D as Diagramming: Hexagram, Symbolic Culture, and Diagram Choices
A case study about cultural signs for sense-making with diagrams.
The above diagram is a by-product of an empirical case study about cultural signs for sense-making with diagrams. The case study is part of the D as Diagramming project which aims to explore the power of diagrams and diagramming.
The case study is about developing a framework for a group discussion in a community design workshop. It represents a typical activity: collective creative communication with diagrams.
I wrote an 86-page report for the case study. In the theory-based reflection section, I discussed three topics. In the practice-based reflection section, I discussed the relationship between diagrams and signs. Finally, I design the above picture as a sign-making creation.
This post shares an insight from the case study: Symbolic Culture and Diagram Choices.
Contents
- An Empirical Case Study
- Symbolic Culture and Diagram Choices
- The Star of David
- “Om” and “Hrim”
- The X-for-Y diagram
- The Duality of Human Experience
- The Power of Cultural Significance
An Empirical Case Study
As a research project, the D as Diagramming project aims to explore the power of Diagrams and Diagramming. From the perspective of Activity Theory, Diagram means a tool while Diagramming means an activity. Thus, the D as Diagramming project is both about tools and activity. From the perspective of cognitive science, diagramming is about spatial cognition which is my favorite topic. From the perspective of Curativity Theory, Diagrams are knowledge containers for knowledge curation.
I use three approaches for the project:
- Reflect on my own works
- Interview others
- Collect examples
This method could be considered roughly as a triangular method. I learned the basic idea about Triangulating Data from Clay Spinuzzi’s book Topsight: A guide to studying, diagnosing, and fixing information flow in organization.
In August, I conducted an empirical case study which is about a community design workshop. It was a three-day online learning program. The curator of the program divided students into groups of six. The activity of day 1 is an open discussion and brainstorming about the definition of community. In order to summarize conclusions from six groups, a volunteer suggested using the diagram of Star of David as a frame. Thus, they selected a primary element from each group and placed six elements around the Star of David. Later, the curator asked an advisor to review the framework. The advisor suggested some revision opinions. The volunteer designed a personalized version of the framework for the advisor. See the picture below.
I started from this diagram and interviewed three key people: the curator, the volunteer, and the advisor. The curator has ten years of community building.
Since I didn’t join the event, I asked them to provide pictures, screenshots, online docs, etc.
I also reviewed the curator’s blog and collected a series of articles about the developmental process of the Community Design Workshop. Ten years ago, the curator started a community to help startup founders. Initially, the community was just an offline weekly meetup with several members in Shanghai, China. Today it is a global network of founders and creators from over 80 local chapters. In order to share his tacit knowledge and experience of building the community in the past ten years, the curator started a program called Three Talks on Community in March 2021. The program is an online course about community building. After running the program for five months, the curator realized that it is not enough to only offer a course for founders and he needed to provide a supportive system of building communities. Thus, the Community Design Workshop program was born in August 2021.
Based on these data, I wrote an 86-page report for this case study. At the theory-based reflection section, I discussed the following three topics.
- The Transformation of Activity Systems. From the perspective of Activity Theory, the curator made a transformation of his activity systems during several months. By working on a developmental project (Three Talks on Community), the curator detached from an activity system of running a community for startup founders and attached to a new activity system of running a supportive system for community builders.
- Collective Tacit Knowledge Curation. From the perspective of Curativity Theory, the workshop is an event of knowledge curation which aims to turn collective tacit knowledge into a meaningful whole. While the Star of David is a public cultural sign, the “using the Star of David as a frame for curating tacit knowledge” is a tacit knowledge for the group.
- Community as a Themes of Practice. The workshop was designed as a co-creation process. The curator encouraged members to share their own experiences on building communities and guided deep discussions. From the perspective of “Themes of Practice”, the concept of “Community” is a theme of practice for these members because they are doing such a practice every day. For the curator, what he is doing is a meta-community. I suggested that he could adopt the “Themes of Practice” framework to think about the future of the meta-community.
At the practice-based reflection section, I discussed the relationship between diagrams and signs. Finally, I designed a new diagram-sign picture as a by-product of the case study.
The original report of the case study was written in Chinese, I’d like to share one insight for present discussion. The rest of the post will offer more details about the insight.
Symbolic Culture and Diagram Choices
The curator is a christian. The early offline weekly meetup was inspired by Christian communion/Koinonia. He used two nested triangles to represent his tacit knowledge about community.
Inspired by the Trinity, the Curator used the above diagrams as a framework to design the Three Talks on Community online course.
This story echoes the above story of developing a framework with the Star of David. Both stories are about adopting symbolic cultural elements as instruments to represent tacit knowledge.
I realized that I should define a new topic for diagram studies. Inspired by Diane E. Bailey and Paul M. Leonardi’s Technology Choices: Why Occupations Differ in Their Embrace of New Technology, I coined a term called Diagram Choices.
This case study also encouraged me to develop an integrated framework for diagram study. The diagram below curates four perspectives together:
- Cognitive Representation
- Cultural Significance
- Mediating Instrument
- Ecological Situation
This integrated framework is a summary of the D as Diagramming project. I’d like to share more details in the next post.
The Star of David
As mentioned above, I discussed the relationship between diagrams and signs at the practice-based reflection. People could use cultural signs as instruments to frame their ideas and build a diagram or framework. However, some diagrams don’t have to use cultural signs as frames because visual graphics have their own abilities to represent conceptual meanings.
To be honest, I didn’t know too much about the Star of David. In order to figure out the meaning of the sign, I searched and read some documents. What I learned is the deep cultural significance behind the Star of David.
According to Wikipedia, “…the Star of David was never a uniquely Jewish symbol. The hexagram, being an inherently simple geometric construction, has been used in various motifs throughout human history, which were not exclusively religious. The symbol was also used in Christian churches as a decorative motif many centuries before its first known use in a Jewish synagogue…The use of the hexagram in a Jewish context as a possibly meaningful symbol may occur as early as the 11th century, in the decoration of the carpet page of the famous Tanakh manuscript, the Leningrad Codex dated 1008…Since 1948, the Star of David has carried the dual significance of representing both the state of Israel, and Jewish identity in general.”
So, the graphic has two names which refers to types of meanings:
- Star of David: a Jewish symbol. This is cultural meaning.
- Hexagram: a geometric construction. This is cognitive meaning.
I also learned the meaning of the hexagram from the perspective of Indian religions.
“Om” and “Hrim”
According to Wikipedia, “Six-pointed stars have also been found in cosmological diagrams in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. The reasons behind this symbol’s common appearance in Indic religions and the West are unknown. One possibility is that they have a common origin. The other possibility is that artists and religious people from several cultures independently created the hexagram shape, which is a relatively simple geometric design.”
I also learned the difference between the downward triangle and the upward triangle from Wikipedia.
“Within Indic lore, the shape is generally understood to consist of two triangles — one pointed up and the other down — locked in harmonious embrace. The two components are called “Om” and the “Hrim” in Sanskrit, and symbolize man’s position between earth and sky. The downward triangle symbolizes Shakti, the sacred embodiment of femininity, and the upward triangle symbolizes Shiva, or Agni Tattva, representing the focused aspects of masculinity. The mystical union of the two triangles represents Creation, occurring through the divine union of male and female. The two locked triangles are also known as ‘Shanmukha’ — the six-faced, representing the six faces of Shiva & Shakti’s progeny Kartikeya. This symbol is also a part of several yantras and has deep significance in Hindu ritual worship and history.”
The above sense-making journey inspired me to reflect on my recent work: the X-for-Y diagram.
The X-for-Y diagram
On August 15, 2021, I published an article titled D as Diagramming: The Organization-for-Opportunity Framework and introduced the X-for-Y diagram. The name X-for-Y is inspired by the Platform-for-Development framework and the Organization-for-Opportunity framework.
The above picture represents a process of diagram blending. The X-for-Y diagram is formed by two triangles. However, I didn’t consider the meanings of male triangle and female triangle. I just use X and Y to name them.
After learning the cultural meanings from Wikipedia, I moved from diagramming to sign making. Finally, I designed a new diagram-sign picture as a by-product of the case study.
The Duality of Human Experience
I designed the picture below to describe four types of “Self — Other” relationship.
There are four types of visual structure in the above picture: Contain, Separate, Combine, and Group. Each type of structure refers to a particular type of meaning.
- Contain: Cultivation
- Separate: Confliction
- Combine: Wholeness
- Group: Interdependence
The idea behind the picture was inspired by the American developmental psychologist Robert Kegan’s writing on the duality of human experience.
These two orientations I take to be expressive of what I consider the two greatest yearnings in human experience. We see the expression of these longings everywhere, in ourselves and in those we know, in small children and in mature adults, in cultures East and West, modern and traditional.
Of the multitude of hopes and yearnings we experience, these two seem to subsume the others. One of these might be called the yearnings to be included, to be a part of, close to, joined with, to be held, admitted, accompanied.
The other might be called the yearning to be independent or autonomous, to experience one’s distinctness, the self-chosenness of one’s directions, one’s individual integrity.
David Bakan called this “the duality of human experience,” the yearnings for “communion” and “agency” (1966). Certainly in my experience as a therapist — a context in which old-fashioned words such as “yearn” and “plea” and “long for” and “mourn” have great meaning — it seems to me that I am often listening to one or the other of these yearnings; or to the fear of losing a most precious sense of being included or feeling independent; or to their fearful flip slides — the fear of being completely unseparate, of being swallowed up and taken over; and the fear of being totally separate, of being utterly alone, abandoned, and remote beyond recall. (The Evolving Self, 1983, p.107)
I added the new picture to the case study report and sent the report to the curator and others.
After about one week, I wondered if the X-for-Y diagram is an established culture sign. So I searched it and found Barbara G. Walker’s idea.
Barbara G. Walker reviews the history of Hexagram and connects it to I Ching, “…Cabalists claimed that all the world’s evil arose from God’s separation from this female principle and the purpose of a true sage was to put God and his empowering female spirit back together. The usual route toward this end was sex magic, also designed according to the Tantric model. Such ideas were shown in graphic shorthand by the double-triadic hexagram — the original source of the three solid (male) and three broken (female) lines. The six lines of the I Ching’s components represented a hexagram taken apart, in a special analytic way, according to one of the world’s oldest symbolic representations of the cosmic Goddess and her methods of creation.” (1986, p.16)
You can find the full description here.
Wow, I just almost reinvented a wheel!
Though the two stories have the same diagrams, they are telling different stories. My version is about the Self — Other relationship, I don’t directly discuss the Male — Female relationship. Her version considers Star of David as the final status. However, I consider X-for-Y (Group/interdependence) as the final status.
The Power of Cultural Significance
As mentioned above, Wikipedia points out that “…The other possibility is that artists and religious people from several cultures independently created the hexagram shape, which is a relatively simple geometric design.”
The above discussion presents a process of learning cultural significance and its impact to diagram design.
- Phase 1: designing the X-for-Y diagram. I didn’t know the cultural meanings of the double-triadic hexagram.
- Phase 2: writing the case study report. I learned the cultural meanings of the Star of David.
- Phase 3: designing the “Self-Other” picture. I didn’t know about Barbara G. Walker’s creation.
- Phase 4: Reviewing the X-for-Y diagram and the “Self-Other” picture. I learned new meanings from Barbara G. Walker’s writings.
Each time, my design is guided by my tacit knowledge. Once I learned some new meanings from the cultural environment, I changed my mind of designing diagrams due to the change of my tacit knowledge.
Now, I know the cultural meanings of the Male triangle and the Female triangle. Can I see the X-for-Y diagram without considering the Male triangle and Female triangle? Since it is just a simple geometric design, I could keep my original mind.
I have mentioned three phases and three functions of diagramming for academic knowledge building in a previous article D as Diagramming: Knowledge Building and Academic Creativity.
- Phase 1: Curating for Understanding
- Phase 2: Creating for Sense-making
- Phase 3: Improving for Communicating
At different phases, creators act with diagrams for different purposes. Though the above diagram is about academic creativity, the model can be applied to non-academic activities such as online workshops and personal reflections.
Creators could adopt metaphors and cultural signs for sense-making and design a diagram or knowledge framework for their purpose. Creators also can only use the geometric approach to design visual areas and match these visual areas with their conceptual spaces.
For communicating, it faces the challenge of considering tacit knowledge of audiences from diverse cultural backgrounds. The best case is that the diagram has some elements which are familiar by target audiences. The worst case is that the diagram brings an unexpected negative consequences for a particular group of audiences.
Should I consider Barbara G. Walker’s writings as an established cultural significance? or I can ignore her writings since it is just her personal interpretation.
This relationship between pure Cognitive Representation and Cultural Significance is an important issue of the integrated framework of Diagramming as Practice. Let’s continue the discussion in the next post.
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