Generative Metaphor Research Articles

A study on the indexical metaphor for the silver generation - Focused on the retrospection of the silver generation -

A study on the indexical metaphor for the silver generation - Focused on the retrospection of the silver generation -

The use of the death trope in peer culture play: grounds for rethinking children and childhood?

Dying and death in children's imaginative play is often subjected to literal interpretation, seen as evidence of meaning-making about death or a form of catharsis. Viewed in this light, children's enactment of uncaused and reversible deaths in ludic activity is considered evidence of developmental ‘immaturity’. Such interpretations, however, fundamentally misplace the contestive and transformative aspects of play [Henricks, T. S. (2006). Play reconsidered: Sociological perspectives on human expression. Urbana: University of Illinois Press]. In contrast, this article argues for the importance of figurative interpretations of children's play. Drawing on data generated in an ethnographic study at an early years setting in West London, it will be suggested that the death trope served as a generative metaphor in the peer culture, its everyday world characteristics provoking relatively stable responses in the face of uncertainties and ambiguities encountered in ludic activity. The use of the death trope made intimate, caring touch between children permissible, rather than just a by-product of small play spaces filled with many bodies.

“Who Am I?”: The Biblical Moses as a Metaphor for Teaching

AbstractThis essay presents Moses, the protagonist of the biblical books of Exodus and Deuteronomy in the Hebrew Bible, as a playful but generative metaphor for current teaching practices and experiences in higher education, including my own. Among numerous similarities (such as the fact that Moses, other teachers, and I are all bound by context), the most humbling insights come from Moses's role as a mediator or intermediary. It is a role that we also inhabit – standing, as it were, between our students and the knowledge of our discipline – and that we might consider further, particularly in terms of our responsibilities.

The Use of Complex Adaptive Systems as a Generative Metaphor in an Action Research Study of an Organisation

Understanding the dynamic behaviour of organisations is challenging and this study uses a model of complex adaptive systems as a generative metaphor to address this challenge. The research question addressed is: How might a conceptual model of complex adaptive systems be used to assist in understanding the dynamic nature of organisations? Using an action research methodology, 6 Ai r Force internal management consulting teams were exposed to overlapping attributes of complex adaptive systems. The study shows that participants found the attributes valuable in understanding the dynamic nature of organisations; however they did present challenges for understanding. Despite being challenging to understand, using complex adaptive systems to understand organisations, particularly as dynamic systems, is of value.

Practice Research Collaboration in Social Work

This article explores a particular approach to developing practice research collaboration between universities and field agencies. The significance of metaphor in framing knowledge relationships is examined and in particular the contribution of reflexive knowledge exchange as a generative metaphor for collaboration. In positing practice research as a social practice, social, cultural, and political dimensions of knowledge exchange are emphasized. Illustrated through a specific site in Australia, the analysis highlights the importance of reflexive knowledge work within universities as a foundation for productive and innovative engagement with field agencies, suited to conditions of uncertainty and complexity.

Embodying Tao in the ‘Restorative University’

This paper proposes a new generative metaphor, the ‘Restorative University’ which embodies an associated Taoist human–nature narrative. It aims to counter what is contextualized here as the bio-cultural disconnection of universities despite their espoused commitment to sustainability. This conceptual research draws on multiple disciplines such as environmental psychology alongside Taoist philosophy to open up a reflexive dialogue between multiple organizational actors. Moreover, to understand the potential transdisciplinary implications of a particular Tian Tao-inspired narrative, the metaphor of the ‘Restorative University’ is critically reflected upon, using illustrative examples of the University in a Garden, in Malaysia and the Schumacher College, in the UK. For universities committed to sustainability, the paper highlights the significance of collective emotional and aesthetic sensibility and agency (embodying Wu Wei), alongside a grounded, local, bio-cultural sensibility (embodying P’u) within the potential enactment of the Restorative University.

On the marketing implications of place narratives

Acknowledging that ‘locals’ are recognised as an important (yet neglected) dimension of place marketing and following critiques of places as ‘products’, the purpose of this paper is to give voice to ‘local people’. Drawing on local narratives of Santorini, Greece, we call attention to places as culturally significant and discursively produced and consumed. Local narratives provide multiple meanings constructed around the diverse and contested experiences of living and making a living in a place. Our analysis employs the metaphors of ‘harsh beauty’, ‘service business’ and ‘home’ to capture these perspectives. The paper has implications for the development of generative metaphors of ‘place’ and ‘local’ within place marketing and contributes to the dialogue over the continued relevance of our discipline to the public sphere.

Earth with Agency: A Thoroughly Queer Notion

ABSTRACTPrevailing Western thought assumes earth is a machine to be worked, its matter existing to be converted into the fuel for human progress. This philosophy both underpins industrial design practice and helps to legitimate anthropogenic climate change. In a cross-disciplinary endeavor, this article utilizes esoteric spiritual discourses (Marcel Mauss’s Gift theory and James Lovelock’s Gaia theory) to “queer” the dominant notion of what earth is. In so doing, it attempts to posit a generative metaphor, which may help articulate an augmented role for designers in the age of climate change.

Cybersecurity as Metaphor: Policy and Defense Implications of Computer Security Metaphors

Discussions of cybersecurity often involve metaphors — some explicit, others implicit — each with its own strengths and weaknesses, its own correct and misleading elements, and, most importantly, its own implications for how to secure computers, computer networks, and the information on them. In legal circles, the influential role of computer and Internet metaphors in dictating actions and laws is more clearly understood than it is in many other policy and security debates that center on questions of the threats posed by these technologies and the best means of mitigating or protecting against those threats. When these debates happen outside the courtroom, the metaphors used to illustrate cybersecurity risks and mitigation measures often enter the discussion unnoticed and are largely accepted without question. This research examines three classes of metaphors in this space — the burglar metaphor, the war metaphor, and the health metaphor — to understand the ways in which they serve as “generative metaphors” that prescribe certain types of policy solutions. As generative metaphors, each of these metaphors frames computer security challenges as analogous to another social problem and, in doing so, implies that the most appropriate and logical defensive measures would be those that mirror the steps society has taken to protect against either robbers, wars, or diseases. Each of these metaphors has strong implications for the causes, motivations, and most appropriate protections for cybersecurity threats. These implications range from who is responsible for defending computer systems, who is threatening those systems, and the nature of what is at stake if those threats are successful.

A visual language and environment for enterprise system modelling and automation

ObjectiveWe want to support enterprise service modelling and generation using a more end user-friendly metaphor than current approaches, which fail to scale to large organisations with key issues of “cobweb” and “labyrinth” problems and large numbers of hidden dependencies. MethodWe present and evaluate an integrated visual approach for business process modelling using a novel tree-based overlay structure that effectively mitigate complexity problems. A tree-overlay based visual notation (EML) and its integrated support environment (MaramaEML) supplement and integrate with existing solutions. Complex business architectures are represented as service trees and business processes are modelled as process overlay sequences on the service trees. ResultsMaramaEML integrates EML and BPMN to provide complementary, high-level business service modelling and supports automatic BPEL code generation from the graphical representations to realise web services implementing the specified processes. It facilitates generated service validation using an integrated LTSA checker and provides a distortion-based fisheye and zooming function to enhance complex diagram navigation. Evaluations of EML show its effectiveness. ConclusionsWe have successfully developed and evaluated a novel tree-based metaphor for business process modelling and enterprise service generation. Practice implications: a more user-friendly modelling approach and support tool for business end users.

Designing Communication Process for the Design of an Idea Zone at a Science Center

In this paper, we use the occasion of the design of a learning space (The Idea Zone) in a science center setting, the Museum of Science and Industry, to illustrate the importance of attending to communication issues in the design of a process to design the space. We explore communication processes in the conceptual design phase, with specific attention to bringing Needfinding to a participatory design framework. Use of the World Café is made to create a conversational space for the participatory design process. We reflect on the recursive nature of designing communication process for participatory design of the Idea Zone and offer seven principles that integrate the theories and practices of both communication and design, bringing particular attention to generative metaphors, reflective practice, and emergence of a “third language” for designing together with others.

AN EXPLORATION OF SPIRITUAL CARE AS CREATIVE INTERRUPTION

Pastoral theology and care has been profoundly shaped by a Christian theological anthropology with deep roots in Enlightenment conceptions of the autonomous and rational subject as the center of the moral universe. My paper will explore a theology and practice of spiritual care through the lens of creative interruption as a generative metaphor for engaging the cultural and religious other. An exploration of creative interruption as a guiding theology of care will draw from the writings of Emmanuel Levinas who argues against systems of knowledge that seek to make the other an image of ourselves. A Levinasian articulation of the other de-centers the autonomous, rational self and has potential to represent the best of chaplaincy and advance both its theory and practice. A consideration of Levinasian conceptions of alterity and the face of the other; the saying and the said in the patient encounter; and the humanizing work of making the invisible visible will shed light on an intercultural and interreligious ethic of care. Gordon Kaufman’s reconstruction of God as creativity will contribute to a conception of care as a creative and interruptive coming-to-being. Creative interruption as a guiding metaphor invites a consideration of the interruptive movement and mystery of creativity that cannot ultimately be appropriated into totalizing theological understandings or conceptions of care.

The hidden curriculum in radiology residency programs: A path to isolation or integration?

PurposeIn this qualitative case study involving five academic Radiology centres across Canada, the authors seek to identify the hidden curriculum. MethodsA qualitative case study methodology was used for its potential to explore and provide rich descriptions and allow for the in-depth analysis of multiple data sources that include official institutional documents, surveys, observations and interviews (including undergraduate students, postgraduate, radiologists, imaging scientists, residents, faculty and administrators). This study relied on 48 interviews and involved primary data analysis by the core research team, and a secondary analysis by external examiners. ResultsThe results revealed that in four of the five major centres studied, a hidden curriculum of isolation prevailed, reinforcing an image of the radiologist as an independent operator within an organization dependent upon collaboration for optimal performance. The fifth site exhibited a hidden curriculum of collaboration and support, although the messages received were conflicting when addressing issues around teaching. ConclusionsThe authors conclude by noting two possibilities for medical imaging departments to consider that of isolation or that of integration. They examine the implications of each and propose a way forward that situates Radiology as the crossroads of medicine. As such, the need for a new, generative metaphor reasserts the importance of recognizing the role and function of scholarship in teaching and learning contexts across Canada.

Renovating Fashion Design Practice: Reflection and Redirection

How can provenance be utilised as a tool to develop a way of practicing fashion design? The move towards sustainable and ethical modes of fashion design practice has led to a re-evaluation of the purpose of fashion design. A change in the purpose of design, demands a change in the process of design. The challenge for practitioners of fashion design is developing appropriate methodologies to achieve this goal. Drawing on the theories and methodologies of redirective practice (Fry 2007) and reflective practice (Schon 1983), this paper suggests a template for future fashion design praxis. Within practice-based research, seeing redirection as renovation is a helpful analogy when developing new methods of practicing design. The meaning of renovation in relation to fashion design practice may be explored through the experimental application of three possible strategies: revival, reshaping, and replacement. Embedded within these generative metaphors are fresh approaches to reconsider the utilisation, modification or relinquishment of existing designerly ways.

Spatial Blooms

‘Spatial Blooms’ (Figures 1 and 2) is research by design work undertaken through the generous support of the University of Michigan’s Taubman College ‘Research Through Making’ grant programme. This article discusses work that explores the possibility of inscribing indeterminacy and varied temporal logics, borrowed from landscape, into architecture. It foregrounds the potential of an evolving architecture that stimulates relationships that might be generated through its existence – temporally active germinal formations, loaded and ready to go. Design efforts study this potential using landscape ready-mades; specifically, landscape’s organizational principles, landscape elements and landscape ‘biologies’, as well as their capacities to engender change, enfolded through design. Ultimately, such architecture would facilitate variable and changing spheres of influence, activated in time. The work trades on the richness of landscapes at cultural, experiential and operational levels, investigating ways in which landscape properties can find their way into architectural speculations. It explores the cross-pollination of landscape properties into architecture through three specific lenses: (1) developing specific visualization techniques to evolve the work; (2) using language prompts to activate design possibilities; and (3) analogous thinking as a design method. ‘Spatial Blooms’ discusses several relationships to the journal’s theme, ‘Sentient Relic’. It suggests spatial and material formations that exist in various phases, or phase states, oscillating between instructional and visceral forms of communication; it offers the possibility of non-anthropocentric spatial logics by augmenting perspective as a dominant spatial apparatus and by initiating relationships through non-anthropocentric landscape characteristics; and it explores an alternative architectural approach in relation to the fixed functional or formal relations of architecture based on typological classification. It is grounded by using ecological thinking as a generative metaphor, suggesting that life might exist somewhere between closed systems and open, shared and active environments. In sum, the work attempts to inscribe alternative temporal logics, change and indeterminacy into speculative architectural settings to activate habitual spatial practices. It attempts to seduce the unknown and provoke curiosity. As a result, it invokes active spatial participation. It studies this possibility by using ready-made landscape characteristics, analogously. Eventually, landscape behaviours, or landscape ‘biologies’, will be injected into the visualizations featured in this article. The cultural, disciplinary and experiential durability of landscape plays important roles in exploring the use of landscape ready-mades toward new architectural possibilities.

Psychoactive Substances and the English Language: “Drugs,” Discourses, and Public Policy

This article undertakes a historical ontology of psychoactive substances, or, in other words, an exploration of the philosophical and political nature of modern categories for plants and chemicals that alter consciousness. Drawing on the ideas of Michel Foucault and Ian Hacking and using the method of critical discourse analysis, I elucidate three distinct contemporary meanings of the English word “drug.” Further, I demonstrate how these meanings of “drug” map onto a modern stereotypology of psychoactive substances that informs public discourses and sustains an ideological drug war paradigm. I trace this paradigm through the generative metaphors of drugs as “malevolent agents” and “pathogens” in modern public discourses, and explore how these metaphors frame and support policy responses within the international drug control regime that are inconsistent with human rights. In so doing, I argue that the language we use to talk and think about “drugs” may not be ideal for crafting sound public policy.

People out of place: allochthony and autochthony in the Netherlands' identity discourse — metaphors and categories in action

As with much of Europe, the Netherlands has no explicit ‘race’ discourse; however, the state, through its public policy and administrative practices, does categorise its population along ‘ethnic’ lines, using birthplace — one's own or one's (grand-) parent's — as the surrogate determining factor. The contemporary operative taxonomy has until recently been binary: autochtoon (of Dutch heritage) and allochtoon (of foreign birth). Used earlier at the provincial level in respect of internal migration, the taxonomy was expanded in 1999 to demarcate between ‘Western’ allochtoon and ‘non-Western’ allochtoon, with the latter being further subdivided into first and second generation. Informed by a ‘generative metaphor’ approach (Schon 1979) that links cognition to action, this article subjects the allochtoon/autochtoon binary to metaphor analysis and the Western/non-Western taxonomy to category analysis. The work done by ‘birthplace’ in the term pair suggests that they are, in their everyday usage, surrogates for a race discourse, carrying the same (ancient) assumptions about individual identity and the earth-air-sun-water of the spot on which one was born that underlies definitions-in-use of ‘race’. Their meaning in contemporary policy discourse derives from the interaction of metaphoric and category structures, with implications for policy implementation.

Understandings of accountability: an autoethnographic account using metaphor

The practical engagement of developing social accounts has provided me with an opportunity to consider different understandings of accountability. My reflective personal account, an autoethnography , explores difference in approaches to and insights into accountability in practice. The changed understandings of accountability developed during and after the production of two sets of social accounts with a not-for-profit organization. As part of the sense making process within the personal account, generative metaphor is used to enable reflection on the problem of accountability within social accounts. In this case the problem is both acknowledging and recognising the effect of my approach to and understandings of accountability during the production and reporting of two social accounts. The first social account was developed with a more formal and instrumental approach to accountability than the second which drew upon the initial experience and understanding of the first included a broader and more complex view of accountability. The recognition of a changed appreciation of accountability through the experience provides a deeper view of how accountability can be played out in practice with a not-for-profit community based organization. The result is my acknowledgement of a broader more encompassing notion of the complexity of accountability as part of a fragmented and changing world ( Miller, 2002 ). By acknowledging this complexity I have opened a space that enables me to recognise the influence of my approach to accountability in practice. There is a need to recognise how we approach accountability in order to counter the current dominance of calculative forms of accountability from the ‘business case’ perspective supporting control of powerful elites that steer society. An accountability that includes complexity and the non-calculative is a more appropriate form for a not-for-profit organization rather than a dominant calculative accountability.

Yam, Roots, and Rot: Allegories of the Provision Grounds

The historical and metaphysical connection between humans and the soil seems to be of vital significance to the recuperative power associated with the provision grounds, a relationship I trace by turning to Erna Brodber's allegorical novel, The Rainmaker's Mistake (2007). Drawing upon the work of Sylvia Wynter and others about the differing plots of the plantation and the provision grounds, this essay explores how Brodber challenges the plot of plantation narratives and employs allegory to excavate the roots of the provision grounds, particularly the figure of the yam. While roots are a generative metaphor for cultural origins, Brodber demonstrates that decay is the material way in which we know history has passed and thus is key to the articulation of time and nature itself, a position with profound implications for the region's historiography.

Memory, Tradition, and the Re-membering of Suffering

This article explores the interrelationship between memory and tradition in the work of religious education with particular attention to three questions: how memory serves the construction of the personal narrative called self and orients the self to the future; how body memory as articulated in habit and ritual becomes the foundation for social memory; and how the memory of suffering offers a generative metaphor for postmodern life. It concludes that the memory of suffering as practiced in religious education and worship is required for “more true” selves and communities and for transformative praxis.