Updating inquiry techniques : from dialogos and hermeneutikos to fractal and attractor narrative analysis

To understand and even improve various sites of complexity born out of human interaction, dialogue has long been recognised as critical to the sense making process and the narratives thus generated. Some have gone so far as to suggest that we narrate into being, ourselves along with that which we purport to observe. Paying attention to narrative has become for many an important means of approaching social complexity. Narrative can be considered in terms of generation through dialogue, the discursive, conversational way in which meaning is created by human beings. Narrative too may be thought of as a form of text, albeit, not always in written form. Hermeneutics, the art and science of studying texts, though having its origins in interpretation of religious texts, can usefully be brought to the study and interpretation of the meaning of narratives more generally. This paper illustrates the usefulness of complexity science principles to qualitative social inquiry through reference to a recently completed research project titled, 'Inquiry into community enabling: a review of the Mount Druitt Enablers Program'. Coherent conversations were used to generate the narratives with fractal and attractor narrative analysis guiding the hermeneutic sense making process. It is proposed that bringing a complexity perspective provides an effective means of dealing with perennially contentious issues in qualitative inquiry.