I don't know anything about Japan. A little geography, maybe. Once, there were samurai. But I do know there are two types of art out of Japan that have been on my mind over the last few days.
The first is emakimono scrolls. Last term, I stumbled upon a paper by Kimberly Boal and Patrick Schultz (2007) that connected transformational leaders with emakimono scrolls: they create a vision of the future by linking it to the past. It's nothing too profound, except that it's given me some perspective in my internal communications work. And it's helping me to connect the disparate projects I'm working on.
Then there's the other bit of art. Rashomon by Akira Kurosawa. In it, four narrators describe their perspective of the same crime; no account is identical to another. I see there's an article by Heider about the Rashomon effect. In fact, didn't Silverman talk about someone's multi-perspective research? Or was it de Vaus? Hmm. Maybe I need to do some re-reading.
Many in our cohort started to question their roles after studying organizational theory. Me, I've been thinking quite a lot about control within an organization. This idea of perspective and multiple accounts challenges the typical practice of communications. Imagine what a tool like Twitter could do?
The tiny anarchist in me likes the possibilities.
