Mass Observation and Methodology (online event)

The papers being presented are:

Mass Observation and the Human Sciences – Nick Clarke, University of Southampton

Literary analysis as sociological method: Mass Observation Mantelpiece Reports as epic, drama, and archive – Rachel Hurdley, Cardiff University

Using Mass Observation data across time and in conversation with other data sources in a study of discourses of voluntary action – Rose Lindsey, University of Southampton

Further detail about each paper:

Mass Observation and the Human Sciences – Nick Clarke, University of Southampton

How should Mass Observation be situated in the human sciences? What are its influences? Is MO itself a distinctive human science? What are its impacts on the broader human sciences? In this paper, I compare and contrast the original MO (the Mass-Observation of the 1930s and 1940s) and the contemporary MO (the Mass Observation Archive and its projects).

The original MO was influenced by the disciplinary interests of its founders, but also numerous national and international movements, schools, and studies. Its distinctive human science was characterised by: disciplinary multiplicity; radical empiricism; accommodation of complexity, diversity, and ambiguity in public opinion; prioritisation of the ordinary; use of observers to collect and report observations (and their own thoughts and feelings); and publication of this material to multiple audiences, including the observers themselves. Its distinctive human science was a democratic science of the people, by the people, for the people, that left its mark on the Ministry of Information, the place of social research in society, market research, the New Left, cultural studies, history from below, and, of course, the contemporary MO.

This contemporary MO was also influenced by the disciplinary interests of its founders and early directors. Its distinctive human science is characterised by: a focus on the everyday lives of ordinary people; a particular focus on the lives and experiences of women; mobilisation of ordinary people – especially women – as writers (more than readers); orientation towards the future (more than the present); generation of correspondence – intersubjective, dialogic, longitudinal, trusting, frank – between archivists and writers; and a situation between the arts, humanities, and social sciences. From this situation, the contemporary MO generates and stages methodological debates on how to interpret written sources and analyse qualitative data – making a significant contribution to the human sciences today.

Literary analysis as sociological method: Mass Observation Mantelpiece Reports as epic, drama, and archive – Rachel Hurdley, Cardiff University

This paper experiments with the use of literary analysis for interpretation of participants’ writing. The dataset comprises over fifty ‘Reports’ in response to a 2019 Mass Observation Directive to its volunteer respondents. Volunteer correspondents have been submitting day diaries and also reports, in response to regular Directives, to the Mass Observation Project since 1981, and, in its earlier incarnation, between 1937 and the 1950s. The aim of Mass Observation is to record everyday life through the writing, photographs and occasional drawings that correspondents submit.

The 2019 Directive asked volunteers to submit reports on what was on their mantelpieces, and also about their treasured objects. Having previously interpreted responses to earlier ‘Mantelpiece’ Directives from 1937 and 1983, I was struck by the similarities and differences between those earlier submissions and the 2019 reports. Whereas my previous analyses had framed the ‘Mantelpiece Reports’ as lists and narrative, this new writing was highly allusive of two literary works: Tom Stoppard’s play Arcadia, and the Catalogue of Ships in Homer’s epic poem, the ‘Iliad’. This led me not only to review the earlier reports, but also to consider how literature can enrich interpretation of participants’ writing. I argue that literary genres offer fruitful analytic resources, particularly through contextualisation with specific literary works.Further, mantelpiece reports construct miniature archives. Viewed and read individually, they represent technologies of self-archiving that contrast with social media archival forms. Taken as a whole, the three collections offer an archive of everyday society and culture, through changing representation practices, that resonates with the Mass Observation Archive itself.In conclusion, the Mantelpiece Reports can be interpreted prismatically through different literary genres and practices.

Using Mass Observation data across time and in conversation with other data sources in a study of discourses of voluntary action – Rose Lindsey, University of Southampton

This paper focuses on the methods used in an interdisciplinary study which examined differing discourses of the role of voluntary action in welfare provision across two distinct timeframes in the UK - the 1940s and the 2010s. These two time-points represent potential ‘bookends’ for the British welfare state. The timing of the publication of the Beveridge Report in 1942 during the Second World War, and its recommendation for comprehensive changes to welfare services in the UK to tackle the ‘five evils’ - idleness, squalor, want, ignorance and disease - was referred to by Beveridge as ‘a revolutionary moment’. This same term has been used to describe the impact of the programme of austerity in the 2010s with welfare services being dismantled in England. A key focus of this study was on these two transformational moments, and their impact on people’s views of the respective roles and responsibilities of the state and voluntary action in the provision of welfare services. This was a comparative study – comparing discourses both over time, and across different sets of actors, with Mass Observation (MO) data used to explore the public’s views and using this in dialogue with other archival sources from voluntary organisations.

Our comparative approach will be the focus of our session. We will first consider how the study accessed and used Mass Observation data to compare public discourses on the role of voluntary action across two periods of time. We will share reflections on the development of a new Directive issued to MO panel members in 2018, which drew heavily on questions asked in similar Directives in the 1940s. We will then consider how Mass Observation data was brought into conversation with other data sets to compare how the general public talked about voluntary action, to how those within the voluntary sector and those within the state talked about it. We will conclude with reflections on what we learnt along the way about the delights and dilemmas associated with working with Mass Observation data.