Taxonomies of Emergence Part 3-Tutorial and D-I-Y on Observation

SUMMARY. Gives a tutorial on how to observe, as part of the process of creating your own taxonomy of emergence. It also considers the use of taxonomies in “predicting” future observations and experiences, based on extrapolation of evidence observed in the past.

This tutorial overviews some tools we can use to observe, analyze, and interpret a paradigm or culture. The three stages are not exactly nice, neat packages. In the real world, they interact with each other, but at least this gives a general process for studying cultural phenomena. So, a super-in-depth study may require us to go through the three-stage loop multiple times as we keep adjusting our thoughts on how things fit together. (That will make more sense once you’ve done some studies …)

OBSERVATION STAGE

When it comes to the observation stage of research, my Number One Sermon theme is: The way we ask our questions preconditions our answers. Let me share a few examples – some rather extreme -  that pretty much mimic actual questions I have been asked in the past 10-plus years of working with various emergence projects:

• “So, you really must hate the hierarchical-format church structure, right?”
• “Those postmoderns never follow any form of true truth, do they?”
• “Why should we even care about subcultures?”
• “That’s missional, isn’t it?”

Theme for Sermon Number Two is: Always search for the previously unasked question or untapped topic, because it’s usually what’s been missing from previous studies that may well prove the most crucial to the best eventual understanding. Some examples:

• Would theodicy rather than missio dei better serve as the largest possible framework for theological meta-narrative?
• What theological perspective or doctrine helps bridge the traditional differences between charismatics and non-charismatics?
• What indicators do we have that learning styles and epistemology are actually more central to the formation of paradigms than is “worldview”?
• What completely different factors can lead to the same manifestations of culture shock and spiritual burn-out?

All the evidence we gather – or fail to gather – at the observation stage will affect the quality of our analysis and interpretation stages. So, what comprehensive combination of questions will help us achieve what we eventually hope for – namely, a workable system for understanding phenomena that already appear to fit in the mega-category of “emergence” AND that will also predict and/or explain new instances of emergence that are not yet even on the radar? (See the note at the end of this post on the issue of theories and prediction.)

We need to ensure we get enough information to work with, or our eventual categories will reflect that weakness. The more detail we have, the more likely we are to be able to discern patterns in them, and discern appropriate levels of complexity among interconnections between factors in the dataset. It’s likely that we will have intuitive insights – hunches about this feature being critical, or that pattern of connection in the data – all along the way from observation to analysis to interpretation and looping back to the beginning of the process. And just because something is a “hunch” doesn’t mean it’s ookey-spookey and we should avoid it. Intuitions are often relatively accurate because our brains sometimes process things faster than our conscious mind can keep up with. So, just take inklings as another form of input.

Back to the questioning process: Seeking a large enough dataset means we need to come up with some “working hypotheses” of what we think may prove important. Then, we can be sure to ask questions that address those features and factors. Our working hypotheses may be proven weak or wrong in the process of research, but they represent the questions we’ve been asking ourselves. So – if we don’t ask good questions of ourselves, how do we expect to be able to ask relevant questions of others?

Meanwhile, we also need to figure out whom we should pose our questions to. What individuals are involved in the subject matter of our study? What groups or organizations could prove relevant as in-depth case studies? Who are acknowledged experts and/or practitioners in this field? Who are not well known, but seem to be doing good work or starting to have influence?

Once we have our questions and interview/research subjects, we can use their answers to describe in detail what we and others are observing. That prepares the way for the next stage – analysis.

DO-IT-YOURSELF [D-I-Y] PREP FOR OBSERVATION ON EMERGENCE

Start making lists of information and ideas you think would help distinguish “emerging” from “non-emerging.” You may want to complete this “homework” before reading the sections on analysis and interpretation.

• What factors do you think might prove important to find out about now in order to create meaningful categories later from your data about “emergence”?
• If you could do interviews and case studies of anyone that’s involved in what seems like emergence, what people, churches, and organizations would you pick? Why did you put them on your wish list?
• Look at the taxonomies on emergence linked to in DJ Chuang’s article on Many Kinds of Emerging Church. What factors do various writers he references pick as important for creating categories? What might they have overlooked that you think could be important? What are some questions they used (or that you could “reverse engineer” and conjecture that they used)?
• What kinds of emerging theologies, organizations, social values, strategies, models, etc., have you noticed that don’t seem to be addressed by the current set of taxonomies?

• What kinds of emergent things have you seen that are currently “off the radar” but that you think need to be investigated? Why?

ENDNOTE: ON THE PREDICTION OF FORTHCOMING ELEMENTS

In my training for work in linguistics, I learned about how to create a dictionary and grammar from scratch for a previously unwritten language. From those courses, I learned that a well-crafted grammar does at least two things well. First, it uses the smallest possible number of grammatical rules to cover the largest possible number of different variations observed in the language. Second, if the grammar has been constructed well, it does a credible job in predicting accurately how not-yet-observed phenomena fit with those already observed.

Creating a taxonomy of emergence is similar to writing a dictionary and grammar for a previously unwritten language. Only instead of dealing directly with sounds, meanings, and interconnections of words alone, we must “listen” carefully to messages and items and actions that give us details about these cultures. Our observations give us the base for writing the “descriptionary” of what we think we are seeing. But during the process of creating this dictionary, surely we will have insights into how the cultural “parts of speech” fit together – as if there were a grammar of how these cultures are constructed. So, we need to hold our theories lightly, not tightly, as we work on both, knowing that the elements and the accepted means of interconnection constantly influence each other. Over time, things will sort themselves out.

Meanwhile, we have to realize that new pieces of cultural data will ALWAYS be showing up. This is especially true if our task involves paying close attention to the cultures of emergence. So, if we are doing well in processing what we can already observe, analyze, and interpret, we will also start seeing patterns that help us predict such important issues as:

• The common goals these cultures seem to be moving toward.
• What trajectories of transformation they are on.
• What might become The Next Big Thing, based on cultural trends and the actions of current “thought leaders.”
• What new issues might become more prominent, based on seeds planted 10, 20, or 50 years earlier.

So, although I was formally trained as a linguist, what I’m really doing with my life is being both a culturologist who writes dictionaries and grammars of specific cultures and cultural movements, and a futurist who seeks to discern which cultural trends are significant and are catalyzing the emergence of important changes in the long run.

In retro-beatnik parlance, “Man, I dig it! It’s really a gasser!”

Next post in this series: A Tutorial and D-I-Y on Analysis.

Jump forward to Taxonomies of Emergence, Part 4 – Tutorial on Analysis.

Jump back to Taxonomies of Emergence, Part 2 – Key Problems, Important Possibilities.