Synopsis
This is a collection of essays, reflections and poems by Nora Bateson, the noted research designer, film-maker, writer and lecturer. She is the daughter of Gregory Bateson and president of the International Bateson Institute (IBI). Building on Gregory Bateson's famous book Towards an Ecology of Mind and her own film on the subject, Nora Bateson here updates our thinking on systems and ecosystems, applying her own insights and those of her team at IBI to education, organisations, complexity, academia, and the way that society organizes itself. She also introduces the term symmathesy to describe the contextual mutual learning through interaction that takes place in living entities at larger or smaller scales. While she retains her father's rigorous attention to definition, observation and academic precision, she also moves well beyond that frame of reference to incorporate more embodied ways of knowing and understanding. These are reflected in her essays and poems on food, Christmas, love, honesty, environmentalism and leadership. [Subject: Systems thinking, education, social anthropology, environmentalism, Bateson, symmathesy]
Review
This book is a rich feast with poetry, short reflections and more extended pieces introducing the terms transcontextuality and symmathesy . It is a corrective to the excessive emphasis on individualism in the West: I carries the suggestion that I am somehow individual, independent, when interdependence is the law...Transcontextuality reminds us that an understanding of living organisms requires more than one context of study if we are to understand their vitality. Perception of the world of things makes them separate, which means that we can assign some form of agency. However, when the larger intertwined contexts are in focus, agency is diffused. This turns out to be a crucial point, as [Nora Bateson] explains in an essay on leadership within the paradox of agency. For her, there is no such thing as an isolated individual and we consequently require a new understanding of leadership based on interdependency, since leadership itself is the product of many contexts. Whatever happens within a system is an expression of the patterns of that entire system, which means there is no blame and everyone is responsible... This seminal book will give you a new relational lens on life. --David Lorimer in Network Review - Journal of the Scientific and Medical Network, No. 122, 2016
The way we see affects what we do, writes Nora Bateson near the start of this exploratory, far- ranging foray into unauthorized knowledge . In a series of premise-investigations undertaken by way of essays, conference talks, autobiographical story, quotes and poems, ranging through linguistics, biology, semantics, cognitive theory, justice awareness and embrace of paradox, Bateson invites and advocates suppleness of perception, rigor of mind, and depth of feeling. In this book that moves above all by its questions, Bateson embodies that rarity, a truly free thinker also fully engaged with the fates of all. --Jane Hirshfield, Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets
This is a book for the adventuresome, prepared to travel, relying on their own resources. It is a little book, but it is dense conceptually. The chapters are both independent arcs and parts of the whole, which indeed does circle around. If I were to name an orientation for this circling, it would be something like a desire for a more fluid and dimensional way of doing things such that ethical behavior can more readily be realized in any relationship, including our relation with the biosphere. The book is realized in various forms ranging from essays, to poems, from conference presentations to personal reflections, including an email to a friend. The style of writing varies, not only between chapters, but often within a chapter. One needs to be nimble to follow the shifts, much like travelling through a highly varied landscape with attention ranging from delight at distant views, concerns about safety of river crossings, to investigations of odd scratches on a tree or delight in a frail flower nestled among rocks. --Pille Bunnell in Cybernetics and Human Knowing, Vol. 24, No.1, 2017
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