CRESCOur Research

Our research

Trajectories of Participation and Inequality

Workaround: In current version of Panels 3.8, it seems this body field needs to be populated in order for title above to appear. This note is hidden by custom CSS style. Jack Latimer.

Overview

  •

    This theme is interested in understanding how social and cultural participation has changed in the UK since 1945. We will examine how people spend their leisure time, what their interests in the visual arts, music, reading, television, film and sport and other cultural activities are, and how these have changed in recent years. We want to understand how these forms of participation relate to different aspects of people’s lives, and how individuals themselves understand and interpret their social and cultural lives

    The challenge of an historical and longitudinal perspective on participation and social change
    There is a popular conception that people have retreated from participation in recent decades, with a resulting loss of social cohesion and civic engagement. We are skeptical of these arguments and recommend a broadening of the research agenda to recognize the importance of ‘ordinary’, everyday forms of engagement and activism. We are therefore looking beneath and beyond ‘indicator’ models of participation to examine the often fluid and informal mechanisms which generate opaque, unorthodox and unappreciated kinds of engagement. It follows that we avoid prioritizing particular kinds of activity – for instance in voluntary associations or in traditional or ‘legitimate’ cultural institutions (museums, art galleries, etc) – in order to elaborate a comprehensive analysis more attuned to teasing out the links between everyday life practices and ‘mundane’ social and cultural involvements. In this context, we are interested in how the delineation of social and cultural participation by government departments, businesses, the media, cultural institutions, voluntary organizations, academic researchers, and so on are themselves implicated in legitimizing and contesting what it means to be engaged and active. A key part of our concern therefore lies in seeing how different agencies themselves construct indicators of engagement, so that we can recognize the absences, partialities and motives they entail.

    Linking Social Inequality and Participation
    We are particularly interested to establish links between the study of social inequality and concerns with engagement and participation. Here we will examine the changing relationship between elite and popular forms of social and cultural participation. We will pursue the argument that whereas in the post-war years popular and elite forms of engagement contested directly with each other, we have now entered a situation where participation is structured around unacknowledged middle class norms which indirectly disadvantage marginal populations of various kinds. We therefore see it as important to develop more sophisticated historical accounts, which are also attuned to the role of lifecycle and generational processes in shaping people’s social and cultural activities.  Part of our work will thus involve reflecting on developing theoretical frameworks, where we engage with issues arising from Bourdieu’s field analysis; urban sociological debates concerning segregation and the urban public realm; network processes; and interests in time, temporality and sequencing

    The local, national, and global
    We pursue our interests on numerous scales, involving European collaborations, UK based studies, and projects focused on Manchester itself. Here a key concern is to use a series of interconnected studies of Greater Manchester to explore diverse aspects of socio-cultural participation in this historically revolutionary city. A site of radical restructuring encompassing the industrial capital of the 19th century cotton textile industry, a major centre for the new industries from the early 20th century, through to its recent re-incarnation as a service led city specializing in cultural, leisure, and tourist activity, Manchester is a perfect location to reflect on trajectories of engagement and involvement. In this respect, a major milestone will be a conference on the theme of Mapping Manchester culture, to be held in the autumn of 2010, which will bring together all key existing and potential players in determining Manchester’s cultural future. In this arena there will be an opportunity to air key academic research, address the wider domain of cultural sector concerns and establish a networking space to develop plans for the website.

    Key Questions

     1)      How does ageing affect diverse kinds of social and cultural participation? 
    We have shown in earlier CRESC research that the cleavage between ‘high’ and ‘popular’ culture is no longer based predominantly on class divisions. Age is now a key differentiating principle, which distinguishes the middle aged and elderly, who are attracted towards established and traditional cultural forms (e.g. classical music concerts, museum and art gallery attendance), from younger age groups, who are more attracted to popular/commercial forms of music and cultural consumption (see Bennett et al 2009; Scherger 2008). Here we will develop novel theoretical and substantive analyses of generation, age and temporality, using both quantitative and qualitative analyses in methodologically integrative and distinctive ways. This will include the use of multiple correspondence analysis and the employment of longitudinal data sets where possible.

    2)      How do we understand the changing boundaries of disengagement and participation in historical perspective?
    This will examine how social inequalities have structured formal, informal and more opaque kinds of cultural involvement since 1950. We recognize that educated middle class groups are more likely to participate in a wide range of formal and legitimate cultural institutions compared to the working class and other more marginalized groups. However, we contest the view that this is a sign that the working classes are socially disengaged more generally, noting their active kinship based and neighbourhood involvements, and the way that interactions with popular media can be conceptualized as active forms of engagement. We are interested in recognizing how the changing demands of work and the remaking of urban neighbourhoods can affect the activities of these groups. We therefore seek to go beyond ‘deficit’ models implied by the ‘social exclusion’ literature and criticize views that the ‘non users’ of established cultural forms are simply passive or isolated. Within this we are especially interested in examining the territorial dimensions of involvement and engagement, where the contestation over belonging is central to understanding forms of participation.

    3)  How are the boundaries of the cultural sector being historically redefined? 
    Recognising that the cultural sector itself sets the terms for formal understandings of engagement and disengagement, we examine the historical formation of the cultural sector, including the relationship between ‘legitimate’ cultural institutions and other public and private sector bodies, and the institutional frameworks which support alternative cultural forms. A major component of our analysis here will be to locate the dynamics of present day arrangements in the historical context of the cultural sector’s emergence from the post-war political settlement as a distinct arena of production and governance.  Once more, a particular focus will be on Manchester as a case study, deploying a series of linked local studies.

    4: What are the comparative dimensions in the organization of cultural capital and social exclusion?
    Here we will build on the path-breaking Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion project (Bennett et al 2009) which has argued for the need to recognize the power of cultural capital in contemporary Britain, conceived not as a form of ‘snob’ culture but as the ability to range widely over a number of key cultural genres, whilst avoiding and denigrating some cultural forms. In this new cluster of projects, we will participate in and elaborate in an international network concerned with measuring the comparative dimensions of cultural capital. Here we have active alliances with researchers in Australia, Chile, Denmark, France, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Portugal, and the United States, and plan a collaborative book which both considers national variants in cultural capital and develops a more global and mobile perspective (Silva, Savage, Bennett, Warde).

    Theme Convenor: Andrew Miles

    Theme Researchers:

    Niall Cunningham

    Ben Jones

    Niamh Moore

    Mike Savage

Projects

Below is a list of the projects run by this research theme. Click on the title of the project for more information.

  • Step-Change

    Step-Change is an EPSRC-funded project that brings together a cross-disciplinary research team from the Institute for Transport Studies at the University of Leeds and CRESC at the University of...

  • Ageing and Participation

    2009   

    Simone Scherger (CRESC Research Associate), with Savage: ongoing survey analysis, exploring processes of inter-generational cultural transmission and social mobility...

  • Changing Boundaries of Participation

    2009-2010

    Miles, Not 'taking part'  Structures and narratives of cultural (dis-) engagement, based on analysis of interviews with an extensive group of 'non-users' of...

  • Cultural Sector

    2009-2012

    A theme wide 'cultural sector map of Manchester', to be used for academics and non academics. This will include biographical listings of key individuals, events, and...

  • Comparative aspects of Cultural Capital

    A major project here is Cultural Capital: urban explorations across Europe. This will use a Manchester case study to examine both the production and demand for different cultural...

  • The Great British Class Survey

    The BBC’s Great British Class Survey was launched on 26 January 2011. Already the largest ever survey of social class in the UK, it draws predominantly on CRESC research. ...

  • Understanding everyday participation – articulating cultural values

    This introductory page is the first of three pages about the Understanding Everyday Participation project:

    ...

  • A Study of Mobility and Immobility

    This project addresses the recent academic, public and political debate about whether social mobility is declining and the considerable anxieties around the issue.  The research, undertaken...

  • Working Class Stability and Change

    Fiona Devine is currently involved in a qualitative project following on her work on middle-class reproduction. In 2010, in-depth interviews were conducted with thirty young women and men in Year...

  • Feminist Webs

    I am involved in a collaborative feminist network across Manchester and the North West. Feminist Webs is a vibrant, entangled intergenerational network of young women and young(er) and old(er)...

  • Sustaining Food

    Current projects include participatory research with a Manchester-based Young Women's Group for young lesbian and bisexual women on their ...

Publications

Below is a list of the publications produced by this research theme.

Working Paper

Refereed Journal Papers

Book Chapters

Conference Papers

Book

Research Briefings

People

Below is a list of CRESC staff working on this research theme.

Research Fellows

Andrew Miles
Niamh Moore
Stewart Muir

Affiliated Academic Members

Mike Savage
Elizabeth Silva
Alan Warde
Janet Wolff

Ex members of Staff

Simone Scherger

News

Below is a list of the news items associated with this research item.

  • There are seven social classes, not three!
    Wed, 03/04/2013

    There are seven social classes in Britain, not three, say Mike Savage and Fiona Devine describing the results of the BBC's Great British Class Survey.

    160,000 people filled in the on-line questionnaire, and the results were analysed in three dimensions of capital: economic , cultural, and social. The results show that only 39% of those who responded fit the extablished categories of 'middle class' or 'traditional working class'. Instead Savage, Devine and the team which included Andy Miles, Niall Cunningham and Yaojun Li, all from Manchester, identified seven classes: the elite; an established middle class; the technical middle class; the new affluent workers, emerging service workers, traditional working class, and the precariat.

  • Major CRESC Grant probes radical rethink on culture
    Mon, 06/02/2012

    A multi-disciplinary team led by CRESC Senior Research Fellow Dr Andrew Miles has been awarded £1.5 million by the Arts and Humanities Research Council for a five-year research project under its Communities, Culture and Creative Economies funding programme.

    ‘Understanding Everyday Participation – Articulating Cultural Values’ proposes a radical re-evaluation of the relationship between participation and cultural value. Bringing together evidence from in-depth historical studies, re-analysis of existing survey data and new qualitative research on the detail, dynamics and significance of day-to-day cultural practices and engagements, the project aims to create new understandings of community formation, connectivity and capacity through participation.

    Miles leads a team of experts drawn from history, the social sciences, and cultural policy at the universities of Manchester, Leicester, Exeter and Warwick together with leading policy researchers in the cultural sector. The project is supported by 16 national and local partners, including Arts Council England, the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, and the Working Men’s Cubs and Institutes Union, with Creative Scotland making a substantial investment to support additional case study work (see below for a full list of project partners).

    The project’s premise is that orthodox models of the creative economy and ensuing cultural policy are based on a narrow definition of cultural participation; one that captures formal engagement with traditional cultural institutions, such as museums and galleries, but overlooks other activities, for instance community festivals, hobbies and a range of informal, ostensibly mundane, everyday activities. This frame, founded historically on deficit based assumptions of the logics for state cultural support, misses opportunities to understand the variety of forms of participation, the stakes that attach to these, and their (positive and negative) consequences.

    The core research questions the project will address are:

    • How, historically, did we arrive at the definitions, fields of knowledge and policy frames informing notions of cultural participation and value today?
    • What are the forms and practices of everyday participation - where do they take place? How are they valued? And how do these practices relate to formal participation?
    • How is participation shaped by space, place and locality?
    • How are communities made, unmade, divided and connected through participation?
    • How can broader understandings of value in and through participation be used to inform the development of vibrant communities and creative local economies?
    • How do we reconnect cultural policy and institutions with everyday participation?

     These questions will be approached through an exploration of the contexts, processes and outcomes of participation, understood as temporally and physically situated phenomena. Here the project will engage critically with Bourdieu’s central concepts of field, habitus and capital as a broad theoretical frame through which to explore the dynamics and stakes of unofficial and day-to-day participation practices.  Accordingly, the research will focus on six contrasting 'cultural ecosystems' (Manchester, Peterborough, Gateshead and Dartmoor in England, and Aberdeen and Stornoway in Scotland) to investigate the connections between multiple understandings of community (geographical, elective, identity based etc), cultural value, the creative economy and everyday participation.

     The findings from the situated case studies will inform four partnership-operated trials of new policy interventions or of professional or community practices. Throughout the project research will be integrated with key partners, stakeholders and cultural and community organisations in order to evolve better shared understandings of everyday cultural participation and the implications of this for policy makers and cultural organisations at national, local and community levels. In this context, new understandings of the relationships between everyday participation, community and cultural value promise to reveal evidence of hidden assets and resources that can be mobilised to promote better identification and more equitable resourcing of cultural opportunities, generate well-being and contribute to the development of creative local economies.

    Project Partner organisations:

    • Arts Council England
    • Clore Duffield Foundation
    • Creative Scotland
    • Department of Culture, Media and Sport
    • English Heritage
    • Local Government Group
    • Manchester City Council
    • Museums Association
    • National Council for Voluntary Organisations
    • Norfolk Museums and Archaeology
    • Paul Hamlyn Foundation
    • Sport England
    • Sustrans
    • Vivacity
    • Voluntary Arts Network
    • Working Men’s Club and Institutes Union

    For further information about this project contact Dr Andrew Miles (andrew.miles@manchester.ac.uk)

  • Key Sociology Paper Honoured
    Sun, 18/12/2011

    An article by CRESC's Wendy Bottero has been chosen by the British Sociological Association for inclusion in its Articles in British Sociology: BSA 60th Anniversary Special Collection. Wendy's article, which appeared in 2004 in Sociology, is on 'Class identities and the identity of class'. The BSA has selected especially significant articles for inclusion in the collection, and Wendy joins a small group of other authors who include CRESC's past director, Mike Savage. Wendy's article is currently avaialable online (see the link below), and its full bibliographic details are:

    Wendy Bottero (2004), ‘Class identities and the identity of class’, Sociology, 38(5) 985-1003. doi: 10.1177/0038038504047182 

  • Everyday Participation and the Creative Economy
    Mon, 06/12/2010

    CRESC Senior Research Fellow Andrew Miles and Theme 5 Affiliate Member Abigail Gilmore from Manchester’s Institute for Cultural Practices attended a three-day AHRC Research Development Workshop in Birmingham from 6-8 December on the Role of the Creative Economy in Developing and Sustaining Vibrant and Prosperous Communities in the UK. They are now working with a group of workshop participants from other institutions and agencies in developing a bid for funds to develop a project on ‘Understanding Everyday Participation – Articulating Cultural Values’.

  • Modelling policy interventions in the cultural sector
    Wed, 24/11/2010

    This joint CRESC/Institute for Cultural Practices seminar took place on 24 November 2010 as part of the dissemination of  the Department for Culture Media & Sport's prestigious CASE (Culture and Sport Evidence) research programme.

    Harman Sagger, Economic Advisor to DCMS, presented a new policy model for the cultural agencies developed by the University of London’s Evidence in Policy and Practice Information (EPPI) Centre and Matrix Knowledge Group, and a mixed academic and cultural sector audience then discussed this and other CASE Programme activities, including the modelling of Subjective Well-being for understanding the economic impact of policy interventions.

  • A step-change in sustainable urban transport
    Tue, 23/11/2010

    CRESC Researchers, Dr Andy Miles and Dr Niamh Moore, along with Professor Mike Savage (University of York) will team up with colleagues at the internationally-renowned Institute of Transport Studies (ITS) at the University of Leeds in a major new study that could help planners make urban travel networks significantly more sustainable by 2050.

    The £1.5 million STEP-CHANGE project, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), aims to inform a 'step-change' in attitudes to urban transport by revolutionising the planning of towns and cities.

    The project, commencing on 1 January 2011, will examine and compare the transport practices of individuals and organisations in two UK cities – Leeds and Manchester. By employing a novel combination of methods, the team hope to gain a unique insight into the complex mix of factors which influence people's travel behaviour. They will then consider how planners can make use of this insight to overhaul existing planning paradigms and develop a new generation of tools focused on sustainability.

    Over a four-year period the team will follow a representative sample of households in both cities, engaging with them on a regular basis to investigate how their travel choices are influenced by various interrelated factors such as getting a new job, having children, or moving house.

    Household members will also record and explain the decision-making processes around their daily journeys in a travel diary. The findings will be analysed and set in context by a parallel study of historical records to build up a picture of people's changing use of transport over the past 30 years.

    Principal Investigator Dr Miles Tight, of the University of Leeds Institute for Transport Studies, said: "In order to reach the government's ambitious targets of an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050, urban transport systems must undergo a massive transformation.

    "A lot of tools that planners currently use tend to support the status quo of a relatively small change in infrastructure and behaviour. What we want to find out is whether there are other tools you can use to promote a large shift towards urban planning that has a far greater emphasis on sustainability."

    Co-Investigator Dr Niamh Moore from the University of Manchester, said: "This kind of research combines a number of novel aspects carried out over several years – an approach that is unprecedented in transport research.

    "In the past, planners have relied on inadequate data and limited models of people's everyday travel. At the end of STEP-CHANGE we will have a much more complex account of people's travel practices than we currently do and, more importantly, we aim to translate these findings to the transport planning world.

    "So novel is the kind of data we will be generating that we do not intend to keep it to ourselves. A key, and unusual step, in this project is the plan to archive the data and make it freely available for others to use, through the Timescapes Archive at the University of Leeds."

    Co-investigator Professor David Watling, also from the University of Leeds, added: "The STEP-CHANGE project is innovative and unique in bringing together social scientists, engineers and mathematicians.

    "Traditional transport research usually involves devising mathematical models based on numerical data, whereas this project will be developing models based on qualitative accounts of people's lives – something that's never been done before.

    "We are hoping that the result will be a much more comprehensive and qualitative picture of what events, actions and behaviours bring about meaningful and sustainable change."

    Co-investigator Professor Mike Savage, FBA, University of York, added: "The plans for a longitudinal qualitative research are at the cutting edge of social science and will attract interest across a number of fields, not just in transport studies."

    STEP-CHANGE is part of the Sustainable Urban Environment SUE programme, a £45m initiative supported by the EPSRC investigating different ways of improving sustainability in the urban environment.

    For more information

    More information about the Timescapes Archive can be found here: http://www.timescapes.leeds.ac.uk/.

    Notes to editors

    STEP-CHANGE (Sustainable Transport Evidence and modelling Paradigms: Cohort Household Analysis to support New Goals in Engineering design) is a five year research project led by researchers at the University of Leeds' Institute for Transport Studies and the ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-cultural Change at the University of Manchester and is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

    The project is the first largely qualitative longitudinal panel study of households which focuses on their transport activity. The information will be used to develop a systematic and publicly available evidence base for exploitation by both the research community and practitioners.

  • Understanding Participation in Culture and Sport
    Mon, 08/11/2010

    A report written by CRESC Senior Research Fellow Andrew Miles and Alice Sullivan from the Centre for Longitudinal Studies, Institute of Education on  'Understanding the relationship between taste and value in culture and sport' was published by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport on 8 November 2010 at:  

    http://www.culture.gov.uk/publications/7542.aspx

    The report describes the research they undertook as ESRC Placement Fellows at the DCMS in 2009-2010. Based on and around the government’s national Taking Part survey it explores the additional perspectives on cultural participation offered by Multiple Correspondence Analysis and by participation narratives from qualitative interviews

  • Growing Histories, Growing Health and Well-being
    Mon, 01/11/2010

    CRESC researcher, Niamh Moore, in collaborations with colleagues at a number of other universities, has been successful in gaining funding from the cross-council Connected Communities research programme led by the AHRC, to research community food growing practices. 

    Two year-long projects will draw on Niamh’s involvement in a south Manchester allotment with local young lesbian and bisexual women (http://www.likt.org.uk/activities/allotment).

    One project will focus on histories of community food growing, and the second will focus specifically on the role of community food growing in supporting health and well-being.

    Both projects will be novel in involving young women, who have recently had training in peer-research, as co-researchers. They will interview each other, and other allotmenters, take photos of their work and play, document the process of organising and planning the allotment, and trace the history of the site in south Manchester through local records, as well as reflecting on the relationship between working outdoors, growing and then eating food collectively, the making of community, and their sense of health and well-being.

     Two other sites involved in this project with Professor Neil Ravenscroft (PI) from University of Brighton, and Dr Ed Welch at University of Durham, are Spitalfields City Farm (http://www.spitalfieldscityfarm.org) and Tablehurst and Plawhatch Community Farm in Sussex (http://www.tablehurstandplawhatch.co.uk)

    The second project focusing on health and well-being is in collaboration with Professor Andrew Church (Brighton), Professor Neil Ravenscroft (Brighton), Professor Richard Mitchell (Glasgow) and Dr Anne Ellaway (Glasgow).

  • Meaning and Politics in Cultural Participation
    Thu, 23/09/2010

    CRESC Senior Research Fellow Andrew Miles was the Guest Lecturer in the first meeting of Leeds Metropolitan University’s Knowledge Exchange Network on participation and engagement in the arts, which took place on the 23rd September 2010. Andrew spoke on ‘Meaning and Politics in Participation’ to an audience of more than 50 people, including academics from 10 universities, cultural policy makers from the Arts Council and local authorities and a large number of practitioners from individual artists to representatives from some of the North's largest institutions.

    Presentations were also given by the network convenors, Leila Jancovich, from the UK Centre for Events Management at LMU, and Professor Franco Bianchini from the University’s Cultural Planning and Policy Unit in the School of Cultural Studies.  These were followed by lively workshops exploring different factors influencing participation and engagement in the arts.

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