storytelling scholars?

“A detailed case study of sociotechnical networks ought to follow at this juncture, but many such studies have already been written, and most have failed to make their new social theory felt, as the science wars have made powerfully clear to all” (Latour, 1999: 198).