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of it (which I feel legitimately able to use). “Meaning” is not addressed through a comprehensive

immediacy or claim that I can intimately know my participants life experiences, but by the

inevitable use of a set of propositions available to interpret my observations.

Maintaining a distance necessarily involves the use of an interpretive language, and this

interpretive language consists of a set of general propositions not directly supplied by the field.

In the background of any interpretation of field research lies a dual operation of comparison: a

comparison between broad social situations within which the more specific social situation being

studied is characterized and identified; these relatively broad social situations themselves invoke

comparisons between the various known social behaviors, in both their similarities and

dissimilarities. These background comparisons produce a tacit theoretical knowledge that is

brought to bear in the interpretation of the field research presented. (Demeulenaere 2011)

In this chapter, the dimensions that comprise the explanatory matrix are further

conceptualized through the development of theoretical propositions. Theoretical propositions

represent high-level conceptualizations that emerged in the process of analyzing the initial raw

data derived from 17 completed interviews (10 participants and 7 facilitators).

Each interview volunteer provided insight into their thoughts, feelings, and tensions and

“the complexity of social life” (Bowers & Schatzman, 2009, p. 103) as experienced through the

Albany Community Conversations series. I studied this event and correlated it in contrast to the

literature on civic engagement and deliberate dialogue coming up with a means to report on the

group interactions and themed discussions as related through the Metasphere experience of

attending the event and sharing personal stories based on personal encounters and perspectives on

the topics of implicit bias, race and racism. A saturation point was reached after the first 12

interviews, however theoretical sampling, indicated a need to seek out additional perspectives.

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