3.2 Core Themes
3.2.7 Reciprocity of perspective
George Mead (1934), was amongst the first to provide popular insights into ‘reciprocity of perspective’ and into the notion of ‘generalized others’. Mead stated that in the process of conversation and interaction, it is vitally important that individuals learn to enter into the
attitude of others: experience themselves from the standpoint of others. Reciprocity of perspective forms one of the key themes of my thesis embedded in four frames, namely, Reflection, Learning, Reflexivity and Change. Scharmer’s Theory U (2009) also embodies this notion through the process of ‘sensing’.
I have borrowed the idea of ‘self-reflective practice’ from my reading of Marshall. (2008:335–
342), amongst others, where she gives the candid advice that self-reflective practice is intrinsic for all inquiry”. Marshall goes further to maintain that anyone engaging in collaborative research, needs a robust, self-questioning discipline as their base. This thesis explores and reflects on the implications of asking, searching, and answering questions of the kind: ‘How do I improve and sustain my own learning and practice in the context of others and social formations?’ (Whitehead, 1989; Homer et al., 2009).
To this end, I have designed four frames: Reflection, Learning, Reflexivity and Change as guiding frameworks within the context of a ‘looking-glass self metaphor’. I have found this evocative metaphor to be useful and meaningful in living my values more fully in practice. The initial impetus for appreciation and awareness of the metaphor, as a mode of self-reflective practice, was kindled when I was teaching Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in Matric during the late 1980’s and early 1990s:
Brutus: Into what dangers would you lead me, Cassius? That you would have me seek into myself for that which is not me?
Cassius: Therefore, good Brutus, be prepared to hear: And since you cannot see yourself.
So well as by reflection. I, your glass will modestly discover to yourself that of yourself which you yet know not. (William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar. Act 1, sc. 2)
The ‘looking-glass self’ is a metaphor’, which originated with Charles Horton Cooley (1902), where the self is characterised as formed by social contexts, and is one that can be expanded to include four additional metaphors: the mirror, the magnifying glass, the compass and the map, as key metaphoric tools to know others on the one hand, and to know our own selves, on the other.
Interestingly, I have used the magnifying glass and compass in geography (topographical maps, aerial photos, and synoptic weather maps) over the past years in order to identify land use
features and to interpret their significance to human settlement. However, the use of these tools as metaphors in the context of this research project has enabled me to interrogate my inner and outer selves: the intra and inter. In addition, I have come to see my doctoral journey as a mirror through which I can apply and enact my understanding of being a deep reflective practitioner.
At a practical level, the ‘looking-glass self’ metaphor has provided me with an opportunity to enhance my insight into being a fallible knower as opposed to an omniscient knower (Lipman, 2003). Thus, this metaphor enriched my deep understanding of my strengths and weaknesses in relation to academic-personal-professional-development. The concepts of fallible knower and omniscient knower have extended my learning space and boundaries so that I now see the world no longer through a narrow lens (Kegan and Lahey 2009). I now accept that I may not have definitive answers and that I do not possess the panacea for one or other organizational malaise (Taylor, 2004:164).
At a theoretical level, I also grounded my thinking on the work of Derrida’s (1997) reference to ‘see[ing] things through critical eyes’ and Churchman’s (1968) reference to the capacity to
‘see things through the eyes of another’. In the same vein, Thomas Schwandt (1994: 118) along with Alfred Schutz (1970), speaks of ‘understanding the complex world of lived experience from the point of view of those who live it’ the emic point of view. Getting inside the head of another lies at the heart of action research, (Ibid.1994: 120) or what was referred to earlier as the reciprocity of perspectives. Fernandez (2014), and Hardman (2011: 165) have also provided me with useful insights into the notion of reciprocity in the context of this inquiry.
As a direct consequence of this self-reflective inquiry, a typology evolved over time, framing the popular insights of reflective practice and reciprocity within a broader more holistic cosmology (Fernandez, 2014), leading me to design the four-frame model involving Reflection, Learning, Reflexivity, and Change.
The anthropologist Malinowski (Geertz, 1983) for example, is considered to be amongst the first to talk of ‘Seeing things from the perspective of “natives”’ and the native’s point of view lies at the heart of ethnographic inquiry. Ironically, the colonialists in South Africa referred to Blacks as ‘natives’ for hundreds of years, and I grew up with the identity of a native. The irony in my journey here is that the ‘native’ sheds that identity through the colonial/western intellectual projects like anthropology and sociology in order to restructure an identity that is free from limitation, and one which is empowering.