ABSTRACT
John Shotter has devoted himself to unfolding a way of understanding the social world that centres human connection – not human cognition. In this chapter I try to show the common thread that runs through Shotter’s oeuvre. His notions of joint action, withness-thinking, dialogic practice, and spontaneous responsiveness weave together, bringing embodied action centre-stage in our ways of knowing. More than ephemeral ‘intuition’, John is able to show us how our embodied relations to ourselves, each other and our environment are filled with ‘arresting moments’ that, if attended to, offer us new ways of looking at social interaction and certainly new ways of engaging. John’s ideas seem to spring from visceral and common experiences – aspects of life with which all can resonate and have the potential to transform some of our most entrenched and isolating cultural practices.
