Real Life Methods ran from October 2005 to January 2009. This website is archived and no longer maintained. For up to date information, please see www.manchester.ac.uk/realities
Vital Signs: Paper Session 4a
Wednesday 10 September, 3.30-5pm, Cordingley Theatre
4a. Representing real lives
‘Literary language as anthropological tool in Vassily Aksyonov: “In Search of Melancholy Baby”’ – Olga Kuminova (Ben-Gurion University)
Aksyonov's study of American life is not a novel. Its mode of dealing with reality is highly analytical, and lives up to the best academic standards of subtlety and tolerance in understanding and describing phenomena of a culture that is not the author's own. Yet In Search of Melancholy Baby reads like a novel, rather than an average academic book. One is drawn into the flowing narrative in spite of the absence of clear-cut fictional plot. The reader's role inscribed in the text is to participate with ease and pleasure in anthropological reflexion on life, where both the reader and the author are part of the life under observation, and deeply involved in or with the text, rather than detached and remote "objective" observers situated outside of life and of the text (as is the case with much academic writing). In my presentation, I will explore the difference between Aksyonov's writing and the more conventional kinds of writing, both academic and literary. I will mainly focus on the stylistic, rhetorical, content and ethical features that bring Aksyonov's text "alive," connect it to the lives of the author and the readers. Most crucially, the author keeps situating himself with regard to people, places and practices he describes – he expresses his attitude towards everything he describes, and everyone he quotes, and this makes the reader tie him/herself to the text and the reality behind it with links of sympathy, admiration, disapproval; even ambivalance, when it is pronounced, becomes an "active link."
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‘Between fact and fiction: Sound, narrative and interactivity in the recontextualisation of the Stephen Lawrence case’ – Tahera Aziz (London South Bank University)
The presentation will focus on the recent ‘surge’ in drama documentary forms across the creative and performing arts. Take, for example, the rise of verbatim theatre, or Jeremy Deller’s re-enactment of The Battle of Orgreave (2001). As a visual artist engaged in a similar creative activity, I am interested in why artists are employing the creative strategy of consciously using factual material in their artistic process, and I will try to surmise what this approach can offer to our understanding of real life.
My own practice research is located at the intersection of sonic art, computer-mediated interaction and storytelling, and focuses on the re-examination of the Stephen Lawrence case, based upon transcripts from Stephen Lawrence Inquiry Report (Macpherson, 1999) and written accounts by Duwayne Brooks in Stephen and Me. While the project draws on both factual and biographical material, it is envisaged that artwork will not simply be a ‘reconstruction’ of the tragic events surrounding the murder, but an exploration and response to the memories and socio-political issues raised by the case, which still have resonance today.
I am currently developing a prototype for an artwork as part of an AHRC award through the Practice-led and Applied Route, and this will be tested on an invited audience, and feedback of the experience will be elicited. I will refer to this research process as part of the presentation.
‘The art of generalisation in real life research’ – Professor Jennifer Mason (Real Life Methods, University of Manchester)
Qualitative researchers have traditionally and convincingly argued that their methods provide a distinctive insight into the rich complexity and nuances of social life and experience. The recent tide of research using methods that aim to capture the tangible, intangible and sensory dimensions in everyday ‘real life’ experience arguably brings yet greater possibilities for insight. This is because these approaches can provide data and knowledge that seem ‘vital’ and evocative in a way that the more sterile abstractions and categorisations (in text and number) that social science sometimes deals in may not.
But these approaches also raise in stark form questions about how such insights can judged and weighed as ‘social science’, and whether they have any resonance outside of the particular situations and circumstances under scrutiny. Of course qualitative researchers have always been haunted by the accusation that although their work may provide fascinating insights, it is ‘only’ anecdotal, because the methods do not allow for generalisation, according to conventional (statistically derived) conventions. However, the conceptual separation of generalisation from insight that this implies (or at least suggests is possible) is worrying.
In this paper I shall outline a case for generalisation as an art, in which the concept of ‘insight’ is central rather than incidental. I shall draw on ‘real life’ data and insight from projects on Family Resemblances and Family Backgrounds, conducted as part of the Real Life Methods programme of the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods (www.realllifemethods.ac.uk)
Download paper [new window] This is a later, updated, version of this paper, given at the NCRM Annual Meeting in January 2009.
