42 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating book built around an important idea, October 27, 1999
This review is from: Relational Responsibility: Resources for Sustainable Dialogue (Paperback)
I just finished reading Sheila McNamee and Kenneth Gergen's new book, Relational Responsibility: Resources for Sustainable Dialogue. (Sage 1999). I am so impressed. This book deals with profound issues, and the authors dig deeply into the quagmire of hurt and complexity that haunt all human relationships.
The authors call to our attention the way in which Western culture has seduced us into thinking that individual actions are individual responsibilities. If Jack offended Jill, then it is Jack's fault. Or, else it is Jill's fault. But McNamee and Gergen suggest that our lives would better if we had ways of keeping in mind that in most cases one cannot separate out whose fault it is. Neither Jack nor Jill intended the negative thing to have happened, but they both contributed to it. (I believe this would be what John Shotter calls "joint-action"). McNamee and Gergen don't suggest that we simply get rid of language that tends to hold individuals responsible for "their own actions", but that we greatly supplement them with language that would encourage the responsibility to be located somewhere in the relationship between the individuals.
But, thinking of Jack and Jill, and how they distribute fault between themselves: How can we keep in mind that the offense is not all Jack's fault, or all Jill's? McNamee and Gergen don't have a complete answer, but they have some good ideas. For example, they want to point out that when we talk about being of two minds about something, this tends to diminish the sense that an individual caused the problem. Jack offends Jill, and then he says, "I'm really of two minds about what I said." This diminishes the sense that either he or Jill are completely at fault here. A second example: These authors talk about using forms of speech that attribute the individual's fault to another sphere. This would mean that even if Jack offended Jill, it was not his fault because it was the result, say, of the stress he experienced at work. One more example: We might keep in mind the observation that the self is socially constructed. To the extent that we construct the self we diminish the simplicity of a self which is individually responsible.Remembering this might diminish the extent to which we see blame as centered on a single individual.
I think all of this is wonderfully inspiring, but my pleasure with this book is not only that it diminishes individual responsibility. It is the new way in which this book was written, the new form. The book consists of three parts. The first part consists of several chapters by McNamee and Gergen and these chapters outline their thesis. The next part consists of very short chapters by fourteen different people. These chapters are all reflections, some critical, some very positive, on the McNamee Gergen thesis. I was most impressed by the inclusion of the spouses of both McNamee and Gergen, both of which had some critical as well as some positive things to say. Finally, the book ends with a review of the feedback they had received from the fourteen contributors to part two.
I am tempted to call this book a kind of paralogue, to use Lynn Hoffman's phrase. There is a common shared topic, which is expanded upon by the two main authors. The additional authors read generously and connect their response to what McNamee and Gergen have said. Then, finally, McNamee and Gergen connect their conclusions in the afterward to the material presented by others in the second part of the book, just as paralogical conversation should do. A paralogue, then, seems to be an artistic written form of paralogy. Thank you Lynn Hoffman, for this great new.And thanks to McNamee and Gergen for the great example of a paralogue.
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