Walking Seminar March 2019

One of the first beautiful spring days brought us to the coast where we walked an around 14km walk from Overveen through the dunes, to the beach and over the beach to Zandvoort aan Zee. Our topic this time was “Big Words”: They tend to be called concepts. They can be helpful as when they give you some focus while you assemble materials. They can be helpful in writing as they link what you write to what others have written using the same concepts. But then again. Big words may also stand between you and surprising things in your field that you cannot smell out as the concepts cover them up. Or you may be using them in a different way than others using the ‘same’ concepts. You may try to present this as inventive and creative on your part, but it may as well increase confusion all round.

Concepts come from somewhere. They have heavy histories – often a few – in this or that discipline – they resonate fights from diverse pasts. How to not get caught up in that? Not so easy. You cannot, after all, re-invent language from scratch overnight. How then to deal with it otherwise?

And then your informants. They talk, too. They may be talking in the same big words that are in use in the literature. They attach similar or different meanings to them. They know what you are talking about already – ah, no, they don’t. But how to talk about something else, or in a new way? How to not just represent your field, but add to it?

Coining concepts may seem attractive as big words often get to travel between texts – and you would like your insights to travel. But then again. Terms often get stifled along the way. Or simplified. Or amputated. What about making stories travel instead, how to do that?

Our walking seminar on February 8th

Expected rain choreographed the circumstances in which this walking seminar took place: a small group of waterproofed and well prepared walkers started off Baarn, to then walk over mostly tree covered firm sand paths. Our conversations were productive and engaging. So much so that we even got lost a little bit towards the end of the route (for the first time as long as I remember the walking seminars). More kilometers to walk, more time to talk. When we arrived at our end destination Hollandsche Rading - tired and intellectually well nourished - it was already dark outside. 

This walking seminar we did not have one topic, but we had participants think about and then discuss their "most pressing problem". The blurb for this walking seminar was: 

Your Present Problem

Rather than presenting you in this blurb with a problem to share, we suggest, this time round, that we jointly tackle every person’s most pressing present problem. Workwise, that is. What in your research do you hit up against these days? What about your field-working, analysing, writing, presenting, dealing with comments, rewriting and rewriting again, are you fed up with, insecure about, exhausted by or otherwise struggling with? Don’t think you have to struggle alone! In talk-walking with others you will discover that they wrestle with, or have been wrestling with, similar problems, or rather interestingly different ones. Added to that, they may come up with inspiring ways of living with, or handling, or, who knows, even solving this, that or the other problem. And you, in your turn, will find yourself capable of supporting them. Yes, you will. Good luck!