Bourdieu conference and workshop: From Jenny Thatcher
A Successful Bourdieu’s Key Concepts: Postgraduate/ Early Career Conference and Workshop
The University of East London in conjunction with Queen’s University Belfast and University of Bristol recently sponsored a two day Postgraduate/ Early Career event that focused on the application of Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical concepts to empirical research in the field of sociology and anthropology, with a substantive focus on the concepts outlined in Michael Grenfell’s (2008) edited book: Pierre Bourdieu: Key Concepts. The conference was hosted at the University of Bristol on Wednesday 28th - Thursday 29th September 2011
The two day event was centred on the presentations of five renowned academics who apply the theoretical concepts of Bourdieu to their work. The academics included: Prof. Michael Grenfell (Trinity College, Dublin), Prof. Diane Reay (University of Cambridge), Dr. Will Atkinson (University of Bristol), Prof. Derek Robbins (University of East London) and Prof. David James (University of the West of England). The four latter academics also conducted workshops over the two days with an average of eight participants in each. The participants were placed into four groups giving each group a chance to have a tutorial style workshop with all four academics at various points during the two days. This gave the participants an excellent opportunity to discuss their research as well as seek advice on their own research and gain valuable feedback from some of the country’s leading academics with international reputation specialising in Pierre Bourdieu.
At the end of the first day the academic and participants attended an organised dinner, providing the opportunity for the postgraduate students/early career researchers to develop their network contacts with other researchers using Bourdieu in a relaxed and friendly environment.
The two day event was a great success and was an enjoyable and beneficial experience for all those that attended. Although we had initially only advertised for applications from UK, we had postgraduates and early career researchers applying from all over the world. Therefore, we opened it up to an international audience and had attendees travelling from as far as America and Brazil. This event highlighted the increasing popularity of the application of Bourdieu’s concepts to current research internationally. We were inundated with applications and unfortunately had to turn many people away. The number of people applying to attend confirmed the need for more events centred on Bourdieu particularly for postgraduates and early career researchers. Some feedback from the conference included:
‘The conference was stimulating and has helped me to refocus on the theoretical concepts which inform my PhD. The key speakers were excellent and it was highly unusual to be able to have workshops with people who are so eminent in their field…excellent! I will be able to use the discussions that I had in my teaching as well as in my research.’
Tamsin Bowers-Brown, PhD student and lecturer, Sheffield Hallam University.
Prof Derek Robbins hosting a small workshop
The Bourdieu workshop was a great reminder of how much we can still develop his theories for contemporary use. It was an extremely valuable experience and has provoked deep thinking amongst everyone who participated. I would love to see this grow into an annual event.’
Billy Wong, PhD student, Kings College London.
Audience waiting for a keynote speech
‘For young researchers, it was a great possibility to hear from more seasoned researchers, some of their practical and theoretical experiences and understandings of working with Bourdieu’s ideas. The nature of the workshops also allowed individuals to ask about their own work and how it could be strengthened through more expert understandings of Bourdieu. It was therefore an excellent example of intellectual field communications.’
Adam Sales, PhD student and early career researcher, University of Bristol.
Prof Mike Grenfell’s keynote speech
‘I’d like to say thank you very much for the Bourdieu conference/workshop. I could not have had a better experience, the organisers were so helpful, organisers had put on a fantastic conference. I’m so impressed with the academics you had at the conference as they are the top people in our field. They were exactly as I thought they would be, i.e supremely knowledgeable and experts at what they do. They were also so friendly and approachable. The venue was fantastic! The conference has helped me immeasurably: I have a clearer understanding of Bourdieu’s Key Concepts, I feel I am part of a community and I have gotten a little more confidence. Thank you and well done! I’d be happy to attend a conference like this again. Thank you to all the funders’
Teresa Crew, PhD student, Bangor University
Following on from this event and because of the large demand from PhDs students, the organisers: Nicola Ingram (University of Bristol), Ciaran Burke (Queen’s University Belfast) and Jenny Thatcher (University of East London) established a British Sociological Association (BSA) Bourdieu study group http://www.britsoc.co.uk/specialisms/Bourdieu.htm. The aims of the Bourdieu Study Group are:
- To encourage and support the discussion and application of Bourdieuian social theory within sociological research.
- To bring together researchers interested in a range of substantive areas to generate and consolidate theoretical knowledge.
- To facilitate networking and discussion through organised activities.
- To support postgraduate students who are engaging with Bourdieu.
As the convenors of the study group, we would like to arrange meetings/activities twice a year and hopefully have an annual Bourdieu conference.
The Bourdieu Key concept’s Team would also like to thank the University of East London, Queen’s University Belfast and University of Bristol for sponsoring Bourdieu’s Key Concepts: A Postgraduate/ Early Career Conference and Workshop
‘Media and the Inner World’: From Candida Yates
What is the Media and Inner World Network?
Media and the Inner World (MIW) is a research network run jointly by Dr. Candida Yates (Psychosocial Studies, UEL) and Dr. Caroline Bainbridge (Cultural and Media Studies, Roehampton University). It was funded between 2009-11 by the AHRC and the directors have applied for ‘Follow-on funding’ in order to extend the life of the network. MiW brings together academics, psychoanalysts and media practitioners with the aim of exploring themes of emotion and therapy in popular culture. The network reaches outside the realm of the University in order to provide public spaces of exchange and discussion. Its’ virtual community provides a wiki forum for further debate: (www.miwnet.org).
The network was launched in March 2009 with a symposium at Roehampton University, which included speakers from the spheres of academia, psychotherapy and media (Prof. Valerie Walkerdine, Prof. Robert Young, Prof. Michael Rustin, Margaret Walters, David Aaronovitch and Brett Kahr). Since then we have organised a number of events, in the form of round table events for public debate, bringing together familiar names to discuss a wide range of topics ranging from ‘The Reparative Work of Radio’ and ‘Paranoia and Television’ to ‘Taste and Hunger in the Media’ and ‘Advertising, Disappointment and Desire’.
The network also held a major international conference on the theme of ‘Psychoanalysis and Television’ in partnership with The Freud Museum in October 2010. The conference included academic speakers (Candida Yates and Caroline Bainbridge); psychotherapists (Carol Leader, Brett Kahr and Valerie Sinason); television producers and filmmakers from Blink Films and Love Films and Channel 4, journalist and broadcaster Tom Sutcliff and award winning TV comedy writer Laurence Marks.
In February 2011, the MiW Network held an international symposium at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust on the theme of ‘Psychoanalysis and Popular Culture’. The symposium attracted a packed audience with speakers from the spheres of psychotherapy, academia and the media including ex England cricket captain and president of the institute of Psychoanalysis Michael Brearley; group analysts Jon Adlam and Chris Scanlon; journalists and broadcaster Suzanne Moore and Krishnan Guru-Murphy; academics Jeremy Gilbert, Prof. Michael Rustin and Prof. John Storey.
A Psycho-Cultural Approach to Media and the Inner World
A central aim of the network has been to develop a ‘psychocultural’ approach to the study of media, culture and the unconscious that combines theories and methods from psychoanalytic studies with those from media and cultural studies. The application of psychoanalysis to culture can be traced back to Freud himself. In cultural and media studies, the work of Freud and Lacan often informs the critical analysis of culture and identity. There has been a concentration in such work on matters related to representation and subjectivity. By contrast, in the sociological context, psychoanalysis is used to illuminate the relationship between politics and society. Some of this work draws on a specifically British frame of psychoanalytic theory embodied in the ‘object relations’ work of Melanie Klein and Donald Winnicott amongst others. This network takes as its starting point the idea that academic approaches to popular culture can benefit from a return to psychoanalysis because of the increasingly important role of the media in shaping a sense of identity and culture. The relationship between the media in the inner world is central here.
With a few exceptions, most applications of psychoanalysis to culture tend to dwell on ‘high’ cultural forms: novels, art, theatre etc; popular culture tends to be ignored. ‘Media and the Inner World’ aims to develop a new psycho-cultural method to analyse current media trends and popular cultural texts, examining the fantasies that circulate through media forms and the relationship of audiences to them. It pays attention to the fears, anxieties, pleasures and desires at play in contemporary media contexts. Against a backdrop of ‘therapeutic culture’ and concerns about emotional governance and regulation, the Western media increasingly utilise psychological discourses and images of both emotional suffering and development, manifesting a deeper cultural desire for therapeutic understanding. Such images include scenes of emotional breakdown in reality TV; the depiction of psychotherapy as a tool of the self in TV dramas and chat shows; themes of emotional and psychological development in fly-on-the-wall documentaries and radio phone-ins. The implications of such representations for audiences need discussion, as do the fantasies and cultural responses they are likely to evoke.
Despite the prevalence of emotion in today’s media, psychoanalysis has fallen out of fashion in academic media studies and charges of universalism abound. Yet paying attention to the cultural and historical specificities of media, it is possible to apply psychoanalytic ideas in a way that takes account of the psychological complexities of contemporary cultural experience. A key focus of the MiW psycho-cultural project is to put the case for psychoanalysis in helping to understand the often-irrational emotions, anxieties and desires of everyday life. To this end, it adopts a nuanced approach to academic criticism, establishing the importance of dialogue with clinicians and media practitioners.
A number of publications will emerge from the work of the network, including a MiW Special Edition of the online journal Free Associations: Psychoanalysis and Culture, Media, Groups, Politics in August 2011.
There will also be a Media and Inner World book series with the international publishers Karnac Books. If any readers would like to submit proposals for inclusion in that book series, please contact Candida Yates, c.yates@uel.ac.uk
For further details of the network and its activities, please contact
Dr. Candida Yates: c.yates@uel.ac.uk
August, 2011.
The Campaign for a Living Wage at UEL: Migrant Workers and Political Opportunities
What opportunities exist for low paid workers in the cleaning industry, drawn largely from migrant communities, to improve their pay and working conditions? On the face of it, the current circumstances appear unfavourable. Following the financial crisis of 2008 the UK economy is currently experiencing low growth. This creates pressure on the incomes of poorer families and puts particular pressure on the wages of low paid, non-unionised contract workers. There is also little sign in the reversal of the trend towards outsourcing. Both public and private organisations continue to seek savings through outsourcing services like catering, cleaning and security.
Despite this unpromising environment there has been a number of high-profile and successful campaigns to achieve a living wage for contract staff in the last decade. These campaigns have been led by community organising groups such as London Citizens and Trade Unions (T&G, Unite and Unison). The campaigns achieved their first notable successes with Homerton and St Clements (Mile End) Hospitals in June 2003. This was followed by striking successes in Canary Wharf and the City of London when Barclays Bank, HSBC, Deutsche, Lehmann Brothers, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, KPMG, RBS, PWC all agreed to pay a living wage to their externally contracted staff, between January 2004 and September 2005. This was followed by campaigns in the HE sector with first Queen Mary, then the LSE, SOAS, Birkbeck and UCL agreeing to pay a living wage. UEL became the first post-92 university to agree to pay the living wage in November 2010 after a six month campaign led by TELCO and Unison. This was finally implemented in August 2011 with cleaning staff receiving £8.30 per hour and achieving union recognition.
Our primary concern in this research project is to gauge what social and political capital organisers were able to ‘tap into’ during the campaign. Those involved in the campaign were struck by how easy it was to ‘organise’ contract staff, to turn up to meetings, to attend actions and speak to the media. Doubtless this could be explained to some extent by their interest in increasing their pay and improving their working conditions. It also suggested that organisers were able to draw upon existing resources, possibly specific to close-knit migrant groups.
This project examines these hunches. Through questionnaires and interviews with those who were centrally involved in the campaign we explore the social and political capital of the migrant workforce at UEL. Participants are asked about their experience of migration and the membership of community groups or associations like churches and community associations. They are also asked about their experience of involvement in the campaign.
The purpose of the project is to understand the success of the campaign at UEL with a view to informing future campaigns. Insofar as the project constitutes a piece of action-research we are working closely with London Citizens and the Hidden Workforce Unit at Unison. Those involved in the research project Dr Ana Lopes, Dr Tim Hall and Dr Erika Cudworth were all involved in the campaign and have close links with the cleaning staff. Carlos Velez a student at the school of Health and Biosciences is also working on the project as a student intern.
A number of outputs are envisaged: an article on the Living Wage Campaign at UEL by Ana Lopes and Tim Hall and an article on the significance of living wage campaigns in the contemporary landscape of political activism by Tim Hall and Erika Cudworth.
Talking about surveillance
Project researchers
Darren Ellis (School of Law & Social sciences): d.ellis@uel.ac.uk
David Harper (School of Psychology): d.harper@uel.ac.uk
Ian Tucker (School of Psychology): i.tucker@uel.ac.uk
Overview
The first stage of this project consisted of a small qualitative pilot study. Two research assistants (Dr Hugh Ortega-Breton and Dr Chrysanthi Nigianni) interviewed 31 adults in London and the South East of the UK in the Spring of 2010 and then transcribed the interviews. Over the last year the project researchers have been analysing the data and presenting elements of the study. A book chapter and a journal article are currently under review and two other articles are in preparation.
Outputs so far
Harper, D. (2011). Paranoia and public responses to cyber-surveillance. Paper presented at Cyber-Surveillance in Everyday Life: An International Workshop, 12-15 May 2011, University of Toronto.
Ellis, D., Harper, D., Tucker, I. (2010). The organisation of life: Everyday experiences of surveillance and dataveillance technologies. Paper presented Political Economy of Surveillance workshop, Hilton hotel, Milton Keynes, 9-11 September.
Methodology
We designed an interview format that consisted of a semi-structured interview schedule (see below). Later in the interview participants are asked to read a short information sheet on surveillance and dataveillance (also below). They are then asked about their responses to this material. We’re happy for other researchers to use this format provided acknowledgement is given. We’d be interested in hearing the results of such studies. The format was designed in a methodologically open manner and it can be analysed using qualitative analytic methods (e.g. discourse analysis, thematic analysis etc.) or hybrid quantitative/qualitative methods (e.g. content analysis).
As well as the UEL study, this format has also been used by Arsalan Butt, PhD student & Professor Richard Smith (School of Communication, Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology, Simon Fraser University):
Arsalan Butt homepage: http://sfu.academia.edu/ArsalanButt
Richard Smith homepage: http://www.sfu.ca/~smith/
Work-in-progress presented by Butt and Smith at Cyber-Surveillance in Everyday Life workshop at the University of Toronto, May 2011: “I might not scratch my ass if I think there might be a camera taping it”: Public Perception of Surveillance Technologies in Everyday Life:
http://www.digitallymediatedsurveillance.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Butt-I-might-not-scratch.pdf
Semi-structured interview schedule
Opening questions
• What systems of surveillance (e.g. CCTV) and personal data storage (e.g. DVLA) are they aware of?
• Kinds of information they are aware of and who has access it
• Thoughts about the collection and use of data?
• Benefits of data collection (e.g. for crime etc)
• Some people say that Britain has become a “surveillance society”. What do they think this means? Do they agree?
• Any concerns about surveillance and data collection (e.g. data being lost on laptops, disks etc).
• Does level of concern vary according to the type of information or use to which it is put?
• How do they balance the right to privacy against other things like fighting crime or convenience (e.g. when shopping on the internet)?
Impact on daily life
• To what extent, if any, are they aware of surveillance or data collection in everyday life (e.g. CCTV, databases etc).
• If they are aware at various times, what triggers this (e.g. speed cameras, crime programmes on TV etc)
• Does it have an impact on the way they go about their everyday lives?
GIVE INFORMATION SHEET ABOUT PERSONAL DATA TO PARTICIPANT
Effect of information about surveillance and personal data
• Give list of surveillance and personal data held
• Any on the list they were not aware of?
• What information do they think these agencies hold?
• What do they think of the kind and extent of information held?
Information sheet: The use of personal data
Please read this leaflet – it should only take 5-10 minutes
What kind of information is held on you? By whom? What is it used for?
Name and address details: Most organisations you deal with. Details from the electoral register are also sold to businesses by your council unless you have asked to be left out. This is one of the ways they get addresses for ‘junk mail’.
Health information: Your GP and dentist and local health Trusts. Also your health insurer if you have one. The NHS is moving its records onto a computerised system.
Driving licence details: These are held by the DVLA in Swansea. They too sell information (e.g. to wheel clampers). They will also give out your details if someone tells them they have had an accident with a car with your number plate.
Car number plate: Across the country your number plate is read by cameras which are linked to the police. If a car is tagged as of interest by the Police National Computer then it will be stopped by the police. Police note down car number plates at political demonstrations. There have been cases where drivers who have previously attended demonstrations have been stopped by the police as a result of these number plate cameras.
Video: Every day it is likely that your image will be caught on a CCTV camera. These are run by shops and businesses, the council, public transport and some residents. No-one knows how many cameras there are in the country but there are at least 25,000 in London. Nationally the number of council-run CCTV cameras has trebled over the last ten years. London councils have about 7,500 cameras. In addition, Transport for London has over 8,000 cameras on tube trains, another 8,000 cameras at stations, 400 congestion charge cameras and over a thousand traffic enforcement cameras. The London borough of Wandsworth has as many CCTV cameras (1,113) as Dublin City Council, the Police departments of Johannesburg and Boston and the City of Sydney authority combined. Video images are held for different periods of time – longer if they portray a criminal offence. Unless you are of interest to the police it is not likely that they will be linked to you as a named individual. There is a debate about whether CCTV prevents crime or simply moves it to other areas. A 2008 report by the Metropolitan police suggested only 1,000 crimes were solved that year by CCTV. However, supporters say it tends to be used most intensively on serious cases like murder or terrorism.
Your shopping habits: Shops collect information on what you buy from them. If you have a store loyalty card like Tesco Clubcard or Nectar it collects information on what you buy. On the internet, stores like Amazon and Ebay install ‘cookies’ on your computer. Cookies are small programmes that identify who you are and your shopping preferences. They mean you do not need to re-enter your details every time you visit the website.
Your finances: Your bank or building society and tax office stores information about your finances. In addition to this there are businesses called ‘credit reference companies’ like Experian that sell information about your credit history to lenders. Fraudsters try to get hold of credit card and online banking details. In 2009 about £440 million was lost through Credit Card fraud. Another £60 million was lost through fraud of online bank accounts.
Travel details: These will be stored by your airline, travel agent and travel insurer. Airlines will also share information about you with US and European travel authorities. Border and immigration authorities share information with one another.
The police and courts: The national DNA database stores details of all those arrested not just those who are found guilty by a court. Details of five million people are held on it. About 30,000 of these are victims and witnesses who gave their DNA to help identify suspects. In addition, the Police National Computer stores details on people, driving licences and vehicles and has about 97 million records on it. Individual police forces also hold separate intelligence databases.
Other personal information: Generally, any information you enter about yourself on the internet is stored somewhere and is linked to the computer you use by its identification number. If you use websites like Facebook or Myspace then all the information you enter about yourself and the links you have with other people is stored by those companies. Emails are also stored for a period as are any search words you have entered into sites like Google. Mobile phone companies store information about who you call for several months. Also, if you use an Oyster card, information about your travel is stored. The police and a number of other government bodies can request data from all these companies.
Is information shared? Generally, companies cannot share information about you with other companies without your permission. However, government bodies can request such information. These government bodies also share information with each other to try to prevent fraud (e.g. benefit fraud), crime and tax evasion and to investigate offences.
How securely is it kept and what controls are there?
In general, information about you and your family is stored securely. There are a number of legal safeguards like the Data Protection Act. This means you can usually access information held about you and usually correct it if it is wrong. You can also sue for damages in serious cases. You can generally opt out if you do not want your details to be shared with or sold to other organisations. The Information Commission is an independent watchdog which monitors the use of information and the commissioner can recommend cases for prosecution. However, there have been a number of incidents where computer disks and laptops containing information have gone missing or where they have been sold illegally:
• In 2007 two computer discs holding details of 25 million child benefit claimants was lost in the mail. It included name, address, date of birth, National Insurance number and bank details.
• In May 2008 a computer disc containing the medical records of more than 38,000 NHS patients was lost by the courier company.
• In November 2009 the Information Commissioner reported that staff at mobile phone company T-Mobile sold details of thousands of customers to brokers. These brokers then sold the data to other phone firms to use in ‘cold calling’.
• In 2009 there were 60,000 criminal acts of impersonation – so-called ‘identity theft’ where a person tries to pass themselves off as another person using that other person’s details (e.g. name, address etc).
A rights issue
I recently returned to normal duties after an enjoyable and I hope productive period of research leave. The sabbatical was granted in order for me to carryout research into the strategies which have enabled the music business to survive in the first decade of the twenty-first century despite the prevalence of online peer-to-peer file-sharing. Concentrating principally on EMI, which is the most interesting of the ‘major labels’ in this regard for various reasons (as well as being the only UK one), I built up a research database and did some writing. I wrote and proofed a chapter on an EMI music producer, for a book which is theoretically ‘in press’ but which probably won’t be out for another year or so. An article is nearing completion, and I have had discussions with a publisher about a book, which I would hope to deliver in late 2011.
But that’s only part of the story. Just before the sabbatical began I was commissioned to write an article for a forthcoming issue of the Contemporary Music Review, which will be devoted to the relationship between words and music. I began talking to the editor about writing something on heavy metal lyrics, and needless to say by the end of the conversation I had agreed to write about the libretto in contemporary opera! I am particularly interested in the ways in which librettists adapt existing texts. No-one else is, so I had firstly to invent a typology, taking as my starting point various discussions of adaptation from text to film or television. The resulting article will appear early in 2011. I am to give a paper on contemporary operatic adaptations at a conference in the autumn, and I hope to follow it up with at least one more article on the subject.
Researching and writing this article was fun up to a point, and the point was one it might be worth sharing some thoughts about. These days publishers of academic journals demand much of their authors (while giving them little or nothing in return), and the most troubling demands, it seems to me, are that we should obtain copyright permissions and/or otherwise absolve them of any liability in that regard, while they insist on taking copyright of our articles for themselves. Obtaining copyright permission to quote from libretti either took forever, or proved impossible. In the case of one opera by a major American composer with a libretto to her own text by a well-known contemporary novelist, after three months of enquiries I managed to obtain permission to view the work, but –specifically – not to quote directly from it. As a result of this and similar exchanges the content of the article changed markedly from first draft to current version, and as one or two enquiries are still outstanding it may have to be significantly amended again at proof stage.
Have any of you suffered similar inconvenience? If so I’d like to hear from you. There is a vital issue of the definition of ‘fair use’, if we are to investigate and comment on contemporary work, which strikes me as being at least as important as the reform of the libel laws (which finally seems to be on the political agenda). Do get in touch.
Practitioners and academics discuss new cycling research
UEL Public lecture on new cycling research, 27th April 2010
On the 27th April, UEL held a public lecture on new cycling research. This showcased both the EPSRC-funded Understanding Walking and Cycling project and UEL’s own ESRC-funded Cycling Cultures research. It drew around 40 people, mostly from outside UEL, representing a good mix of academics and practitioners including cycle trainers, transport consultants, cycle campaigners, and local authority officers.
Dave Horton and Griet Scheldeman speaking at the public lecture
Understanding Walking and Cycling is a large, mixed-method project involving teams of researchers at several different institutions. Dave Horton and Griet Scheldeman outlined the ethnographic component of the project, which involves studying transport decisions at a household level in Worcester, Leeds, Lancaster, and Leicester. Dave and Griet described how frequently these decisions represent pathways to not-cycling. Studying decisions at the household level allows us to see how transport choices are embedded in household life. This might be particularly important for those with multiple roles and responsibilities – commuting becomes far more complex if two children need to be escorted to two different schools, for example. However, Dave and Griet discussed their worries that focusing on households could obscure a key factor discouraging cycling: the heavy volume of motor traffic on the roads.
Katrina Jungnickel and I talked about the Cycling Cultures project, which by contrast focuses on four areas (Bristol, Cambridge, Hackney, and Hull), with relatively high cycling levels. We want to investigate why this is the case and the contribution of “cycling cultures” in the four areas. We described the background to the project, the methodology, and the current stage the research has reached (I am writing this from a train to Hull!) Using the Census commuting data for comparisons, we can see that cycle commuters have quite different characteristics in the four places; for example, in Hull cycle commuters disproportionately come from car-free households (this may have changed since 2001, of course). Historical data adds perspective, as in 1971 both Bristol and Hackney were relatively low-cycling areas but have since bucked the national trend. How do economic, political and cultural factors combine to produce diverse rates and experiences of cycling in the four places?
UEL Public Lecture participants
There was a lively discussion following both talks and after the lecture in informal discussions. There seems to be a community of interest developing among cycling practitioners and academic researchers – not of course without its tensions and disagreements. I look forward to further events including our upcoming first Cycling Practitioner Forum and a seminar series we will be organising at UEL towards the end of the year. Further details of events as they are planned and the Cycling Cultures project can be found at www.cyclingcultures.org.uk . You can find out more about Understanding Walking and Cycling at http://www.lec.lancs.ac.uk/research/society_and_environment/walking_and_cycling.php . Any comments welcome!
Rachel Aldred
Public perceptions of surveillance and use of personal data (Darren Ellis)
Hi, I’m Darren Ellis, a lecturer in UEL, HSS, Psychosocial Studies. I thought I’d just write a little bit about a cross-school project that I’m doing with some colleagues in the School of Psychology at UEL (Dave Harper and Ian Tucker). Recently (March, 2010) we managed to secure a small amount of funding to recruit two research assistants to help us collect some interview data regarding perceptions of surveillance and the use of personal data. As you may havce noticed, there has been increased public debate in recent years about the social impact of surveillance and the storage of personal information on databases due to the ever increasing technological capability of surveillance and database systems. In 2006 the Information Commissioner commissioned a Report on the ‘Surveillance Society’ followed in 2008 by a select committee inquiry (House of Commons Home Affairs Committee). Last year the Joseph Rowntree Trust published a report on the ‘Database State’ and have gone on to sponsor an ICM poll on privacy rights and even a film on the encroachment of surveillance on privacy (Erasing David) http://erasingdavid.com. These reports have generally focused on technological capabilities and human rights concerns, particularly about privacy. However, somewhat surprisingly, they did not include any empirical investigation of public perceptions of surveillance.
There has also been an ever increasing amount of theorisation about issues concerned with surveillance; beginning with ‘Foucault’s panopticon’ up to more recent Deleuzian theorisations of ‘rhizomatic surveillance assemblages’. Although these theories have been extremely useful in facilitating the development of compelling models of surveillance systems, they tell us very little about how the public generally perceive and experience them. Indeed one of the major gaps in the surveillance literature is a rigorous investigation of the dynamics of public perceptions of surveillance. So, to enable us to explore participants’ perceptions of surveillance in more detail we’re conducting a qualitative study which we hope will help to elucidate dynamic and contextual factors influencing perceptions.
We are interested in any thoughts you may have on this project, so do contact us:
D.Ellis@uel.ac.uk
D.Harper@uel.ac.uk
I.Tucker@uel.ac.uk
What are research participants doing?
I thought I’d use this blog as an opportunity to ask myself what social research participants are doing in social research when they are clearly doing something other than, or as well as, research. Research participants’ involvement in research is a rather obvious example of the co-research to which the blog title refers. Of course there are research approaches – such as participatory action research, or PAR – which explicitly require and address such participant involvement. But what happens when that involvement is manifestly and necessarily distinct from that of the researcher? And might the answer to this question have something to say about contemporary characteristics of social research itself?
Recently I have been doing some research with Chila Kumari Burman, Leverhulme Artist in Residence in our School and with the school’s Centre for Narrative Research (http://www.uel.ac.uk/cnr/ChilaBurman-Artistinresidence.htm ) Chila has been running workshops on visual autobiography with groups of people in different East London locations, using life size shapes drawn round their bodies as a starting point, and a mixed media approach involving collage, painting and drawing. I’ve been doing interviews with the workshop participants afterwards about how they put these visual autobiographies together – what they put in, what they left out, what the process was, what they liked about it, how they might do it differently next time. Cigdem Esin, CNR’s Research Officer, has been helping out, and so has Abu Maruf, a Masters student on our Narrative Research module. You can see examples of Cigdem’s and Maruf’s own visual autobiographies below.
The workshops happened in an art gallery, a cultural center and and a supplementary school in Spitalfields, an area that is economically, educationally, ethnically and culturally highly diverse. A lot of work has already been done on historical, socioeconomic and cultural formations within this locality. For me, the interest was not so much in diverse participant identities, but more in what participants brought to the workshops from the locality and from outside it, from across the city and across the world. Researching participation in a cultural activity like an art workshop is a good way to go beyond everyday socioeconomic identities because the activity is exceptional; some people will see the workshop happening in their regular environment and ignore it, others will hear about it from outside and travel to it. At the same time, researching, by individual interview, the subjectivities expressed in the images, allows a breaching of everyday identity formations, since a wide range of subjectivities – past, present and future, actual, reconstructed and imagined, your own and those of others close to you, from East London, the whole city, the country and the world – all find a place.
What about in the art itself and the making of it? Most people constructed autobiographies mainly within the shape of the body, using materials at the workshop that they liked, drawing, painting and writing alongside and over them, sometimes – like Cigdem – bringing materials in to add to the images or adding things later at home. Some images – like Maruf’s – were entirely made up of their own images, written in this case, though using the paint materials in the workshop.
The most obvious visual difference was in the name and postcode tags that dominated some of the children’s images, picturing a concern with local identities that’s quite common across London and in other cities. Visually, these tags crossed and sometimes completely shattered the boundaries of the body maps, writing names, postcodes and localities around and over individual bodies.
But these tagged images also emblematiseda broader issue: the taking over of the research by the participants. The children who made these images started off following the guidelines for the workshop and then, realising they didn’t have to, invented some of their own, about what to tag, where, and who could tag whose work. Some of them made separate, poster-sized tag pieces as well.
This kind of journeying away from research within the research itself, is always going to happen to some degree, especially when research is being done in people’s regular leisure, cultural and educational settings. It’s particularly feasible when, as in this case, research piggybacks onto the making of art, which all the participants understood as at least partly their own creation – not subsumed by curriculum or aesthetic tradition. Also, when people work in groups, as here, it’s possible that at times the researcher will become just another citizen of the research world, outnumbered, outperformed and outspoken, in the art and the interviews, by the research participants. And when, as in this case, the research is also supplementary to art, and is happening in educational or cultural institutions, the researcher may even be less researcher, and more a co-citizen of the artmaking, educational or cultural worlds of the research context. The researcher may end up writing the research, but even without PAR the resultant work is going to be determined by contributions not of their making and often not even known about by them.
It was very clear in the art and the interview elements of this project that people’s participation was functioning in a lot of ways independently of the research and even of the art. In interviews, they said variously – and sometimes self-contradictorily – that in the workshops they were having fun; doing something they were good at; spending time on an activity they used to love but now had less time for; enjoying art in a non-judgemental context, large-scale art, the lengthiness of the project, or materials they hadn’t used before; trying to develop their artistic practice; interacting within families; interacting between friends; exploring the content and histories of their lives; thinking about their futures. Since these participants were so active in determining the research, these participant activities and drives must shape it. But it seems salutary to imagine research itself as a hybrid of drives and activities like these: as fun, as social activity, as historical exploration, and as explorations of the future and of change. One of the children who had made an artwork dominated by name and place tags looked at it later, in the interview, and considered aloud whether that was how he always wanted to draw himself. This research made me wonder something similar.
Research collaborations across universities walls
I run across this researchers’ network site which is quite impressive, at least in its potentials. Go to http://www.academia.edu/. One could construct virtual departments across the world, according to people specific or broad research interest, thus facilitating information and communication and share projects. Few names from UEL and HSS are already there.
University commons
Here is an article by David Bollier on the “Renaissance of the Science Commons“. It outlines few basic dynamic of academic communities to produce and share knowledge in spite of corporate and institutional pressures for enclosing research within propriety rights fences. Bollier identifies three means at the disposal of researchers to regain control over their work “1) commons made possible by new software architectures; 2) commons based on innovative legal structures; and 3) institutional commons.”
