This message has been sent through the MASSOBS discussion list.
Remember, clicking 'reply' sends your message to the list.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Redman makes a lot of good points. If you are looking for sociological
material which is based on random sampling techniques and which is in no way
skewed by self-selection, exhibitionist tendencies or by the way directives
are framed, then Mass Observation may not be your best resource. But if you
want archival material which you can enter into imaginatively, using the
knowledge you already have about the period in which it was produced and the
social situation of its producer, then MO is a treasure trove.
A parallel comes to mind. At the Roman fort and settlement of Vindolanda,
near the Roman Wall, they've recovered various documents inscribed on wooden
tablets. For example there's a letter from a mother in Rome writing to her
son in Vindolanda saying, among other things, that she's sending him some
more underpants! We have no way of knowing how representative that woman was
of Roman women in general. Yet this letter, and similar ones, give us a
fascinating glimpse into Roman society. With such documents you begin to
form a very human picture of how people felt and lived nearly two millenia
ago. Inevitably that picture will be distorted in some ways, but it's much
better than no picture at all, and it can be corrected as further evidence
emerges.
Isn't it the same with the MO records?
Francis Clark-Lowes
-----Original Message-----
From: Dorothy Sheridan
Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2013 10:52 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [MASSOBS] Re-use of MO Sex Survey material
This message has been sent through the MASSOBS discussion list.
Remember, clicking 'reply' sends your message to the list.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear all,
Just picked up a video from a session in December at the Open University's
Centre for Citizenship, Identity and Governance (CCIG) on the re-use of
data. It's Peter Redman talking about the hazards and benefits of
re-examining the 1949 Mass Observation "Little Kinsey" survey material.
Much of what he says has been said before about MO and statistical
representativeness and indeed, much of what he says, re-framed more
historiographically, could be (and should be) said about all re-use of data.
Link:
<http://www.open.ac.uk/ccig/media/peter-redman-on-mass-observation>
I hope he won't mind me saying that there is a slight tinge of "they were
so biased then but we know better now" to his presentation. Not that I
disagree with him entirely, but I feel he is very normative about how
so-called rigourous research should be done whereas I'd want to argue that
much of the pleasure and reward in reinterpreting social research data is
grasping the cultural and historical frames that have been used - whether
it was done in 1949 or in 2013. The evidence comes not just from the
replies to the survey questions themselves but from the whole contaxt of
the survey - and on those questions he is rather vague,. He was working
from the microform version in the British Library which must have been
quite restrictive.
Anyway if this is your field, take a look. Sociologists might find it
helpful. It's just under half an hour long.
Dorothy Sheridan
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To leave this list email [log in to unmask]
Alternatively, send the following command to [log in to unmask]
leave massobs
--
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To leave this list email [log in to unmask]
Alternatively, send the following command to [log in to unmask]
leave massobs
--
|