Willing to Learn : Passages of Personal Discovery

by BATESON, MARY CATHERINE

• ISBN13: 9781586420802
• ISBN10: 1586420801
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-10-12
• Publisher: Steerforth

Summary

WRITER AND EDUCATOR Mary Catherine Bateson is best known for the proposal that lives should be looked at as compositions, each one an artistic creation expressing individual responses to the unexpected. This collection can be read as a memoir of unfolding curiosity, for it brings together essays and occasional pieces, many of them previously unpublished or unknown to readers who know the author only from her books, written in the course of an unconventional career. Bateson's professional life was interrupted repeatedly. She responded by refocusing her curiosity by being willing to learn. The connections and echoes between the entries in her book are as intriguing as the contrasts in style and subject matter. The work is grounded in cultural anthropology but shaped by the observation that, in a world of rapid change and encounters with strangers, individuals can no longer depend on following traditionally defined paths. Willing to Learnis arranged thematically. One section includes a sampling of writings about Bateson's parents, anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson. The longest section focuses primarily on the contemporary United States and deals with life stages and gender. Bateson argues that because women's lives have changed most radically, women are pioneers of emerging patterns that will affect everyone. Another section deals with belief systems, conflict, and change, especially in the Middle East, and the final section with different ways of knowing. Bateson is a singular thinker whose work enriches lives by bringing fresh, original ideas to subjects that affect all of our lives.Willing to Learnis at once an articulation of and an enduring testament to the artistic creation Bateson has produced pursuing her own life's work.

Author Biography

MARY CATHERINE BATESON recently retired from her professorship at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. She divides her time between Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she has continued part-time teaching, and the Monadnock region of New Hampshire. She is also president of the Institute for Intercultural Studies in New York City, where she can spend time with her daughter’s family, including her grandson, Cyrus.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Thinking Back	1	(5)
The Shaping of This Book	6	(5)
PART I. FAMILY MEMOIRS
Introduction	11	(2)
Ghosts to Believe In: A Writer's Companions	13	(4)
Continuities in Insight and Innovation: Toward a Biography of Margaret Mead	17	(12)
``Daddy, Can a Scientist Be Wise?''	29	(15)
The Wisdom of Recognition: Activism and Aesthetics	44	(12)
Six Days of Dying	56	(10)
Composing a Life Story	66	(12)
PART II. THE SHAPES OF LIVES: AGE AND GENDER
Introduction	78	(3)
You Will Know the Future When You Get There	81	(11)
``The Epigenesis of Conversational Interaction'': A Personal Account of Research Development	92	(15)
Holding Up the Sky Together	107	(6)
Caring for Children, Caring for the Earth	113	(7)
``A Spade with Which to Dig'': Valuing Human Occupations	120	(8)
The Unending Threshold: Learning and the Life Cycle	128	(9)
Commitment as a Moving Target	137	(7)
The Atrium: A Space of Light	144	(7)
``An Oak Tree in Full Leaf''	151	(9)
``A Riddle of Two Worlds'': An Interpretation of the Poetry of H. N. Bialik	160	(21)
Into the Trees	181	(13)
PART III. CULTURE AND CONVICTION
Introduction	194	(4)
``This Figure of Tinsel'': Themes of Hypocrisy and Pessimism in Iranian Culture	198	(13)
Learning to Learn and Knowing What You Know: South Africa 1991	211	(11)
Compromise and the Rhetoric of Good and Evil	222	(11)
Toward an Ambiguous World Order	233	(9)
Change in Islam: The Status of Women	242	(8)
Learning in Layers	250	(13)
The Lessons of 9/11	263	(19)
PART IV. WAYS OF KNOWING
Introduction	282	(3)
Democracy, Ecology, and Participation	285	(17)
On the Naturalness of Things	302	(6)
Visions of Transcendence	308	(12)
Multiple Kinds of Knowledge: Societal Decision Making	320	(19)
In Praise of Ambiguity	339	(16)
Purpose, Gender, and Evolution	355	(11)
Thinking AIDS	366	(33)
Afterword: To Wander and Wonder	399	(13)
A Chronology	412	(5)
A Bibliography of Works	417	(5)
Mary Catherine Bateson
Acknowledgments	422	(2)
Notes	424	(14)
Index	438