Sunday, May 17, 2009
BSA Annual Conference, Cardiff
Sociology conferences used to be lively counter-cultural affairs in the 1970s, when I first went to one. A well-known American professor of sociology used to have parties in his (student) accommodation every night. In the interests of positive discrimination, he would often make sure that young and attractive girls were over-represented. One evening, moans, groans and appeals to the Almighty were heard in the early hours, and his neighbours simply assumed that the party had escalated to a new level. In fact, the professor had fallen in his shower and broken a leg. He was found next morning and treated before dying of exposure.
The 2009 conference was a much more sedate affair, held in the Victorian splendour of Cardiff City Hall. Victorian splendour used to just look rather comically self important, but this year there was an unfortunate undertone of unearned wealth and bankers' bonuses. Attendance was rather thin. Although the conference had a main theme – globalization – other streams were well populated. My own paper (Work and Leisure in Higher Education) was given on the first day, and attracted a small but enthusiastic audience, and that left me free to enjoy the rest of the event. My co-presenters in the same session reported findings from their own project on the impact of university expansion on city regeneration. There seem to be interesting contradictory effects: on the one hand, university expansion brings jobs to city regions; on the other student ghettos arise and this introduces unwelcome fluctuations in property values and community life.
For many, the highlights were the sub-plenaries. I chose the ones which focused on my specific interests. Alan Warde led the session on his interests in consumerism and the sociology of culture, and reported some of the findings from the long running ESRC project which sets out to apply the work of Bourdieu to modern Britain. This project has finally produced a substantial book as well, available only in hardback so far. Several other contributory elements have led to publications in the journal Cultural Sociology (e.g. Warde et al 2007) . Brown and Lauder reported their findings of their long running ESRC project on the notion of the ‘knowledge economy’ in another sub-plenary. This project has also been reported in several publications already (including an online ESRC Report) , and offers a sceptical discussion on current government policy to use the education system to generate highly skilled graduates who will compete in the global economy (Brown & Lauder 2006). Both of these substantial projects seem to me to reflect the classic concerns of sociology such as social stratification, and its effects on education, jobs, and culture.
Among the other sessions that I attended was a very interesting discussion on the problems of teaching research methods. I found myself in a group of people who teach to a wide range of undergraduate and graduate audiences, by no means all of them sociologists. Those who still teach in elite universities to single honours sociology students were actually rather surprised to find that the rest of us were encountering serious difficulties and that methods courses were deeply unpopular. When we eventually got on to the sorts of solutions that would meet our concerns, a number of interesting possibilities arose. There seemed to be general consensus that methods courses should be practical and hands on. There was also widespread interest in online resources as a solution to one of the major problems of research methods courses – covering a wide enough syllabus without boring student specialists. I passed on a link to my own online research methods database on the Conference Forum.
Finally, I attended a session on methodological innovations, focusing especially on the notion of social networks and how to research them. I became interested in this topic having reviewed some work on visual methods, and having come across various methodological ‘turns’ in the process, especially the ‘narrative turn’, and the ‘performative turn’. People presenting in this session used techniques such as ‘walking fieldwork’ for example, where a researcher learns about the subjective dimensions of networking and place by walking round the area with a resident, and listening to accounts triggered off by visiting particular places.
Other than the sessions attended, I spent the usual time networking, chatting up publishers, asking them what their best sellers were in particular fields, and where they thought the new trends in the market would go. I also met one of two of the Great and Good, had a chat, and picked up a few bits of intelligence about research and publication.
It is a sign of having had a good conference that one returns determined to follow up some of the issues. Since leaving Cardiff, and processing my notes, I have traced the course of the two major ESRC projects I mention and acquainted myself thoroughly with both of them. Both are very important. I have swapped notes and emails with several other colleagues about teaching methods, and I have been thinking about using walking fieldwork in a small project of my own in the local area. That small project will be a contribution to a local community regeneration effort – an unusually ‘practical’ outcome for me!
I hope the presentations will be available on the conference website in due course.
Dave Harris
References
Brown, P. & Lauder, H. (2006) 'Globalisation, knowledge and the myth of the magnet economy', in Globalisation, Societies and Education 4(1): 25-57
Warde, A., Wright, D., & Gayo-Cal, M. (2007). Understanding Cultural Omnivorousness: Or, the Myth of the Cultural Omnivore. Cultural Sociology 1(2): 143—64.
