Susan Oman | The University of Manchester (original) (raw)

Papers by Susan Oman

Routledge eBooks, Jun 23, 2022

Springer eBooks, Oct 7, 2021

New Directions in Cultural Policy Research encourages theoretical and empirical contributions whi... more New Directions in Cultural Policy Research encourages theoretical and empirical contributions which enrich and develop the field of cultural policy studies. Since its emergence in the 1990s in Australia and the United Kingdom and its eventual diffusion in Europe, the academic field of cultural policy studies has expanded globally as the arts and popular culture have been re-positioned by city, regional, and national governments, and international bodies, from the margins to the centre of social and economic development in both rhetoric and practice. The series invites contributions in all of the following: arts policies, the politics of culture, cultural industries policies (the 'traditiona' arts such as performing and visual arts, crafts), creative industries policies (digital, social media, broadcasting and film, and advertising), urban regeneration and urban cultural policies, regional cultural policies, the politics of cultural and creative labour, the production and consumption of popular culture, arts education policies, cultural heritage and tourism policies, and the history and politics of media and communications policies. The series will reflect current and emerging concerns of the field such as, for example, cultural value, community cultural development, cultural diversity, cultural sustainability, lifestyle culture and eco-culture, planning for the intercultural city, cultural planning, and cultural citizenship.

Journal of Cultural Economy, 2018

This paper responds to a trend of contracting out subjective well-being econometrics to demonstra... more This paper responds to a trend of contracting out subjective well-being econometrics to demonstrate social return on investment (SROI) for evidence-based policy-making. We discuss an evolving ecology of 'external' research taking place 'between' the academy and commercial consultancy. We then contextualise this as waves of research methodologies and consultancy for the cultural sector. The new model of 'external between' consultancy research for policy is not only placed between the University and the market, but also facilitates discourse between policy sectors, government, the media and the academy. Specifically, it enables seductive but selective arguments for advocacy that claim authority through academic affiliation, yet are not evaluated for robustness. To critically engage with an emergent form of what Stone calls 'causal stories', we replicate a publicly funded externally commissioned SROI model that argues for the value of cultural activities to well-being. We find that the author's operationalisation of participation and well-being are crucial, yet their representation of the relationship problematic, and their estimates questionable. This case study 're-performs' econometric modelling national-level survey data for the cultural sector to reveal practices that create norms of expertise for policy-making that are not rigorous. We conclude that fluid claims to authority allow experimental econometric models and measures to perform across the cultural economy as if ratified. This new model of advocacy research requires closer academic consideration given the changing research funding structures and recent attention to expertise and the contracting out of public services.

International Review of Public Policy

New Directions in Cultural Policy Research

People want to better understand well-being and data—both separately and together. Others need to... more People want to better understand well-being and data—both separately and together. Others need to consider understanding differently. Arguably data should improve knowledge of good and bad well-being and reveal how to apply this information to improve societies. Understanding means more than knowledge, including a shared understanding of how to do something (like a method). Crucially, it also means empathy. This chapter presents academic and everyday perspectives from research on how people understand data and when data are a barrier to understanding and well-being. Context matters: where data come from, who these are for and about, where they go and for what purpose. Without acknowledging the limits in capacity for understanding, the ‘What Next?’ question cannot be addressed for well-being.

New Directions in Cultural Policy Research

Understanding the where, what, how, who and why is important to any social research. This chapter... more Understanding the where, what, how, who and why is important to any social research. This chapter poses these questions about data and well-being in various ways. We look at well-being measurement, appraising the pros and cons of different forms of data and approaches, acknowledging that all data have limits and that context should drive any chosen approach. It presents examples of qualitative data available through interviews and ethnographies, and quantitative data through surveys, and administrative records. We focus on objective well-being data and a case study of the OECD reveals the volume of decision-making behind international objective indicators. Such human intervention is rarely visible, but is important and useful to improve understanding and comprehension of well-being data more generally.

New Directions in Cultural Policy Research

The ‘new science of happiness’ was not really discovered, but was a coming together of people, pu... more The ‘new science of happiness’ was not really discovered, but was a coming together of people, publications, projects, politicians, agencies and disciplines around the turn of the twenty-first century. This moment foregrounded the issue of how people feel (subjective well-being), changing how this is understood and measured, driving the ‘second wave’ of well-being. This chapter reviews these interlinked histories to contextualise the ‘new’ well-being data. It presents definitions, theories and methods to help understand what went on behind the scenes and under the bonnet of these data practices. We look at the establishment of the UK’s subjective well-being measures and address the question of what subjective well-being can do that differs from previous well-being measures.

New Directions in Cultural Policy Research

Well-being data are often our data, in that they are personal data about us—and their collection ... more Well-being data are often our data, in that they are personal data about us—and their collection requires our time and consideration. We are increasingly aware of data’s role in our everyday lives, yet we lack a shared understanding of data and well-being and how they are linked. This chapter illustrates that data don’t just represent society, but they actually change society, culture and our values in ways we cannot see. This chapter discusses who the book is for, what it is trying to do, how the book should be used, its structure and key arguments. Data collection and uses are value-laden exercises and this chapter guides the reader on how this book can help them judge what well-being data mean for them.

New Directions in Cultural Policy Research

Cultural advocacy communicates the values of the cultural sector, often relying on economic valua... more Cultural advocacy communicates the values of the cultural sector, often relying on economic valuations, which can feel like a different language. This chapter ‘follows the data’ in a valuation of the culture–well-being relationship. It contextualises why the research was commissioned and the data’s origins: how they were collected, as well as the processes and decisions made in analysing the data. The chapter follows the findings in two ways: discovering changed meanings, when reproduced in media reporting; and discovering different findings, when reproduced by another researcher. The chapter’s step-by-step approach opens the black box of these data processes, asking if data used like this can beimpartial. Are there limits to how they progress understanding of well-being in social and cultural policy?

New Directions in Cultural Policy Research

This chapter looks under the bonnet of research, interrogating data and evidence used in social a... more This chapter looks under the bonnet of research, interrogating data and evidence used in social and cultural policy. It looks at data in the culture-well-being relationship in three ways. First, if well-being data can indicate whether policy spend on culture is good for society. Second, a review of two projects that evaluate ‘cultural occupations’ and ‘artistic practice’ in the UK and the US. Despite ostensibly similar approaches with well-being data, different understandings of these categories affect findings. Third, Italian research found ‘cultural access’ was vital to well-being, but its operationalisations are curious in ways that affect the conclusions and recommendations. Understanding well-being data—and the contexts of their use—is critical in appreciating evidence, its limits and uses in social and cultural policy.

New Directions in Cultural Policy Research

This chapter looks at the relationship between culture and well-being. It introduces how the ‘the... more This chapter looks at the relationship between culture and well-being. It introduces how the ‘the culture-well-being relationship’ is invoked in advocacy for culture’s role in social policy, resting on a philosophical lineage. It demonstrates how this relationship has been theorised, naturalised and popularised to become ‘common sense’ for some, while its use in policy has seen it institutionalised, operationalised, metricised and monetised. This chapter reviews this process through a brief survey of cultural policy, asking who decides which—or whose—culture is good for society from Victorian to contemporary cultural value debates. This chapter presents the increasing presence of well-being data in this story, as well as the role of cultural measures in national well-being data from the UK to Bhutan.

New Directions in Cultural Policy Research

Can Big Data improve understanding of well-being and can they harm well-being? The chapter opens ... more Can Big Data improve understanding of well-being and can they harm well-being? The chapter opens by asking what even is ‘Big Data’, and is ‘it’ actually new when large datasets have been valuable in understanding population-level health, wealth and well-being for 6000 years. It reviews the failed promises of Big Data to predict and prevent pandemics, including COVID-19, comparing new data infrastructures with old ones. It presents examples and case studies of social media data and data mining on large scales, and for smaller organisations to understand how we feel. We find there are more limits to Big Data and new data technologies to understand well-being than are made explicit, and question the ethics of Big Data insights and their monetary value in the context of well-being.

New Directions in Cultural Policy Research

What is well-being? Well-being has become synonymous with the multi-billion-dollar wellness indus... more What is well-being? Well-being has become synonymous with the multi-billion-dollar wellness industry, whilst also being rooted in ancient philosophy and religious practices. It has no universal definition across time, place or scientific discipline, yet the very term ‘statistics’ was invented to measure human happiness.This chapter contextualises the history of well-being data and development as one which is tied to political and technological change, firstly, in the desire to monitor human welfare, and secondly, for policy. Public management strategies embraced economic approaches to auditing, as a means to define value and efficiency in social policy choices. The chapter considers how well-being data became co-opted into an ostensibly rational process of decision-making and evaluation, becoming a tool of policy—for good and bad.

The Sociological Review

This article joins up evidence and policy relating to two linked concerns in higher education (HE... more This article joins up evidence and policy relating to two linked concerns in higher education (HE) that are treated as unrelated: postgraduate research student (PGR) well-being, and staff sexual misconduct towards students. Against the standard methodology of systematic reviews, we build on feminist approaches to apply a ‘re-performance’ approach to the review. Re-performance re-enacts established methods, contextualising previous analysis through ethnographic and desk-based research, exposing gaps in evidence, analysis, representation, care and policy. We reveal how aspects of PGR experience, particularly the cultures that engender ill-being and enable sexual misconduct, are silenced in evidence-making. Our ‘re-performance’ uncovers how this occurs in three ways, through: the (mis)construction of the ‘typical student’ in well-being literatures; the (mis)construction of the phenomenon of ‘well-being’ exacerbated by generic survey tools focusing on a medicalised model of mental healt...

Routledge eBooks, Jun 23, 2022

Springer eBooks, Oct 7, 2021

Journal of Cultural Economy, 2018

International Review of Public Policy

New Directions in Cultural Policy Research

The Sociological Review

What happens when cultural participation is measured and assessed in the context of subjective we... more What happens when cultural participation is measured and assessed in the context of subjective wellbeing? And what role does the policy process play in the development of advocacy work that does this measurement and assessment? This paper addresses both questions in an English context.

There has been a large increase among recent research commissioned by organisations in England of apparent demonstration of the value of the cultural sector through the analysis of secondary quantitative data to estimate the subjective wellbeing benefits of cultural participation. This has led to headlines such as “[d]ancing makes people as happy as a £1,600 pay rise”. The reception of these headlines has largely been positive and uncritical, and more recent rounds of government cuts have
seen the Arts Council and Department for Culture, Media and Sport more or less protected, with quantitative evidence along these lines cited as explanation.

We propose a more critical reading, arguing that the measurements of subjective wellbeing, the operationalisation of cultural participation, and the overall modelling strategy are all inadequate for the task at hand. By reproducing and expanding on these models themselves, we show that these estimates largely reflect two things: the relatively weak relationship between income and subjective wellbeing, and the specific definition of cultural participation that allows the funded cultural sector
to appear especially glowing while omitting several other activities.
This raises a number of questions for the cultural sector. Firstly, with regards to the current overreliance on external consultancy which tends to report findings favourable to commissioners, rather than progressing understanding of the issues at hand. Secondly, whether this is the most desirable way for the sector to articulate its value: providing economic multipliers to present its case as a tool of improving national wellbeing? And finally, how far do pieces of quantitative evidence actually enact realities that they claim to objectively describe?

This paper reflects on the nature of participation in a series of UK-wide focus groups inspired b... more This paper reflects on the nature of participation in a series of UK-wide focus groups inspired by the Office for National Statistics’ 2010 ‘What matters to You?’ national well-being debate. Participants were recruited as what Schostak has called pre-existing ‘discourse communities’, including a theatre project in a male prison in the Midlands, a beginners’ computer class in South West England and a yoga class in North East Scotland. Each group discussed ‘what mattered to them’ with little facilitation, and at the discussion’s close, many group members spontaneously expressed enjoyment at participating.
This paper takes these informal insights of participants regarding their enjoyment of group participation as paradata to problematise assumptions about the qualities and definitions of participation. Many of those who attended the group discussions, did so to escape loneliness. Such admissions might seem to reinforce the assumed socio-cultural benefits of participation. However, the expressions of enjoyment tended to refer to the fact that the research session had presented the first opportunity for these groups who have been participating together for some time, to ‘chat amongst themselves’ or ‘get to know each other better’. This raises questions regarding the presumed beneficial qualities of participation. Is participating with people enough, or do people need to engage with each other meaningfully to effect the positive affective qualities of participation? If ‘it is participation per se that matters for well-being’ (Miles and Sullivan 2010), were these conversations a method of ‘everyday participation’ in themselves, rather than simply a means of collecting data? What might this mean for data collection on the impacts of cultural activities on personal or societal well-being? This paper asks whether we should move away from thinking in terms of participation forms, and instead think about participation qualities or genres in order to better understand the participation – well-being relationship.

Subjected to well-being: self-survey and the social survey This paper addresses the well-being a... more Subjected to well-being: self-survey and the social survey

This paper addresses the well-being agenda as an example of ‘the double social life of methods’, “….in which methods are shaped by the social world in which they are located; ….and in turn help to shape that social world” (Law 2012). Much has been written on the social survey’s capacity to describe the social in ways which are believed to progress the well-being of nations; simultaneously enabling experts to manipulate realities in ways which advance their own political agendas. Similarly, the Quantified Self movement might claim to advance the agency of its users, granting them increasing control and knowledge of their bodies and behaviours, yet much evidence points towards these technologies creating more pliant subjects, rather than healthier people. However, little has been written on how the well-being agenda presents an overlapping of concerns regarding these two social constructions. This paper questions whether this is because the long-standing, familiar technology of the survey is thought of as ‘safe’, while new forms of data collection are considered in terms of ever-increasing ‘risk’.

Questions enquiring after a person’s anxiety and happiness, following more traditional panel survey requests for information, such as income, are becoming increasingly standardised across UK national surveys. The normalisation of ‘happiness’ (or subjective well-being) questions in social surveys has yet to be theorised in terms of their affective impact on the subject engaging in a very particular practice of social analytics. This paper will firstly address the requirement of subjects to self-survey their own happiness by way of these new questions; continuing to outline some of the problems of the new technologies of subjective well-being, using data from happiness surveys, as ways of describing the social, and imagining its possibilities for improvement.

Susan Oman (University of Manchester) - ‘Free-text’ and ‘forced-choices’: ‘What Matters to who ab... more Susan Oman (University of Manchester) - ‘Free-text’ and ‘forced-choices’: ‘What Matters to who about measuring national well-being?’

The UK’s Office for National Statistics is one of many national government agencies looking to decipher and track national well-being as an alternative measure of progress. Its 2010 Measuring National Well-being: What Matters to You? debate accomplished 34,000 responses in what might be considered a successful exercise of political participation. The ONS stated that these responses would inform the, then, forthcoming well-being indicators. I will argue that the outcomes and outputs of the debate indicate that the ONS overlooked opportunities to understand the meaning of well-being presented in certain forms of participation which has implications for well-being indicators as the basis for policy-judgements or evaluations.

Building on current research which questions 'what matters' for measuring well-being, I return to 6,787 responses in the consultation’s ‘free-text’ fields named 'Other'. These reflections on the meaning of well-being were written by those who elected to describe ‘What matters to you?’ in their own words, rejecting what one participant describe as the ‘forced choices’ of ONS-prescribed tick-boxes. I conceptualise the distinctive space of the ‘free-text’ field in opening dialogue between participants to conceive the ‘grand(er) narratives’ of national debate and well-being. I argue that the ‘participatory spirit’ (Kroll 2012) of the debate was compromised by methodological oversights, to the detriment of the Measuring National Well-being programme as a political and social science project to understand and improve the well-being of all.

The UK’s Office for National Statistics is one of many national government agencies appealing to ... more The UK’s Office for National Statistics is one of many national government agencies appealing to languages of crisis by seeking to decipher and track national well-being as an alternative measure of ‘progress’. Its 2010 Measuring National Well-being: What Matters to You? debate involved 34,000 citizens in an exercise of political participation which was alleged would inform the (then) forthcoming well-being measures. This paper outlines how the ONS neglected to listen to all who participated, disqualifying the project as a democratic exercise and thus as an accurate representation of ‘what matters’. While there were no boundaries set by the ONS with regards to who might participate in the debate, there were methodological boundaries to the inclusion of data forms in establishing this evidence base for policy-making.

I will look at the debate’s online survey as a method of participation with two response registers: tick-boxes, which one participant called ‘forced choices’, or the free-text fields which the ONS labelled ‘Other’. The two response methods present radical differences in the order of importance placed on well-being concepts in or outside the ONS’ multi-dimensional index. The most commonly mentioned dimension in the free-text fields, and not reflected in debate outputs, was what might be described as ‘everyday participation’ as a contributor to overall quality of life. I will conclude that the well-being agenda, with its current evidence base and methods, cannot sufficiently understand inequalities in the ‘good life’ in order to effect positive socio-political change as advancement towards the ‘Good Society’ the debate promised.

This presentation outlines the socio-political context and methodological rationale for seconda... more This presentation outlines the socio-political context and methodological rationale for secondary qualitative analysis of data produced by programmes which aim to represent the world quantitatively. In this paper I outline my approaches to ONS data from its Measuring National Well-being: ‘What Matters to You?’ debate (2010). This will firstly describe my analysis of 7,000 free-text fields called ‘Other’, in which survey participants elected to avoid what one respondent called the ‘forced choices’ of the easily numerated tick box options. Despite the ‘rich descriptions’ of well-being and ‘what matters’ to respondents, these fields are largely overlooked in ONS reports on the debate’s outcomes. This is the case for all the qualitative data, including the debate’s 175 live events; and I will secondly account for my approach to ‘performing’ ONS methodologies in similarly constructed settings in order to generate focus group-style discussions. I finish by outlining how misunderstanding the utility of qualitative data and analysis in a project to understand what matters to people highlights problems relating to the wider political project to understand what well-being is, especially those who identify as ‘Other’ in the course of completing a government social survey.
In so doing, I hope to convey how different agendas and approaches to understanding well-being, despite drawing on the same data, present not only different, but numerically opposite outcomes. These descriptions of inverted well-being ‘realities’ highlight pressing methodological challenges in the measurement and description of well-being on any scale, particularly that of ‘a nation’. I also intend to present new perspectives on the methodological opportunities presented by social survey data collection, stressing the potential for re-analysis of data beyond that which becomes the social indicator. In so doing, I hope to address ESRC concerns regarding data re-use and the methodological challenges facing data collection and analysis associated with well-being.

Measuring National Well-being and Cultural Participation. Why don’t things quite add up? The... more Measuring National Well-being and Cultural Participation.
Why don’t things quite add up?

The UK government is one of many looking to decipher and track national well-being as an alternative measure of progress. The importance of cultural life to ‘progress’, and ‘cultural participation’ to individual, community and national well-being has been reasoned since Plato and Aristotle (Belfiore and Bennett 2006; Vuyk 2010). In 2010 the UK’s ministry of culture invested £1.8million in an evidence programme which aimed to substantiate this and other associations to assert the value of culture. Yet despite almost 2,500 years of theoretical history and recent financial investment in the 'culture - well-being' relationship, ‘culture’ was absent from the UK’s well-being measures until last year.

I propose a more reflexive and inclusive framing of ‘cultural participation’ can argue a more robust relationship to well-being. I do so drawing on secondary analysis of responses to the UK’s 2010 Measuring National Well-being debate, together with testimonials from my UK-wide focus groups. ‘Cultural participation’ is difficult to define (Gray 2009). I argue the everyday descriptions of participation I have encountered in these well-being datasets present opportunities for a more representative understanding of the value(s) of ‘cultural participation’ than cultural policy currently allows. I suggest this not only improves understandings of the relationship between culture and well-being, but contributes to wider well-being research and policy.

This symposium will reflect on the process of enquiring into wellbeing in diverse social and cult... more This symposium will reflect on the process of enquiring into wellbeing in diverse social and cultural contexts. A series of papers will offer reflections on different ways of asking about wellbeing. The aim is to facilitate discussion on how different methods and different disciplinary approaches are implicated in the constructions of wellbeing they produce, and how these need to be adapted to reflect different social and cultural contexts.

Cutural Value Initiative , Jun 2013