Post postmodern narrative and critical realist perspectives, Dian-Marie
Hosking tempts the researcher with her visioning of ‘relational construction- ism . . . as a thought style . . . [through which] . . . “research” now has a changed meaning – not to “tell it how it is” – but, for example, to “tell how it might become” ’ (Hosking and Hjorth, 2004, pp. 258–259). And joyfully, she proposes that a relationship, or ‘inter-action’, is not limited to human inter- course. ‘Inter-actions involve texts, actions, objects, and artifacts available to be made part of some ongoing process, to be re-constructed, made relevant or irrelevant, meaningful or meaningless, good or bad, by being put in relation’
(Hosking and Hjorth, 2004, p. 260, emphasis in original). In a sympathetic vein, planetary biologists James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis propound the thesis that Mother Earth, called Gaia after the Greek Earth Goddess, is not simply a sphere of matter but is ‘a living system, behaving as a unified organ- ism’ (Ruether, 1994, p. 4), an entity with whom it is possible to have an ‘inter- action’. In either cosmology, we garden with Mother Earth in a revitalized social relationship that is fraught with physical, intellectual and social signifi- cance, an ‘inter-action’ that might indeed guide us in becoming, but an ‘inter- action’ very much in need of voice.
And how might we characterize our ‘inter-action’ with Mother Earth? To begin to put words to that relationship I decided to survey the recreational gardener, a site of ‘inter-action’ seemingly irrelevant to the study of entrepre- neurial activity but, in fact, an untapped source of important extant knowledge.
In brief, I canvassed a dozen women about what gardening means to them.
Two respondents succinctly encapsulated many of the group’s sentiments.
Sheilagh, a retired banker, said:
I read somewhere that ‘with a garden there is always hope’ and I think that says it all for me. Serenity, creativity, nurturing and a closeness to a higher power are not the reasons I began to garden but they are the reasons I continue (Fertile, 2004).
Wendy, a lawyer, said:
It’s a good excuse to spend hours outside, listening to the birds, squirrels, bees . . . Gardening forces me to be patient. I like the fact that the outcome of my efforts is partially dependent on forces outside my control (I hate this in any other aspect of my life). I like best the surprises. It’s the process not the results that I most enjoy (Bird, 2004).
The relationship between the gardener and her garden is not one of ownership and control but of sound and silence, respect and reciprocity,47hard work and spiritual healing. This ancient and paradoxical behaviour has no voice in mainstream economic or entrepreneurial research but these insights are urgently needed as we seek new ways to look at the problems of our world.
Faced with an ‘ingenuity gap . . . between our ever more difficult problems
and our lagging ability to solve them’ we need to look at our situation ‘. . . in a multitude of ways – analytically, empirically, emotionally, and spiritually’
(Homer-Dixon, 2001, p. 2), seeking out all possible sources of innovation as well as respecting ‘ideas that though not fundamentally novel are nonetheless useful’ (Homer-Dixon, 2001, p. 21). Finding our way will be made easier if we could temper societal adulation of the heroic and adopt a more egalitarian view of entrepreneurial potentiality, an approach Chris Steyaert (2004) calls
‘the prosaics of entrepreneurship’. ‘A prosaics acknowledges the importance of the everyday and the ordinary, the familiar and the frequent, the customary and the accustomed, the mediocre and the inferior, in short, the prosaic’
(Steyaert, 2004, p. 9). Combining a ‘prosaics of entrepreneurship’ with a belief that ‘creativity is . . . not an exceptional condition but an everyday occurrence’
(Steyaert, 2004, p. 13) will help us to re-member the entrepreneurial commu- nity to embrace all possible sources and types of creativity. The stories of Thuli, Catharine and Anne are indeed prosaic but nonetheless illuminating.
And, remarkably, their experiences share many commonalities despite the differences in their backgrounds.
Using research methodologies sympathetic to emerging research topics (Hjorth, 2004), this chapter looks at three women who come from different cultures, different eras and different economic systems. Rejecting the stric- tures of objectivity and random sampling (Vickers, 1989) and adopting a stance of ‘conscious partiality . . . partial identification with the research objects’ (Mies, 1993a, p. 38), I have chosen women whose stories, in turn, draw attention to the physical/survival (Thuli), mental/spiritual (Catharine), and communal/relational (Anne) elements of entrepreneurial self-creation.
Ecofeminist Judith Plant would call these ‘stories of place’, ‘stories of women who have made contributions to social change movements . . . [and] progress towards truly sustainable human community’ (Plant, 1997, p. 134). These
‘stories of place’ are unique in their particulars but each of the women profiled shares a common bond with the land. Thuli tells us how she gardens to feed herself, her children and her grandchildren. We learn how Catharine nurtured her mind and spirit by writing about the plants she found in an often hostile new country. And finally, we meet Anne, a modern eco-businesswoman. She runs a successful gardening business but she does so with considered attention for the land and for the well-being of her family, her employees and her customers, thereby nurturing a complex web of relationships necessary for a healthy community.
I admire these women and am in awe of what they have accomplished, but telling their stories is not easy. Denied the authority and opportunity to craft publicly legitimated inspirational female heroines, women writers have strug- gled with the art of representation, resulting in unusual and oblique forms in many genres (Lerner, 1986, 1993; Heilbrun, 1988). Women’s story-telling is
often situated in daily, lived experience, with limited attention to the articula- tion of grand, hegemonic ideas and theories, paralleling attributes found in
‘genealogic storytelling’ (Hjorth, 2004).48To honour the tenets of standpoint feminism (Smith, 1979) these stories begin with biographical details to provide some context for each woman’s respective experiences; then, extended verbatim reporting is used to try to capture each distinctive voice.
The data for Thuli and Anne have been abstracted from transcripts of lengthy, open-ended interviews while Catharine’s story fragments were chosen from a volume of her personal correspondence.
In all cases, the women speak in their own words. Narrative synopses attempt to fill the gaps but, inevitably, the stories will still be incomplete. As well, by selecting them and ‘inter-acting’ with them, I become ‘part of the story’ (Hosking and Hjorth, 2004, p. 265) evoking possible concerns about the impartiality and trustworthiness of the data. This weakness inherent to quali- tative research is not easily overcome, particularly as this study focuses on the positive/commendable aspects of each respective life for the purpose of draw- ing out that which is possible/desirable and does not attempt to be a complete and objective record. The justification is pedagogic. These are medicine stories with lessons about healing (Orenstein, 1990, p. 286) – healing the self, healing others and healing the community. These are stories about the work we all need to be doing in order to heal the world. Living at the margins of their economic and intellectual systems, these women offer perspectives which could add richness and diversity to entrepreneurship theory (Campbell, 2004).
To bring together stories that span the Atlantic Ocean and over two hundred years of human history, I propose a quilting analogy (Campbell, 2004), the sewing together of distinctive pieces/stories into a creative whole. The quilt- ing analogy invites the reader to experience these lives through sight and touch, to see and feel their vibrant/colourful textures, to feel their warmth, to value their individuality and, at the same time, to appreciate the common threads of their juxtaposed lives. To stimulate the auditory senses, I propose an additional analogy – jazz improvisation. Jennifer Coates, feminist ethnogra- pher and socio-linguist, describes the construction of talk among women friends as ‘a kind of jam session . . . [where] all participants share in the construction of talk in the strong sense that they don’t function as individual speakers . . . the group takes priority over the individual and the women’s voices combine (or meld) to construct a shared text’ (Coates, 1996, p. 117, emphasis in original). The attributes of such talk include collaboration, turn- taking, minimal responses, partial utterances, non-competitive overlapping comments, and lots of laughter (Coates, 1996, pp. 117–151). Obviously, the women in this study did not talk to each other but I believe that they each speak as if they were part of a ‘jam session’ and that their words are best understood as part of a ‘shared text’. The contributions of every speaker are
uniquely valued and their collective endeavour ‘permits a more multilayered development of topics . . . [referred to in classical music as] polyphony . . . where two or more different but mutually reinforcing things are said at the same time’ (Coates, 1996, p. 133).
Thuli is the first voice in this polyphonic, ‘shared text’.49Research for this story was conducted when Botswana was still seen as an exemplar of entre- preneurial possibility in sub-Saharan Africa. Additionally, the !Kung-San of the Kalahari desert had attracted considerable research attention as a ‘matrifo- cal hunting gathering society that has lasted into the twentieth century’
(Ruether, 1994, p. 159). It seemed an ideal site to study women entrepreneurs.
I went to Botswana ostensibly to review field notes with my research assistant Antoinette Ratang Dijeng but, thanks to Thuli and the other women we inter- viewed, I learned to view my own farming ancestors with respect as entrepre- neurial, pioneering settlers in rural Ontario. Up until that time, I had self-reported my heritage as farming rather than entrepreneurial. I also had to confront my limited Western notions of progress in the presence of a viable subsistence life.