Knowledge and Knowing in Literary Writing Process. An Epistemology of Artistic Practice

Transcription

1 all rights reserved by Passagen Verlag, Knowledge and Knowing in Literary Writing Process. An Epistemology of Artistic Practice By Tasos Zembylas / Claudia Dürr Vienna, Passagen, 2009, ISBN: Contents Introduction 1. Case Studies. The literary writing process in act Michaela Falkner Thomas Klupp Verena Roßbacher 2. The artistic field as a frame of the creation process Participation and integration in the artistic field The battle for work, visibility and recognition Aims, abilities and working conditions 3. Writing as a productive and generative act Aspects, that are indirectly reflected in the work The immediate work on text The forms of knowing in the writing process 4. Ability as a manifestation of the artistic practical knowing Mastery a difficult concept Learning and experience as constitutive conditions for mastery Limitation of the epistemology of artistic praxis Endnotes Literatur Anhang Introduction Artists keep experiencing the discrepancy between what they know and what they are knowing-in-action, between what they imagine and what they are able to realise. This differrence, calling for epistemic explanation, gave rise to our initial questions at the start of our research project: How does the creative process evolve? What enables some persons to tackle artistic challenges better than others, to proceed more elegantly or skilfully? How does practical knowledge, in other words knowing, manifest itself, become effective and, how is it generated? In order to pursue such questions systematically, we conducted a nine-month empirical research project in which we studied creative writing processes as they were happening, and which also involved carrying out numerous interviews. Our intention was to study the organisation of entire writing projects, starting from first impulses and ideas, up to final editing of created texts. In a writing project numerous different activities are taking place, not all of 1

2 which manifest themselves in what is written. A particular challenge in interpreting our empirical material was the necessity of simultaneously focusing both on individuals and on a collective, since artistic practice, while achieved by individuals, is also the outcome of collective endeavours. The backdrop to any artistic form is a shared practice providing the indispensable setting for individual creativity and effort: without this basic insight, one may easily and inadvertently lapse into adulation of genius. Our motivation for choosing our research topic had to do with attempts at many art colleges and universities to relate the artistic research to knowledge production. Natural and formal science, the humanities, social and cultural studies all of them have developed their specific theories of science and epistemologies. However, what kind of knowledge (know that) and skills (know-how, knowing) are created, what kind of experimental research is taking place during the creative process? Is a specific epistemology of artistic practice i.e., a theory of artistic competence conceivable, analogous to established theories of science? Our answer to this question is positive: the present book pursues it at greater length. Yet, we are aware that today this kind of epistemology is still awaiting elaboration, even though in recent decades a number of studies on skill acquisition have appeared on musicians, and another few on actors/ actresses and writers. Epistemology proceeds from the central assumption that intelligent and complex actions, including artistic ones, are knowledge-based. This postulate distinguishes artistic action from simple, everyday occurrences and habits. However, epistemologists define the terms knowledge and knowing in different ways, so further clarification is needed. Mentalistic 1 theories of action emphasise the role of consciousness (intention, volition, planning, decision, etc.) and assume a certain structure in intelligent action: put succinctly, before any action there is brainwork. Actions without any clear intention or explicit plan, or above all, without guidance by the intellect, are usually denied the attribute intelligent with one great exception: artistic action. Since the 18 th century, the concept of genius has been used to support the philosophical claim to the exceptionnal status of the artistic act. Critique of the various versions of the mentalistic paradigm has given way to the gradual rise of new conceptions concerning the action process: intelligent action is no longer necessarily linked to cognitive representations (such as plans or explainable decisions). Even when actors have a plan, new aspects may emerge during the realisation phase, reducing the relevance of planing details. Also, non-standard activities, even if carefully organised, consist of numerous smaller or bigger situation-specific improvisations that are only subsequently submerged by rational explanations for the respective actions, due to some external pressure for reasonable justification. Our core research question, What is happening during the creative process?, gives rise to a wider circle of further questions. In order to grasp the process of artistic creation, we need to understand artistic skills and competence, i.e. we need insight into the emergence and effect of what we call "artistic-practical knowing". This grasp is, in turn, embedded in our basic anthropological and social-theoretical assumptions. How do we conceive man? How do we conceptualise the formation and organisation of social communities? How do individuals relate to their social environment and, vice versa? How do communities change through their members actions and interactions? Here, we must briefly recapitulate a number of 1 The term mentalism denotes philosophical approaches postulating a distinction between something internal (spirit, consciousness, mind) and something external (matter, outside world, body). 2

3 philosophical propositions on which we shall draw below, in one way or another and often implicitly. During the first half of the 20 th century, philosophers and epistemologists like John Dewey, Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Ludwig Fleck, Gilbert Ryle, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Michael Polanyi developed the main features of a non-cartesian epistemology, which was taken up and developed further during the following decades by a number of other thinkers. Among them were Thomas Kuhn, John Searle, Harry Collins, Hubert Dreyfus, Donald Schön, Pierre Bourdieu, Bo Göranzon, Jane Lane, Etienne Wenger, Michael Eraut, Stephen Turner, Allan Janik, Hans Gruber, Theodore Schatzki, and Fritz Böhle this list of names is by no means complete. Some basic ideas, which have become part of this book s terminology, will in the following be discussed in greater detail. The four terms, practice, community of practice, knowledge and competence, may at first sight appear to be imprecise, since they are also part of everyday vocabulary. However, in the course of our epistemic investigation their meaning becomes more elaborate and specific. The word practice implies actions and activities, but as a technical term its meaning is wider: it denotes acting within a historical and social context that imparts structure and significance to such acting. The concept of practice, therefore, always points to some morethan-individual and socially emerging phenomenon, which unfolds both in informal and institutionalised ways. Practice is thus neither an antonym to theory, nor to ideas or ideals, nor does it establish a dichotomy with respect to them. On the contrary: theories and other forms of reification are emergent outcomes of practice. This means, a particular practice is neither merely bodily, nor purely mental, it rather is a framework within which corporeal and cognitive activities unfold that are experienced to be meaningful in communal togetherness. Thus any practice encompasses both explicit and implicit aspects, i.e. certain elements that are articulated and others that remain unsaid, or contents that are made public and others that are tacitly assumed. If one adopts a particular practice, it is the result of one s socialisation, one s direct experiences, of acquisition of cognitive, perceptual and emotional patterns, of taking over forms of interpretation and styles of thought, and also of taking up the use of any kind of artefact or tool in order to become active and participate in social fields. Therefore, central in any particular practice there are learning processes through which existing knowledge and practices are passed on, and new forms of knowledge and knowing are generated. To engage in a specific practice, to refine and develop it, and to pass it on to others, often becomes central to a person s identity, i.e. a specific practice will generate emotional, motivational and moral components that induce actions. The term community of practice is to be understood in the light of two prior assumptions: we conceive man as a social being and we assume that the social, cultural, political and cognitive embededness of individuals is rooted in their Lebensform. In this sense, communities of practice are anthropologically established entities. They are formed through collective enterprises and fields of practice and they comprise a common reservoir of knowledge and skills made up of shared experiences, theories, thought patterns and tools; they evolve through communicative interactions, learning processes, negotiation processes and relations with other communities. Each community of practice generates and reproduces practices through direct involvement of its members, as well as through continuous evaluative appraisal of the meaning and quality of their activities. The relationship between a specific practice community and its members is not deterministic but dynamic, since its members degree of participation and integration in the community varies. Even if there is consensus about particular practices and evaluation criteria, concrete actions vary individually and according 3

4 to given situations, analogous to the way in which language as a collective body of rules is actualised in different ways by individual speakers. The members consciousness of the fact that they are shaping and determining their actions individually (even if not completely so) is fundamental to their experience of participation in a certain community of practice. Communities of practice are not sealed, self-sufficient entities; they rather exist in a wider historical, social, economic and institutional context. Major sociological categories relating to the individual (e.g. gender, age, social position, cultural background, etc.) and to the community (e.g. structure, institutions, rules, etc.) are important in analysing communities of practice. Participation implies shared beliefs, understandings and self-images, common knowledge and skills, coordinated forms of behaviour and exchange. Yet, communities of practice are not necessarily and always harmonious, since they include competitive and conflicting interactions. Knowledge is a multi-faceted concept. Every person and every group disposes of a corpus of knowledge which, however, is not always generally recognised and appreciated, either because this knowledge does not agree with a particular kind of practice, or because somebody is denied participation in the respective community of practice. So, knowledge is to be understood as resulting from participation in a particular practice. The concept of knowledge is complex because it cannot always be fully grasped and articulated, because knowledge it sometimes remains hidden and tacit. The conception of knowledge is thus closely related to other concepts such as consciousness, intuition, cognition, symbolic forms, corporeity, experience, perception and action. Different states of aggregation of knowledge can therefore be either conceived in terms of philosophy of language (e.g. knowledge bounded to symbolic forms versus tacit knowing), or in terms of phenomenology (e.g. implicit versus explicit status). The distinction between knowledge as symbol-bounded entity (episteme / know that / savoir) or as practical knowledge, i.e. ability rooted in action (praxis / know how or knowingin-action / savoir faire) also corresponds to the distinction, in German, between Kennerschaft (connoirseurship) and Könnerschaft (mastery, practical expertise). Based on this differrentiation, it seems justified to subdivide general epistemology into theory of formal or symbolbounded knowledge on the one hand and theory of practical knowledge or tacit knowing, also called epistemology of practice, on the other hand. The two kinds of epistemology are concerned with different objects of investigation. Knowledge in the sense of propositional knowledge about facts, which may be applied when action takes place, is nevertheless independent of application; it exists beyond practical application, because it can be fixed in symbolic form. Sensual and practice-related knowledge or knowing, on the other hand, which is rooted in experience and practical skills, which is intrinsic to and embodied in action, cannot be de-coupled from its realisation in performance. Propositional knowledge proceeds from premises that can largely be analysed and represented. Practical knowledge, by contrast, is transient and often implicit, since it mostly eludes precise articulation and analytic reflection. Propositional knowledge and practical knowledge are evaluated by different criteria. Propositional knowledge, may be true/ false, verified/falsified, and supportable by argument. Practical knowledge, by contrast, is evaluated in terms of successfully performed action. However, both criteria of truth or verification as well as criteria of skilful performance are subject to social negotiation processes. The above categorisation of knowledge forms, although useful in epistemic analysis, still does not constitute a structural dichotomy: explainable versus tacit, explicit versus 4

5 implicit, theoretical versus experience-based or action-based knowledge, knowledge versus ability in (nearly) all concrete manifestations of knowledge and actions we observe a multitude of gradual mixtures of various components and conditions of knowledge: we must therefore take care not to lose sight of the constant mutual influence and interdependence between the two forms of knowledge. The term competence (or proficiency) is reserved for abilities that are acquired and developed further through learning processes and practical experiences. One must note, however, that competence is not acquired directly, it rather is a phenomenon emerging through accumulation and formation of practical knowledge. Competence is always connected with some specific practice or, respectively, with a certain domain; there is no abstract, general, or unspecific competence. Its concrete degree or level is established by the respective community of practice, which interprets certain actions as skilful and successful performance. The awareness and recognition of one's skills and competence is an important faculty, which can be developed through participation and integration in some community of practice. Thus, there is some linkage with normative ideas about effective action and good practice, and with concrete valuation standards. The relationship between competence, knowledge and practice is a dynamic one: competence is productive and creative; it generates new skills and innovations, and consequently new practical knowledge, which in turn influences social practices and the communities of practice. If certain basic conditions change, individual abilities may be lost because they are no longer considered valuable. The recognition of competence, therefore, is an interpretative rather than an analytical issue. The contents of the present book overlap with other academic disciplines such as literature studies, aesthetics, theory of creativity in psychology, sociology of the arts, empirical creative writing research, as well as research into professional and vocational competence. Above all, however, our book is concerned with epistemology, as it mainly seeks to study the formation and effectiveness of artistic-practical knowledge. To investigate the process of creative writing as it is happening, in contrast to, for example, retrospective text-genetic studies (genetic criticism), opens up new dimensions of analysis. The activity of creative writing reveals itself as a dynamic conglomerate arising through the interaction and mutual dependency of individual authors, literary possibilities and the environment of surrounding activities. Epistemology of artistic practice overlaps only partially with traditional theory of knowledge and theory of cognition; it investigates similar themes but focuses mainly on forms of knowledge (e.g. knowing) that are inseparable from action. It is a theory of artistic competence, in which, nevertheless, propositional knowledge, reasoning and other cognitive abilities are by no means marginal elements in the architecture of competence. In conclusion, we do not wish to replace other theories, rather we are investigating four specific theses: Artists are embedded in a concrete cultural, social, economic and political environment, which shapes their style of thinking, their means of expression and articulation, as well as their resources and material possibilities (cf. chapter 2); Viewed from an epistemic point of view, their work process is both reproductive and creative, i.e. artists draw on existing knowledge while simultaneously creating new knowledge through the specific nature of each artistic project (cf. chapter 3); Competence depends on criteria of successful performance (cf. chapter 4); From an epistemic point of view, competence cannot be analysed completely (cf. also chapter 4). 5

6 Empirical research method The discrete nature of practical knowledge renders it hard to grasp. It is not immediately accessible to the observers sensory perception, while the respective actors often have just a vague notion of it. Practical knowledge is therefore explored through interpretation and analysis of actions. However, the description of any action implicitly entails an explanation or interpretation, which is also evaluative. To recognise this fact means that one must renounce any claim to providing pure description. We consequently did not intend to depict the process of artistic creation, rather we were trying to make it better understood in terms of our theory of artistic-practical and knowledge. The term understanding (to understand what somebody does, how he or she does it, to trace the intentions of actions) is often misleading, because it might suggest that there are universal or objective standards to be grasped and analysed. However, within complex social reality, where ontological and symbolic phenolmena (i.e. actions and their meaning) are inextricably mixed, we are often confronted with ambivalence. Understanding, therefore, is not simply a matter of knowing facts and being informed, it also results from familiarity with a specific context of action. As researchers, we therefore had to keep very close to the ongoing process of creative writing. Another dimension of our understanding has to do with the basic openness in the formation of meaning. Human beings usually grasp a phenomenon by weighing and interpreting various aspects, the totality of which, however, they usually do not fully comprehend. They always understand something just partially, viewed from their particular perspective and situation. For our research project this meant that we could not simply incorporate the self-images and original information provided by the participating writers, and that we constantly had to keep in mind the relativity of the collected material. Because of the individuality of creative writing processes literary works are not standardised products and because of the hidden nature of artistic-practical knowledge, we had to employ a qualitative research approach, i.e. to conduct methodically controlled case studies and open interviews. Case studies do not yield general results, rather they are designed to reveal concrete features. Deeper insights into complex action processes are often easier to obtain through case studies rather than individual observations and interviews. We assumed that by detailed documentation and analysis of some literary writers work processes, performed throughout nine months, we would be able to identify many factors relevant from an epistemology and action-theory point of view, whose interplay determines the process of creative writing; if we combined this with our findings from individual interviews, we would be able to reveal the great variety of forms of creative writing processes. We also hoped that by combining case studies with interviews in which a number of writers of different age and sex participated, we would obtain some weak proof for the correctness of our theoretical notions about the activation and creation of different forms of knowledge through the creative writing process. To be sure, this would only be possible if the analysis of our empirical material would reveal striking similarities allowing one or the other arguable generalisation. Considering that practical knowledge tends to become increasingly internalised during accumulation of experience this is one of Hubert Dreyfus s basic assumptions discussed in chapter 4 we thought it expedient in our case studies to co-operate with younger writers, who would be confronted with writing problems and learning processes more frequently than famous and experienced authors. Our essential selection criteria were defined in advance: we were looking for prose writers who were habitually using computers for their work (so that 6

7 the text variants reflecting the process of textualisation or writtenness would be preserved); they also had to be currently and regularly engaged in writing one specific text. We did not try to select certain types, neither with respect to working style nor regarding kind of text. Another requirement was that the authors would be personally motivated to co-operate with us for an extended period of time, since in investigating the acquisition and enlargement of practical-artistic knowledge we were not dealing with research objects that one could study by just observing them; rather, we had to rely on information provided by our authors about their writing experiences. Since we wanted to observe the texts during their process of originnation, the authors had to allow us to look at their respective still unfinished texts, and they had to be willing to speak with other persons about something they subjectively did not regard as perfect. We were able to contract four authors for this form of co-operation, but we present in chapter 1 of our book the creative writing processes of three of them: Michaela Falkner (Vienna), Thomas Klupp (Hildesheim/Berlin) and Verena Roßbacher (Berlin). Verbal reports, i.e. verbalisation of cognitive processes simultaneously with ongoing action represent a data collecting method commonly used to investigate expert knowledge in different professional fields (computer experts, laboratory physicists, radiologists etc.). However, in the case of a complex, creative activity like the process of writing a literary text, that method cannot be employed. In order to catch writing experiences while they were still present they would later either have disappeared from memory or have been integrated by the actors into some rational explanation pattern we asked each author participating in the case studies to keep notes regularly in personal writing diaries, either in written form or as audio recordings. In those diaries, the authors documented their activities and current challenges immediately after each work session; as orientation for this, we gave each author a catalogue listing a number of themes. The personal writing diaries provided space for the authors to record their introspective observations, which supplemented our outside observations obtained through our interviews and through analysis of the text variants. However, sometimes it is not just difficult but impossible for authors to articulate experiences happening during the writing process, since a person s awareness focuses on certain aspects and may not reach all side themes and fringe areas. Sometimes, verbalisation is also experienced as something negative, when an author feels that verbalisation over-simplifies the complexity of his or her creative processes, so that the writing process seems to be whittled down to just a few describable moments. During certain phases of the work process, analysis may be felt to interfere with the flow of action, since it dissects the process into components. It is often useful for artistic action to be kept intuitive to a certain extent; sometimes it is even necessary for an artist not to speak about his or her work, in order to be able to continue acting. In any case, the limits of diary entries are obvious: as researchers, we had no control over what the authors did not wish to tell us, and we had only indirect access to what they perhaps were unable to tell us. Our task was to uncover the inexpressible, to consider it and, perhaps, to address it during an interview. Not all ideas and thought processes occurring during the process of writing immediately find expression in text, but it was indispensable to analyse all texts at every stage of their growth, so that we could observe the process as it was happening and to interpret the authors statements correctly. The authors participating in the case studies programmed their text processing software so as to keep all changes to their respective texts (insertions, replacements, deletions, etc.) visible for us. After each work session they sent us their latest variant. Throughout our project, we communicated continuously with our case-study authors. Our 7

8 contacts went beyond interview meetings: we exchanged messages, we sometimes called each other on the telephone, we met at readings or on informal occasions. This was an indefinite, wider kind of communication between us and the authors, which also became part of our analysis and interpretation, but which we are not able to make more explicit. We met our case-study authors at regular intervals to conduct interviews with them, in order to cast some light on certain concrete aspects that we had retrieved by analysing their writing diaries and text variants. Since practitioners always know more than they can tell 2, there is a danger that, in certain situations and if forced to (being pressurised to explain or justify themselves), practitioners will start to ascribe some conceptual structure to their action that it does not have, i.e. they will tend to tell more than they can know 3. At the start of our conversations we therefore avoided questions that might evoke explanations or justifications of their text (e.g. why-questions). Only after having accumulated enough empirical material did we pose questions that would help us to trace the authors perceptions of problems and alternative solutions. During the final stage of our project we also organised dialogues with experienced writers chosen by our case-study authors for an exchange views and discussion of experiences regarding the process aspects of writing. Since practice always is wider and more varied than any individual horizon, we conducted in addition to our case studies twenty one-time interviews with other prose authors in Austria and Germany. During the first lot of interviews we mainly focused on the working process; we asked the authors to describe, taking the example of one of their completed or current projects, how they had organised their writing. This revealed the great variety of ways of working, which depended on such different factors as available time, personal preferences, habits, as well as aspects directly related to the ongoing writing process. After roughly ten interviews, we modified the interview format, to shift our focus more towards learning experiences and the diachronic perspective, so we would be able to observe possible changes over time. For this round of interviews we deliberately contacted authors with at least twenty years of writing experience. Since we assumed that observations made by publishing house editors would uncover aspects differing from those revealed through the creative writers self-descriptions, we also conducted two interviews with editors working at publishing houses. House editors often have the chance of observing the micro structures of a creative writer s work process at least from time to time while accompanying the growth of a particular text. In some cases, where the cooperation between authors and house editors had lasted for several years, the house editors were also suitable interview partners for questions relating to our diachronic research perspective, for example, Which changes accompany increasing writing experience?, or Where do accumulation of artistic-practical knowledge or, respectively, increased experience and competence, reveal themselves? At the end of our project s explorative stage, our material consisted of nearly 700 pages of transcribed talks and diary notes, as well as 4,400 pages of text variants of prose works-inprogress. A naive approach to this empirical material would have been a mistake. The interviewees awareness that their utterances might be quoted influenced our conversations, both 2 Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension, London: Routledge, 1966, 4. 3 Richard E. Nisbett, Timothy D. Wilson, Telling more than we can know. Verbal Reports on Mental Processes, in Psychological Review, 84 (3), 1977,

9 with respect to what the authors said, and regarding the manner in which they depicted their writing experiences and their own person. Such directed consciousness can never be eliminated completely; we therefore had to keep in mind that both in the diary information and in the interviews there would be a difference between actual (and partly consciously experienced) writing processes and narrated writing experiences. This difference would be the result of deliberate attention directed at something during the working process (the mind focuses on certain aspects of writing, other aspects remain unobserved) limited ability of articulating conscious content temporal distance and difference between time of writing and time of telling about it intentional consciousness during the interviews (thematic focusing, interaction with the researchers, self-description). The authors statements are not theory-free descriptions; they rather comprise interpretations of their personal situations. The ways in which they articulate their experiences and insights is a conglomerate merging shared, culturally generated explanation patterns with individually varying nuances and accents. It is therefore possible to extract both basic norms and convictions and non-predetermined insights from the statements made by the interviewees. To recognise the presence of this difference in our material (shared views versus individual experiences), we needed to be informed about current norms, structures and values shared by the literary community (cf. chapter 2) and we also had to have done a sufficient number of interviews and to reach a point of data saturation, so we would be able at the interpretation stage to identify common or varying content. The method we used to analyse our material largely followed the procedures of qualitative content analysis. For initial structuring of our material, we divided the transcribed interviews and diary notes into segments and assigned those to thematic dimensions (five main and 38 sub-dimensions, as well as, in a few cases, further differentiation). These categories constitute the thematic fields we had derived from our basic research questions and epistemic interests. They concerned details of actual working processes (generation of ideas, organisation of research and work process, reading experiences, etc.), but also diachronic development and learning experiences, the authors personality (their biographies, material circumstances, role models, etc.), and also text-specific statements. In a second round of analysing our material we aimed at further concentration of content, i.e. we compared and analysed the text passages of each thematic field once more, in order to identify additional structures and patterns of meaning in our empirical data. On this basis, we developed a new set of categories, which subsequently guided our analysis and helped us to collate our findings at a higher level of abstraction (see appendix). Since we did not analyse the writing process retrospectively and since we were very much confronted with the openness and fragility of the creative process the analysis of our empirical data started before the literary texts had been finished we were not in the position of omniscient observers. This awareness exhorted us constantly to keep as close as ever possible to our empirical material. Interpretation is not to be a projection of one s own preconceptions, but the fruit of a methodical process of analysis and critical reflection. Step by step, i.e. for each thematic code, we anticipated the respective width of interpretation that we thought to be appropriate for the respective material. Our initial apparatus of categories was only a first structural framework. During the phase of data analysis it was crucial to identify or construct categories that would induce heuristic understanding and further interpretation of the empirical material. 9

10 In the course of further reflection on the empirical material, the relevance of material became increasingly apparent: the richest insights were derived from the case studies, where a connection could be established between the present diaries, the text variants and the interviews. Statements made in the one-time interviews were generated through our guidelines and could be adequately interpreted on the basis of our personal impressions. There is no such empirical proximity in statements taken from published works such as poetry readings, interviews, or specialised publications on writing experiences and learning processes so we only referred to them at a later stage of our project to confirm and illustrate our own conclusions. When starting to draft the manuscript for this book we had to meet our self-imposed challenge, namely not only to construe the epistemological dimension of the writing process but also, at the same time, to embed it in a related theoretical frame. During this phase, the interaction between theory-building and reconsideration of empirical data material became even more intensive. Theoretical conceptions are indispensable in the formulation of one s research framework, since researchers are not inventors or discoverers ex nihilo. Theories structure one s view of empirical reality, but they are in turn themselves elaborated and revised by insights derived from experience. Without preliminary conceptual structures it is impossible to differentiate between relevant and irrelevant data. In conducting research it is not easy to establish a proper balance between theory and an empirical approach, between thinking in categories and sensory perception, for this balance is itself a matter of implicit practical knowledge. We took great care not to allow any theoretical approach to become so dominant that it would determine our research results to the extent that it would invariably reproduce our preliminary theoretical assumptions