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Researching Society and Culture Revising Term 2

Researching Society and Culture Revising Term 2. Researching Society and Culture 13 th May 2014 Hannah Jones. This term : How can we research… Week 1: Riots, disorder, conflict Week 2: Researching migration, migrants and transnationalism Week 3: Studying ‘communities’

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Researching Society and Culture Revising Term 2

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  1. Researching Society and Culture Revising Term 2 Researching Society and Culture 13th May 2014 Hannah Jones

  2. This term: How can we research… Week 1: Riots, disorder, conflict Week 2: Researching migration, migrants and transnationalism Week 3: Studying ‘communities’ Week 4: Disability Week 5: Literature reviews Week 6: Reading week Week 7: Researching class Week 8: Urban poverty Week 9: Working lives and globalization Week 10: Slums and the informal economy

  3. The context of research The range of methods The reasons to choose one method or another.

  4. What is the RESEARCH QUESTION? WHO is asking? HOW did they do the research? … and WHY?

  5. What are riots? or Defining the research field

  6. Operationalisation What do you (the researcher) mean by ‘riot’? You could use: • Legal definitions • Dictionary definitions • Existing research studies • Empirical description

  7. DEDUCTIVE approach: Starting from a definition and setting out to find instances of this to study; Starting from a hypothesis which you wish to test INDUCTIVE approach Starting from ‘the field’, developing theories and concepts to test based on what you find

  8. http://www.theguardian.com/uk/series/reading-the-riots

  9. What is the RESEARCH QUESTION? WHO is asking? HOW did they do the research? … and WHY?

  10. The difference between: Description and Explanation

  11. The difference between: What happened and Why it happened

  12. Also remember there is a difference between: What happened and How it was represented … and both might be interesting research

  13. Also remember there is a difference between: ‘The riots’ (the nature of violent conflict) and ‘The riots’ in public knowledge (the cultural representation of that conflict) … and both might be interesting research

  14. Defining the research field: MIGRATION • Migration flows (how many people are moving, and who) • Migrant population (who lives where) • Who counts as a migrant? • Different statuses of migrants • Experiences of migrants • Effects of migration • Why do people migrate? • Migration policy • Attitudes to migrants • Comparison over time, or between places • Follow the money?

  15. Changing perspectives create new research questions “The shift towards a study of ‘transnational communities’ … was more a consequence of an epistemic move away from methodological nationalism than of the appearance of new objects of observation” Wimmer, A and Glick Schiller, N (2002) “Methodological nationalism and beyond: nation-state building, migration and the social sciences”, Global Networks, 2(4) 301-334.

  16. Why is this relevant tosocial research more broadly? Epistemology: How we look at the world (rather than changes in the social world itself) can throw up new research questions (and answers) Unit of analysis: Is the number of people entering/leaving a country the unit of interest – or (for example) the experiences and effects of people living in places other than where they were born?

  17. Source: Vargas-Silva, C (2013) The Fiscal Impact of Immigration in the UK, Oxford: Migration Observatory. http://www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/sites/files/migobs/briefing%20-%20the%20fiscal%20impacy%20of%20immigration%20in%20the%20uk_0.pdf

  18. From Bell, B and Machin, S (2013) Briefing: Immigration and Crime: Evidence for the UK and Other Countries, Oxford: Migration Observatory.

  19. Social and cultural effects? Images Texts Archives Ethnography Interviews

  20. Experiences of migrants The super-rich (e.g. work by Beaverstock, Hubbard and Short) Lifestyle migrants (e.g. work by Michaela Benson) Domestic workers (e.g. work by Bridget Anderson) Irregular migrants (e.g. work by Nando Sigona and Vanessa Hughes) Refugees (e.g. Birmingham Churches Together)

  21. Ethics • Participants • Researcher • Public

  22. What are community studies? Two things community studies don’t necessarily have in common: • Object of study • What’s a community? • Method of study • How do you study community?

  23. Community • Neighbourhood/geographical area • Social connections • (Local?) identity • …?

  24. How can you study communities?

  25. How can you study communities? www.placesforall.co.uk http://lsecities.net/objects/research-projects/ordinary-streets

  26. Wilmott and Young • Bethnal Green and Greenfield, 1957 • Families and streets • Interviews, ethnographies, statistics • Early development of social science methodology

  27. Mumford and Power • ‘East-Docks’ and ‘West-City’ in East London, 2003 • Family, public space and race relations • Interviews, meetings, walks and ethnographic notes • Anonymised places

  28. Reading community studies for the methods • What assumptions? (Who is the researcher? Who is being studied?) • What kind of knowledge is being produced? (Is it presented as ‘true’, ‘objective’? Who is it for? Who will use it?) • How is data collected – and how is it analysed? • What practicalities are there that affect the studies? (Keeping in contact with participants, changing names…)

  29. Community studies might also be thought of as ‘locality’ studies • Often mixed methods from a range of sources, including institutional statistics and individual voices of community members • Aim to tell us something specific, and something general • Definitions of community contested and always changing – possibilities for new forms of community studies (and new research methods)

  30. Disability and Participative Research • Ways of thinking about disability • Medical model • Social model • Relational model • The politics of research practice: from research subjects to research participants • How different methods of understanding disability lead to different research designs

  31. Perspectives on Disability • Medical model • Bureaucratic category • Social model

  32. The Social Model of Disability • Impairment • Disabled by society • Barriers • Disablement

  33. Post-structuralist critique of the Social Model of Disability 1) Totalising: suggests all experiences of ‘disability’ work the same, for everyone in all times, places and contexts 2) Distinction between impairment (biological) and disability (social) not so clear-cut

  34. Politics and Research IntersectionalityActivist research Empowerment Policy research Personal and political Theory-based Social change

  35. Participatory Action Research (a) a collective commitment to investigate an issue or problem (b) a desire to engage in self- and collective reflection to gain clarity about the issue under investigation (c) a joint decision to engage in individual and/or collective action that leads to a useful solution that benefits the people involved, and (d) the building of alliances between researchers and participants in the planning, implementation, and dissemination of the research process. MacIntyre, A (2008) Participatory Action Research, London: Sage. P1.

  36. An approach – not a method Participatory action research could use many methods of data collection and data analysis The point is that the whole process – research design, data collection, analysis and dissemination – involves the research ‘subjects’ as active participants and decision makers

  37. Disability studies show us how different ways of looking at the world produce different research problems – with both methodological and political consequences • Participatory research is one popular approach in disability studies, which means using social research methods differently • There are both possibilities and limitations to participatory action research

  38. Researching Class • What is class? • Sociological concept with different theories: • Karl Marx: class antagonism between capitalist bourgeoisie and working class proletariat; • Max Weber: stratification theory, based on class, status, and group power; • Pierre Bourdieu: class is cultural as well as economic; • Contemporary theorists concerned with social stratification, inequality, class identity, class and gender, class and race, social mobility, and the relevance of the concept of ‘class’, et al. • To study class we need to ‘operationalize’ it, to define it as a concept and how to study it (quantitatively or qualitatively), for example in terms of class consciousness, hierarchies of occupation, or class identity

  39. Class identity Debates about the meaning of class range between different positions: • class is relatively precise, contained, and measurable, related primarily to economic position (Goldthorpe 1996, Marshall 1988); • class is expanded, fragmented, contradictory, contested, and subjective, but still a very relevant social identity (Savage 2000; Skeggs 1997; Crompton 1998); or • class is no longer important in relation to other identities and issues, and indeed, we are witnessing ‘the end’ or the ‘death’ of social class (cf. Pakulski and Waters 1997; Clark and Lipset 1993).

  40. GBCS: Take the test! • http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22000973

  41. Great British Class Survey (GBCS) 2013 • http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22000973 • Examines whether class still matters in 21st century Britain • Criticizes tradition link between occupation and class (exemplified by Goldthorpe and Marshall) • Includes three dimensions: economic, social and cultural (drawing on Bourdieu’s analysis of different forms of capital) • Develops a 7-class categorisation: elite, established middle class, technical middle class, new affluent workers, emergent service workers, traditional working class, precariat • Several criticisms: too simplistic/reductive to the seven categories; not rigorous enough in methods; too sensationalistic in the media headlines

  42. New York Times ‘Class Matters’ Survey 2005 • http://www.nytimes.com/national/class/ • Class is defined as a combination of income, education, wealth and occupation – a fairly traditional, structural definition, BUT: • Addresses new trends (the ‘relo’ and ‘hyper-rich’ classes), other social identities and issues (health, immigration), and cultural dimensions (new status markers and representations of class in popular culture. • Situates study in relation to the American ‘myth’ of equality, mobility, and opportunity. • Research led by reporters/media rather than academics but draws on some academic research and US census studies

  43. The Hidden Injuries of Class(Sennett and Cobb 1977) 1/2 • Qualitative collaborative research study based on 150 in-depth interviews and ‘urban anthropological’ participant observation in communities, schools, local clubs, and bars • Focus: class identity and consciousness of working-class men in Boston in the context of post-industrial change (from manufacturing-based to service-based economy) • Narrative approach: analysis focuses on in-depth cases (eg. Frank Rissarro and James) to illustrate arguments in detail

  44. The Hidden Injuries of Class(Sennett and Cobb 1977) 2/2 • Findings • ‘Hidden injuries of class’: social psychological feelings of lack of authenticity, respectability, ambivalent or fulfilment among working-class people who have become socially mobile outside of traditional working-class jobs • Reflexivity and ethics: • reflexive about researchers’ position as part of the ‘educated’ and ‘cultured’ elite • challenges of trust and rapport • took certain ‘liberties beyond those necessary to protect anonymity’, such as condensing remarks of two speakers into one, and rephrasing some words of interviewees (p. 42)

  45. Formations of Class and Gender (Skeggs 1997) • Qualitative study based on 12-year ethnography of 83 working-class women in northwest England • Feminist perspective draws on Bourdieu’s idea of cultural taste; focuses on subjective experiences of working class women • Class was central to women’s lives and experiences, and visible through their constant efforts to evade class. • Never having the right sort of body, the right sort of voice, the right sort of taste… • Class is not experienced through occupation in the same way as with men • Importance of ‘respectability’ as a theme

  46. Chicago School of Sociology (tradition of urban ethnography) • Late nineteenth century- mid-twentieth century: Robert Park, Ernest Burgess, Louis Wirth • Focus on everyday interactions in specific locations • Urban ethnographic approach to sociology • Seeking out “natural areas” of the city (e.g. Jewish ghetto, dance halls etc.)

  47. The Chicago School: aims and methods Sociologists learning to take the role of others Aim: ‘objective’ science of society • Triangulation of methods (qualitative and quantitative) • Lived in the setting • Worked for local employers / agencies • Walked the streets Methodologically problematic • Usually white, male, middle class perspective • Affects focus of studies – primarily on men • Presumes a neutral observer; lacks reflexive engagement

  48. The Chicago School: urban ecology approach Urban ecology: concentric circles of growth around the urban (poor) core, modelled on organic systems, increasingly white, stable, and affluent towards outer rings

  49. Research example: W. F. Whyte’s Street Corner Society (1943) • Pioneering urban ethnography (influenced later works by Anderson and Venkatesh) • Whyte was educated in Chicago but departed from Chicago School traditions through his in-depth ethnographic focus • Italian-American slum district of Boston ‘Cornerville’ • Participant observation over three and a half years of street gangs and ‘corner boys’ • Focused on local gangs and their organization, showed that a poor community need not be socially disorganized

  50. Urban poverty debates: pathologies of neighbourhood • Increasing interest in understanding urban poverty as a social and spatial problem in cities, linked to race and class • Pathologies of neighbourhood, human ecology, functionalist perspective (Chicago School and urban ethnographers): certain urban areas are prone to crime, social fragmentation and disorder • Reductive links between social factors and spatial ‘containers’: ‘ecological fallacy’ which typifies urban areas in terms of their worst features • Strength and weakness of urban ecological approaches: focus on complex of elements in organizing urban spaces and shaping urban processes, yet difficult to pinpoint ‘causal’ factors

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