We write widely-cited books, articles, working papers and reports. More importantly, we are also reshaping intellectual and policy agendas. Our core achievement is to deliver theoretically rigorous and critical empirical research on social and cultural change. Four our first five years we identified the following examples of outstanding science for the ESRC.

Financialization

1) Our research on financialization presented the first substantial socio- cultural account of how financialization generates inequality and instability. This pioneering research (begun well before the onset of the financial crisis) has been vindicated by post 2007 developments. Financialization and Strategy (2006) displaced product market centred views of giant firm strategy by reconceptualising strategy as narrative and numbers for the capital t market; opening up new analysis of undisclosed business models, the limits of governance for shareholders and the opportunism of management as in the case analysis of General Electric. Financialization at Work (2008) challenged epochalist concepts of financialization by developing a conjunctural analysis of the changing logics of financialization; opening up new kinds of analysis of financial innovation and financial crisis whose potential is demonstrated in Engelen et al (forthcoming 2010) and the Alternative Report on UK Banking Reform (2009).

Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion

2) Our research on cultural capital and social exclusion produced the most comprehensive account of social and cultural participation ever conducted in the UK, and has informed not only academic audiences but also the DCMS, Arts Councils, and the BFI. Although commenced as an independent project, by being embedded in CRESC it proved possible to provide additional dedicated research resources which led to the writing of the book Culture, Class, Distinction in 2009, already hailed as a ‘landmark’ text by a reviewer in British Journal of Sociology. It has also informed a wider programme of research on changing processes of social and cultural inequality and the remaking of class relations, one important outcome of which was Elites Remembered (2008) (collaborative with the financial researchers from (1) above) which emphasised the need for a revival of academic elite studies and highlighted the new importance of intermediary elites; opening the way for non academic impact through engaged research on private equity and on the pay of corporate managers and financiers.

Media and Culture Industries

3) Our collective research on the media and culture industries has challenged theorisations of post-nationalism and globalisation that see the nation state as withering or national culture and media as under threat, intervened in policy debates about security policy with regards especially to British Muslims and multiculturalism and contributed to refining the meanings and methods of cosmopolitan social sciences.  We have created and deployed a mix of methods appropriate to investigating issues of security and citizenship, democratization and diplomacy in historical and comparative perspective (see Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 28/4, 2008). Supported by an additional ESRC/AHRC award as well as through a CRESC theme, we have developed a large multi-disciplinary, multilingual, and multi-ethnic research team (see Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 32/6 2006 and European Journal of Cultural Studies 10/3 2007). We conduct research in a concerted fashion over two to three year periods using the web as a research tool, exchanging, sharing and collectively analysing data, and engaging in sustained critical reflection on research interactions and processes with participants and partners.

Methodological Innovation and Expert Knowledge Practices

4) Finally, our work on methodological innovation and expert knowledge practices (collected in Cultural Sociology 2009, has paid particular attention to how certain knowledge forms attain value, and how such value is communicated, distributed and challenged. A particularly important ethnographic study has been of engineering practice. Our ethnographic research in this realm of applied science has shown how expertise is operationalized through engagement with specific local practices and cultural understandings, even as prestige expert knowledge is linked to generic knowledge. We have shown how quantitative and qualitative data are productively entangled in the digital modelling practices of engineering firms in which precise, limited data is embedded in more flexible and open-ended images that enable change-makers, such as engineering professionals, to engage issues of public concern in the design of future built environments. (Harvey 2009).