I was asked to talk about our 'Afters' paper on a creative writing panel organised by Dydia DeLyser and Harriet Hawkins at the 2011 AAG conference in Seattle. They then invited me to write a 2,000 word reflective paper which, with others from this panel, will be published later this year in Cultural Geographies.
This post initially contained the first draft of this paper, but now contains the second draft (which was revised to add more of a sense of the work of co-ordination in collaborative writing like this).
Please feel free to add your comments, if you're a co-author, reader, or both... The paper invites them...
Thanks
Ian
22 June 2012
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‘Afters’: 26 authors, a blog, and a ‘workshop imagination geared to writing’.
Ian Cook et al,
Department of Geography, University of Exeter
Blog
There seems to be an agreement that I should orchestrate the writing of the paper, but in a way that’s relatively non-hierarchical, and includes different voices, fragments and the character of our discussions. If possible. ... When the dust settles, I’ll code, cut and paste, and top and tail a rough document for us to start with,
[my summary on the 'Afters' blog of a discussion about turning its conversations into a journal paper].1
There seems to be an agreement that I should orchestrate the writing of the paper, but in a way that’s relatively non-hierarchical, and includes different voices, fragments and the character of our discussions. If possible. ... When the dust settles, I’ll code, cut and paste, and top and tail a rough document for us to start with,
[my summary on the 'Afters' blog of a discussion about turning its conversations into a journal paper].1
Paper
I was invited to take part in the creative writing panel at AAG Seattle in 2011 to talk about collaborative authorship. ‘Afters’, the third and final paper in my ‘Geographies of food’ series, had just been published in Progress in human geography.ii It had 26 authors, whose names and affiliations filled up the entire first page. Overleaf, there was a conventional abstract and introduction. When that was over, it began to fracture, into sections of text, of various sizes and shapes, arranged on and over the pages. Each piece of text was an extract from the blog that had hosted our conversations, and included its named author(s) at its end. Each piece of text made sense in and of itself. Each had been carefully placed before, after, and beside others. But there was no obvious order in which to read them, down and/or across the page. The ‘gutters’ normally running down the centre of the journal’s pages were disrupted and rearranged. The inner margins of each piece of text were justified and neat, but were never in the same place and sometimes weren’t there at all. The outer margins were un-justified, fraying the text at its edges. This ‘juxtaposition and montage’ aesthetic invited - and required - ‘plurivectorial reading practices’.iii This paper is difficult to skim-read or to summarise. Its sum is an awful lot more than its parts.
Blog
The present paper is an experiment in representing and performing collaboration. There are elements of both co-learning and co-production in at least three ways: IC in conjunction with the rest of us, we as we participate differently in knowledge spaces because of the IC intervention and possibilities of new co-learning and co-production that might be mobilised by readers of the paper. In this respect the paper's relationality is unusual. The first read, the paper itself, provides a sense of disturbance, positioning and scoping through multiple voices and the tensions that come from the ordering and juxtaposition on particular pages. A second read, the fuller blog, contextualises and grounds voice. Voice is given new potentiality through the intervention. In journals like [Progress in Human Geography] the basic diet of papers is overview statements that are sweeping, summary and often stifling (as while they may strive to be inclusive they usually miss the mark). The present paper is more in-view like, offering explicit content on actual projects, from multiple intellectual and institutional trajectories. This is less representational and more performative, since the voice-bites are performing the person and their concerns / suggestions / insights rather than declaring new narratives. In another way the paper performs as a knowledge space. I found Mol's book exploration of parallel but interdependent text quite illuminating,iv as it was in the conceptual space between the different texts that quite new work was done, at least when I was reading it. It seemed a neat way of breaking some of the constraining qualities of single narratives. The current paper is also analogous to what is often done in workshops and meetings, when people sit in a circle and share 'disciplined' remarks on a topic. The basis of exploration is heightened by the buzz factor. The interactive potential, set up by the material organisation of the paper, is intriguing. What points of entry and departure will be performed as the paper is read? For me this is one of the paper's primary provocations
[author Richard Le Heron's description of the first draft of the 'Afters' paper].v
The present paper is an experiment in representing and performing collaboration. There are elements of both co-learning and co-production in at least three ways: IC in conjunction with the rest of us, we as we participate differently in knowledge spaces because of the IC intervention and possibilities of new co-learning and co-production that might be mobilised by readers of the paper. In this respect the paper's relationality is unusual. The first read, the paper itself, provides a sense of disturbance, positioning and scoping through multiple voices and the tensions that come from the ordering and juxtaposition on particular pages. A second read, the fuller blog, contextualises and grounds voice. Voice is given new potentiality through the intervention. In journals like [Progress in Human Geography] the basic diet of papers is overview statements that are sweeping, summary and often stifling (as while they may strive to be inclusive they usually miss the mark). The present paper is more in-view like, offering explicit content on actual projects, from multiple intellectual and institutional trajectories. This is less representational and more performative, since the voice-bites are performing the person and their concerns / suggestions / insights rather than declaring new narratives. In another way the paper performs as a knowledge space. I found Mol's book exploration of parallel but interdependent text quite illuminating,iv as it was in the conceptual space between the different texts that quite new work was done, at least when I was reading it. It seemed a neat way of breaking some of the constraining qualities of single narratives. The current paper is also analogous to what is often done in workshops and meetings, when people sit in a circle and share 'disciplined' remarks on a topic. The basis of exploration is heightened by the buzz factor. The interactive potential, set up by the material organisation of the paper, is intriguing. What points of entry and departure will be performed as the paper is read? For me this is one of the paper's primary provocations
[author Richard Le Heron's description of the first draft of the 'Afters' paper].v
Paper
This ‘Afters’ project began with email invitations to over 100 authors in July 2008. I asked if they would welcome the opportunity to respond to what I’d (not) written about their work, other people’s work, and work that might come next, in ‘Following’ and ‘Mixing’: my first and second ‘Geographies of food’ reviews?vi It then moved online, after I set up ‘the fuller blog’ - as Richard called it - as a space for conversation between the 26 authors who wanted to take part. We were at varying stages of our careers, from a variety of disciplines, living in different parts of the world, didn’t all know each other, and none of us had blogged before. 43,000 blog words of online conversation later, I was coding, drafting, circulating, revising and submitting our 7,000 word 'Afters' review to Progress. In an attempt at open collaboration, the process, content, form and - most recently - power relations in/of the paper were discussed on a public blog. This raw conversation could be read by all of us, and anyone else, including those who want to know more about, and/or contribute to, the conversation after reading the paper. It is still there - at http://food-afters.blogspot.co.uk - with almost 7,000 page views recorded so far.
Blog
Now it's time for me/us to turn the contents of this blog into a 7,000 word paper ... which will need to be submitted ... in the next 6-8 weeks. Can each of you do the following? 1) have a look at the post below called 'collaborative writing', 2) have a look below at the post called 'conclusions', 3) have a look at the discussion that started in the comments at the end of Allison and Jessica's 'collective writing'...' post, 4) add your comments anywhere (or send to me to post) .... I've set the clock again (2 weeks and counting), after those new discussions have taken place, I'll put together a draft paper in the way that we agree this should be done, circulate it via email for comments, redraft, circulate and ... submit. Hope this catches you at a good time. Again, please shoot from the hip, rattle things off, splurge, dump ... whatever helps to make this a quick and easy task
[my summary of the coordination, encouragement, editing and 'donkey work' that I contributed to the blog-to-paper process, in addition to writing as an author].vii
Now it's time for me/us to turn the contents of this blog into a 7,000 word paper ... which will need to be submitted ... in the next 6-8 weeks. Can each of you do the following? 1) have a look at the post below called 'collaborative writing', 2) have a look below at the post called 'conclusions', 3) have a look at the discussion that started in the comments at the end of Allison and Jessica's 'collective writing'...' post, 4) add your comments anywhere (or send to me to post) .... I've set the clock again (2 weeks and counting), after those new discussions have taken place, I'll put together a draft paper in the way that we agree this should be done, circulate it via email for comments, redraft, circulate and ... submit. Hope this catches you at a good time. Again, please shoot from the hip, rattle things off, splurge, dump ... whatever helps to make this a quick and easy task
[my summary of the coordination, encouragement, editing and 'donkey work' that I contributed to the blog-to-paper process, in addition to writing as an author].vii
Paper
I had talked about this ‘Afters’ project before, in 2009 at a Leeds University workshop on ‘Doing collaboration differently: challenging an unequal academy’. As a writing-up PhD student at the Birmingham University seven years earlier, its organiser Shona Hunter had helped me to run an ‘Advanced Qualitative research’ module for Social Science Masters students. I had designed this to help new PhD students appreciate how a relatively messy research process can produce relatively neat results, and to reflect on what that might mean for the research they were planning to do. There were introductions but no lectures. Most important were the small group conversations co-ordinated by Shona, two other writing-up students and me, and informed by our PhD proposals, field notes, interview transcripts, other raw materials and related academic readings. We wanted to encourage students to share and reflect upon diverse research expectations and experiences from across the social sciences. This meant that, while the module was carefully organised, we never knew exactly what would happen, who would bring what experiences, concerns and ideas to the classroom, and what would emerge through these conversations. As long as the students carefully read the work that we set, turned up to class, and took part in the conversations as best they could, we were happy. As long as conversations were lively and respectful and students were learning to ‘prepare to be flexible’ - whatever their discipline or research - we were happy.viii As long as complex, flexible, disorienting, determined, transformative, eureka, oh dear, can do, felt... dispositions to research emerged from these conversations, we were happy. In 2009, Shona remembered this as collaborative teaching and learning, with relatively flat hierarchical relations. That’s what I try to encourage, as much as possible, when I get the chance. I love working this way, what it feels like, what other people get out of it, and what it can do, however challenging it may be for all concerned.ix This is my ideal/normal.
Blog
I ... remember working with Ian on that MA module really fondly. ... I’m reminded about one of the things I really started to understand through that and the many other (formal and informal) collaborations I’ve been involved in since; the necessary relational character of academic life the importance of interdependence, care, responsibility and accountability in all collaborations. I think one of the things I really wanted to get to grips with in the [Leeds] session was how we can work with and through our relational autonomy and how we recognise the academy as a relational space where emotions and affect constitute the discursive, cultural/social nature of our working contexts, something still rarely acknowledged in academic institutional spaces. How do we work with this rather than always working against this grain, competitively rather than cooperatively? I think we started to get to thinking about this in the ... session, but it also reminded me about how difficult it is to think through power and inequality and speak about them without seeming trite, or without wondering what these sort of events do in terms of separating out (the inseparable?) speaking about and the doing? What does it mean to talk about doing collaboration and what is its relationship to the doing?
[Shona Hunter's comments on my 'conclusions' to the Leeds talk/blog].x
I ... remember working with Ian on that MA module really fondly. ... I’m reminded about one of the things I really started to understand through that and the many other (formal and informal) collaborations I’ve been involved in since; the necessary relational character of academic life the importance of interdependence, care, responsibility and accountability in all collaborations. I think one of the things I really wanted to get to grips with in the [Leeds] session was how we can work with and through our relational autonomy and how we recognise the academy as a relational space where emotions and affect constitute the discursive, cultural/social nature of our working contexts, something still rarely acknowledged in academic institutional spaces. How do we work with this rather than always working against this grain, competitively rather than cooperatively? I think we started to get to thinking about this in the ... session, but it also reminded me about how difficult it is to think through power and inequality and speak about them without seeming trite, or without wondering what these sort of events do in terms of separating out (the inseparable?) speaking about and the doing? What does it mean to talk about doing collaboration and what is its relationship to the doing?
[Shona Hunter's comments on my 'conclusions' to the Leeds talk/blog].x
Paper
You can read the whole ‘writing collaboration’ talk/blog I set up for that workshop. It’s still there - at http://writingcollaboration.wordpress.com - with almost 6,000 hits so far. It explains why I write ‘solo’ as ‘Ian Cook et al’, and what he/they can say that I can’t.xi It outlines my takes on seven types of collaborative writing I have initiated, coordinated, encouraged, contributed to and helped see through to publication. These often jar with text added by my co-authors and others in the comment boxes below. ‘Afters’ is the example used to illustrate a ‘blog paper’, although it also contains elements of the ‘right to reply’, ‘writing conversation’, and ‘social sculpture’ genres. What it’s not is a conventional paper that delivers its message didactically, like a lecture (although this is sometimes necessary and agreed upon in ‘mash-up’ collaborations). This doesn’t mean, however, that it’s difficult to explain what it’s like to collaborate in the writing and/or reading of the paper we're talking about here. This is not rocket science. Taking Richard’s lead it could, in principle, involve anyone who recognises the buzz of taking part in a stimulating workshop, reading group or discussion class where everyone has done the reading, brings this and their research expertise to the table, listens to and makes their own critical, thought-provoking points, is open to learning something new, feels able to say that they have learned something new, trusts and appreciates others in the room, understands their arguments even if they don’t agree with them, and can find the time to take fully part in this. I’m guessing here, but in the 'Afters' project we seem to have drawn upon and/or developed a ‘workshop imagination geared to writing’:xii in our contributions to the blog conversation, in the paper that tries to give a lively sense of taking part of those conversations, and back on the blog where the posting of this reflective paper has prompted further conversations. So... this final sentence is an invitation to you to join this conversation, shoot from the hip, rattle things off, splurge, dump ... whatever helps to make this a quick and easy task.
Blog
Although I'm not much of the blogging type ... , I was struck by the effect of it producing a ‘real time’ conversation with those with whom I do not always agree in our scholarly debates (although I agree with those who would rather have this conversation in the hotel bar). It produced an extra degree of civility, care, and engagement. ... Whereas I like to argue, quite strenuously it seems, about the limits of alternative food politics in terms of political economic transformation or even transformations of individual political subjectivity, when I read others’ interpretations of the similar phenomenon I often find myself in agreement with them, as well
[author Julie Guthman reflecting on the blogging process and final paper edit].xiii
Although I'm not much of the blogging type ... , I was struck by the effect of it producing a ‘real time’ conversation with those with whom I do not always agree in our scholarly debates (although I agree with those who would rather have this conversation in the hotel bar). It produced an extra degree of civility, care, and engagement. ... Whereas I like to argue, quite strenuously it seems, about the limits of alternative food politics in terms of political economic transformation or even transformations of individual political subjectivity, when I read others’ interpretations of the similar phenomenon I often find myself in agreement with them, as well
[author Julie Guthman reflecting on the blogging process and final paper edit].xiii
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Roger Lee, for inviting, encouraging and managing my/our ‘Geographies of food’ papers; to Anna Read for her truly wonderful copy editing, to Shona Hunter for asking me to talk about this process in Leeds and to Dydia DeLyser and Harriet Hawkins for asking me to talk and write about this here, and finally to my ‘Afters’ co-authors whom I cannot thank enough for saying yes and risking/sharing so much.
Endnotes
i I. Cook et al, ‘Writing’, food-afters.blogspot.co.uk (2009), (http://food-afters.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/writing.html last accessed 11 June 2012)
ii I. Cook, K. Hobson, L. Hallett IV, J. Guthman, A. Murphy, A. Hulme, M. Sheller, L. Crewe, D. Nally, E. Roe, C. Mather, P. Kingsbury, R. Slocum, S. Imai, J. Duruz, C. Philo, H. Buller, M. Goodman, A. Hayes-Conroy, J. Hayes-Conroy, L. Tucker, M. Blake, R. Le Heron, H. Putnam, D. Maye & H. Henderson, ‘Geographies of food: afters’, Progress in human geography, 35(1) (2011) pp.104-120
iii J. Dittmer, ‘Comic book visualities: a methodological manifesto on geography, montage and narration’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 35 (2010), pp.222-236. iv A. Mol, The body multiple (Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 2002)
v R. LeHeron, Feedback from Richard, food-afters.blogspot.com (2010), (http://food-afters.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/feedback-from-richard.html last accessed 11 June 2012)
vi I. Cook et al, ‘Geographies of food: following’, Progress in human geography, 30(5) (2006), pp.655-666; I. Cook et al, ‘Geographies of food: mixing’, Progress in human geography, 32(6) (2008), pp.821-833.
vii I. Cook et al, ‘Writing the paper: a collaboration? (archived)’, food-afters.blogspot.co.uk (2009), (http://food-afters.blogspot.co.uk/2008/09/writing-paper-collaboration-archived.html last accessed 21 June 2012)
viii This approach to PhD preparation resulted from my own experiences as a PhD student: see M. Crang & I. Cook, Doing ethnographies (London, Sage, 2007).
ix See, for example: I. Cook, “Nothing can ever be a case of us and them again’: exploring the politics of difference through border pedagogy & student journal writing’, Journal of geography in higher education, 24(1) (2000), pp.13-27; I. Cook, T. Angus & J. Evans, ‘A manifesto for cyborg pedagogy’, International research in geographical & environmental education, 10(2) (2001), pp.195-201; I. Cook, J. Evans, H. Griffiths, R. Morris, S. Wrathmell et al., ‘‘It’s more than just what it is:’ defetishising commodities, expanding fields, mobilising change…’, Geoforum 38(6) (2007), pp.1113-1126; & J. Evans, I. Cook & H. Griffiths, ‘Creativity, group pedagogy & social action: a departure from Gough’, Educational philosophy and theory, 40(2) (2007), pp.330-345.
x S. Hunter, Comment on I. Cook et al., ‘4.Conclusions / top tips’, writingcollaboration.wordpress.com (2009) (http://writingcollaboration.wordpress.com/4-conclusions/ last accessed 21 June 2012)
xi This has also been discussed in I. Cook, ‘‘You want to be careful you don’t end up like Ian. He’s all over the place’: autobiography in/of an expanded field’, in P. Moss, ed, Placing autobiography in geography (Syracuse, NY, Syracuse University Press, 2001) pp.99-120, and in I. Cook et al, ‘Positionality / situated knowledge’, in D. Atkinson, P. Jackson, D. Sibley & N. Washbourne, eds., Cultural geography: a critical dictionary of key ideas (London, IB Tauris, 2005) pp.16-26.
xii To paraphrase George Marcus’ ‘cinematic imagination geared to writing’, from p.45 of ‘The modernist sensibility in recent ethnographic writing & the cinematic metaphor of montage’, in L. Taylor, ed., Visualizing theory (New York, Routledge, 1994) pp.37-53.
xiii J. Guthman, ‘Finishing up (from Julie)', food-afters.blogspot.com (2010) (http://food-afters.blogspot.co.uk/2008/09/re-finishing-up-from-julie.html last accessed 11 June 2012).
