Policy Press
Chapter 7 Social divisions: class, gender, ethnicity – and more
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Abstract
We have seen how research grows out of historical social conditions. As times change, so the problems, strategies and, indeed, the very methods of research are transformed. Even the histories of disciplines and research can come to look out of date very quickly. Reading A. H. Halsey’s A History of Sociology (2004) is salutary: it shows how few women were involved before the 1970s, how there was a major neglect of race, and demonstrates the lack of interest in anything remotely postcolonial or ‘queer’. Halsey’s important history, published only 17 years ago, already documents a very different bygone world: a much more gentlemanly and privileged world. The worlds of research methods and its subjects keep being constructed and reconstructed, moving on through time and space.
In this chapter, we take issues of class, race and gender as major examples. Ill-defined and often absent in research of earlier periods, these become key issues strategically developed through research fields and methodologies. We show briefly how by the mid-1980s a major multiple/intersectional research field of social divisions was being carved out – one that did not exist before.
As Frank Bechhofer recalled of the 1950s:We thought, everybody had been studying the working-class, it is a miracle that the working-class of Britain did not rise as a man and slaughter the sociologists, even if they didn’t overthrow the government, because every sociologist in Britain seemed to be studying the luckless working-class! I mean, I think every miner had their own sociologist! It was really strange! (p 15)
Abstract
We have seen how research grows out of historical social conditions. As times change, so the problems, strategies and, indeed, the very methods of research are transformed. Even the histories of disciplines and research can come to look out of date very quickly. Reading A. H. Halsey’s A History of Sociology (2004) is salutary: it shows how few women were involved before the 1970s, how there was a major neglect of race, and demonstrates the lack of interest in anything remotely postcolonial or ‘queer’. Halsey’s important history, published only 17 years ago, already documents a very different bygone world: a much more gentlemanly and privileged world. The worlds of research methods and its subjects keep being constructed and reconstructed, moving on through time and space.
In this chapter, we take issues of class, race and gender as major examples. Ill-defined and often absent in research of earlier periods, these become key issues strategically developed through research fields and methodologies. We show briefly how by the mid-1980s a major multiple/intersectional research field of social divisions was being carved out – one that did not exist before.
As Frank Bechhofer recalled of the 1950s:We thought, everybody had been studying the working-class, it is a miracle that the working-class of Britain did not rise as a man and slaughter the sociologists, even if they didn’t overthrow the government, because every sociologist in Britain seemed to be studying the luckless working-class! I mean, I think every miner had their own sociologist! It was really strange! (p 15)
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front Matter i
- Contents iii
- List of abbreviations iv
- Authorship v
- Acknowledgements vi
- Finding and using the pioneers’ interviews vii
- Introduction: the pioneers of social research study 1
- Moments of discovery 9
- Life stories: biography and creativity 21
- Beginnings 33
- Contexts: Empire, politics and culture 45
- Old boundaries, new thoughts 73
- Organising: creating research worlds 79
- Old and new trends 101
- Fighting or mixing: quantitative and qualitative research 111
- Into the field 129
- Fieldwork: making methods 135
- On the margins 161
- Social divisions: class, gender, ethnicity – and more 163
- Reflections for the future 189
- Conclusion: what can we learn? 199
- Epilogue 203
- Notes 209
- Further reading 215
- Biographical summaries 219
- Index 233
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front Matter i
- Contents iii
- List of abbreviations iv
- Authorship v
- Acknowledgements vi
- Finding and using the pioneers’ interviews vii
- Introduction: the pioneers of social research study 1
- Moments of discovery 9
- Life stories: biography and creativity 21
- Beginnings 33
- Contexts: Empire, politics and culture 45
- Old boundaries, new thoughts 73
- Organising: creating research worlds 79
- Old and new trends 101
- Fighting or mixing: quantitative and qualitative research 111
- Into the field 129
- Fieldwork: making methods 135
- On the margins 161
- Social divisions: class, gender, ethnicity – and more 163
- Reflections for the future 189
- Conclusion: what can we learn? 199
- Epilogue 203
- Notes 209
- Further reading 215
- Biographical summaries 219
- Index 233
