From my [[PhD proposal]] Connecting with my own whakapapa to the Hmar tribe of Mizoram and the Kumbanad family of Kerala (both in modern India), I see my research as being in a world that is primarily relational – “an affective force that compels us to not just understand the world as relational, but feel the world as kin” (Tynan, 2021). This is further encouraged by my understanding of the indigenous worldviews of the Pacific (Reynolds, 2017) and Aotearoa New Zealand (Hoskins & Jones, 2020), that are also relational at core. This worldview implies a relational understanding of epistemological and ontological questions – knowledge is created in relationship, and can primarily be understood in relationship (Bird-David, 1999). This raises both content and methodological questions around my research. From a content perspective, a relational worldview implies that my exploration of emotional capability in innovation contexts would see the primary locus of research as being the relationships between people, between people and the organisations they work in and for, and between myself as researcher and the people who, rather than being participants in my research, become co-researchers (Datta et al., 2015). Methodologically, this asks that I, as researcher, bring my whole self (not just my researcher self) to the conversation with my co-researchers, that I engage in a meaningful relationship with them. A key content concept in this research is the idea of relational space, known in Samoan culture as the ‘va’ (Wendt, 1996). Relational space is deeply tied to the idea of the person as relational - simultaneously individual, and connected to other people, elements in the environment, even historical and future contexts. The Samoan exhortation of ‘teu le va’ (roughly translated as ‘keep the relational space tidy’) is an example of this understanding of personhood in relation (Anae, 2016; Suaalii-Sauni, 2017). Similar conceptions of relationality and interconnectedness also show in my own home geography of Zomia (Datta et al., 2015; Scott, 2009) and in Māori ideas of tuakana-teina (Suaalii-Sauni, 2017). The idea of a relational space has practical implications for this research. For instance, relationality implies reciprocity (Paksi & Kivinen, 2021). In the space of a researcher- co-researcher context, this would mean that the co-researcher needs to receive value from the exchange just as the primary researcher does. This also implies that the relationship between the co-researchers and the primary researcher is sacred, and at least as important, if not more important than the research outcome (Datta et al., 2015; McGregor & Marker, 2018). Conversation as an expression of relationality is established in Indigenous research, particularly in that conversation enables storytelling (Kovach, 2010; Smith et al., 2016; Tecun et al., 2018). Conversation has also been found to be the basis for creating relationships in interactions that are typically transactional (Leenerts & Teel, 2006) and as recognising the wealth of knowledge in people not usually part of the mainstream (Trainor, 2018). Using conversation as a method of research will both gain from this existing body of relational work, and also build the relationships needed for teams to build their own emotional capability. [[Paper_What is relationality? Indigenous knowledges, practices and responsibilities with kin]] ![[Relationality_Tynan.png]] "As an ethic of responsibility, relationality is something that is practiced." p604 *Relationality => Responsibility => Reciprocity* (?) Relationality is multiple truths. Relationality is also about agency. Relationality is kinship. Relationality is responsibility, with kin and Country first and foremost. Relationality is practice. p606 [[Paper_‘‘Animism’’ Revisited]] "Second, drawing on Gibson (1979)and Ingold (1992), I posit that in another sense devaru are a constitutive part of Nayaka’s environment, born of the ‘‘affordances’’ of events in-the-world. Nayaka’s ‘‘attention’’ ecologically perceives mutually responsive changes in things in-the-world and at the same time themselves. These relatednesses are devaru in-the-world, met by Nayaka as they act in, rather than think about, the world. " p68-69 >*How does the 'relationality' manifest? For Nayaka, it manifests as Devaru, for Māori as whakapapa, for Mizo and Samoans as Mizo-ness and Samoan-ness. Mizo dân, Samoan 'teu le va'* "I derive from Strathern’s ‘‘dividual’’ (a person constitutive of relationships) the verb ‘‘to dividuate,’’ which is crucial to my analysis. When I individuate a human being I am conscious of her ‘‘in herself’’ (as a single sep-arate entity); when I dividuate her I am conscious of how she relates with me. This is not to say that I am conscious of the relationship with her ‘‘in itself,’’ as a thing. Rather, I am conscious of the relatedness with my interlocutor as I engage with her, attentive to what she does in relation to what I do, to how she talks and listens to me as I talk and listen to her, to what happens simultaneously and mutually to me, to her, to us." p72 >*When researching, I need to observe **how** my co-researchers relate, with each other and with me. What is changing as we talk-listen to each other?* "The idea that one shared space, things, and actions with others was central to the Nayaka view of life. A Nayaka was normatively expected to share with everybody **as and when present**...irrespective of preexisting social ties,criteria, and entitlement." p72 >reciprocity as a way of being in the world, rather than as a transaction? "Anyone they persistently shared with (even a non-Nayaka person like the anthropologist) they regarded as kin...Their kinship was primarily made and remade by recurring social actions of sharing and relating with, not by blood or by descent, not by biology or by myth or genealogy." p73 >Does this relate to the Māori use of 'whānau'? I remember the Mizo use of 'in ti chhûng' (to have relationships as if we are family) that we often had with some people who were of the same clan.