Catherine Gouge, West Virginia University

Opening Remarks

• What’s your favorite (not necessarily most useful) theory and why?
• Can you have theories without practices? Practices without theories? Think about what each might
  look like.
• What would it take to prevent practice from informing theory and vice versa? Would one (theory without practice, practice without theory) be better or worse than the other? How so?
• In an ideal (ethical, just, efficient, abundant) world, how might practice inform theory and vice versa?
• In a total hellscape (e.g., 2020 or worse), how might practice inform theory and vice versa?

Synthesis from Breakout and Discussion

Running Definition

• • Theories provide frameworks that help us identify and learn from patterns, similarities, and differences when theorizing. Other scholars in the field define it as ethical (Cambron), or a form of caring (Jay Dolmage) because it helps us identify priorities and commitments and to think about why we do what we do and how we do it. Karen Barad argues that theory has actual material effects in the world that it actually materially changes the world because it can be used, and is used, to determine how and where we make cuts in what counts and doesn’t count. Theories are generalizable. They can help us apply what’s been learned by solving one problem and applying these ideas to solving others. Theories also provide us with a rationale and criteria for decision making and for understanding the effects and nature of those practices. Theory enables us to talk about what we do and why we do it. It gives us a language for that or vocabulary for that, and allows us to transfer that understanding and those rationales.

Takeaways

• The idea that theories enact values was a recurring theme throughout this session, but remember that theories can be nefarious–the theory may be ethical while the outcome may not be.
• Reinscription is a powerful term for us to remember how the limitations of theory are enacted in our research as RHM scholars.
• The relationship of theory, practice, and research is reciprocal and cyclical as theory guides research and improves practice, research guides our practice and builds our knowledge of theory development, and then practice creates and generates research questions and knowledge for theory.

Future Considerations

• Which theory might be most useful to one context and another and how is it useful?
  • How do we do it?
    • For example, how do you apply a theory that may be useful to landscape architecture and something queer?
  • If theory building is practice, then when distinguishes it from theory? Are they inseparable?
    • Is it that theory grounds practice?
  • Is theory more rhetorical for RHM work?
  • How does theory inform writing pedagogy?
  • Is our evidence data, and what is the relationship to positionality for those working in RHM?
  • How do we constantly question data as evidence and the role RHM has as evidence in the data framework?