LOVE AT WORK: WHAT IS MY LIVED EXPERIENCE OF LOVE, AND HOW MAY I BECOME AN INSTRUMENT OF LOVE'S PURPOSE?
Abstract of PhD Submission
Eleanor Lohr
This is a first person action research account in which I immerse myself in my embodied experience of love. My aim is to learn through love how my practice, as a Director in social housing, and as a teacher of yoga, might be improved by giving primacy to a value laden theorising of my lived experience.
I combine journalling and spiritual practice to bring an intimate and non-verbal experience of love into professional practice. I bring this inner felt experience into language taking a phenomenological and hermeneutical approach. I immerse myself in the relation between physical, emotional and spiritual knowledge. I analyse the movement of knowledge between the personal and the social in the language of inclusionality (Rayner 2004), and show how social relations mediate my inner non-verbal experience.
I situate my method within the action research paradigm and my philosophy within a holistic and subjectivist frame. As I write I realise my knowledge in the relation between thinking and the act of writing. My knowledge and its production are deliberately value-laden. I cultivate reasoned emotion in order to influence my thought process. My claim to originality of mind emerges from this subjective experience as I show how I bring my ontological values of love into practice through a 'pedagogy of presence' that is integral to my action.
I judge the worth of my action and its loving dimension in silent reflective spiritual practice. I also judge the worth of my action and its loving dimension in the feedback I get from others. I set criteria that focus on seeking harmony and wholeness, and which do not ignore challenge and difference. I argue that the creative dynamism arising from difference is an important component of love at work.
I provide evidence for my claim in an account of current practice, through pictures, drawings and a video clip, and it is further evidenced by the coherence of my writing and the rigorous application of my own criteria against which I judge the worth of my actions. My claim to truth can also be substantiated by my application of method, and by situating my inquiry firmly within a post-modern narrative.
CONTENTS
You can download the PhD in chapters in PDF Format
Frontpiece, Acknowledgements, Abstract, Contents page i
Prologue page x
Introduction page 1
CHAPTER ONE - Meanings of love page 10
CHAPTER TWO - Propositional Framing page 27
CHAPTER THREE - Action Research Models and Method page 76
CHAPTER FOUR - Inclusional Methodology page 100
CHAPTER FIVE - Experiencing Love page 117
CHAPTER SIX - Embodied Knowing page 170
CHAPTER SEVEN - Eros and Organisation page 190
CHAPTER EIGHT - Agape and Organisation page 226
CHAPTER NINE - A Pedagogy of Presence page 257
CHAPTER TEN - Divine Love in Organisation page 266
CHAPTER ELEVEN - Evaluating Practice page 275
CHAPTER TWELVE - Relational Epistemology and the Academic Audience page 293
Epilogue page 310
Bibliography page 319
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