ENGAGING STORIES: MEANINGS, GOODNESS, AND IDENTITY IN DAILY LIFE A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by John Adam Armstrong August 2015 © 2015 John Adam Armstrong ENGAGING STORIES: MEANINGS, GOODNESS, AND IDENTITY IN DAILY LIFE John Adam Armstrong, Ph. D. Cornell University 2015 With this dissertation I’ve attempted to encircle the idea of engagement—a term that's becoming more and more popular of late as public institutions attempt to frame how exactly they work with, for, or on, the public. In this work, I address four questions. What is engagement, institutionally speaking? How might institutions need to reconsider engagement? What is engagement for me? And ultimately, so what? The short answer is that engagement is a story. It's a story we tell ourselves about how people (should) interact with one another to make the world as it is, the way it should be. That being said, there are many different stories of engagement that fit this rubric—from unjust wars to happy marriages. They develop different characters, different settings, and different meanings, and in the end these stories have different morals with different consequences. These differences matter. With this dissertation I try to do away with some of the muddle between these different stories. I am not trying to do away with difference—just trying to give difference fair play. I also tell a very different story of engagement gleaned from my own experience and the experiences of a number of others in Tompkins County, NY. It's not the right story, it's just a different story that I think holds promise. Lastly, I discuss how all of these stories might change the way we think about our own work, and the work of institutions, in democratic society. As you come to read further, you'll notice that I've framed this dissertation around choices we each have and make. I hope this framing facilitates further discussion around engagement. In that spirit, the dissertation has been fully published on a website that includes comment-ready text and enhanced multi-media. It's my intention that this website, and the interactive conversation it can allow, be an experiment in a type of public scholarship it seeks to promote. If you’d like to read the dissertation in that format, go to www.pokesalad.info/engagingstories. Ultimately, I hope our conversations might help me, and us, understand this idea of engagement in our daily lives. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH John Armstrong was born and raised in Hot Springs, Arkansas. After high school, he quite nearly enlisted in the military save for the insistence of his sister(s). He took a college entrance test and just barely received a ride to work himself through the University of Central Arkansas, matriculating in August 2001—just before America went to war. He earned a degree in biology but decided against pursuing medicine. Instead he joined the Peace Corps and lived for two years in Ait Bou-Gamez, Morocco where he assisted in the founding of a women’s cooperative. He then served as an AmeriCorps Vista volunteer for Heifer International in Rutland, Massachusetts. John came to Cornell University in Fall 2009 to study small ruminant animal science. Through various twists and turns he found himself entering a MS/Ph.D. program in Adult and Extension Education. With funding provided by the USDA-AFRI Food Dignity grant and the John S. Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines he then took on this study of the cultural history and present discourse of public engagement. As of June 2015 John lives in Detroit, Michigan. v For Jemila Sequeira, who befriended a stranger at her door. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The most curious ambiguity in a piece of modern writing arises when an author attempts to relay a sense of who is speaking. Printing the author’s name followed by in-text citations of other authors’ names is, for me, the most farcical manifestation of this attempt. I’ve had the pleasure to meet and share stories with a great many people who flood my mind when I think about this work. There are a great many people who contribute to this we as I put words to paper. I’ll try to capture some of that we here. First, I wouldn’t be here without the endless support of my family. My father taught me carpentry, nudged me into community work, and has always been at my side and in my mind. My mother fought for my education in particular. How she managed to raise me and my sister Sineca to be the people we are, I’ll never understand. To my sisters, Sineca, Brandy, and Iris, you’ve inspired me and kept me going more than you know. I’m constantly grateful for the opportunity to be a little brother. My stepmother Judy and my stepfather Otto have supported this rather odd family through thick and thin. My grandmother, Ona has been a particular joy to my life—picking me up after school for those many years, being a welcome break before I went to work, always giving a bite to eat and big hug. She in particular has more stories than I’ll likely ever know. For the whole family, those above, aunts and uncles, cousins and distant others, I’d wager to say that we’ve shared more stories than any family on the planet. My life in stories started with you. I always think of you when I’m writing. You’re always in my writing. And you’re my best audience. To my second family, the friends I came to know over two year in Morocco, you’re priceless. In good company I think we came to learn about ourselves amid the discomforts of trying be good people in communities not our own. I learned enough over those two years with you and from you to be uncomfortable when I came back. That discomfort is what started this dissertation so thanks for making me uncomfortable. Our friendships and our yearly reunions keep me going. vii The family of friends I’ve met through Cornell has been a most eclectic bunch. I’ll try to give them in a rough chronological order. To Terry Tucker, thanks for that first chat and sharing a bowl of chili with me. We seemed to understand one another and that’s exactly what I needed. Thanks to all the Hubert Humphrey Fellows who let me practice being a guide around Ithaca. To Julia Crane, Bradford Condon, Ellen Crocker and all the Plant Pathology crew—thanks for putting up with my philosophizing and in general being a great group of people. To Butch Wilson, thank you for starting my interest in adult education theory among the great company of Tim Shaffer and Tom Archibald. I’m so very happy to have known the Education Department at Cornell. To Jessica Cañas and Cassady Fendlay, thanks for sharing time with me on our travels. To Juliana Fulton, I’m quite happy that we both like dancing and that we don’t mind fixing up old houses. I’m excited for Detroit. To Devon Jenkins, thank you for being my guide and friend to Niger and back again. To Scott Peters and Christine Porter, thank you for supporting my work in spirit and funding. Thank you to Todd Dickey, Melissa Rosario, and Justine Lindemann for all the insight and hard work on our report on graduate student engaged research. To Davydd Greenwood, thank you for being a mentor for all of us aspiring action researchers. To Travis Vachon, Katie D’Amico, Charles Haitjema, the CRP crew, the cPARN crew, the KYX crew, the attendees of my most epic birthdays, and the many friends throughout Ithaca, you are the best. Thank you to William Keeton House for providing the best work environment anyone could ask for. Thank you to the John S. Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines for supporting a rather odd first-year writing seminar. Thank you of course to my committee—Scott Peters, Sofia Villenas, and Richard Kiely who have let me try things out and be creative with this dissertation. I can’t imagine having a better group of scholars to share this work with. Thank you to all the people who gave me a coffee or a beer over the past six years. I owe you one. Much of this work has been supported through the Food Dignity Grant—USDA-AFRI Competitive Grant no. 2011-68004-30074. Written by Christine Porter in conversation with many others, this grant has brought together some of the most interesting people from across the viii nation working for food justice and food sovereignty. The fifty some odd people involved in this grant would be impossible to do justice here. I’d just like to thank, in addition to Christine, Gayle Woodsum, Hank Herrera, Daryl Marshall, Monica Hargraves, and Jim White Wolf Sutter. When we meet it seems we’re always pushing for more and I’ve tried to sustain some of that spirit in this writing. Above all thank you Jemila Sequeira, without you I wouldn’t be here today. Jemila has been a dear friend and she’s the threshold through which I’ve had the opportunity to build some of the most transformative relationships in my life. Through her influence I’ve come to know some of the most wonderful people in Tompkins County: Larisa Camacho-Lillie, Caleb Thomas, Elan Shapiro, Phoebe Brown, Anne Rhodes, Ann Martin, Fabina Benites Colon, Zaneta Clarke, Kirby Edmonds, Olivia Armstrong, Ken Schlather, Jhakeem Haltom, Monica Arambulo, Damon Brangman, Jamila Simon, Dani Ferris, Margo Hittleman, Kerra Quinn, and so many others.