Everyday Life and the Birth of Mass Observation (original) (raw)

The Observers and the Observed: The ‘dual Vision’ of the Mass Observation Project

Sociological Research Online, 2014

In Summer 2008 I commissioned a Part 1 Directive on ‘Doing Family History Research’ from the Mass Observation Project as part of a Leverhulme-funded project [1] on the status and significance of genealogy and its role and consequences in personal and family lives. Drawing on examples from this research project, this article will consider how we can understand Mass Observation correspondents as generating sociological knowledge and insight through what I will call ‘dual vision’. Correspondents write about personal, interior and family lives by being both the observers and the observed, simultaneously commenting upon personal and family life as a social phenomenon (detailing the ‘typical case’), and able to document their own personal and family lives in detail. Further, given the function of the MOP to record for posterity, Mass Observers also consciously situate themselves and their accounts not just in social or geographical space, but also in relation to history, and in time. I wi...

The Materiality of Method: The Case of the Mass Observation Archive

Sociological Research Online, 2014

The Mass Observation Archive presents numerous methodological issues for social researchers. The data are idiosyncratic, difficult to analyze, and the sample design is nonsystematic. Such issues seriously challenge conventional social research protocols. This article highlights a further characteristic of the archive: its unwieldy materiality. Focusing on the sensory experiences of the archive and its particular type of data, the article shows how the experience of getting ‘dirty with data’ plays a real and dynamic part of conducting Mass Observation research. Building on these observations, and drawing on two recent projects that have used the Archive, we reflect on the extent to which these issues are genuinely methodologically problematic, and how far the materiality of method and the sensuousness of data play a part in other research sites and methodological approaches too. In doing so, we emphasize the physical and logistical practicalities involved in engaging with all kinds o...

‘The observers and the observed: The "dual vision" of Mass Observation Project correspondents’

Sociological Research Online, 2014

In Summer 2008 I commissioned a Part 1 Directive on 'Doing Family History Research' from the Mass Observation Project as part of a Leverhulme-funded project[1] on the status and significance of genealogy and its role and consequences in personal and family lives. Drawing on examples from this research project, this article will consider how we can understand Mass Observation correspondents as generating sociological knowledge and insight through what I will call 'dual vision'. Correspondents write about personal, interior and family lives by being both the observers and the observed, simultaneously commenting upon personal and family life as a social phenomenon (detailing the 'typical case'), and able to document their own personal and family lives in detail. Further, given the function of the MOP to record for posterity, Mass Observers also consciously situate themselves and their accounts not just in social or geographical space, but also in relation to history, and in time. I will argue that MOP accounts of personal, interior and family lives are useful to sociologists both because this 'dual vision' makes possible rich and reflexive descriptions of personal and family life, but possibly more importantly, because it allows us to see how people consciously imagine and embed themselves in their social, geographical and temporal context through relating their own experiences to the 'typical case'.