Nora Bateson is an independent film-maker, writer, policy adviser and lecturer. She is the daughter of Gregory Bateson,  and grand-daughter of William Bateson and is president of the Stockholm-based  International Bateson Institute (IBI) -  a research group that specializes in transcontextual research into human and other living systems.Nora made the award-winning film An Ecology of Mind, which explores Gregory Bateson's theoretical work while offering insights into her relationship with her father. Nora's first published work was a cookbook and her interest in food, ecology and the family - as well as systems thinking and symmathesy - are very evident in her beautiful 2016 book Small Arcs of Larger Circles.Nora's theoretical style combines complex systems theory and analysis with an all-round awareness of, and attention to, the aesthetic. She continues to explore a wide range of disparate topics such as education, communication, and cybernetics through the lens of Warm Data. This aspect of her work is exemplified in her 2023 book Combining.In 2026 she returned to her roots with Belly: a book with its roots in the family, in the kitchen, in the glorious messy riot of complex systems.

"Nora Bateson playfully and poetically follows in her father's footsteps in search of complex wisdom for our uncertain world."Alfonso Montuori, Professor, California Institute of Integral Studies"In a series of premise-investigations undertaken  by way of essays, conference talks, autobiographical story, quotes and poems,  ranging through linguistics, biology, semantics, cognitive theory, justice awareness  and embrace of paradox, Bateson invites and advocates suppleness of perception, rigor of mind, and depth of  feeling. In this  book that moves above all by its questions, Bateson embodies that rarity, a truly free thinker also fully engaged with the fates of all." Jane Hirshfield, Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets

• ContentsAcknowledgments A Glass of Water Belly of is the Beast Go Home Threads Rules My Spine is Louder Than The Teleprompter Matrix Mattering Digesting The Grid Embodiment Chewing ... Do Not Eat The Compost How Clean Is Your Kitchen? Chewing ... Orders The Belly Holds The World Sensitizing Chewing ... Transform Before Times Forming Chewing ... Not All Onion Skins Grow Up To Be Conversations Waxing and Waning Morale Give Everything To Life Campfire Potato Chewing ... Not The Change You Are Looking For Covering For Each Other Chewing ... Before The Change Stories From Questions Rooster Infinitizing Chewing ... Paradox of Agency Unseen How Much? Gastronomical Conversations Chewing ... This Is Not A Pipe Giving What Was Taken Rain All The Life Forms Meatballs by Stepmother Lawnmower World Invisible Ingredients Labyrinth Chewing ... Orders of Actions A Lemon Extemporaneous Du Jour Chewing ... Trust The Eighth Deadly Sin Communication Is Sacred Walls The Backwards Wish Grief Eating The Rot Chewing ... Appetites and Desires Among-ing Flags Trail Angels Ecology Of Change Earned Innocence References Art Credits About The Author