Papers by Barton Buechner
Advances in media, entertainment and the arts (AMEA) book series, Feb 24, 2023
This chapter describes development of a literacy of lived experience, applying concepts of phenom... more This chapter describes development of a literacy of lived experience, applying concepts of phenomenology, somatics, and the coordinated management of meaning (CMM) theory of social construction in communication. Structured writing exercises (protocols) are used to deeply examine poignant life experiences, which had a strong impact or raised important questions for individuals as well as at the collective level. This process can further expose the presence of “moral injuries” or difficult episodes of lived experience which challenge or disrupt core beliefs impacting the sense of identity and purpose. The tools and models presented here also offer some ways to exercise self-leadership through the acquired capacity for co-constructing more coherent social realities after this type of disruptive experience. The process is illustrated with the example of a military veteran who became “stuck” in life after leaving service, a problematic experience for many transitioning veterans that also...
Advances in Media, Entertainment, and the Arts
This chapter describes development of a literacy of lived experience, applying concepts of phenom... more This chapter describes development of a literacy of lived experience, applying concepts of phenomenology, somatics, and the coordinated management of meaning (CMM) theory of social construction in communication. Structured writing exercises (protocols) are used to deeply examine poignant life experiences, which had a strong impact or raised important questions for individuals as well as at the collective level. This process can further expose the presence of “moral injuries” or difficult episodes of lived experience which challenge or disrupt core beliefs impacting the sense of identity and purpose. The tools and models presented here also offer some ways to exercise self-leadership through the acquired capacity for co-constructing more coherent social realities after this type of disruptive experience. The process is illustrated with the example of a military veteran who became “stuck” in life after leaving service, a problematic experience for many transitioning veterans that also...
IGI Global eBooks, Feb 17, 2023
Frontiers in Communication
Despite increases in technical capacities for communication, contemporary society struggles with ... more Despite increases in technical capacities for communication, contemporary society struggles with a persistent inability to effectively engage in collective action around a growing number of existential challenges manifesting in local, national, and global contexts. Confronted with environmental deterioration, economic disruptions, wars, and civil unrest, we are challenged to engage in coherent conversations that could lead to collective action, based on a shared understanding. Instead, we are enmeshed in polarized narratives, competing agendas, and emotional conflict. The uneven response to the global COVID-19 pandemic is but the most recent example of this lack of unity. As we seek to find our way in this increasingly complex social landscape, one of the best potential sources for learning about social systems and communication in conflict has gone largely unexamined. For nearly two decades, Military veterans of many nations have struggled while returning from wartime service in Af...
Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship
This special edition of the Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship (JCES) is the result ... more This special edition of the Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship (JCES) is the result of a 2-year effort to identify, compile, and publish scholarly research about military-to-civilian transitions conducted by service members, veterans, and their families (SMVF). It gives these SMVF voices center stage by representing a lived experience that speaks a truth to the scientific literature that bears careful and thoughtful consideration. This special edition was inspired by the awareness that many of the programs, policies and processes intended to facilitate social readjustment, transition, and mental health intervention for the SMVF community are largely based upon clinical research. Yet this research has historically limited the participation of individuals with lived experience in SMVF social worlds. As a result, scholarly representations have left out the full nature and diversity of the veteran community and the voices of the oft forgotten military family. As the project...
The influx of returning veterans in higher education that began in 2009 (with the inception of th... more The influx of returning veterans in higher education that began in 2009 (with the inception of the post-9/11 GI Bill) has unleashed potentially reflexive transformative forces in the worlds of higher education, employment, and among veterans and their organizations and programs. Early findings of research into the social impact of returning veterans point towards an underlying phenomenon of personal development and growth as an alternative to cultural perceptions of widespread mental health issues among veterans, and the essential role of multiple mentors in facilitating this growth. Coming to a better understanding how these social and communication dynamics are playing out with this cohort in education and employment contexts -and outside of formal organizational structures -is essential to improving the processes by which veterans are positively supported in transition from military service to becoming productive and integrated members and future leaders in American society. This...
Traumatic experiences are not unique to war veterans, survivors of genocide, the wrongfully convi... more Traumatic experiences are not unique to war veterans, survivors of genocide, the wrongfully convicted, or those with visible disabilities. A better understanding of their experiences in overcoming these adversities – and growing from them – can help us all to create space for transformation in our lives, and the lives of others. The way we communicate, or talk about life experiences (including traumatic events), has a significant impact on the way they are experienced and responded to. This includes making meaning of traumatic events in the context of other life experiences, reconstructing/co-constructing a new worldview that takes into account permanent changes or expanded consciousness, and incorporating somatic or embodied experience in the transformation process. This paper will address the factors that may make positive change after adversity possible, and discuss some of the ways that supportive space, complex communication, and somatic awareness can help to make this happen on a broader scale.
Deathworlds to Lifeworlds
Social reintegration of veterans following military service is a complex, nonlinear, and highly i... more Social reintegration of veterans following military service is a complex, nonlinear, and highly individualized phenomenon, yet much of the existing literature on transition of veterans represents a narrow and limited perspective of transition and trauma—mostly written from an external (nonveteran) perspective. We present an alternative based on concepts of personal and social transformation through collaborative, veteran-led social science research designed from an interdisciplinary Adlerian (social systems) perspective. Participants are military-connected students, defined as service members, veterans, family members, and mental health practitioners experienced in working with military and veteran populations. Research projects described were designed by the students, and these typically involved informal data gathering and self-reflection, combined with extensive review of current interdisciplinary literature in the military psychology field. A case study of informal participative...
, a community of scholars and practitioners gathered in Berlin for the SIETAR 2012+38 forum. What... more , a community of scholars and practitioners gathered in Berlin for the SIETAR 2012+38 forum. What drew them together was their strong desire to help bring about Global Integral Competence and Cosmopolitan Communication. To invite the leading edge of practice and thought to become present, we imagined a world, in 2050, where integral consciousness had become the average level of development of individuals throughout all cultures, and where integral competence had found its way into our brain, mind, culture and systems. We imagined that people would be versed in cosmopolitan communication practices, which ""enables coordination among groups with different, even incommensurate, social realities."(Pearce, 1989, p. 169
Journal of Humanistic Psychology
Journal of Transformative Education
This article addresses a significant gap in the transformative learning literature as it relates ... more This article addresses a significant gap in the transformative learning literature as it relates to collective transformation, a transformation that is a level beyond individual transformation and is differentiated from the designed and imposed forms of social or organizational change. We consider collective transformation as an emergent and shared worldview shift that is grounded in a shared experience. The participants might not be fully aware of or even able to describe this experience until they engage with it at the interpersonal level. In prior research and practice, the five authors have independently observed and documented the phenomenon of collective transformation among members of marginalized populations who have undergone liminal experiences—forms of disequilibrium that leave individuals betwixt and between. The common thread in these experiences is the emergence of a shared feeling called communitas, which is a deeply felt (yet often temporary) sense of belonging and c...
Journal of Transformative Education
, a community of scholars and practitioners gathered in Berlin for the SIETAR 2012+38 forum. What... more , a community of scholars and practitioners gathered in Berlin for the SIETAR 2012+38 forum. What drew them together was their strong desire to help bring about Global Integral Competence and Cosmopolitan Communication. To invite the leading edge of practice and thought to become present, we imagined a world, in 2050, where integral consciousness had become the average level of development of individuals throughout all cultures, and where integral competence had found its way into our brain, mind, culture and systems. We imagined that people would be versed in cosmopolitan communication practices, which ""enables coordination among groups with different, even incommensurate, social realities."(Pearce, 1989, p. 169
The Cosmopolis 2045 project offers a framework for envisioning the way various components of soci... more The Cosmopolis 2045 project offers a framework for envisioning the way various components of society might integrate and function together in the future, using more evolved and complex forms of communication defined by W. Barnett Pearce as "Cosmopolitan Communication" (Pearce, 1998). This paper provides background for a panel discussion that focuses on the dynamics between the elements of mindfulness, sustainable peace, and systemic security within Cosmopolis, and how they facilitate continual learning and transformation of both Cosmopolis and its inhabitants.
Ø (1) Veterans transiEon is a social jusEce issue Ø APA definiEon of PTSD has changed-therapies... more Ø (1) Veterans transiEon is a social jusEce issue Ø APA definiEon of PTSD has changed-therapies have not Ø (2) Adult educaEon addreses "Moral Injury" trauma Ø (3) Mentors are essenEal to make both homecomer and welcomer "wise to things" (Schutz, 1945) Ø (4) MediaEng structures (Berger and Nehuaus, 1977) offer alternaEves to insEtuEonal approaches Ø This can be enacted as a process of personal transformaEon through learning IdenAty formaAon and re-individuaAon… War Trauma is Complex
This paper was presented as a workshop at the Berlin "Global Integral Competency" confe... more This paper was presented as a workshop at the Berlin "Global Integral Competency" conference organized by the Society for Intercultural Education, Training, and Research (SIETAR) Deutschland. As a way of looking at "new/old paradigms in action" It provides an analysis of the military inspector General ("IG") system through lenses of network organization, communication and social construction theories. The American Military IG system was created by George Washington and Baron Friedrich Wilhelm Von Steuben as a way to provide training and discipline to volunteer "citizen-soldiers" with varying degrees of commitment and expertise. This article explores why this approach may have been so dramatically successful, and what can be learned and applied in both contemporary organizational and intercultural settings by updating and re-applying these principles to make use of "moral code-sharing" in other intercultural communication contexts. Mo...
This conference presentation describes phenomenological research into the process by which return... more This conference presentation describes phenomenological research into the process by which returning combat veterans experience their return to higher education after combat service, with particular attention to the development of mentor relationships in the campus context. Fourteen student veterans were identified as evidencing posttraumatic growth by their campus veteran services coordinators, and interviewed with a semistructured protocol to get at their relationships with mentors at various stages of life and how this has affected their worldview and development during transition. The results of the interviews were then developed into protocols and examined hermeneutically. Episodes of communication in which the phenomenon of mentoring was detected were subsequently analyzed using interpretive heuristic methods of the Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM) theory for a fuller understanding of the way these interactions played a role in constructing or reconstructing the social ...
Contextual Mentoring of Student Veterans: A Communication Perspective by Barton David Buechner Ab... more Contextual Mentoring of Student Veterans: A Communication Perspective by Barton David Buechner Abstract Nearly two million combat veterans are now in various stages of the process of returning from service and entering higher education using the post-9/11 GI Bill. Who is guiding and advising them in the process of this transition, and how are they doing it? To help answer this question, this qualitative phenomenological study examines the narratives of successful student veterans for ways that mentors played a role in their transition from military service to academia. The study was informed by an examination of relevant literature, including individual mentoring and group mentoring; medical and non-medical readjustment counseling for returning combat veterans; various branches of psychology, communication, social construction, and warrior mythology and storytelling. Narrative data were examined using a composite metatheoretical model drawing on domains of human experience (Shay, 20...
Uploads
Papers by Barton Buechner