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ETHNOGRAPHIC
RESEARCH
and ANALYSIS
Anxiety, Identity and Self
Edited by
Tom Vine, Jessica Clark,
Sarah Richards and David Weir
 Ethnographic Research and Analysis

“I read this groundbreaking anthology with great interest. It captures a suspicion

of mine. You cannot understand Being-in-the-world of doing organizational eth-
nography without also going deep into the inner spacetime of your own autoeth-
nographic journey. It takes a double journey (inward and outward) otherwise it is
merely creating more duality, avoidance of our own life of anxiety. Somehow the
outer story-telling and the untold inner story must come into relationship in our
qualitative methods.”
—David Boje, New Mexico State University, USA

“This book offers rich bases for comparison, allowing an editorial focus on estab-
lished practices and accepted problems in some disciplines and facilitating applica-
tion to others. It is thus well set to present the personal dilemmas that ethnography
inevitably presents, and to offer mutual learning from divergent experience.
The result is a rich collection of variations that could easily have produced an
uncoordinated mishmash. This has been avoided by the skillful editing of its dispa-
rate inputs - all united by a demonstrated regard for ethnography. The result is a
contribution to social science that should rightfully establish ethnography at the
centre of social science endeavour.”
—Gerald Mars, Honorary Professor of Anthropology, University College
London, UK
Tom Vine • Jessica Clark • Sarah Richards
David Weir
Editors

Ethnographic
Research and Analysis
Anxiety, Identity and Self
Editors
Tom Vine Jessica Clark
University of Suffolk University of Suffolk
Ipswich, UK Ipswich, UK

Sarah Richards David Weir

University of Suffolk York St John University
Ipswich, UK York, UK

ISBN 978-1-137-58554-7    ISBN 978-1-137-58555-4 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58555-4

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017950217

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub-
lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the
material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institu-
tional affiliations.

Cover illustration: Jim Corwin / Alamy Stock Photo

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United
Kingdom
 Contents

1 Introduction   1
Tom Vine, Jessica Clark, Sarah Richards, and David Weir

2 Home-Grown Exoticism? Identity Tales from a New Age

Intentional Community  13
Tom Vine

3 Wrestling with Online Avatars: Technology and Sexual

Transformation  37
Paul Driscoll-Evans

4 Chóng ér fēi: Cultural Performances of Belonging

in Intercountry Adoptive Families  53
Sarah Richards

5 Ethnographic Practices of Listening  77

Allison Boggis

6 Discussion and Collaboration in Diagnostic Radiography  97

Ruth Strudwick

7 Living with Uncertainty: The Ethnographer’s Burden 113

Steve Barnes
v
vi CONTENTS

8 What Makes the Autoethnographic Analysis Authentic? 127

David Weir and Daniel Clarke

9 Saying the unsayable: An Autoethnography of

Working in a For-­Profit University 155
Katie Best

10 An Autoethnographic Account of Gender and Workflow

Processes in a Commercial Laundry 171
David Weir

11 The Salience of Emotions in (Auto) ethnography:

Towards an Analytical Framework 191
Ilaria Boncori

12 It’s More Than Deciding What to Wank Into:

Negotiating an Unconventional Fatherhood 217
John Hadlow

13 Hate the Results? Blame the Methods: An

Autoethnography of Contract Research 233
Will Thomas and Mirjam Southwell

14 Collaborative Autoethnography: Enhancing

Reflexive Communication Processes 253
Ngaire Bissett, Sharon Saunders, and Carolina
Bouten Pinto

15 Methodology: From Paradigms to Paradox 273

Tom Vine

16 Conclusion 301
Tom Vine, Jessica Clark, Sarah Richards, and David Weir

Index 309
 List of Figures

Fig. 6.1 Outpatient journey through the DID 101

Fig. 6.2 Inpatient journey through the DID 102

vii
 List of Tables

Table 8.1 Delamont and authentic autoethnographic texts 130

Table 10.1 Dirty and clean areas 178
Table 10.2 Heavy and light areas 178
Table 10.3 Male and female areas 180
Table 10.4 Interface areas 183
Table 10.5 Zones of control 184

ix
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Tom Vine, Jessica Clark, Sarah Richards, and David Weir

The ideas for this book originated from a 2012 conference held at the
University of Suffolk. What emerged from this conference was recognition
that although our disciplinary backgrounds varied, there was significant
value in establishing a shared platform for our ethnographic experiences,
not least in the interests of mutual scholarship and reciprocal learning.
Notably, and in spite of our disparate subject areas, it became clear that as
ethnographers we were encountering similar challenges and epistemologi-
cal anxieties. Moreover, there appeared to be mutual recognition in terms
of the potential for advancing the ethnographic method in the future. In
capturing the essence of this conference, this book is not intended as a
‘how to guide’, of which there are many, but rather a space to bring
together and share the experiential aspects of ethnographic work. As such,
this edited book presents these experiences from a wide range of disci-
plines including work and organisation studies, sociology, social policy,
philosophy, management, health and human sciences, family studies, edu-
cation, disability studies, and childhood studies.
This book seeks to devolve methodological themes and practices
which are established in some subject areas but not in others. These

T. Vine (*) • J. Clark • S. Richards

University of Suffolk, Ipswich, UK
D. Weir
York St John University, York, UK

© The Author(s) 2018 1

T. Vine et al. (eds.), Ethnographic Research and Analysis,
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58555-4_1
2 T. VINE ET AL.

include, for example, the rise of autoethnography and the role of story-
telling. Additionally, the chapters contained within interrogate and
reframe long-­ standing ethnographic discussions including those con-
cerning reflexivity, while exploring evolving themes such as the experien-
tial use of technologies. This book thus demonstrates the value and
versatility of ethnography as a method in a diverse range of rarely com-
bined disciplines. In further emphasising our transdisciplinary objectives,
each chapter includes a brief biographical preamble in which the author
reflects on the existing character and impact of ethnographic research
within their native discipline.
Ethnography is widely considered to have emerged as part of anthro-
pology and is considered both its trademark (e.g. Schwartzman, 1993)
and textual product (e.g. Atkinson, 1990). However, in this book we
acknowledge that the practice of ethnography long predates its formal
canonisation in anthropology and reflect on this significance. This histori-
cal precedent notwithstanding, ethnography has traversed changing
dynamics of how and why research is conducted across the social sciences
and remains a pivotal method through which the rich context and com-
plexity of the human condition is revealed. As such, ethnography remains
as relevant to contemporary social science as it did to historical anthropol-
ogy. In this book, we explore ethnography as a research tool in online
endeavours, visual methods, autoethnography, performance theory, and
collaborative techniques. However, from the diversity of perspectives pre-
sented, commonalities are revealed in respect of both the challenges of
ethnographic encounters and the opportunities these bring. The recurring
narratives of ethnography thus remain among the contemporary topics
explored. Each writer rediscovers these themes and wrestles with their
implications. These include positionality, the researcher–researched rela-
tionship, identity, liminality, subjectivity, presentation of self, and the role
of storytelling. This historical ‘baggage’ of ethnography remains acutely
relevant and topical to contemporary conversations. To this end we urge
the reader to consider an alternate history of ethnography; one that pre-
dates anthropology. Here the concept of a ‘proto-ethnographer’ is perti-
nent, both noted (e.g. Herodotus) and lay (since ethnographic research
can be considered instinctive as well as schooled; this is because schooling
invariably involves social construction and so can constrain as well as
enable creativity). Second, the relationship between teaching and learning
is to some degree characterised by contradiction and paradox; see, for
example, Ackoff and Greenberg (2008). We therefore suggest that eth-
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 INTRODUCTION 3

nography can be usefully conceptualised as pre-formal and intuitive.

Furthermore, given that ethnography seeks not to distil human behaviour
into abstract or schematised models, the parameters and preferences for
which vary from academic discipline to academic discipline, but to priori-
tise experiential data collection and analysis, ethnography is here concep-
tualised as a relevant research tool which transcends the normative and
expected parameters of social science.
At this point, it is worth noting the difference between qualitative
methods and ethnography. While numerous social scientific projects lay
claim to using one or more qualitative methods (such as interviewing,
photography, discourse analysis, etc.), far fewer are representative of eth-
nography per se. In its purest (anthropological) sense, ethnography is only
achieved where the researcher immerses herself in a participatory observa-
tional context in the proposed environs for as long a period as possible.
For Moeran (2009, p. 150), ‘ethnographic fieldwork should last between
six months and one year’. The advantages of a full year’s research—or
perhaps even several years’—are relatively obvious: it affords the researcher
experience of both annual rituals and seasonal variations in environmental
conditions and associated behaviour. Studies of this nature are less numer-
ous, not because the method is inappropriate or ineffective; rather they
require commitment and time which is off-putting for many academics
who today work in an environment where there exists an emphasis on
quantity with regard to publications (Schwartzman, 1993). It is hoped,
therefore, that the ethnographies presented in this book go some way to
redressing the balance.
We take the position that collections of ethnographic work are better
presented as transdisciplinary bricolage than as discipline-specific series. As
such this volume provides a space where the plurality of ethnographic
approaches is illustrated through the varied ways that researchers apply its
principles to diverse disciplinary contexts. This book therefore delineates
(1) the continued relevance of ethnography in contemporary research,
(2) the opportunities to apply ethnographic approaches across diverse
spaces, and (3) open and honest accounts in which the perennial questions
ethnographic research produces can be re-examined. The importance of
the ‘ethical subject’ notwithstanding, we note that the pressure to con-
form to ‘sanitised’ methods is pervasive—even in ethnography—and this
presents myriad challenges. Indeed, although ethics does not constitute an
explicit theme for this book, many of the chapters reveal subtleties, com-
plexities, and paradoxes associated with ‘ethical research’.
4 T. VINE ET AL.

Transdisciplinarity
Under the guise of social anthropology, ethnography was ‘linked to the
spread of colonial empire and its administrative, missionary and commercial
needs’ (Evans-Pritchard, 1969, p. x). It fell out of favour in the wake of the
decline of colonial rule across the globe and became a niche method and
methodology, largely limited to anthropologists and a few quirky sociolo-
gists. However, it regained popularity in the UK and elsewhere in the 1960s
and 1970s. As part of this resurgence, serious attempts were made to listen
to the voices and view the worlds of those considered marginalised. These
included the fields of poverty (Wilson & Aponte, 1985), sexuality
(Sonenschein, 1968), crime and deviance (Hamm, Ferrell, Adler, & Adler,
1998), and latterly children (Montgomery, 2007). While retaining its niche
status, its resurgence has in many ways seen it transformed beyond its origi-
nal applications of anthropology and marginalised groups. Ethnographic
approaches are now a relatively common site in disciplines as diverse as man-
agement, radiography, childhood studies, education, and disability studies.
This suggests that ethnography is a flexible and reflexive methodological
tool that can be effectively applied in many research contexts regardless of
topic, participants, or indeed discipline. This book is a response to these
developments whereby authors present ethnographic tales of their diverse
research experiences and the application of such methodologies in their
respective fields. The extent to which ethnography retains its original fea-
tures and characteristics through such diverse applications is a debate that
this book opens rather than closes. Many of the authors reflect explicitly on
the place of ethnographic methodologies in their native discipline and the
role they play in unsettling the extant knowledges of that subject area. This
is particularly interesting when such disciplines are traditionally associated
with the natural sciences, such as radiography, and are therefore built upon
different epistemological assumptions.
Although this is a transdisciplinary book, it does not include a contribu-
tion from the field of anthropology. Is this significant in any way? Does it
indicate that ethnography has successfully made the transition into other
areas of social science? The fact remains that, as editors, we would have
certainly considered contributions from anthropologists, but received
none. Perhaps this implies a reticence on the part of anthropologists to
publish in applied areas? We can conclude with more confidence that this
underlines the point that ethnography has spread beyond its origin.
However, this gives our book discernible direction. It is this very dispersal
 INTRODUCTION 5

that interests us foremost since, inevitably, the methodology has devel-

oped in divergent ways in each discipline; the specific ethnographic tech-
niques and preferences vary between contributors, and we reflect on this
as part of the concluding chapter.
And why transdisciplinarity? Why not interdisciplinarity? Or multidisci-
plinarity? We considered these alternate terms but decided ultimately that
our endeavour did not sit ‘between’ different disciplines nor was it simply
about lending voice to a ‘multiplicity’ of different disciplines. Rather, we
wanted to demonstrate the ways in which ethnography can and does tran-
scend disciplinary boundaries and, more importantly, how its application
in each differs. Ultimately, since practice does vary, this is configured as a
pedagogical venture whereby disciplines are able to learn from one
another. You are very much encouraged to read the ethnographic accounts
from disciplines different to your own and reflect on them from the per-
spective of your native world. Where do analytical emphases differ? Is lan-
guage used differently? How might the insights cross-pollinate your own
research? Is there scope for further collaborative, cross-disciplinary work
in the future?
Finally, the book was led by a team from the University of Suffolk. In
many respects young universities in the UK are at extraordinary disadvan-
tages, not least in terms of reputation and—by implication—their ability to
recruit students. However, one clear advantage of universities such as Suffolk
is their small size. Unlike most established institutions in which exist clear
architectural and cultural divides between academic departments, at Suffolk
scholars from different disciplines sit cheek by jowl in open-plan offices.
Although this certainly brings its own challenges, it creates an environment
which readily enables collaborative, transdisciplinary dialogues.

The ‘Researcher Self’

In each chapter of this book regardless of discipline, topic, and subject
matter, what emerges—almost subconsciously—is the ‘ethnographer’.
The ethnographer, it would seem, is inseparable from the ethnography.
Part of the reason for this is the way in which ethnography is regulated.
The expectation for reflexivity and the recognition of positionality within
the research process are key tenets within ethnographic work whereby
compliance produces the ‘ethical subject’ (Danaher et al. 2006, p. 131).
What the chapters in this book reveal is a variance in the continuum of this
revealing of self. This revelation extends from the full and confident
6 T. VINE ET AL.

immersion of the researcher in their subject matter and respective fields to

tentative and often overt anxiety about finding oneself in one’s own
research. Perhaps because of the continued pressure to conform to sani-
tised methods across all social research, we are reluctant to engage in the
explicit ‘revealing of self’. However, what these chapters do reveal is that
ethnography inevitably contributes to the construction of the researcher.
They constitute a reflection that reveals who we are. Regardless of whether
or not the researcher actively self-discloses, what emerges in each chapter
is a recognisable researcher role and identity. Arguably, this is an integral
part of knowledge construction in any method, irrespective of ontological
position. The critical difference is that ethnographers, it seems, are more
attentive to it.

The First-Person Pronoun

Drawing on novelist, Ursula Le Guin’s (1989) reference to the third-­
person voice as ‘the father tongue’, Bochner and Ellis (2016, p. 82) sug-
gest that the conventional use of the third person denotes a high-minded
mode of expression that seeks and embraces objectivity. ‘Spoken from
above’, they say, ‘the father tongue distances the writer from the reader,
creating a gap between self and other’. They suggest that ‘autoethno-
graphic writing resists this kind of emotional distancing’. This is certainly
a persuasive argument, but it feels rather one sided.
For others, the first-person pronoun can be construed as a discernibly
modern construct. The concept of the individual’s self-identity (and, by
implication, the use of the first-person pronoun) has been a key concern
for Giddens. He writes, ‘[s]elf-identity is not a distinctive trait, or even a
collection of traits, possessed by the individual. It is the self as reflexively
understood by the person in terms of his or her biography’ (Giddens, 1991,
p. 53, original emphasis). Important here is the notion of biography.
Giddens suggests that in contemporary society the continuity, predictabil-
ity, and security associated with premodern life have had to be substituted.
In Giddens’ eyes, this substitution is provided by the self in terms of estab-
lishing and maintaining a sense of personal history. This particular theori-
sation is justified in terms of an internalisation of scientific reflexivity. By
way of clarification, Giddens continues:

in the context of a post-traditional order, the self becomes a reflexive proj-

ect. Transitions in individuals’ lives have always demanded psychic reorgani-
 INTRODUCTION 7

zation. … But in some cultures, where things stayed more or less the same
from generation to generation on the level of the collectivity, the changed
identity was clearly staked out—as when an individual moved from adoles-
cence to adulthood. In the settings of modernity, by contrast, the altered self
has to be explored and constructed as part of a reflexive process of connect-
ing personal and social change. (ibid. 32–33, emphasis added)

We are reminded here that the notion of the ‘individual’ is a modern

invention: ‘the ‘individual’, in a certain sense, did not exist in traditional
cultures, and individuality was not revered as it is today. Only with the
emergence of modern societies and, particularly, with the differentiation
of the division of labour, did the individual as a distinct entity become a
focus of attention (Durkheim, as cited in Giddens, 1991, p. 75). Ironically,
perhaps, the external institutionalisation of reflexivity is mirrored inter-
nally at the level of the individual. Giddens identifies ‘the lifespan as a
distinctive and enclosed trajectory’ (ibid., p. 146: emphasis added). He
goes on to suggest that the individual is reified by ‘turning his back’ on
external sources of meaning such as the life cycle of generations, the ties of
kinship, other pre-existing relationships, and the permanence of physical
place. For Giddens, then, the ‘self as reflexive project’ is understood as the
means by which we are each compelled to ‘narrativise’ our own life so as
to sustain some semblance of meaning and existential security in an uncer-
tain world.
In the field of critical psychology too, there is an overriding concern
that in the fold of free market economics, western history has systemati-
cally prioritised the analytical category of the individual over and above
that of the collective (Carrette, 2007). In this way, ‘knowledge framed in
terms of individualism is prioritised over and above that framed in social or
communal terms’. (Vine, 2011, p. 185). An emphasis on the first-person
pronoun might therefore reinforce this bias.
So where does this leave us as ethnographers? On the one hand, eth-
nography—particularly when configured as autoethnography—is about
the effective articulation of subjective, individual experience. In this way,
its use of the first-person pronoun appears to be perfectly justified. On the
other, and as we have seen, the use of the first-person pronoun reflects a
specific linguistic tradition, emergent in some (but not all) cultures and
languages in which the concept of the individual is lent primacy over that
of the collective. Finally, an added complication arises when autoethnog-
raphy is co-produced, ostensibly as a ‘single voice’. Is it appropriate to use
8 T. VINE ET AL.

the first-person pronoun in these cases? These are certainly interesting

questions, and we very much hope they will generate discussion beyond
the confines of the text. Ultimately, we decided to leave the manner in
which the first-person pronoun was used—if indeed at all—to each of our
contributors. However, as editors we were sure to point out that in going
to significant lengths to avoid the fallacy of misplaced concreteness
(Whitehead 1967 [1925]), authors should be mindful not to fall prey to
the ethnographic fallacy (Duneier, 1999) in which observation is overly
subject centred and taken at face value. Inevitably, ethnography is a bal-
ancing act.

Anxiety and Uncertainty (of Self)

The final theme that connects the chapters of this book is that of anxiety
and uncertainty. Indeed, during the aforementioned 2012 conference,
one of the overriding experiences of the research discussed was that of
uncertainty. Some of those presenting (and many more in the audience)
were early career researchers and the sense of anxiety that comes with that
most likely compounded the issue further. Ethnography is investigative
(Fetterman, 1988). Ethnography is messy (Crang & Cook, 2007).
Ethnography is problematising (Schwartzman, 1993). And ethnography
is largely boundaryless and non-linear; it involves ‘flying by the seat of
your pants’ (Van Maanen, 1988, p. 120). For all these reasons, it is no
surprise that ethnography invokes anxiety and uncertainty. But rather than
focus on means of mitigation, the chapters in this book explore—and cel-
ebrate—these experiences for their own sake. It is here that existential
doubts in respect of our honesty, empathy, culture, sexuality, competence,
and intellect are brought into the open and explored. A generation ago,
Rose speculated on the implications of what he called ‘multigenre
ethnography’:

a new sort of enculturated student will be formed who will conceptualize

fieldwork differently from now. Above all, their inquiry might well have a
narrative sort of quality, that is, students will seek to place themselves in unfold-
ing situations, to live through complex ongoing events—the stuff of stories—
rather than looking for the meaning of gestures, the presentation of selves,
class relations, the meaning of rituals, or other abstract, analytical category
phenomena on which we have historically relied. (Rose, 1990, p. 58, origi-
nal emphasis)
 INTRODUCTION 9

This advice has come of age. Our book is dedicated to exploring the rami-
fications of conducting research immersed within the complex, unfolding
situations Rose contemplates. Unsurprisingly, then, most of the ethnogra-
phies presented in this book are inevitably multi-sited and, in some cases,
collaborative.

Chapter Outlines
This book begins with chapters most akin to traditional ethnography but
as it unfolds we transition into autoethnographic work and the emerging
field of collaborative ethnography.
In Chap. 2, Tom Vine recounts his experience of living and working in
a New Age commune. The appeal of such communities is typically pre-
sented in terms of the unfamiliar or ‘exotic’. Ironically, upon closer inves-
tigation, Tom concludes that the appeal is very much in the mundane:
Findhorn provides for its participants a palpable sense of organisational
and familial belonging. Reflecting these findings back on the macrosocio-
logical shifts of the past generation, Tom notes that this sense of belong-
ing has been surrendered in the mainstream as our work lives have become
increasingly contingent and domestic living arrangements continue to
depart from the nuclear ‘norm’.
In Chap. 3, Paul Driscoll-Evans, a nursing clinician-academic, reflects
on a decade working in the field of sexual health and HIV care. As part of
this experience, he undertook ethnographic fieldwork among men who
have sex with men (MSM) in Norfolk. He explores, in particular, the
effects of the internet in facilitating homosexual encounters and the chal-
lenge they present to traditional concepts of personhood and psychosocial
geography.
In Chap. 4, Sarah Richards explores the consumption of ‘authentic’
identities among intercountry adoption families. Reflecting on the experi-
ences of her subjects, together with her own as an adoptive mother, she
explores the imperative for English adoptive parents of Chinese children
to provide them with mediated cultural experiences. In one sense, it is a
well-intentioned response to policies, but a response that inevitably leads
to tensions and challenges regarding the performance of ‘authentic’
identities.
In Chap. 5, Allison Boggis reflects on her experience using ethnogra-
phy to assist in the researcher’s ability to identify and interpret the voices,
experiences, and opinions of disabled children. Disabled children have,
10 T. VINE ET AL.

traditionally, been voiceless; their voices are proxied by their parents and
mediating professionals. With the assistance of high-tech Augmentative
and Alternative Communication Systems (AACS), Alison demonstrates
one of the myriad advantages of adopting an ethnographic approach in her
native field.
In Chap. 6, clinical radiographer, Ruth Strudwick, departs from the
methodological norms of her field and engages in participant observation
of other radiographers working in the National Health Service. On the
one hand, her work reveals the mundanity of a clinical environment. On
the other, like that of Van Maanen (1973, 1975) in respect of US Police
Departments, her data reveal the salience of socialisation in respect of mas-
tering the profession.
In Chap. 7, Steve Barnes grapples with existential angst. He comes
from a background in positivist methods where uncertainty is mitigated by
means of reassuring boundaries. He discovers that no such boundaries
exist in ethnography. His five-year journey through his doctoral thesis is
presented as a series of anxieties about himself, his abilities, the method-
ological shortcomings, and the fact that nothing seems to happen. In this
sense, Steve’s experience is a narrative of two selves, from ‘who I was’ to
‘who I am’, demonstrating ‘how a life course can be reimagined or trans-
formed by crisis’ (Bochner & Ellis, 2016, p. 213). However, as you will
see, Steve still remains to be convinced of the validity of this journey.
In Chap. 8, David Weir and Daniel Clarke wrestle with the authenticity
of autoethnographic analysis. By way of a response to Delamont’s (2007)
infamous critique, they each present a personal retrospective to lend
empirics to their defence of the method.
In Chap. 9, Katie Best reflects on the schizophrenic nature of working
in a ‘for-profit’ university. As a scholar accustomed to Marx (at least from
the relative comfort of a leather-clad armchair) and more contemporary
critical accounts of management, she finds herself having to play the cor-
porate game. Strangely, she quite enjoys it. But this serves only to further
aggravate her sense of intellectual integrity and personal narrative. The
chapter taps into the insecurities, doubts, dualities, and endemic frustra-
tions many of us in the world of academia—and beyond—share.
In Chap. 10, David Weir reminisces about his experiences working as
an impressionable teenager in a commercial laundry in the 1950s.
Gendered workflow patterns, backroom coitus, and flying turds come
together to form a truly evocative account of post-war work life in north-
ern England.
 INTRODUCTION 11

In Chap. 11, Ilaria Boncori argues that, in spite of its influence else-
where in the academy, emotional content continues to take a back seat in
ethnographies set in the worlds of business and management. For Ilaria,
this is a source of perennial frustration. Determined to address this short-
coming, she presents a model from which future scholarship may take
precedence.
In Chap. 12, John Hadlow renders explicit his own experiences as an
informal sperm donor to a lesbian couple and the unusual conceptualisa-
tion of fatherhood this constructs. As part of this passage, he reveals anxi-
ety about his use of autoethnography, not least because of the lasting
effects the printed word has on those involved, irrespective of procedural
anonymity. In this way, a significant complexity in respect of ethnographic
ethics is revealed.
In Chap. 13, Will Thomas and Mirjam Southwell recount for us a pain-
ful experience of rejection in the world of commercial research. As befitted
their remit, they conducted qualitative research. Presented with the unan-
ticipated results of their research, the client reacted by rejecting the find-
ings on the basis of their non-quantitative methods. Their narrative
explores their journey of reflection to try to understand where, if any-
where, they went wrong.
In a truly collaborative venture, for Chap. 14, Ngaire Bissett, Sharon
Saunders, and Carolina Bouten Pinto present personal vignettes reflecting
on their experiences both in academia and in industry. Although decidedly
different, they forge a pattern from which they are able to learn from one
another and hone their pedagogical skills accordingly. Indeed, given the
focus on mutual learning from one another’s divergent experience, this
chapter echoes in microcosm, the guise of this book in its entirety.
In Chap. 15, in the final contribution to this volume—‘Methodology:
From Paradigms to Paradox’—Tom Vine explores the ontological ten-
sions inherent to the research process, including the rarely challenged
claim that empirics must be underpinned by a supposedly sublime honesty.
This chapter reflects on ethnography by recourse to paradox as a means of
reinterpreting the experiences presented by the preceding contributors.

References
Ackoff, R., & Greenberg, D. (2008). Turning Learning Right Side Up: Putting
Education Back on Track. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Atkinson, P. (1990). The Ethnographic Imagination: Textual Constructions of
Reality. London: Routledge.
12 T. VINE ET AL.

Bochner, A., & Ellis, C. (2016). Evocative Autoethnography: Writing Lives and
Telling Stories. London: Routledge.
Carrette, J. (2007). Religion and Critical Psychology: Religious Experience in the
Knowledge Economy. London: Routledge.
Crang, M., & Cook, I. (2007). Doing Ethnographies. London: Sage.
Danaher, G., Schirato, T., & Webb, J. (2006). Understanding Foucault. London:
Sage.
Delamont, S. (2007). Arguments Against Auto-Ethnography. Paper Presented at
the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference (Vol. 5,
September p. 8).
Duneier, M. (1999). Sidewalk. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux.
Evans-Pritchard, E. (1969). Preface. In J. Degerando (Ed.), The Observation of
Savage People. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Fetterman, D. (1988). Ethnography: Step by Step. London: Sage.
Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and Self-Identity. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Hamm, M., Ferrell, J., Adler, P., & Adler, P. A. (1998). Ethnography at the Edge:
Crime, Deviance and Field Research Paperback. New England: Northeastern
University Press.
Le Guin, U. (1989). Bryn Mawr Commencement Address. In Dancing At The
Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places (pp. 147–160). New York:
Harper & Row.
Moeran, B. (2009). From Participant Observation to Observation Participant. In
S. Ybema, D. Yanow, H. Wels, & F. Kamsteeg (Eds.), Organizational
Ethnography: Studying the Complexities of Everyday Life. London: Sage.
Montgomery. (2007). Working with Child Prostitutes in Thailand: Problems of
Practice and Interpretation. Childhood, 14(4), 415–430.
Rose, D. (1990). Living the Ethnographic Life. London: Sage.
Schwartzman, J. (1993). Ethnography in Organizations. London: Sage.
Sonenschein, D. (1968). The Ethnography of Male Homosexual Relationships.
The Journal of Sex Research, 4(2), 69–83.
Van Maanen, J. (1973). Observations on the Making of Policemen. Human
Organizations, 32, 407–418.
Van Maanen, J. (1975). Police Socialization. Administrative Science Quarterly, 20,
207–228.
Van Maanen, J. (1988). Tales of the Field. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Vine, T. (2011). A Review of Jeremy Carrette’s Religion and Critical Psychology:
Religious Experience in the Knowledge Economy. Journal of Management,
Spirituality & Religion, 8(2), 184–189.
Whitehead, A. (1967 [1925]). Science and the Modern World. New York: Simon &
Schuster.
Wilson, W. J., & Aponte, R. (1985). Urban Poverty. Annual Review of Sociology,
11, 231–258.
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 CHAPTER 2

Home-Grown Exoticism? Identity Tales

from a New Age Intentional Community

Tom Vine

I like to describe myself as a ‘work and organisation academic’.

However, when networking on behalf of the University or liaising with
a prospective MBA student, I present myself as a ‘business and
management lecturer’. Circumstances determine which label I use.
Sometimes, however, my selection is motivated by a desire to challenge
preconceptions. For example, a school friend of mine recently died and,
at the funeral, I got cornered by our old headmaster, a profoundly
conservative Oxbridge graduate. ‘Vine’, he said, ‘what are you doing
these days?’ ‘I’m a lecturer’, I responded. ‘Which university?’ he said,
most likely hoping that I would proclaim affiliation to a prestigious
Russell Group institution. ‘Suffolk’, I responded. He scoffed. ‘What do
you lecture?’ ‘Work and organisation’, I said. ‘What? That sounds
suspiciously like sociology’. ‘Well, yes, it’s a multidisciplinary subject
area, a key component of most management degrees’. ‘Ah! So you work
in a business school?’ ‘Yes’. ‘Why didn’t you say so? You don’t want to
give people the impression you’re a bloody sociologist!’ That was, of
course, precisely what I was trying to do.
Ethnography is reasonably well received in the domain of work and
organisation, but finds rather less traction in the commercially oriented
world of business and management. However, it’s worth noting that to

T. Vine (*)
University of Suffolk, Ipswich, UK

© The Author(s) 2018 13

T. Vine et al. (eds.), Ethnographic Research and Analysis,
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58555-4_2
14 T. VINE

some extent the practice of management consultancy (which is as

commercially oriented as it gets!) involves ethnography. The parameters
in management consultancy are very different and we’re probably some
way off seeing ‘participant observation’ itemised on an invoice. A very
different vocabulary is deployed too: ‘on-site specialist research’, for
example, or ‘leveraged professional advice’. Nevertheless, there is an
underexplored kinship between the two approaches.

In one sense, the research presented in this chapter runs contrary to the turn-
ing tide of ethnography. Twentieth-century ethnography sought to distance
itself from the imperialist anthropology of the Victorian era. Whereas British
adventurers of the 1800s lavished us with accounts of life from ‘exotic’ cor-
ners of the earth, the twentieth century witnessed a shift in empirical focus—
to ‘ordinary’ life: street corners, police departments, prisons, amusement
parks, and so on. However, the Findhorn Foundation in Scotland, the focus
of this chapter, apparently represents a New Age way of life at odds with the
‘ordinary’ cultures in which it is embedded and might legitimately be con-
sidered ‘exotic’. Others have concluded the same of comparable sites. Prince
and Riches (2000, p. 9) suggest that ‘for most New Agers in Glastonbury,
the existential experience is departure from the mainstream’. Ironically, and
at least in the case of Findhorn, the purpose of this chapter is to persuade you
otherwise. I follow a strategy delineated by Silverman (2007): to reveal the
mundane in the remarkable. However, here I focus on a particular mundan-
ity, one which the mainstream has surrendered.
The Findhorn Foundation, as it is known today, is sometimes described
as a commune. Its members, however, prefer the term ‘community’ or
‘intentional community’. The Findhorn community was established in
1962 by Eileen and Peter Caddy, with Dorothy Maclean. Five years previ-
ously, working as hoteliers, the Caddys had been entrusted with the man-
agement of the Cluny Hill Hotel in the nearby town of Forres. Eileen
allegedly received guidance in her meditations from an inner divine source
she called ‘the still small voice within’, and Peter ran the hotel according
to this guidance and his own intuition. Cluny Hill which had up until this
point been relatively unsuccessful won the praise of the inspectorate and
was awarded four-star accreditation. Impressed at the speed at which they
had improved the profitability of the hotel, the owners of the hotel chain
decided to relocate the Caddys to another of their failing hotels in the
hope that they would do the same there. Following identical spiritual
 HOME-GROWN EXOTICISM? IDENTITY TALES FROM A NEW AGE... 15

techniques, the two were unable to replicate success in this new setting.
They were sacked a few years later. With no immediate source of income
and no permanent lodgings, they moved with their three young sons and
Dorothy to a caravan on a plot of wasteland adjacent to the village of
Findhorn on the Morayshire coast. The community was born.
Although modest in its inception, the community has grown steadily.
The founders cultivated a vision which, though subject to both contesta-
tion and controversy, retains a central theme: a life premised on an appar-
ently synergetic blend of spiritual and ecological sensitivity. Today, the
community is spread over two main sites (Park Campus, the original site,
and Cluny Campus, the site of what was the Cluny hotel, acquired by the
Foundation in the 1970s). Additionally, the community includes settle-
ments on two smaller island outposts located off the west coast of Scotland.
Collectively, it is home to approximately 300 people, most of whom work
for the community either directly or in the form of related business ven-
tures providing both conventional and esoteric products and services for
the thousands of visitors to the Foundation each year.
The Foundation is the largest intentional community in Europe and is a
powerful ‘brand’ within New Age circles (for an extensive discussion of the
New Age, see Heelas, 1996). Typically, visitors to the community enrol on
focussed group-based residential programmes. These include ‘Experience
Week’ (which offers participants a taste of community living and is a pre-
requisite for other courses); ‘Ecovillage training’ (a practical sustainability
course for planning and constructing settlements); and ‘Spiritual Practice’
(for meditative and related techniques). In addition, Findhorn also offers
residential workweeks where participants work alongside community mem-
bers on dedicated cleaning, maintenance, building, and horticultural proj-
ects. Of my six residential visits to Findhorn, three were on such
programmes. These included Experience Week, a workweek for the house-
keeping department, and a workweek for the maintenance department.
During my ethnography, I experienced a life far removed from conven-
tional society: sweet-smelling homes fashioned from old whisky barrels; a
widely shared belief that work at Findhorn is ‘love in action’; ritualised
mourning prior to the felling of trees; decision-making via ‘attunement’
(feeling internally drawn to a particular outcome); a system of servant
leadership in which stewards (described as ‘focalisers’) practise ‘responsi-
bility without authority’; hot tub bathing in the nude; the exchange of
fairy stories between like-minded adults; and monastic-style singing
­sessions in Tolkienesque woodland lodgings. All constitute interesting
16 T. VINE

phenomena, but in this chapter I explore Findhorn’s appeal by recourse to

participant biographies.
My approach has afforded conclusions which non-immersive research
methods are unlikely to have yielded. What appears to be ‘exotic’ is, in
practice, both organised and formalised. Findhorn’s attraction is not its
exoticism (which is the presumed appeal when invoking ‘escapist’ inter-
pretations). Its appeal is better understood in terms of more prosaic
desires, particularly familial belonging and organisational security, quali-
ties which participants have been unable to realise satisfactorily in main-
stream society. The stories conveyed represent a corollary of the New
Capitalism in which and by contrast to the relative stability of the post-war
period—life in the neo-liberal West is experienced as precarious, itinerant,
fragmented, solitary, and economically insecure (Barley & Kunda, 2004;
Boltanski & Chiapello, 2006; Giddens, 1991; Sennett, 1998). Gradually,
our experience of organisations is increasingly characterised by ‘an array of
short-term arrangements including part-time work, temporary employ-
ment, self-employment, contracting, outsourcing, and home-based work’
(Barley & Kunda, 2004, p. 9). Therefore, identifying with an employer,
let alone securing a sense of job security, has been dealt a serious blow. Of
the nuclear family, Weigert and Hastings (1977, p. 1172) described it as a
device which harbours:

a socially and personally defined reality with a unique history, a recognizable

collective identity, and mutual claims projected into the future. In a word, a
family is a ‘world’, albeit a little one, in which selves emerge, act, and acquire
a stable sense of identity and reality.

However, by 1988 Popenoe had concluded that the institution of the

nuclear family was now in permanent decline and with it came significant
ramifications in respect of identity and stability. Although my intention is
certainly not to reify the nuclear iteration of family, the perception of the
existential security once afforded to many by the nuclear family has—like
that of the traditional workplace—undoubtedly shifted.

Why Ethnography?
My research is framed around generating a more nuanced understanding
of identity. Glynn (1998) theorised people’s ‘need for organisational iden-
tification’ (‘nOID’). Having established that we are predisposed to identify
 HOME-GROWN EXOTICISM? IDENTITY TALES FROM A NEW AGE... 17

with organisations, she asked: ‘How can we operationalize and measure

nOID?’ (ibid., p. 243). However, Glynn was unable to offer an appropri-
ate means of undertaking this venture. Sveningsson and Alvesson (2003,
p. 1165) suggest that ‘identity lacks sufficient substance and discreteness
to be captured in questionnaires or single interviews’. Glynn’s inability to
answer her own question was due to identity being ill suited to quantita-
tive methodologies. For Van Maanen, such pursuits are better paired with
ethnography:

Studies of organizational identity and change are often—perhaps most

often—ethnographic in character. Because symbolic meaning and unfolding
history are critical to any account of collective identity, there is perhaps no
other substantive area for which ethnography is more suitable as a method
of study. (Van Maanen, 1988, p. 244)

Identity and change were fundamental concerns for my investigation, not

least because New Age discourses are typically characterised by changing
lifestyles, identity (re)formation, and maintenance (see Heelas, 1996).
Furthermore, there is an interesting relativist dynamic to ethnography
which offers additional justification for its choice here as appropriate
method: ‘Ethnographies are as much about the culture of the student as
they are of the studied’ (Herbert, 2000, p. 563). Auto-ethnography
requires us to intentionally blur the boundary between the researcher and
the researched. I chose to orient my study at the juncture where studies of
organisation engage with the social scientific rendering of family, religion,
and spirituality. The latter has constituted an interest dating back to my
conservative education at a Jesuit school where any attempts to develop
skills of critical thinking were rapidly quashed. More recently, my mother
had embraced the New Age culture with gusto, and I was fascinated if
somewhat concerned by this turn of events. Burrell has commented that
as scholars we are ‘predisposed to study our insecurities’ (personal com-
munication, 2001). In line with the rationale proffered by Herbert (ibid.),
this ethnography probably imparts as much about me as it does of my
subjects.
Although full immersion is impractical (and, given the potential for
institutionalisation, not always advantageous), I was able to dedicate a full
year to my ethnographic endeavours. Over the course of this period, I
stayed with the community on six different occasions (ranging in duration
from four nights to two weeks) and maintained regular contact with
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supper. As I quitted the cabin Bates and Tom went to Rotch’s berth.
There was some noise in the wind at this hour; the breeze blew
fresh, the short seas ran sharp and burst shrilly, the race of foam on
either hand sent up a note of boiling, there was much merry
whistling in the rigging, and a faint small thunder of wind sweeping
out of the hollows through the curved foot of the sails.
So it happened that I could hear but little of what passed in the
cabin. The wheel was small; I gripped it strongly; I put my mind into
the binnacle-stand and watched the card very earnestly, that the
brig should not run away with me.
Twenty minutes might thus have passed when I heard noises that
rose high above the sound of the sea and the cries in the rigging.
Will shouted, ‘Marian, there’s murder doing!’
I dared not let go of the wheel lest the vessel should broach to and
lose her spars. I shrieked with all my might to Collins, who came
running headlong down the steps.
‘Take the helm,’ I cried, and I sprang through the cabin-door.
At that instant Tom and Bates came out of Rotch’s berth. The mate
turned the key and thrust his shoulder against the door to make sure
all was fast. Tom held a handkerchief to his jaw. He removed it to
look at it; it was stained with blood.
‘What has happened?’ I called out.
‘He jumped upon me, threw me down, and his teeth met in my
cheek—a true hound of hounds, a very dog of very dogs,’ said Tom.
I drew his hand from his face and witnessed the marks of a severe
bite above the right jaw; a little blood flowed.
‘It is nothing at all,’ said he. ‘But how consistent is his trick of
fighting with the nature of the animal!’
I hastened to the galley for some warm water, carefully bathed the
wound, and bound it up. Mr. Bates, whose face was very pale, had
gone on deck to look after the brig; he now returned and found Tom
at the table with his face swathed.
‘Has the villain gone mad?’ said I.
‘Butler,’ said the mate, ‘the sight of you and your talking to him drove
him mad. I feared it. That man’ll never confess.’
‘He’ll hang then,’ said Tom in a fierce, muttering voice.
‘In the face of Nodder’s confession,’ cried Mr. Bates, with more
excitement in his manner than I had ever before witnessed, ‘the
scoundrel swears that Butler was guilty of the attempt. When we
entered I addressed him quietly, almost soothingly; Butler did not
speak, he stood in readiness to prevent Rotch from snatching
Nodder’s confession out of my hands. I read the carpenter’s
statement. He listened with his head hung. When I had ended,
Butler said to him: “You see now how it has worked out. When do
you intend to make your declaration to Mr. Bates?” The man in an
instant leaped upon Butler and bore him to the deck. I got hold of
his throat to drag him away, and saw the devil’s teeth in Butler’s
cheek. I’m an old sea-going hand, Miss Johnstone, and have been
forced to listen to some bad language in my time, but never heard I
the like of what left Rotch’s lips after I had choked him off Butler and
flung him aside. His brain’s giving way,’ said he, addressing Tom.
‘If he’s mad,’ I exclaimed, heartily frightened, ‘his bite may have
poisoned you, Tom.’
‘He’s dog-like enough,’ said he, ‘but I don’t fear his teeth. Bates, you
forgot to tell Miss Johnstone that before he sprang upon me he
called out, “You made the attempt,” using one of the choicest of his
diabolical expressions.’
‘We have Nodder’s confession,’ I exclaimed.
‘But he shall confess—he shall confess,’ said Tom, with deep and
thrilling intensity of tone; ‘I have him—he can never escape me. He
shall confess, or he swings for it by my hand as surely as God’s his
judge.’
Saying this, he left the table and went on deck.
‘Mr. Bates,’ said I, ‘how is the man to be brought to own his crime?’
The mate looked at me earnestly and slowly and shook his head.
‘He’ll go out of his mind,’ said he. ‘That’s often how God punishes
the like of such wretches. He may confess as a madman, but never
while his wits yield light enough to hold his hate in sight. Hate! Why,
with him the deadliest of human passions lives wrapped up, pure
and unalloyed, in flesh, stalking on two legs, and calling itself Rotch.’
He left me, and for many minutes I stood alone, leaning with my
hand upon the cabin table, lost in deep and distracting thought.
It so befell, however, that we were not long to wait before this
degrading, loathsome and maddening business of Rotch was settled
for us, and this without any demand upon our own ingenuity, though
the thing worked out to its issue in strict correspondence with the
inhuman devil’s nature and with all that is base and wretched in this
narrative. Whether the man had been a little mad at the root all
through; whether he really feared that Tom would execute his threat
and hang him; whether he supposed that, taking it that Tom did not
hang him, he would be fearfully punished for the conspiracy and
perjury which Nodder had deposed to; or whether his conscience,
working like a fiend, grew too strong for him during his long, solitary
hours of imprisonment, he, one day, fulfilled the prediction of the
mate and went mad.
We were then in the northern verge of the south-east trade-wind,
sweeping smoothly toward the Equator. I was asleep in my cabin,
and was awakened by a great disturbance and shouts. The hour was
some time in the afternoon. By the time I had put on my dress and
run out, the cries and sounds of scuffling had ceased; but on
stepping a few paces aft, I heard a strange noise of moaning and
snapping yells proceeding from Rotch’s cabin. It was such a noise as
might be made by a couple of dogs, who, though half dead with
worrying each other, still fight on.
I ran to the wheel, where I found Will, who told me that while Bates
was in Rotch’s cabin, whither he had carried some drinking water,
Rotch, giving a loud shout, whipped a table knife out of his bunk; he
lunged at Bates, who very nimbly tripped him up, got the knife out
of his hand, and lay wrestling on the deck with Rotch, bawling for
help. Tom and Collins rushed to his assistance, and amongst them
dragged the villain into his berth again.
Whilst Will was telling me this, Tom and the others came out of
Rotch’s cabin. And now I heard that the man had gone mad, and
that to prevent him doing himself or us a mischief they had secured
his legs and bound his arms to his side.
This was a very great calamity; had he jumped overboard or cut his
throat all would have been well, but here now was a madman to
watch. Our little ship’s company was miserably few, and the
requirements of the brig totally prohibited our telling off any one of
us to look after the lunatic fiend. Then again, being mad, his
confession (whatever might prove the delirious gabble he chose to
regale Mr. Bates with) could be of no use to Tom, who would thus be
balked in his iron-hard resolve of carrying him to some part of the
seas where he could hang him if he did not confess.
But it was not a thing to be mended by lamentation; whilst madness
raged in the unhappy, wicked wretch, he was to be kept bound, and
rendered as helpless by cords and lines as Tom in his sanity had
been by leg-irons and handcuffs. Mr. Bates from time to time looked
in upon him, cut up his meat, fed him, and gave him drink. I never
went near the monster’s cabin nor set eyes upon him. If Tom looked
in, Rotch spat at him, howled, expressed by contortions and
grimaces a hundred hellish passions, and struggled with fury and
with the power of a giant to liberate himself that he might get at
him. The madman’s cabin-door was in various ways strengthened to
provide against all possibility of his breaking out. Otherwise he lay
lodged as securely as if his prison had been the sentinelled and
barricaded ’tweendecks of the Childe Harold.
This was his condition for about a week, dating from the hour of his
going mad; Bates then told us that the fellow was cooling down and
exhibiting some return of mind; a small light of intelligence was in
his eyes, and the fire of insanity was waning in them. He begged for
the freedom of his limbs, and Bates gave him the use of his arms.
One morning the mate came out of Rotch’s berth, and said to me,
who was sitting at the cabin table:
‘A strange change has come over that miserable creature. He cries
like a whipped boy, and his mind seems in a state of panic terror. He
lay hold of my hand just now and wriggled as though to fall upon his
knees, and implored me not to let Captain Butler come near him.
“He’ll hang me,” he whimpered; “that’s what he’s keeping me here
for. Why don’t he send me ashore? I’m not fit to die. I’ve got a wife
and children dependent upon me.” Then he blazed out: “But he
dursn’t hang me. It would be the bloodiest of all murders to swing a
poor sick man like me!” And he muttered about having a house of
furniture and a little money at home, all of which he’d give me if I’d
smuggle a knife into his berth, and then send Captain Butler to him
alone on pretence of hearing him confess.’
It was on Friday that Bates told me this. On the following Sunday we
sat down to dinner as usual at one o’clock. It was a very quiet day,
clear and bright; the brig was flapping leisurely along clothed to her
royals before a small air of hot wind blowing almost directly over the
stern. Tom put a slice of pork on a plate, and Bates cut it up to carry
it with biscuit, a pannikin of rum and water, and other matters to
Rotch’s berth. The mate went to the door of Rotch’s cabin, and put
the tray down to turn the key and shift one of the uprights which
protected the entrance. My eye was upon him; he opened the door,
cried out, and sprang back, tossing his arms with a gesture of horror
and consternation.
‘What is it?’ called Tom.
‘Come and look, Butler! Come and see for yourself!’ cried the mate.
Tom rushed aft and stood beside Bates. In a moment or two he
turned his face toward me and said, whilst he pointed to the cabin,
with his finger a little elevated: ‘Marian, he has hanged himself!’ He
then went in. Bates, with a white face, came running to the table for
a knife, and then joined Tom. I sat quite still. I had not the courage
to view an object which I guessed would haunt my memory as a
phantom of ghastly horror whilst life lasted. My heart beat with sick,
fast throbs whilst I waited. They were ten minutes in cutting him
down and making sure he was dead. They then came out, closing
the door behind them, and drew slowly to the table.
‘Miss Johnstone,’ said the mate, ‘he’s stone dead.’
‘Is it not God who wins, surely and always, in the end?’ exclaimed
Tom.
 POSTSCRIPT
When the venerable lady—the Marian Johnstone of the preceding
narrative—had arrived at this point, she declined to proceed. She
said she had told enough. If a sequel was necessary, it must be
invented. She had several grandchildren, and she did not choose to
vex or distress them by unnecessary candour.
With much coaxing, however, and during repeated visits, she let fall
enough to admit of a truthful ending to her strange tale, and the few
things material omitted by her were supplied by Admiralty records
and certain files of shipping papers.
It seems that amongst them they safely carried the little brig Old
Stormy to the English Channel, where, hauling in close to the French
coast, they spoke a French smack, and Captain Butler went ashore
to await Marian Johnstone in some French or Flemish town that had
been agreed upon. The brig then stretched across to the English
coast and landed Nodder, who died twenty-four hours after his
arrival in England. Then, with the assistance of a few ’longshoremen,
the vessel was carried to the Thames.
Miss Johnstone at once called upon her uncle. No particulars of an
interview, which surely must have been memorable and remarkable,
were to be procured. Though Captain Butler had sworn that he
would not accept a free pardon if it were granted, nor ever again set
foot in his native country, Miss Johnstone went to work nevertheless
to render him what is called by the lawyers an unattainted person. It
might have been that Captain Butler knew the law better than she; it
is certain that her uncle, Mr. Johnstone, a shrewd old lawyer, gave
her neither hope nor encouragement. His reasons are probably
indicated in an ‘opinion’ he obtained from one who stood high as a
legal authority in his day. The following extract may be given:
‘The unfortunate master has apparently been guilty of no less than
three different felonies within the jurisdiction of the Lord High
Admiral, i.e. on the high seas. The three felonies are (1) scuttling, of
which he is wrongfully convicted and transported; (2) being at large
during a sentence of transportation without lawful excise—felony
under 5 Geo. IV., c. 84, s. 24; and (3) of being concerned with other
convicts in piracy with bloodshed, under 18 Geo. II., c. 30, s. 2. As
to pardons: All convictions are to be presumed, of course, to be
correctly made until the contrary be shown. By 7 Geo. IV., c. 28, a
warrant under the royal sign manual is equivalent to a pardon under
the great seal, and this only as a pardon as to the specific felony
committed by the pardoned, and does not avail as to any offence
committed subsequently to that pardoned and not mentioned in the
pardon.’
The seizure of the Childe Harold had occurred subsequently to
Butler’s conviction for attempting to scuttle the Arab Chief. He was
also at large whilst still a convict. Miss Johnstone, with much spirit,
but with a good deal of wrong-headed obstinacy also, persisted in
struggling in the direction of a pardon for her sweetheart until
certain convincing representations finally determined her to desist.
Having made all necessary arrangements with regard to her
property, she joined Captain Butler abroad and was married to him.
They ultimately went to the United States, and it is understood that
for some years Captain Butler had command of a fine clipper ship
flying the Stars and Stripes and trading between Boston and the
western South American seaboard.
The award for the salving of the Old Stormy made a considerable
sum. The cargo proved to be exceedingly valuable. Some of the
pictures were by great masters, and the consignment of china alone
was valued at eleven thousand pounds. Captain Butler, through Miss
Johnstone, refused to touch one penny of the award; the money
was therefore paid in sums proportioned by the rating to Mr. Bates,
Will Johnstone, and the man Collins.
It is remarkable that the cabin story of the abandonment of the Old
Stormy proved absolutely true. A single survivor of the crew was
rescued; he was carried to Sierra Leone, where he died; before he
died he detailed the facts of the mutiny, murders, and abandonment,
precisely as they were recited in the document found in the brig.
The Childe Harold was fallen in with by a large heavily armed
Portuguese man-of-war, thirty leagues west of the island of Tristan
d’Acunha. She had been wrecked aloft in a gale; the convicts were in
terrible distress, they were short of water, they had wantonly wasted
the ship’s stock of provisions. The commander of the Portuguese
ship perceiving the vessel’s character sent a number of armed men
on board, and then, strangely enough, towed her for a supply of
fresh water to Tristan d’Acunha, where both ships arrived three
weeks after the departure of the Old Stormy from that island. The
transport was then conveyed to Table Bay, refitted, placed in charge
of a new captain and officers along with a strong crew, and
despatched on her voyage to Hobart Town, where she safely arrived.
How the ringleaders were punished has not been ascertained.
The long-boat, containing Captain Sutherland, Captain Barrett, the
soldiers, women and children, was fallen in within seven or eight
degrees north latitude, and the people, who were all in good health
in spite of great sufferings from exposure—one death only, a child,
having happened—were carried round the Horn before there
occurred an opportunity to tranship and send them home. But the
quarter-boats in which the seamen had been sent adrift were never
accounted for.
This, then, is the true sequel of the extraordinary adventures of the
remarkable young woman who has been styled in this narrative of
her experiences Marian Johnstone.
THE END

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