Mary Catherine Bateson: Compositions in Living Cybernetics

In bringing cybernetic insights to her work as a cultural anthropologist, Mary Catherine Bateson inspired new ways of thinking about contemporary global challenges. This collection of essays from authors representing a range of disciplines from anthropology to design to creativity and spirituality, as well as transdisciplinary perspectives that are at the heart of cybernetics, honours Mary Catherine’s life and work. Just as Mary Catherine found resonance in the metaphor of composing as a creative process that unfolds over time in response to ever-changing contingencies, these essays bring forth and build upon the many themes from her work, such as interdependence, reflexivity, continuity/discontinuity, and cybernetics as a living process, recombining them in new ways to offer novel insights.