Wildflowers

Planting Initial Seeds

A sense of community potentially begins with how qualitative inquiry is taught. How we introduce, situate, and communicate the many things that it is, has been, and has the potential to become. How there is room for everyone regardless of the paths that we eventually choose, and how these are paths on which we do not journey alone. Instead, these are paths that we not only share, but paths that have already been lit by others (in Salvo, 2018). This is how I begin and end every introductory qualitative inquiry course I teach—with the message that we are all here, together, sharing the same “big tent.” And that this enables us to find shelter, purpose, community, and perhaps even ourselves.

I begin to do this through a letter that I write to all my students. As it turns out, I happen to write many letters to students over the course of their studies, starting with the introductory course. The first letter I write appears as the cover page of the syllabus and is available in advance to guide course selections. Yet, this letter—the second letter students receive—is different. I deliver this letter in-person.

I end the first and the last class of each semester by reading this letter. As the initial class begins to wind down, I slowly walk within the inside of the circle and place a small parcel on every student’s desk. It is a simple pouch made of recycled brown paper that I have secured with twine. I ask that students not untie or open these bundles yet—that they wait until they have returned home. Then, I read the contents of the letter out loud (see the appendix).

The pouches, as students later discover, have been filled with wildflower seeds. I share that the seeds are much like their journeys through qualitative inquiry and through their graduate programs as a whole. I do not have to point out that these seeds are also much like them: ready to realize their potential and grow into something beautiful, even though they are something beautiful already. These are things that, over the course of each semester, students begin to infer and wildflower seeds help us to remember.

I believe that these ideas, in tandem with the possibilities of belonging through the “big tent,” are the most important components of this initial course in qualitative inquiry. I look forward to sitting on my kitchen floor the night before each semester begins, putting the bundles together one by one as I imagine the students I am about to meet and how—though they are working across different fields and disciplines—they could be among our future colleagues, collaborators, and community members. In these respects, this ritual has become an important part of how I convey the idea that we are in a larger community of wildflowers, weeds, and magnificent plants. Together.

Community Gardening

In a sense, academic communities can be thought alongside community gardens. Once a staple of economic depressions, community gardens have re-emerged in urban areas as a means of not only connecting people but reconnecting people with the land. Simply put, community gardens are both neighborly and nourishing. And, in so doing, they also promote the public good.

Growing plants in a communal space thus involves gardening differently than how one would garden in, say, either a private backyard area or a large agricultural farm. Whereas one encourages individualism, the other fosters corporatization; both could be viewed as forms of privatization. Because the doing of qualitative research often occurs in isolation, it is easy to imagine that we go to work alone in our own backyards (as well-known metaphors for insider ethnographic research can indeed suggest). It is in our seemingly solitary spaces, after all, that we seed, tend, harvest, love, watch, respect, and wait for plants to emerge in our modest plots. As some of us are staking tomatoes, others are patiently listening to the corn stalks grow. And that’s okay, for we don’t all need to be in the same space producing the same thing at the same time—that can lead to overproduction and overcrowding, which aren’t healthy for plants or ecosystems, either. There is still plenty of room to grow and be ourselves; community gardens are not moves toward assimilation, but spontaneous cultivations of difference. Besides, balancing and rotating crops is necessary, as soil requires rest and replenishment. Yet, regardless of what we are trying to grow at any particular point in time, our gardening efforts occur separately and together. Our plots are always already interrelated through community.

Such a sense of community, however, is cultivated and encouraged over time. It doesn’t just happen or magically appear. As such, we should not fall prey to complacency (Denzin, 2010). This is worth remembering, especially given that community gardens fall somewhere on the spectrum between private backyard spaces and large corporate farms. We often seem quicker to move toward the former while claiming to eschew the latter. In particular, many qualitative scholars might be skeptical of slash and burn agriculture, genetically homogenized and modified foods, and the corporate licensing and distribution of seeds. We might, in fact, readily add these to the burgeoning category of things we call “neoliberal.” At the same time, however, we perhaps have been less critical about how neoliberal structures are also upheld through individual choices, including our own. It is no small feat to resist the individualistic trappings of neoliberalism, for that’s where the rewards lie. Neoliberalism has its own siren call for scholars, and illusions of meritocracy can be very comforting indeed. Yet, despite appearances to the contrary, our work always depends on others.

It is not only that we affect and are affected by those in our immediate proximity, therefore. The ways in which we are entangled extend much further than that. Regardless of whether we make direct connections with others nearby, for instance, soil, water, and creatures constantly keep us connected. Just as runoff from harmful chemicals impacts the health of the entire garden, insects are not confined within particular garden patches. Disease spreads, too. It wasn’t just the dogwoods in my backyard that died as a child, but dogwoods across the Southeastern United States. I continue to feel their absence.

In short, this means that shared spaces involve, well, sharing. We already share the bad; we may as well share the good, too. Many community gardening models are built on this premise and share tools, share plots, and even share food. This is done out of necessity and generosity, yes, but also because—like being kind to others—it’s simply the right thing to do. When others are struggling to remain afloat, there is no need to go out of the way to make life harder for anyone else (not, of course, that there ever is good reason to do such a thing). More often than not, life is difficult enough as is. When the deer ate up the food in the garden first, it was easy to see that, as our neighbors, they must have needed it more.

Although community gardens tend to emerge within semi-organized spaces, they also can be organic and wild. Raggedy flower patches, wildflower meadows, and community wildflower gardens are but a few examples—the world rarely operates within such neat and tidy rows. Furthermore, there are many natural ways for plants to proliferate in harsh conditions apart from human intervention. Different plants reproduce through spores, rhizomes, tubers, and, of course, through the production of seeds. Plants don’t just sit around and wait to be disseminated by humans. Carried along by the wind, water, and other spirits, plants are capable of finding their own way. And, after they land, when they are able, they begin to grow—together, in the community that they continue to form.

Cultivating Community

If there is a time for community, it is now.

We can quibble all we want about the differences between wildflowers and weeds, but the distinctions therein can be arbitrary. In some places, lavender is thought to be a weed. If this seems trivial, then perhaps that’s because it is. The planet has more urgent priorities than this. In a time when the future of humanity is at stake because the future of the planet is at stake, it seems that we as inquirers would be well-served to look beyond our many selves—human, methodological, and otherwise.

Yet, this is more than an argument involving ethics or the ways in which we could all be growing together: it is one that is connected to the Earth and our daily impact on it. In the Anthropocene, collaboration and cooperation are not only collegial matters: they are necessary mechanisms for survival. We are all in this together, and differences over whose methodologies are “right,” “best,” or “most appropriate” are not only unproductive but counterproductive in working toward futures that include us all. The fates of humans, nonhumans, and inhumans are entangled in the Anthropocene together, and the ways in which wildflowers communicate work to make this more clear.

In troubled times, it would be a misguided use of energies to disparage something as a weed, disrupt the ecosystem next door, or crowd out neighboring plants. There is simply too much to do in too short a time. Moreover, I seriously doubt that the goal of qualitative inquiry has ever been to uproot, displace, or forcibly decenter others. It certainly has not ever been mine. Even flowers in the ditch on the side of the road are sharing the same space, even if it is a modest one. In these ways, arguments against seed bombing and spraying pesticides onto already thriving spaces are not as dissimilar as they might seem; invasion and eradication are equally forceful moves.

If we are to garden in a shared community, then perhaps we might turn to more sustaining techniques. For example, we might decline to pull up and discard the nearby “weeds” simply because they happen to exist. We might also refrain from damaging other people’s flower beds. Sharing does not mean permission to take whatever we want. This is particularly the case when taking, appropriating, and/or destroying the work of others. Care and collaboration are not reflected in attempts to make other people’s work wither. Instead, we might cultivate inclusive and desirable practices as we hold onto the warm and vibrant spirit of community gardening. Community gardens are wild wherever they grow, and we should grow them often. We should only do so, however, in ways that are generative, replenishing, and in reciprocity with the land and with each other.

And though we may be cultivating different practices across different inquiry traditions—such as those involving art, autoethnography, critical and digital studies, education, health, Indigenous inquiries, psychology, social work, and the social sciences and humanities, among others—we are still in a community garden, not a series of individual or corporate farms. There are times when, by simply being present, qualitative inquiry is perceived as a threat to the orderly garden of research. We may not have been disciplined into submission, as can be done with plants, but there have been costs.

Sometimes when I travel down silent hallways and rows of empty offices, I imagine that the rooms have been filled with collections of lonely scholars, each crafting a tableau to be put on display in a zoo or arboretum. One from this discipline, one from that discipline, one from yet another, and so on. And as I do this, I think about how there are researchers in an increasing number of disciplines in the social sciences and humanities that are threatened, endangered, or on the verge of extinction. Sometimes it helps to collect plants and animals when their populations begin to dwindle. Oftentimes it doesn’t. Reconstituting under forced and unnatural conditions can be difficult, especially when the available resources have been severely limited.

It is worth considering, then, that paper is something precious made from plants. Namely, the journals and books we read in hard-copy form are made of plant materials. Living things have given themselves to us to make our scholarship happen, and, in the process, we have given something of ourselves to them, too. It is easy to forget about the expenditure of life on both sides. Perhaps we should not write so casually then, both in deference to the plant life that creates papers and to the people who write them. Nor should we act as if the publication of papers and production of books is more important than the people involved. There are always more texts than could be written, but if we are not careful, there may not always be enough people left to write them.

We ought to be mindful, therefore, about how we can overharvest when we write. Neoliberal systems line plants up in rows, force production, and then reap the benefits. When plants are overharvested, they are then replaced with new plants, if replaced at all. Consequently, it’s easy to become commodified and lose any initial sense of wildness. Perhaps this is because wild things should not be bought and sold in the first place (Kimmerer, 2013). We should resist, then, invitations to domesticate or forfeit our sense of being to do this work. We should resist selling ourselves for what basically comes down to one more paper. And maybe just one more, or perhaps just two more, papers after that. Commodification is a slippery slope.

Irigaray suggests an alternative. In taking up “flower” as an action rather than as a commodity, she asks, “Why do we not keep alive and develop our own energy so that we may let our natural belonging flower?” (Irigaray & Marder, 2016, p. 24). We might consider her question in the context of community, as well.

And while this has much to do with inquiry communities, it is also about much, much more. I am not unconvinced that how we interact with plants isn’t also how we interact with other methodologies, other people, and, more broadly, other aspects of life. Inquiry might be taken not only as an orientation toward research, then, but also as an opportunity to look inward at ourselves while looking outward to envision what we might contribute to the world. This may seem daunting, if not impossible. However, it is not, for Kimmerer (2013) also reminds us that “Imagination is one of our most powerful tools. What we imagine, we can become” (p. 184)

For me, and perhaps for you, too, wildflowers might encourage different paths. Whether it is in a garden or an insurgent flower patch on the side of the road, wildflowers potentially help us more thoughtfully correspond with the other life in our space, however wild that life may be. Rather than look down at wildflowers, we might shift our perspective upward to listen, slowly, to how other plants are growing and communicating around us. To how plants organically sustain communities. And to how we are each an essential and necessary part of crafting the kinds of futures that we want for tomorrow. For we are the wildflowers and weeds of inquiry, finding a way, together.