The troublesome word “container”
Art of Hosting, Chaordic design, Complexity, Conversation, Culture, Design, Emergence, Evaluation, Facilitation, Featured, First Nations, Leadership, Organization, Power
I’m in trouble. In the best way. So get ready for a long and rambling post about geeky dialogic philosophy and complexity practice.
I’m a little bit known in some communities as a person that is writing and working with the notion of “container” in dialogic organization development. The word and concept itself comes from a lineage of thinking about the spaces inside which dialogue takes place, and there is certainly lots written about that. I think I first learned the term from the work of William Isaacs whose classic work, “Dialogue,” is a seminal reference in this field. He describes a dialogic container as the “sum of assumpitions, shared intentions, and beliefs of a group.”
While that was the first place I learned of the concept of container in dialogue, my learning about it was also informed by reading about complexity science, and especially learning about dissipative structures and autopoiesis, two key concepts in self-organization in living systems. Furthermore, I learned of the notion of sacred space in both Christianity and indigenous ceremonies, especially the Midewiwin, to which I was exposed in my University years. Finally, my thinking about container with respect to complexity has been heavily influenced by both Dave Snowden and Glenda Eoyang‘s work, as they have explored how these concepts and dynamics from the natural sciences show up in human systems. In this context, Dave’s work on enabling and governing constraints is incredibly useful and Glenda’s broad palette of tools helps us to illuminate and work with containers.
So that is a brief survey of where my understanding has come from. I find the concept incredibly helpful in understanding the dynamics of self-organizing systems and it helps us to find places to intervene in a complex system with a rigorous approach to explore and change the patterns of self-organization and emergence.
So I use the word “container” with a very specific meaning, but it’s not a meaning that is shared by everyone and it definitely not a meaning shared by folks who have a history of being contained. Occasionally I get scolded for using the word, and I own that. We must be VERY thoughtful about language in this work so this is a long post where I think about the implications of this troublesome word which is used to describe a useful concept badly.
The word and concept are useful in understanding and describing dialogic practice. But it has some SERIOUS baggage because in contexts of oppression and colonization the history of colonization, enclosure, and imprisonment is entirely the history of containing people; on reserves, in jails, in schools, in groups defined by race and marked by lines, in ghettoized neighbourhoods, in a million places in which people are contained, enclosed and deprived of their agency and freedom to create and maintain boundaries.
In these contexts, the word “container” is often heard as a reference to places that are created by people with the power to contain others, and very often they contain people who have a lesser amount of power to change or free themselves from that container.
It is true and important to note that any discussion about how to manage dialogic spaces – containers – is entirely dependant on the power one has to create and influence the boundaries, and manage the connections and exchanges. Creating a dialogic container is an act of privilege. Using the word “container” will almost always trigger a negative reaction in people that have been SUBJECTED to containment, against their wills, against the interests, and in the service of depriving them of power.
Liberation movements all over the world in all moments of history are about creating alternative spaces to the oppressive culture and conditions of the present. These are expressed in all kinds of ways. In land reform movements, for example, colonized lands are recovered and returned to their original owners. In movements to free people from enclosed and coercive spaces like exploitative labour, prisons, residential schools, oppressive child welfare practices, or human trafficking, alternative spaces are built for equality, justice, freedom, learning, self-actualization and growth. And the metaphor and reality extends to spaces where people change the language to talk about their conditions and create spaces where conversation, dialogue, and organizing can happen in a way that draws a line between the oppressive practices of the past and the liberating spaces of the future. Socially constructed narratives can provide alternative stories that begin to link, connect, and differentiate people in a way that helps them organize their conditions of freedom.
So one major problem with this troublesome word is how it works in English. The word “contain” can be brutal, because in English it is a transitive verb that is not continuous, meaning that it implies an action conducted upon a object and then arriving at a resting place, where the object is contained and the action is done. That is a troubling truth of the word “container” and partially explains why it rests so uncomfortably on a dialogic practice that is intended to create spaces of generatively, creativity and life. It objectifies the object of it’s action and it acts upon that object to bring about a final conclusion. There is a lot buried in the particular grammatical function of the word. There is no room in the English definition of the word for self-organization and emergence.
Truthfully, the space required for dialogic practice needs a type of verb that doesn’t come so easily to English: a collectively transitive verb that is generative, continuous, and describes something that changes in its use. I suspect, having been a poor student of Anishinaabemowin and a bit of Skwxwu7mesh snichim, that there are maybe such verb forms in these languages. In my long study of the Tao te Ching, I’ve come to understand the concept of “yin” to be this: the form that life takes, in which creative energy is contained so it can do it’s work. It is created and changed in its interdependent relationship to what happens within it, like the way a river bed both holds the river and gives water its form of “river” instead of “lake” and is changed by the river being in it. It implies “receptivity” to creative energy. In Japanese where there is a sophisticated vocabulary for these kinds of spaces, “ma” (?) might be the word I’m looking for: a word that my friend Yurie Makihara defines this way: “Ma is the time concept expressing the time between something and other thing. We say how to create Ma is really important to encourage you to speak or “it’s kind of nice to have this kind of Ma.” For me Ma is the word to include some special sense to say, so we don’t use it just to express the time and the place.” Even though Yurie’s English is quite good, it’s clear that translating this into English is nearly impossible! But I think you get a sense that Ma is a collective sense about the shared time and space relationships that create a moment in which something is possible. Ma describes that moment, in a spatial way.
So. As is often the case, I’m left with the hidden poverty of English to give me a word that serves as both verb and noun and that is highly process-dependant. Over the years folks have suggested words like “nest” “hearth” and “field” to describe it. These are good, but in some ways they are also just softer rebranding of the word “container” to imply a more life-filled space. The terms still don’t ask the question of who gets to create, own and maintain the container nor do they fully capture the beauty and generativity of a complex adaptive structure in which meaning-making, relationship, healing, planning, dreaming both occur and act to transform the place in which they occur.
If we cast our eyes about the culture a bit wider, they quickly land on the word “space.” We use the word “space” a lot in social change circles, but it has its own troublesome incompleteness. The problem with “space” is that it often tends to turn attention towards what is between us and away from the boundary that separates us from others. This can be the way in which creating space for social change can fall victim to an unarticulated shadow: inclusion always implies a boundary between what is included and what is not included. Many social change initiatives falter on an unresourceful encounter with the exclusion that is implied by radical inclusion. A healthy social system can speak as clearly and lovingly about this boundary as it can about the relationship within the system. And for me this is the important part of talking about dialogic practice. So I can understand the helpful neutrality of the term “space” because it can be a result of a tight and impermeable boundary or it can simply be what we give our attention too as we come into relationship around attractors like identities, ideas, purposes, or needs. It can beautifully describe the nature of the “spaces in between.” But it still doesn’t do enough for me to describe the relationship between the spaces and the forces – or constraints – in the system that give rise to a space and enable self-organization and life. Still, it’s a pretty good word.
So perhaps what is needed is a true artistic view of the problem, to look away from the problem and towards the negative space that defines it. That is indeed what I have started doing in my work, by focusing more on the factors that influence self-organization and emergence and less on naming the structure that is created as a result of those factors. This is a critical skill in working with complexity as a strategist, facilitator, manager, and evaluator. These constraints include the interdependent work of the attractors and the boundaries which help us create a “space” for sensemaking and action, whether dialogic action or something else. There is a place where you are either in or out, and there can be a transition zone that is quite fluid and interesting. There is also an attractor at play, which can be a shared purpose, a goal, a shared identity, a shared rhythm or something interesting and strange and emergent that brings us into relationship. Anywhere you find yourself, in any social space, you can probably identify the attractors, the boundaries and perhaps even the nature of the liminal space between completely in and completely out.
This brings us back to the power conversation, rather more helpfully I think. If we let go of the “container” and focus instead on the factors that shape it, we can talk about power right upfront. Attractors and boundaries are VERY POWERFUL. They are created by power and maintained and enforced by power and the negotiation about their nature – more or less stable, more or less influential, more or less permeable and mutable – is by definition a negotiation about power. As a facilitator one carries a tremendous amount of power into the design of dialogic spaces. The most energetic resistance I have ever received in my work is always around the choices I made and the nature of the attractors and boundaries I am working with. I have been told I am too controlling, or not controlling enough. I have been told that we aren’t asking the right question (“who are you to say what we should be talking about?”). I have been removed from my role because what I was doing was far too disruptive to the group’s culture and norms of how they work, and in enforcing the disruption, I was actually depriving people of accessing the power they needed in the work.
(See the stories from Hawaii here and here and this story from Nunavik. Being an outsider with this power is perilous work.)
So yes, the terms we use to describe dialogic spaces matter. Finding a word to describe these spaces is important, and this is an important piece of critical pedagogy for anyone teaching dialogue and facilitation.
But don’t let your work rest on the definition of the space. Understand where these spaces come from. Actively work to invite more self-organization and emergence into these spaces that are in service of life, love and liberation. Become skillful at working with boundaries and attractors, limits and invitations, constraints that enable life rather than govern outcomes, and get good at knowing what kinds of relationships and constraints are the best fit for what is needed. That is what we need as we co-create spaces of radical participation and liberation and to transform the toxic use of power and control so we get more and more skillful at inviting us all into life-affirming moments and futures.
What do you think?
What a gorgeous meditation on semantics, power, and complexity. I have struggled with the word “container” from the beginning of my exposure to the AoH and Complexity world, and have never been able to use it. You have unpacked my discomfort that was for me beyond words.
I have tried several words and phrases to describe the space as I experiment with boundaries and attractors around those facilitated events. ”Gathering “ has been one I’ve used most when a word is necessary. But I like this idea of seeing and defining the inverse. It’s akin to thinking about “who isn’t present” versus “who is present.” And exploring the nominal space around the gathering is also really helpful. Not sure yet how this is practically facilitated, but I’ll definitely explore! Thank you!
People who are not used to being contained take a long time to get the message! I’m ashamed of how long it has taken me to recognize this.
Hi Chris
Very thought-provoking. I have been partial to the term Grok which I took for Robert Heinlen’s novel Stranger in a Strange Land. The following is a bit from Wikipedia that shares a bit of the meaning of the word.
Robert A. Heinlein originally coined the term grok in his 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land as a Martian word that could not be defined in Earthling terms, but can be associated with various literal meanings such as “water”, “to drink”, “life”, or “to live”, and had a much more profound figurative meaning that is hard for terrestrial culture to understand because of its assumption of a singular reality.
According to the book, drinking water is a central focus on Mars, where it is scarce. Martians use the merging of their bodies with water as a simple example or symbol of how two entities can combine to create a new reality greater than the sum of its parts. The water becomes part of the drinker, and the drinker part of the water. Both grok each other. Things that once had separate realities become entangled in the same experiences, goals, history, and purpose. Within the book, the statement of divine immanence verbalized between the main characters, “Thou Art God”, is logically derived from the concept inherent in the term grok
Hi Chris
Studies in nature often use the concept of “boundaries” – they are what hold back Chaos. The most simple organism is in reality only a chaos that is bounded. It’s the boundary that is at the core of life itself. All organized systems have therefore a boundary. The space inside is where the healthy interaction takes place. So in a plant, a chloroplast, was once an outside entity that has “done a deal” with the rest of the plant cellular structure and has been allowed to come inside where it supplies the energy for the plant. In most animals have a similar once foreign cell called mitochondria. In cellular life the, the boundary is a semi porous material called a membrane. This allows for some allowed things to pass through the membrane but it keeps the structure intact.
A container is by definition impervious and is often artificial.
BUT, if you were cooking, you often need a container.
You know better than anyone that in a good exploration there is often heat and even conflict – you see this is cooking – but if the container is managed well – the perfect stew or bread emerges.
In a cell model, there can be conflict as well – hence the symptoms of disease that generates heat as well.
This experience of heat and conflict is surely central to the process?
The gift of the great facilitator is to keep this heat from boiling over.
In cell life, the forces of homeostasis come into play and so does the immune system.
My own image of you and say Johnnie Moore is more of a master chef than a natural algorithm – not sure that container is so bad – I have fond that natural models are so far away from the knowledge of most people that you have to spend too much time in explanation to make the metaphor work.
The original idea of container in dialogue was inspired, I believe, by a union-management negotiation in a steel mill. The workers knew they needed a container to hold the anger in the room like the ones they worked with to hold molten metal. It has become a standard concept in dialogic practice and here we are finally critically interrogating it.
Thanks Chris. I’ve often used this word too- oblivious to how it might sit with oppressed people. Another blind spot uncovered.
Sorry this is such a long comment.
The key word, IMO, in this discussion of the rightness and wrongness of words, is POWER. We are, most of us, utterly incompetent at acknowledging where the power REALLY is, and isn’t, in the room and in all the spaces that participants will scatter to once the event concludes. More profoundly, we are, most of us, unaware of how much/little power we have individually (over/with others, in the community and world at large, and within and over ourselves). This is particularly true in more complex systems, where power is almost entirely illusory, but where the presumption of its existence is, mostly, far more important than its actual existence. Those with the trappings and pretensions of power count on this, of course, and like it that way.
I’ve always liked the idea that the facilitator’s prime role is “holding the space”. That implies creating and sustaining an area of what I would call “relatively low turbulence”. This is NOT necessarily a “safe” (from abuse of power) space, which is for various reasons generally beyond the facilitator’s power to provide. To me, holding the space is akin to holding a mirror to the group and trying to prevent actions that block or distort what the group sees in that mirror (mostly actions of power abuse).
I think the reason so many well-intentioned deliberative events fail is principally due to the mistaken belief that when the event is actually power-driven (ie the sponsor wants to coerce attendees to do or not do something that they would not actually do if they thought they had a choice), it can accomplish anything other than what those with power have already decided is to be done, notwithstanding any ideas, understandings, insights and perspectives surfaced or gained. Almost all ‘deliberative’ events I was involved with in 35 years of business were, for that reason, essentially fraudulent, and purposeless other than as a PR exercise or exercise of power.
This is not to say that it might temporarily help some participants feel ‘heard’ and feel that the consequences of the power imbalance aren’t quite so hopelessly dysfunctional as they had feared. I’ll leave it to you to decide if that’s a good thing or not; you can probably guess my opinion.
Power, and more specifically inequality of power and abuse of power, is the proverbial elephant in the rooms where most facilitators work. The participants hope it won’t be there, isn’t there, can be ignored or overcome. But that don’t make it go away.
Power is the ultimate “container”, in every sense of the word. So I agree that you should avoid the word, along with “safe spaces” and other false promises. Just hold the mirror up to the group and hope for the best.
Hi Chris,
I am so grateful for your thinking…
For some reason the word,” Endris Web”, comes to mind.
And I may be so TOTALLY off base, but my understanding of the Endris web, is that we all ( as in , Everything!!),. are part of this web.
And we are connected,…. and part of, ….., and changed by,… and contribute to,… the evolving consciousness of this web.
The web, is the container, but there are really no restrictions to its being ness.
My feet can merge with this tiny part of it that is physical, and Bowen island,.. and my heart can flow with the people whom I meet that are part of it.
And my soul,.. perhaps is somehow engaged with more of it than I can ever imagine..
Love this. The post needed a little bit of soul added to it. Thank you!
Another great piece and contribution Chris!! Thanks for writing it all down!
(one typo – I think – in the first sentence of the last paragraph; or at least a word missing?)
A bit of over thinking here maybe, but interesting for sure. Has the word really been a stumbling block for your work? I have referred to the “collective vessel” or “conditions” for dialogue as well as “container” and “space”. And I think they all work if you give them a bit of explanation where necessary.
It has. With the groups of people I have named. And so the effort to address it.
SO juicy a topic Chris! I’m moved by your exploration of the words we are using to name the environments we engage in. I’ve been playing with the concept of boundary permeability in my own hosting and coaching work, which essentially leverages the model of a cell as a dynamic space of growth, transacting nutrients (learning) for energy and replication (change). Of course, I never use the word “cell” for reasons you’ve fully explained (LOL), but in my heart, this feels like what I’m into. The factors of the internal complexity of an organization or team; internal/external feedback streams; the amount of turbulence (or active learning/integration) taking place–these all have been really useful frames for me to think of the health of the engagement. It’s dynamic and invites agency as the organization continually learns what it needs to thrive. I find myself curious about the level of permeability the client needs to curate health–whatever that means in their context. Thanks for this rich post brotherman.
I don’t have a solution. I do have some thoughts.
I have used “container” for years. It has always felt right…until now. 🙂
It strikes me that containers hold things and, especially for liquids, give them shape. But the shape is always that of the container. This feels off to me.
I wonder if there’s something in here that’s akin to “form,” rather than “container.” The analogy I have is where musicians improvise together, sometimes using pre-determined form (traditional jazz) but other times creating the form as they go (free-form jazz).
As facilitators, our job isn’t necessarily to shape the form (though often times it is), but always (it seems to me) to give life to and sustain the presence of the form.
Very interesting, Chris.
Container does have a sense of “holding in.” What we need is “inviting in.” Remind me of the difference I’ve worked with for a long time of welcoming boundaries. Boundaries are essential, I think, for many things. The sense of them shifts when we construct them to invite in rather than to exclude.
You’re spot on, I think, when you turn to MA. It is always paired with BA and both words are hard to translate into English and are a challenge for most people in Japan to explain. My simple explanation is that BA is the relational space we enter into; MA is the energetic relationships with in that space. We must attend to the energetic and physical creation of the space and we must tend to the energetic exchanges within the space.
Collective culture of Japan demands an attunment to both of these dimensions. One of the things you never want to be called in Japan is someone who “Kuki Yomenai” – someone who cannot read the air. I remember the first time I held Open Space in Japan. My western assumption was that people who hesitant to enter the space. They were not hesitant, they were just reading the air, waiting for the right time to step forward.
I rarely use the term “container.” Your reasons for not doing so are much more robust than mine. I simply prefer BA and MA as more fulsome descriptions.
Thanks for this work.
thank you for every word
Thank you, Chris, for this great reflection. As a European, perhaps more attuned to the Latin roots of container in *con tenere* – holding together – I am probably less sensitive to any negative connotations. Words mean what we agree that they mean. Thank you for encouraging a joint exploration with participants in a “contained” process of how we want to define our space/ma/container.
Chris – Am alternative word which you mention but don’t linger on is ‘field.’ It also has a rich and detailed intellectual lineage wi thin Sociology – Bordeau, Giddens, Sewell, Fligstein, among others. It addresses social relationships and power of all types. And although it is not what the complexity consultants use, its fundamental meanings apply to complex systems. Metaphorically I also think that it works – so that is what I use.
Thanks for your piece. So well done!
Thank you Chris (& all) for sharing your thoughts and wisdom here (a work in progress I assume).
Language is a tricky thing!
For me the word “container” has a good connotation (maybe it is due to being European)
Being “contained” is different in my ears than being “constrained”. A good container allows freedom of movement (without ending up in chaos or disintegration). I know some people find the use of container strange. I once found myself grabbing a shallow bowl and a pitcher (both containers) and putting an equal amount of water in them – and then giving them both a good shake. Of course the water in the bowl (a week container in this case) was all over he place, where the stronger container could allow for all the “disturbance” needed (read = diversity of views, creative chaos, radical inclusion etc.)
Containers (boundaries) can certainly also be co-created – e.g. co-creating agreements in circle work.
Ok friend, I DO NOT have an answer here…but an offering of some pieces that I am trying out and activating in our work here on the west coast – that you have also been a part of. I have thought a lot about the kinds of ‘vessels’ containers we have literally – and we have and MANY folx have around the world beautiful traditions for basketry, for weaving. Often it is many many strands coming together to hold a harvest, in a literal way. When we looked at the four fold practice and thought about co-creation the deep understanding of OUR work, of shared work seemed to be best expressed by our language word: MAMOOK, (anglicized here) and to Dawn (my sister and co-conspirator) and my delight the word MAMOOK is ALSO our language word for weaving. When we are working, we are co-creating, we are weaving a container, a collective basket of offerings, gifts, treasures, harvest. I LIKE this a lot and will keep sitting with it….more to come, more to gift as we keep working to deepen and weave new narratives forward. CHUU!
Chris —
Thank you for your deep dive into “containers”. I came away with a new understanding of how the term can be oppressive. You end with the counsel:
Understand where these spaces come from. Actively work to invite more self-organization and emergence into these spaces that are in service of life, love and liberation.
How we create such spaces has been the focus of my work. Your reflection inspires me to name what I have found creates spaces/fields/containers/MA (or BA?) in which people show up, connect with others, discover “us” and move to action around what matters to them.
I have come to think in terms of three aspects to attend to:
Name your purpose.
Invite the diversity of the system.
Welcome who and what shows up.
I was going to share more here but I found myself writing my own post! So if you want to see more, I invite you to my Medium site. (There’s even a picture.)
https://medium.com/@PeggyHolman/designing-for-engagement-b772fa1feac?source=friends_link&sk=91a8338ada7e3dcd13e901de3cd7e6ec
Love it. And for anyone reading here Peggy’s book on Engaging Emergence is a must read on this topic.
Fascinating, Chris… it reminds me of my own struggles when I realized all of the negative associations with encouraging people to “listen” better…
https://thelisteningarts.org/2017/01/10/listening-our-shared-world-into-being-the-power-and-politics-of-being-heard/
Chris, thank you for this wonderfully unexpected article.
English is not my mother tongue yet i felt discomfort and even aversion to the word “container” when used in self-organizing context. We had our conversations about it yet only now i have a deeper more intellectual dive to some of the origins of my intuitive resentment and much better words and claim to explain why.
2 more aspects that i was not aware off and came into being as i was reading (thank you!):
Any way you look at it a facilitator has power.
– one critical difference is whether you use it to create inviting boundaries and attractors (in that you give the power to include to the person who decides to join) or you use it to contain ( promise safety, equality etc ) and practice selection of “right people , right behavior” etc.
– second critical difference is if you use you power to spread (like love and liberation) or to you use it to control
the way i see it i think
“Gathering” (noun and verb) is what we do and “Field” is the potential shape-shifting space, that is constantly created, in which it takes place.
“Containers” may be the temporary “baubles” that conversations and actions create in the field , poping and dissipating.
you wrote:
“what i use to illustrate Actively work to invite more self-organization and emergence into these spaces that are in service of life, love and liberation. Become skillful at working with boundaries and attractors, limits and invitations, constraints that enable life rather than govern outcomes, and get good at knowing what kinds of relationships and constraints are the best fit for what is needed”
these sentences are precious pearls.
I find it is harder to sell as pedagogy because it does not give a sense of firmness to stand on but it is the only pedagogy that keeps us tuned to try to by mindful as much as we can that it is life we are working for…
thank you again http://www.tovaaverbuch.com
Thank you Tova. It helps to hesr from a non-mother tongue English speaker. You have the useful distance from context. And always lovely to be thinking together with you.
Chris,
Thanks for this thoughtful reflection on a word and a reality. Two insights are particularly helpful for me.
First, of course, it is helpful to become aware of how the term can be seen to “other” power. I never heard that response, and am happy to be sensitized to it in future. As you know, in HSD we are more attached to the pattern than to the word that describes it. So, I’m happy to call the containing condition of self-organizing anything that carries meaning toward understanding and action.
Second, your reflections and the responses here explain why I’ve always itched a little when facilitators talk about setting a container. The assumption that one can create and/or privilege a particular container has always seemed a bit presumptive to me. I suspect now that it is my discomfort with the connection between power and “container” as some use it.
For me, the term “container” does not denote a particular boundary, but a plethora of them–social, physical, conceptual, emotional, relational, linguistic, artistic, geographical, tribal, yours, mine, ours, theirs, its, and on and on. Each person works within the systems that they create, honor, and depend upon. Each of those systems is held together in some way by some thing(s). Those “holder togetherers” are what we have labeled “containers.” One of the most significant lessons of containers for me is that they are multiple and massively entangled.
Power rests in claiming and naming a most relevant and meaningful container in a given place and time and purpose. An individual or group can choose to privilege one or more containers as they identify and explore patterns together. Each of us can and does do this in any interaction. In fact, it is my experience that those without formal power are often most adept at seeing and holding containers. We have a great deal to learn from them.
Abuse of power is claiming that yours is the most important (or worse yet, only) container in a time or place and holding onto that, even when it limits the opportunities for others to name and privilege their own. The gift and challenge for each of us–facilitators and all–is to recognize our own at the same time we honor whatever it is that holds the world together for others. Call it what you will.
Thanks, as always, for your care and insight.